Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest
For parents fed up with the growing numbers of tests and the increasingly high stakes, 'opting out' is now the popular form of protest. Critics say it aims at the wrong target and ignores importance of data gleaned.
BOULDER, COLO. — It had never really occurred to Chantal Kovach to keep her fifth-grade son from taking Colorado's new annual assessments, until an e-mail started circulating among parents.
Ms. Kovach became concerned that the test would be measuring material her son's class hadn't covered yet, that the results wouldn't be available to his teacher until the fall. She also was worried that the class would have to devote significant hours to taking the test, and then more hours later in the spring taking other tests on the material they had studied.
But it wasn't until she went to the teacher, wondering if it might still be useful to her son as practice, that she made up her mind.
"The feedback I got was that only when an educated group of parents takes a stand against this colossal waste of time will anything change," says Kovach, who kept her son home in March and will do so again next week and in May, and says many other parents at her Boulder, Colo., elementary school are doing the same.
For a segment of parents fed up with the growing numbers of tests and the increasingly high stakes placed on their scores, "opting out" is now the popular form of protest. And in certain states and communities, the movement is gaining steam, with large percentages of parents and students sitting out required exams. With schools required by current federal law to test at least 95 percent of their populations, the burgeoning opt-out numbers raise the possibility of federal sanctions.
But what some see as important grass-roots protest against a testing regime they say has become too onerous and that has negative effects on children and education, others say is misguided, a protest that stems from understandable frustration but that aims at the wrong target, and that ignores the important information gained from such tests.
"I don’t think [the opt-out message] gets to the heart of what is really concerning large numbers of people," says Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice for the Education Trust, which works to reduce the achievement gap among US student populations. Ms. Santelises acknowledges that there are too many tests and in some cases too much rote test prep – but says those are issues that can be solved by reducing unnecessary state and district assessments and with effective leadership that encourages real learning, not teaching to the test. And she sees the federally mandated annual assessments, which she and others say have never been better, as important tools that shine a spotlight on growth and on achievement gaps.
"We need a measure that allows us to get a snapshot that is consistent across communities and zip codes, that allows us to see where we are missing the mark for some groups of kids as opposed to others," says Santelises.
But parents choosing to opt out say the current tests cause unnecessary stress and harm to their kids, aren't useful diagnostically, and are pushing instruction and education in a direction they disagree with. Many, though not all, of them also disagree with the new Common Core standards and are unhappy with both the standards and with tests that they say are too rigorous and developmentally inappropriate.
The opt-out movement has surged in pockets, often concentrated in relatively affluent communities (hence Education Secretary Arne Duncan's infamous gaffe that "white suburban moms" were the ones unhappy with new tests) and in states or districts with policies more friendly to opting-out parents. (State and district policies vary wildly with what they mandate when it comes to testing.) But nowhere has seen higher rates of concentration than New York State, especially on Long Island.
"We are the epicenter," says Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, N.Y. She calls the opt-out movement in New York an "act of civil disobedience that parents and teachers are engaging in because the schools that we love are being undermined by test-based reforms."
When the state gave its exams earlier this month, at least 200,000 students – out of the 1.1 million eligible students – opted out. That was up from about 60,000 last year, 30,000 of whom were from Long Island. In Ms. Burris's district, more than 70 percent of parents chose to have their children sit out the exam, she says, and in another Long Island district, the opt-out rate exceeded 80 percent.
"We knew the numbers had to be high enough that they can’t ignore it," Standardized test backlash: More parents pull kids from exams as protest - CSMonitor.com: