Students won’t be punished for opting out of testing
By Charles W. Kim, Managing Editor
MONROE — Students opting out of next month’s Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testing should not have to “sit and stare,” district officials said Wednesday.
District Acting Superintendent Dennis Ventrello said that the schools would “attempt” to allow “quiet reading time” for students that decide to “opt-out” of the state mandated assessments next month.
“That’s what I’d like to do,” Mr. Ventrello said following the Wednesday night Board of Education meeting. “There would be a compromise. We can’t do the alternative setting, we don’t have the facilities, the schools are overcrowded.”
The announcement came as several parents and educators spoke out against the standardized tests during the public comment portion of the meeting.
More than 10 people spoke during the meeting expressing their concerns about the tests.
“We are setting up our students for failure,” one parent said.
The first round of the new, online tests in language arts and math are scheduled to start in New Jersey’s schools on March 2 and will be administered to students from third to 11th grade, according to the state.
The first round, called Performance-Based Assessment, is given in the spring while another round is scheduled to be given in May as an End of Year Assessment, according to the state.
Although the testing is mandatory in the state, several groups of parents, teachers and others are objecting to the testing and say they want their children to “opt-out’ of the exams.
The tests, administered by education publisher Pearson, were designed by stakeholders in each of the states signing on to the Common Core curriculum.
Opponents say that Pearson, a for profit entity, is making a tremendous amount of money in the deal and, they fear, will keep changing versions of the test as the years go on to increase its profits.
The new batch of tests has also frightened parents because of its dependency on technology, with each test administered on some kind of wired device.
A fifth grade student at Woodland Elementary School, who only wished to be identified as J.C., said the practice tests were worded in a very tricky manner and that the tasks needed to complete questions on the screen were hard to navigate.
“We tried it at home and it seemed like a more complicated test than the NJ ASK (tests),” the student said. “Doing it on paper is a lot easier.”
J.C.’s mom said her son is a good student and did not have any problems with standardized testing in the past.
She also said she wants her son to opt-out of this year’s testing.
J.C. said the biggest problem is that there are not good directions showing students what to do online or explaining how to do the test as far as how to enter numbers, or use the online tools.
“I think it would be easier doing the test we did all of the other years,” he said.
He also said class time is now being spent doing lessons “that are not in the book” in order to get ready for park.
“it makes me frustrated,” he said. “We are just learning the same things day after day and not learning anything new.”
The technology required for the tests also caused many school districts to spend money on updating and expanding the number of computers, laptops, tablets and other devices to be ready for these tests.
While some schools, like Monroe Township, are ahead of the curve by expanding its technology years ago through a grant so that all high school students have a tablet, other districts are scrambling to make sure there are enough devices for the students.
Even the nature of prep time, according to teachers, is changing, as students have to learn how to navigate this online examination as opposed to traditional pencil and answer sheets that are scanned and read by a computer.
Pearson and test proponents say that the new tests are better in that they can truly follow each student through the answering process by documenting, not only the answer to a question, but the methodology the student used to arrive at it.
Groups like the New Jersey Education Association and Save Our Schools are organizing parents to refuse to have their children tested, and to make sure that the students are not punished for “opting out” of the exams.
Parents can go to the web sites of these organizations to find template letters to send to their school administrators to decline the testing.
These form letters list several reasons for refusing the testing, and also let school administrators know that other alternatives need to be in place during testing periods for the refusing students so they don’t “sit and stare” for the period of the examination, which is scheduled to be about an hour a day for eight testing days in the spring and again at the end of the year.