Opt-out push urges parents to buck standardized tests
Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National
When it came to testing her kids, Sara Miller used to go with the flow.
"Like other things in school, you just kind of assume that you're going to do it," said Miller, a Clearwater mother of four.
That's no longer the case for Miller and a small-but-growing movement of parents who're pushing back on standardized school testing.
They're opting their children out of tests such as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, citing concerns with growing frequency of standardized tests, the efficacy of such tests and their impact on students and teachers.
St. Cloud-area supporters of the opt-out movement are spreading their message to parents before MCAs start in coming weeks. In St. Cloud school district, most will begin in April.
Miller says she first opted her school-age kids out of standardized tests last year after learning about the movement. She did so again this year, submitting statements to their school principals that said her children were opting out.
In Minnesota, less than 1 percent of students opted out of the MCAs in 2014. Most were in the Minneapolis school district.
Yet Minnesota Department of Education officials acknowledge the opt-out movement, while small, is gaining momentum.
Shannon Essler-Petty is a local parent and education professor who supports the opt-out movement. Essler-Petty said simply making parents aware they can opt their children out has been a big hurdle for the movement.
"It's growing as more parents find out it's an option," Essler-Petty said.
Test results questioned
The opt-out movement is part of a backlash to the national standardized-testing sea change that started in 2002.
That's when former President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law, which linked federal funding to standardized testing and required schools to make yearly progress in test scores.
In Minnesota, the reading, math and science MCAs meet the requirements of the federal law and measure student progress toward state academic standards.
Students also take other standardized tests, including the STAR reading and math tests and the Optional Local Purpose Assessments, or OLPAs, in reading and math.
Testing proponents see the MCAs and their counterparts in other states as crucial to gauging student performance. They say test scores help teachers and schools know where their students excel and where they need to improve.
Some advocates see test scores as a lever for change in struggling schools.
Testing critics say U.S. schools have become fixated on standardized tests even as Opt-out push urges parents to buck standardized tests:
