Alyson Klein writes at the Education Week (3/12) “Politics K-12” blog that the National Education Association is backing legislation sponsored by Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Rep. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) that would significantly decrease “the federal footprint on standardized testing.” Noting that similar legislation has failed in the past, Klein writes that under the bill, “states would assess their students only in certain grade spans” instead of “testing students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.”

THE Journal (3/11) also covers the NEA’s backing of the bill, noting that the union “issued a lengthy endorsement of the legislation, praising the bill’s sponsors and slamming high-stakes standardized testing as harmful to students and detrimental to education.”