Can Children Under 13 Opt Out Of “The Test”?

1. This is important information that concerned parents should be circulating among other parents. Most people don’t know that teachers are being ordered to commit what most would consider to be abusive practices against children whose parents attempt to opt out of testing by holding their children out of school on testing days. At a candidate forum, Adelita Grijalva confessed that when such a child returns to school, educators must place the test in front of the child for 3 DAYS IN A ROW.

   Imagine an 8 year-old child who now must either defy her teacher and refuse to take the test 3 TIMES or defy her parents’ wishes and take the test 3 TIMES. This is how the Arizona Dept. of Education commands that educators treat children.

   How did we get to this place where adults who commit to educate our children are abusing them in this manner and teachers, principals, school district officials and governing board members are not speaking out LOUDLY? The reason they give is that they are quaking in their boots because federal Title I funding may be restricted if a certain percentage of students are not tested. That’s it folks. They figure that it’s better to abuse a few little kids. Pretty sick stuff.

2. Good points. Where’s Hillary and her “reset” button? Seriously, the testing of long ago seemed to work to get a bunch of rocket scientists the right jobs while using chalk on a blackboard. How did Abe Lincoln do it? Do we really need to make life as a kid so complicated? Okay, enough rhetoric, stop the nonsense.

3. Jana Happel asks: “How did we get to this place where adults who commit to educate our children are abusing them in this manner and teachers, principals, school district officials and governing board members are not speaking out LOUDLY?”

   This is an interesting question, but it assumes facts not in evidence. Thousands of teachers have spoken out against the overuse and misuse of standardized testing and have been doing so for years. Some principals have also been doing this, though they are generally quieter than teachers because they typically do not have unions to protect their jobs when they exercise their right to free speech. Central administrators have been very quiet about this abuse, but a few courageous ones have spoken out. And even some politicians have spoken out against this abuse, though they have been isolated and attacked by the educational publishers and other business interests that have seen their profits soar during the past decade as the testing frenzy has gained steam.

   Jana, I would ask a few different different questions. How did we get to this place where politicians who send their own children to schools that do not even use standardized tests think it is just fine to subject other people’s children to the overuse and misuse of standardized tests? How is it that President Bush, President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan have used the leverage of federal aid and NCLB waivers for states and school districts to force states and districts into the use of so many tests? How is it that national teacher unions have gone against the interests of millions of their own members and the tens of millions of students they teach by remaining largely silent in the face of this testing abuse?

4. Jana Happel said, “The reason they give is that they are quaking in their boots because federal Title I funding may be restricted if a certain percentage of students are not tested.”

   I agree that the potential loss of Title I funding is certainly a factor that has silenced state education officials and school board members, but the consequences of large numbers of students opting out of tests goes much deeper than that. Title I funding is a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known by its acronym, ESEA. ESEA was first passed by Congress back in the 1960s. In fact, Title I means that is the first part (Title I) of ESEA. Every time it has been reauthorized Congress has attached a memorable name to it. The most current version of ESEA is best known as No Child Left Behind. Under No Child Left Behind schools and school districts face an increasingly severe set of consequences for failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP.) One component of AYP has always been having at least 95% of students in the school, and every grade level in the school, take the standardized tests mandated by the state Every year schools fail to make AYP because they don’t have 95% of their students taking the tests.

   One of the very first consequences of failing to make AYP is the redirection of Title I funds away from classrooms and into Supplemental Services such as tutoring. Further failure to make AYP leads to even more severe consequences, such as the loss of district control over the schools that fail to make that benchmark, the loss of the jobs of some teachers and principals, and the turning of failing district schools over to private management companies.

   The consequences of failing to make AYP are severe, and that made waivers from NCLB even more critical. Since the waivers required states and districts to buy into the Common Core standards and the tests that go with them, the fears of school boards are legitimate. The use of waivers to blackmail districts and states into accepting this overuse and misuse of testing that is part and parcel of the Common Core must be owned by the Obama administration. While it is understandable that school officials do not want to encourage parents to have their children opt out of these tests it is less understandable why they have remained silent on the broader issues of testing abuse and misuse.

5. One year we failed AYP for not testing two 4th grade students. One had fled with his mom from a domestic violence situation. The other was sick. You can bet, that never happened again. Since that time we have sent testers to hospitals and homes to test kids.

   The game is ridiculous and the rules are awful.

6. Stay tuned people. At the last TUSD Board meeting Kristel Foster asked staff to look into what the costs to the district would be if we opted out of standardized testing. Lets all hope that that was in a good faith effort to look into doing something, and not just political posturing. I actually think this is one that the superintendent too would like to know, so its a safe issue to raise–now lets plan on hearing that report. And if this issue is important to you, and you don’t see the report on the agenda, be sure to join the call to the audience and ask for it.

   And as for gutting Title One funds,look again, they have already been gutted and it didn’t take the Federal government to do it. The Board didn’t vote on it, but last year over the summer the entire department got reorganized and funds were seriously reduced (like, cut in half in some places). So anyone’s hands can get into that cookie jar, and no one needs to know the reasons.

7. “Today’s education-reform consensus is a reflection of the ideology and outlook of the business people and philanthropists who fund the movement and who bring to it the same top-down, blame-the-rank-and-file mindset of the auto executives of the late 1970s and 1980s. Today’s quick-fix authoritarian strategies—from testing regimes to the failed $1 billion iPad gamble in Los Angeles—mirror the war footing of Detroit when GM’s CEO Roger Smith wasted billions of dollars on robotics as a way to solve the “people problem” in Detroit.

   Then as now, the more authorities seek to blame rank-and-file employees, the worse things get. Fear and loathing led, in Detroit, to look-alike cars, poor quality, lost market share. In schools it has resulted in endless testing and test-prep, a narrowing of curriculum, and, no doubt, a deterioration in meaningful education—the kind that is difficult to test.

   Then as now, the cognoscenti have sought to quantify all outcomes by looking at a narrowly defined bottom line. For automakers this meant focusing on short-term profits—even if that meant eroding quality and, eventually, market-share. In schools, they look at an ever growing array of test scores—most recently in New York State kids were subjected to at least three different standardized tests per year (one State test and two city tests designed for the sole purpose of evaluating teachers.) One problem is that because of budget constraints, the more you test, the lower the quality of the tests and the less meaningful they become. And given that the tests are cloaked in secrecy, they are stripped of their only pedagogical purpose—the ability to help teachers analyze what their kids know so they can improve.” (Quote from: Lessons for Education Reformers from W. Edwards Deming, America’s Leading Management Thinker. Posted on November 15, 2014)

8. Parents can opt their child out of testing by withdrawing their child from the school on the days of testing, and then re-enrolling their child back into the school after those days of testing are over without risk of the child being forced to do make-ups upon return or having to keep them out of school for the 12 days of the testing window, which in most cases is a forced drop from the school anyways In this way, schools will not be punished through attendance or by poor scores, since student’s scores, who transfer or move during a school year, do not count anyways. (Those unaware students take the test even though their scores are not valid. What a shame!) In this way the pressure is off the school and the students. Think about how easy it is to stop testing if everyone quits school for 3 days and then registers again after the break. No test scores, no data.

9. Marty, you misconstrue my lament about the lack of protest by educators. David’s post is about opting out. My comment is not about the misuse of testing in general, but specifically directed to the abuse of children whose parents have attempted to opt them out. There are many ill effects that result from testing mania. But how sick is the system when educators are forced to go to such extremes with children whose parents have either explicitly or implicitly made their wishes known?

   That said, I agree with the comments about the pressures on educators to stay silent on testing. (Teachers who administer the PARCC test must sign an agreement that they will stay silent on the PARCC). That is why opting out is so important. Opting out is the most effective way for parents to act in the best interests of their children and to throw a monkey wrench into the machine. Also, superintendents and administrators are in a tough position because they act as cheerleaders for schools that improve their test scores and letter grades. They endorse the legitimacy of the idea that test scores tell us everything we need to know about the quality of education. There are some brave superintendents around the country who question this, but we haven’t seen it here.

   The comments about AYP are very knowledgeable and seem to be accurate, as far as I know. This system is precisely why opting out throws a monkey wrench into the machine. If schools are failing AYP merely because of opting out, it puts focus on the parents’ civil disobedience and their concerns and also reveals the system to be a sham. Look at what the state of Washington did on a different requirement of the law. The legislature refused to implement the requirement that test scores be used for teacher evaluations and the entire state lost its accountability waiver. That means that huge numbers of schools and districts face the sanction of restricted spending of Title I funding and associated consequences. As a result, Washington state and local districts are educating parents as to what this means and how it happened. See e.g. http://www.asd.wednet.edu/administration/t…

   The option of withdrawing and re-enrolling a student may work for some. But magnet and open enrollment students at oversubscribed TUSD schools would risk losing their spots to students on the waiting list. Personally, I think that encountering the consequences imposed by the system is a more effective means of change than quietly flying under the radar and avoiding the consequences. But if parents who opt for withdrawal/re-enrollment are vocal about opting out, then it may be a good option for them. I would rather focus attention on the sick, punitive system that benefits the education industrial complex and hurts students.

10. Jana Happel says: : If schools are failing AYP merely because of opting out, it puts focus on the parents’ civil disobedience and their concerns and also reveals the system to be a sham.”

    I agree that one possible near-term consequence of sufficient numbers of students to opt out of the tests resulting in every-increasing numbers of schools failing to make AYP. I would ask you to examine two other pieces of the entire picture before you conclude this is a positive result.

    Many observers have said all along that the goal of NCLB was to privatize public schools by “proving” to voters that public education has failed. To a great extent what we are seeing now… with the proliferation of tuition tax credits and charter schools …is the success of that strategy. Is opting out of testing along with the increase in “failing” schools it leads to, going to increase the mis-perception that public schools are failing? If so, opting out as a strategy to defeat the corporate takeover of public schools is a supposed remedy that makes the disease spread more rapidly.

    What are the chances that a parent-led movement to defeat the misuse of tests is going to get fair coverage by the media that provides most people with their wrong assumptions about the relative success of charter schools and private schools compared with public schools? Tell folks who only get their news from any of the major networks that charter schools as a whole and private schools as a whole under-perform district public schools and you had better be prepared for a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. That is a result of the same biased coverage that any opt-out movement is likely to receive.

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