OP-ED: WHY SOME PARENTS IN NJ ARE REFUSING HIGH-STAKES STANDARDIZED TESTS
Stopping kids from taking the exams doesn't just express a parent’s anxieties for kids, it also demonstrates concerns about the school system
- Julie Borst
Parents have always had the right to refuse standardized tests for their children, and in prior years, many took advantage of that right. With the onset of PARCC testing this spring, the number of parents refusing has increased dramatically, reflecting growing parental concerns about the PARCC tests and about high-stakes standardized testing, more broadly.
We asked New Jersey parents to explain why they were refusing the PARCC tests for their children, and more than 80 responded.
Aside from concerns for their own children, parents are refusing high-stakes standardized tests because of the tests’ impact on public schools, including:
- narrowing the curriculum
- consuming instructional time
- failing to improve educational outcomes
- increasing costs to districts for infrastructure to administer the tests
- absorbing teacher professional development time, and
- encouraging teaching to the test
Parents also object to the forced imposition of ever-greater amounts of high-stakes standardized testing, and the increased use of such tests to punish students, teachers, and public schools.
And parents are frustrated because they feel that their voices are being ignored at both the state and federal levels of government. For many suburban parents in particular, this is a moment of political awakening as they confront what urban parents have known for a while -- that the political system seems rigged in favor of those with the most resources.
New Jersey school districts are caught in the middle, between angry parents on the one side and the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) on the other. The NJDOE appears determined to minimize the number of families who refuse the PARCC tests, regardless of what it takes.
School districts report that the NJDOE has threatened any public school with less than 95 percent PARCC participation with:
- onerous corrective action plans
- Poor scores on the NJ School Performance Reports (which are issued by the NJDOE)
These NJDOE actions seem intended to coerce school districts into adopting punitive policies toward children whose parents refuse the PARCC tests and to intimidate parents into having their children participate in those tests.
Fortunately, many school districts are refusing to subject students whose families have refused the tests to punitive measures such as "sit and stare," which forces children as young as eight to do nothing for hours, while their classmates are Op-Ed: Why Some Parents in NJ Are Refusing High-Stakes Standardized Tests - NJ Spotlight:
