Legislature passes standardized testing opt-out bill
A bill heading to Governor Kate Brown's desk would make it easier for parents to opt their students out of state testing.
A bill headed to Governor Kate Brown’s desk could decrease the number of students taking state tests next year.
House Bill 2655 would allow parents to opt their student out of the Smarter Balanced tests for any reason, not just medical or religious ones, and requires school districts to mail the opt-out forms to parents with a notice explaining their ability to exempt their child from the tests.
Sen. Bill Hansell (R-Athena) voted in favor of the bill Thursday. He said he has heard concerns from constituents and lobbyists about the new tests and wanted to support parents’ rights to have a say in their child’s education.
“This will allow parents to make decisions,” he said.
In addition to making it easier to opt out of standardized testing, HB 2655 also keeps the state from penalizing schools that have less than 95 percent of their students participate in the tests.
The Oregonian reported Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle emailed Oregon school superintendent Rob Saxton that Oregon schools stood to lose their federal Title I funding if the state violated the part of its No Child Left Behind waiver requiring at least 95 percent of each student group (including racial minorities and special education students) participate in state testing.
Hansell acknowledged that was a “major concern” discussed by the Senate Thursday, but he felt the bill’s sponsors convincingly vetted the concern by arguing that the federal government wouldn’t actually pull that much money from a state’s education system, especially not with the state’s Congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., dedicated to making sure that didn’t happen.
Education is a state responsibility, Hansell said, not a federal one, and the federal government needs to let Oregon make changes to its system if it wants to see better results.
“I don’t want to be held hostage to an education policy because the federal government threatens to withhold some money,” he said. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”
School report card data shows schools where the opt-out rate is the highest are mostly concentrated in the Portland area. Umatilla and Morrow county schools’ participation rates were all over 95 percent in 2013-2014.
Laura Miltenberger, assessment coordinator for Pendleton School District, said 10 students opted out across the entire district this year. She said she didn’t know how the new legislation would affect the district’s rates, but she did know that the district works hard to have plenty of public forums and other opportunities to educate parents about the Smarter Balanced test.
“I think there were some parents who were thinking about opting out but changed their minds after we answered some of their concerns,” she said.
Miltenberger said it helps when parents understand that data from the tests is used to pinpoint where instruction needs to be improved and to measure if changes in curriculum are effective. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the picture.
Pendleton just wrapped up its first year of Smarter Balanced tests, and Miltenberger said most of the students she interviewed said they actually liked the test better than the old Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
It was longer, true, but they found the open-ended questions more interesting than filling in bubbles and said they liked the idea that they might get partial credit for an essay question where they didn’t know the exact answer.
“They felt more successful, and more engaged,” she said.
Raymon Smith, superintendent of Echo School District, said his district only had one student not Legislature passes standardized testing opt-out bill - East Oregonian:
