Apparently, the Clintons have parted ways with the vast majority of fellow Democrats, as well as civil rights and business groups, on the importance of annually measuring student progress against state academic benchmarks. Just last week, stumping on the campaign trail, former President Bill Clinton announced that Hillary Clinton "thinks the federal government requires too many tests for U.S. schoolchildren."

Unlike the phony debate about Common Core on the Republican side, this is an issue where the policies of the next president will actually matter. And if Hillary Clinton acted to roll back what are already fairly minimal federal testing requirements, it would be to the detriment of our students, particularly poor and minority children, children of recent immigrants and students with disabilities.

It's likely no coincidence that Bill Clinton made these comments in the lead-up to the Democratic primary in New York, where polls show the former secretary of state with a narrower lead than expected over rival and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The announcement also came on the eve of the first day of annual student testing in New York, where some largely well-to-do, suburban activists have been advocating that parents opt their children out of taking state assessments.

To be clear, we support efforts to minimize the time spent on student testing. Last year, we joined a diverse array of organizations – including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association – in support of legislation to eliminate low-quality and unnecessary tests. That legislation is now federal law, part of the Every Student Succeeds Act signed by President Barack Obama last December.

The problem with this new wrinkle in Hillary Clinton's K-12 education agenda is the assertion that the federal government is to blame for over-testing. Nothing could be further from the truth. On average, federal policies account for seven hours of testing per year – roughly 0.6 percent of an average school year. The time students spend on assessments required by states and school districts is, on average, two to three times that required by the federal government.

Bill Clinton has said that he'd like to roll back the clock and return to the testing policies of his administration, when kids were tested just once in elementary school, once in middle school and once in high school. But, as the Clintons know, these policies came under criticism from a wide array of stakeholders because they did not provide frequent or useful enough information to parents, teachers or administrators. Nor did they chart the progress of individual students and schools from year to year. For these reasons, Democrats like the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, working with a broad bipartisan coalition, succeeded in expanding annual testing in reading and math to all grades three through eight. As a member of the Senate Education Committee, Hillary Clinton was not only integrally involved in, but also voted for this change.

Last year, Congress reaffirmed the policy of annual testing with overwhelming bipartisan margins of support. In fact, 43 of 46 Democratic senators – including Sanders – voted last year in favor of an amendment that not only continued annual math and reading assessments in grades three through eight, but also required that the results be used to rate schools and that interventions occur when large proportions of students, especially those from historically disadvantaged groups, are not meeting state benchmarks. Virtually every major civil rights group in the country endorsed that amendment, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and advocates for students with disabilities.

Bill Clinton argues that the money spent on student testing could be better used elsewhere. But the cost of federal and state testing combined is less than $35 per student. What's more, that investment yields substantial dividends. One study showed that the annual testing required in all states after 2002 resulted in states and localities increasing their support for education by $600 per pupil, as the information uncovered by assessments compelled states moved to invest more to raise student achievement. In addition, the testing requirements in federal law have been accompanied for the last decade by billions in targeted funding for school turnarounds in high-poverty schools.

What anti-testing advocates are failing to tell our parents and communities is that getting rid, or opting out, of standardized assessments disproportionately harms poor students and students of color who are already in areas plagued by a lack of resources, where high-poverty schools struggle to offer advanced classes and attract good teachers and counselors. These communities depend on the insights gleaned from testing for funding and allocations that are intended to direct resources where they're needed the most – in order to actually address the systemic inequities holding too many of our kids back from reaching their fullest potential. That's what civil rights groups have learned over the past two decades. That's why they strongly support these policies.