What Happens When Students Boycott a Standardized Test?
The movement to opt-out of nationwide exams is gaining traction—and forcing policymakers to rethink the role of such assessments in public education.
Standardized tests have been an integral part of the American school routine since the 1970s, the protocol changing very little. Children were told to put away their books; to fill in the bubbles, with No. 2 pencils, completely; and, when the time was up, to immediately put down their writing utensils. However, those ubiquitous (and ever-dreaded) tests have evolved dramatically as of late—and deliberations over their purpose have become increasingly urgent.
This semester, students in roughly three dozen states and the District of Columbia are taking one of two new standardized tests that are known by their consonant-riddled acronyms: PARCC, which is part of the Pearson family, and SBAC, which was developed by a consortium of states. The force behind these assessments is the Common Core State Standards, the set of highly controversial universal learning benchmarks that, the thinking goes, would’ve been difficult to implement without new-and-improved standardized tests. (Students in the remaining states are taking other exams; under No Child Left Behind, the federal government requires that every state gives its kids some form of assessment, but it doesn’t stipulate a specific one.) Like the hodgepodge of older tests used over the past five decades, these new assessments are designed to gauge students' proficiency in math and English via series of multiple-choice questions.
The days of booklets and pencils, however, are long gone; these tests are administered on computers and come with fancy resources such as virtual rulers and protractors and can be customized to students with, say, special needs. Some sections feature "drop-and-drag" options and even adaptive questioning that responds to individual students’ abilities. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted by more than 40 states, emphasize critical thinking. That means the English tests include essay sections, for example, while those for math at times ask students to explain how they found their answers. Compared with the previous assessments, the results from these tests generate more information for officials and parents about student proficiency and progress.
But perhaps the most obvious distinction from years past, at least now, is that significant resistance to the standardized tests has organized in a growing number of states—to the point of mass boycotts in certain communities. This movement was jumpstarted by parents and has since garnered the support of the teachers’ unions. And now it’s getting some ammunition from the students themselves. This campaign isn’t only raising pressing concerns about the validity of standardized tests, it’s also revealing the extent to which the foray into a new era of test-driven accountability and debates surrounding this reform could end up damaging the country’s public education system. After all, the consequences of an exam boycott could be just as severe as those that come with over-testing; finding a compromise is certainly preferable to too much or too little.
While states generally have not released exact numbers on the opt-outs, school officials and local newspapers report that growing numbers of students, with their parents’ blessing, have not taken (or will not take) their standardized tests this spring. In New Jersey, for example, at least 46,000—or 5 percent—of the roughly 896,000 public-school students in grade levels subject to the exam are estimated to have opted out of the first installment of the PARCC test, which was conducted in March; greater numbers are expected refuse to take the second one in May. (Similar statistics are predicted in Colorado, Florida, and New York, too.) And while the vast majority of students are still taking their tests, the number of refusals is hard to ignore—as are the specific areas in which refusals are most prevalent. At least in New Jersey, the opt-outs are largely concentrated in wealthy communities, according to an analysis of compiled data.
Here in New Jersey, I witnessed the anti-testing politics evolve over the past few months. It appeared to begin with a small number of parents expressing diverse concerns, sharing information at school board meetings and through social media. Opposition started to increase, however, as the teachers unions helped parents organize. The teachers reversed their initial support of the new testing guidelines once the Legislature, similar to those in many other states, passed legislation tying teacher evaluations—and thus their pay—to assessment results. Some of the unions’ local branches even arranged parties to view the filmStandardized (Lies, Money, & Civil Rights: How Testing Is Ruining Public Education) or set up websites informing parents how to complete the necessary What Happens When Students Boycott a Standardized Test? — The Atlantic: