ms. bonamici for five minutes, or six or seven. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, and thank you so much to the witnesses for being here today. it's really pretty exciting time for the u.s. space program. i know that my colleagues and i all watched the orion test launch with great interest. i also want to join my colleagues and congratulate nasa, lockheed martin, united launch alliance, everyone who participated in this test flight. i heard from some of my constituents who really applauded this, saw this as a big step in our leadership in space. that comes as welcome news as we are trying to inspire and spark interest in the next generation of young scientists. in our previous space subcommittee hearing we talked about the challenge of communicating the importance of nasa's work and a mission to our constituencies who support the mission with their hard earned tax dollars but as mr. bridenstine the same of a lot of people who were inspired looking back to the apollo mission and the moon landing. but that public outreach is important and i notice that you g

ms. bonamici, is recognized for five minutes. ms. bonamici: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i'm here this morning to discuss an important issue that we hear about when we talk with teachers, parents, students and school administrators. in conversation after conversation they've expressed concern about what seems like an endless stream of tests that in many cases do little, if anything, to improve learning or classroom instruction. of course, assessments play an important role in education and high-quality assessments are valuable for informing meaningful instruction. nonetheless, too much time is devoted to redundant, low-quality or unnecessary tests. in many cases teachers administrator tests but the results aren't made available for months and hardworking educators have little opportunity to design individualized support based on the results of those tests. furthermore, some of the tests are redundant. they take up time that could be used on meaningful instruction. used resources best spent elsewhere and cause students undo stress. in other schools, too much time