Groups organizing to ‘opt-out’ of exams
By Charles W. Kim, Managing Editor
The best way to beat the game is not to play.
That is the message groups of parents may send to school districts in New Jersey and eight other states as the standardized Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, tests begin.
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.
In South Brunswick, parent Lisa Rogers and former Board of Education candidate Melissa Katz hosted a screening of the film “Standardized” at the Public Works Building Wednesday night.
Made independently by two teachers, the film is critical of such testing, calling it “too high stakes.”
The film makes the case that standardized testing does little to increase learning, but rather forces educators to “teach to the test” and not spend class time on productive activities for their students.
“The issue drives home that this is across the country,” Ms. Rogers said. “We (in South Brunswick) live in a bubble. We can walk around (safely). In other parts of the country, there are gangs.”
She was responding to school closings in places like Chicago where a number of schools closed due to poor performances in standardized testing.
“When you lose a school as the hub of the community, you lose the community,” she said.
In an effort to combat what these groups see as the improper use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers, students and make decisions about how individual schools are doing, they are looking to refuse their children taking these tests.
As far as teacher evaluations go, the state website said that 95 percent of that teacher’s students must sit for the test in order for the teacher to have 10 percent of his/her evaluation based on the results.
Ms. Rogers said that percentage is scheduled to rise to 30 percent of the evaluation in the next few years.
The opposition to the testing, which started out with 50 states participating, is now down to just 11 and maybe, as she believes, down to nine.
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.
That has 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.
Local school officials did not respond to requests for a comment on how they intend to deal with refusing students for this story.
In South Brunswick, Ms. Rogers said a group of parents plan to address the Board of education about these issues during its next meeting.
Groups in other communities are also planning to address officials or attend meetings as well.