Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The following comments on standardized testing of U.S. students and teachers are from Bloomberg News interviews and e-mails provided by state education departments.

Roderick Paige, former U.S. Education Secretary:

``We've got to get better testing producers -- we've got to do that. But kids must be evaluated so that we can know the extent to which the standards are being achieved or not. We use this information to re-teach.''

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Harley Miles, supervisor of assessments for schools in Charlottesville, Virginia. Miles wrote her May 16, 2005, e-mail to state education officials as students waited to take the No Child Left Behind test because Harcourt Assessment had failed to deliver exam booklets on time:

``I have students who have gotten psyched to do their best, but each day are told, `No, not today.' I am at a loss as to how to proceed. I can't get to the Harcourt person who was assigned to my division because there seems to have been some kind of change in the process.''

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Jeffrey Galt, former Harcourt Assessment chief executive officer. He says opponents of standardized exams publicize errors as a way to discredit testing:

``It's gotten to the point where you just have to be perfect to be successful. But for a business process that is so dependent on human beings, it's virtually impossible to be perfect.''

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Linda McNeil, co-director of the Center for Education at Rice University in Houston. McNeil comments on linking teacher compensation to improving student scores on a single statewide test.

``Fear is what's driving this system. It's complete intimidation. It's no theory of education.''

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James Yoder, a Spanish teacher and department chair at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yoder discovered errors on verb conjugation questions while taking a June 2004 licensing exam produced by Educational Testing Service:

``It was basic, so basic.''

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Janet Weldon, testing director in Marion County, Florida. She wrote a Feb. 24, 2005 e-mail to state officials, commenting on poor print quality and too few answer sheets for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

``In my ten years of running testing programs in our district, I have never seen the kinds of difficulties we've encountered with Harcourt for the FCAT.''

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Frank Catalano, senior Vice President Marketing, U.S. Assessments & Testing for Pearson Education:

``The bottom line is, we are in the business of helping kids learn and getting educators to the point that they want.''

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Tim Vansickle, Minnesota testing director. He wrote an April 23, 2006, e-mail to Pearson Assessments after schools complained that pencil marks on one page of an answer sheet sometimes generated smudges on another page, potentially confusing scanning machines:

``How could something so basic as answer document design go so wrong?''

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Johanna Lockhart, marketing director for the Houston Independent School District:

``We have a saying in Texas: If it moves -- test it!''

To contact the reporters for this story: David Glovin in New York at dglovin@bloomberg.net David Evans in Los Angeles davidevans@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 3, 2006 00:10 EST