A clip from The Nation:
". . . .As standardized testing has
grown, so too has its shadow. In 2011, the United Opt Outmovement was established to
counter the pro-testing mania sweeping the country. Its website provides
opt-out guides for
forty-nine states and the District of Columbia, and connects a burgeoning
community of grumbling and disaffected parents.
“I didn’t ask for high-stakes testing,”
says Tim Slekar, United Opt Out’s founder. Slekar sees participating in a
large-scale opt-out movement as a way for him and his children to “reclaim
public education.”
United Opt Out currently claims 6,000
members, but Slekar says its ranks are ballooning. “I’ve spoken to more parents
in the last three weeks than in the past three years.”
In New York, dozens of grassroots organizations
have emerged to address testing. Parent advocates recently formed New York
State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE)
to serve as an umbrella group. The organization draws together parents from big
cities and sleepy byways, united in “seeing the damage to the kids,” says
NYSAPE co-founder Chris Cerrone.
In the tiny West New York district where
Cerrone’s children go to school, the number of students opting out rose sixfold between
2012 and 2013. At Springville Middle School, enough students boycotted to
trigger NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress alarms.
NYSAPE has scrutinized state opt-out
procedures and found New York has no provision for addressing student test
refusal. The knowledge that students can forgo tests without individual
repercussions has emboldened parents across the state.
In schools from Long Island to Albany,
from the Adirondacks to Lower Manhattan,
students pushed their pencils aside and refused state tests this past spring.
It was a high-water mark for the opt-out movement in New York, but still
totaled less than 1 percent of
students.
The question remains as to whether
boycotts that exceed 5 percent of a school’s population, and thus preclude
schools from making Adequate Yearly Progress, can invite consequences. National
testing advocacy group Fairtest treads
cautiously here.
Chris Cerrone calls it “a myth,”
however, pointing to the fact that despite increasing opt outs, no school in
New York has lost funding due to student test refusal. But it’s still unclear.
* * *
On October 27, eight days after the
Castle Bridge boycott went public, the Chief Academic Officer of New York City
schools told a state
Senate committee that the K-2 bubble tests the city had
selected in August were “developmentally inappropriate.” He indicated that the
city would move towards “performance assessments” in these grades, noting that
the new state teacher evaluation law mandates some form of assessment in these
grades.
It’s the latest in a series of
conciliatory gestures by the Department of Education toward parents and
educators who’ve been raising hackles for years.
Some of the most aggressive pushing on
testing recently comes from grassroots anti-testing group Change the Stakes. Incited by the
perceived onslaught of Common Core–aligned
state tests, the group published sample opt-out
letters and rallied parents at numerous schools in support of a
boycott.
This knowledge is empowering. Parents at
Castle Bridge delighted at the realization that they could yank their kids from
tests. Don Lash, parent of a Castle Bridge first-grader, said “just being aware
there was an alternative” was a revelation. . . ."
