Big Win for Opt-Out | Alan Singer

Big Win for Opt-Out | Alan Singer:

Big Win for Opt-Out

The Opt-Out movement in New York State and maybe across the country may have already won. In New York, 200,000 students refused to take either the Math or English standardized exam (or both) last April. This was quadruple the number of students opting out of the 2014 tests and by far the highest opt-out rate in the country.

Opt-Out is a parent-led campaign supported by many teachers against Common Core aligned high-stakes tests used to evaluate students, teachers, and schools. In 2015 it moved from the political margins and emerged as a full-scale social movement committed to the idea that education should be about children, not testing. States have not yet abandoned Common Core and Race to the Top mandated high-stakes testing, but as the Opt-Out movement continues to grow and its pace of growth continues to accelerate, I believe they will.

Politicians want votes almost as much as they want money and they will be forced to respond. In New York State Governor Andy (who thinks he's King) Cuomo and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl "Testing" Tisch pushed out State Education Commissioner John King last December, partly because of his poor job selling the tests to parents. Then in July Cuomo and Tisch dumped Pearson as the company responsible for creating and administering the high-stakes tests. To assuage parents the State Legislature ordered school districts not to use student scores on the high-stakes tests as the primary factor in determining promotion or to put scores on a student's permanent record. The State Education Department now concedes that because of the high number of students opting out of the last round of test the scores are not reliable measures of student, teacher, or school performance.

Testing advocates are increasingly worried by the parental response. Board of Regents Chancellor Tisch has repeated called opting out of the state exams a terrible mistakeby parents and said that if she had children scheduled to take the exams she would not have them opted-out. But of course Tisch is very wealthy and her now adult children attended private schools where they did not take state tests that are mandated for children in public schools.

A New York Times editorial on Saturday August 15 declared "Opting Out of Standardized Tests Isn't the Answer." It called opting out by 20% of the students scheduled to take the tests "alarming" and charged "this ill-conceived boycott could damage educational reform." But their upset is because Opt-out is not "ill-conceived" and because stopping corporate for profit efforts to privatize public education in the name of reform is a crucial goal shared by many in the movement.

The Times joined with State Education officials and tried to drive a wedge between Big Win for Opt-Out | Alan Singer: