The opt-out movement and the power of parents 

 

After years of writing and speaking about standardized testing, a veteran educator finds a new way to influence policy.

 

Who holds the most power in shaping K-12 school policy today? Is it the district superintendent, the local school board, or other elected officials? What about the local school principal, or teachers, students, or even parents? How about professors of education, or teachers unions, or civic-minded citizens? 

Of course, each of these stakeholder groups has its own sphere of influence. For example, local school board members and other elected officials wield considerable power to shape district policy. Superintendents and school administrators are powerful decision makers within their districts and schools. Teachers are extremely influential within the classroom, and their unions can be formidable negotiators over salaries and working conditions. Researchers and professors of education help to shape the national conversation about instructional practices and curricula. Civic-minded citizens play a key role in promoting the economic, cultural, and social importance of education. And students, particularly at the high school level, often air their concerns through such venues as student government associations. But how much power do parents wield, and how do they use it? 

As a former K-12 teacher, an active union member for many years, a longtime civic-minded community member, and, for the last 20 years, a university professor, I’ve always known that organizations such as the PTA and other local parents’ groups had a meaningful voice in district-level politics. But it is only recently that, as a parent of two school-age boys, I have come to appreciate just how much power parents can have. 

Finding my power 

As a professional educator, I have written newspaper editorials, blog posts, scholarly articles, and books, and I’ve spoken at community events and professional conferences about the excessive use of high-stakes testing in our schools. In those pieces, I’ve drawn from academic research the ways in which testing narrows the curriculum, fosters a stressful schooling environment, dulls motivation, conflicts with developmentally appropriate practice, promotes teacher turnover, and soaks up funding (Cizek & Burg, 2006; Kohn, 2000; Kozol, 2005; Perrone, 1991; Ravitch, 2013; Rose, 1989; Sacks, 1999; Solley, 2007). 

While I would like to think that my work has done much to shape educational policy, the truth is that my influence has been limited. But something surprising happened three years ago, in the spring of my son’s 3rd-grade year, to show me that I had much more power than I thought. This was the year my son was supposed to take Louisiana’s state-mandated standardized tests for the first time, and I wasn’t going to have it. I decided to opt him out. 

In pursuing the opt-out process, I took the following steps: First, I discussed with my child why I was going to withdraw him from testing. I shared the meaning, purpose, and importance of assessment, letting him know there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to assess. I explained that the latter was happening in his school and that I didn’t care for him to be a part of that. 

Second, I wrote a letter to my child’s teacher and the school principal, stating that because high-stakes testing has little to do with meaningful learning, he was going to opt out. In addition, I went before the school board and made my intention public.  

Although I was within my parental rights to pursue opting out, I still received pushback from the school system. For instance, I was told that if my son didn’t participate in testing, this would be a mark against the school’s accountability scores, which could affect its funding. But using testing as a threat to judge schools and determine whether to increase or withhold funding is an indication of a flawed accountability system. This mechanism of threat must change to an approach that works to cooperate and collaborate with schools, particularly in light of the choices that parents themselves are making on behalf of their children. 

Moreover, I was told that if my son did not take the test, it would be difficult to ascertain whether he was making progress, but it is patently untrue that standardized tests are the great illuminator of student progress. Indeed, there are many better formative and summative ways to assess student progress, including teacher-constructed assessments, portfolio-type approaches, and project-based activities. 

As a parent, I felt the heat but remained firm in my decision while shielding my son from the outside “adult” noise. Ultimately, the school accommodated my son, both that year and the next, along with others who decided to opt out.  

After a move to South Carolina, I followed the same process to opt out my now-5th grader, along with my other son, a 3rd grader who was about to enter the standardized-testing world. And again I received pushback, built on the same arguments I had heard in Louisiana. But this time, things went very differently. The principal and assistant principal said they would accommodate my request, but on the first day of testing for my 5th grader, administrators from the central office went to the school and usurped the principal’s authority by dismissing my request, placing my child into the class where he was to take the test, and then calling to inform me they had done so.  

In short order, I went to the school to assert my right as a parent and to tell the district administrators that I would be happy to alert the press about their actions. That was the only day my 5th grader was subjected to testing that year (though he didn’t actually take the test; instead, he chose to read a book). The school honored my request for my 3rd grader. 

With parents of school-age children leading the charge, the opt-out movement has done much to raise awareness of the test-centricity of our schools. 

Opting in to policy change 

The opting-out process I pursued was consistent with suggestions from FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, United Opt Out National, and various grassroots state-level groups formed through social media. Moreover, the pushback I received from both school systems is consistent with other stories of parents from around the nation who are working to resist test-centric schooling.  

While historically there has always been a debate regarding the relevance, reliability, and validity of standardized tests, the present opt-out movement took shape in 2014. Largely led by parents of school-age children, these grassroots groups resist standardized testing because they object to how testing is tied to a narrowing of the curriculum, the corporatization and privatization of schools, the Common Core State Standards, and the evaluation of teachers based on standardized test scores (Pizmony-Levy & Green Saraisky, 2016). According to 2016 data from FairTest, 675,000 students opted out of testing in 2015, including 240,000 students in New York and significant numbers of students in New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, California, Oregon, Florida, and several other states. A large proportion of parents who have opted out their children are White, but there is a growing constituency from communities of color (Bryant, 2016; Schweig, 2016). 

Carol Burris (2016), a former high school principal and now executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education, has stated, “The testing ‘opt out’ movement is gaining momentum, even as efforts to derail it ramp up … Opt out is mainstream.” Indeed, as my experience shows, there are efforts to derail the opt-out movement. But, with parents of school-age children leading the charge, and with the support of students, educators, and community members from numerous walks of life, the movement has done much to raise awareness of the test-centricity of our schools. And this awareness has propelled the mainstreaming of the opt-out movement. 

In turn, we’ve seen movement toward policy changes in some states. For example, New York voted to reduce the time spent on annual testing from three days to two days for each subject. Ohio is reconsidering its policy of assigning a zero score to students who opt out, which can have a dramatic effect on their school’s overall accountability scores. Washington state is looking to decouple some tests from graduation requirements, and a bill has been introduced in South Carolina that would reduce the number of tests K-12 students would have to take before completing high school (Burris, 2016; Samsel, 2017; Schechter, 2017). Of course, there is still a long way to go. Despite these changes in state policy and the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, “Opt-out activists and their sympathizers are still worried about the time students spend preparing for, and taking, standardized tests” (Samsel, 2017).  

A drumbeat of awareness 

A powerful way for any type of social, cultural, or educational movement to begin is to be persistent in calling attention to a wrongdoing. A determined, steady drumbeat of information greatly works to raise awareness, which moves people to take action. Already hundreds of thousands of parents around the United States have been moved to act by withholding their school-age children from testing. This is a big step that can itself raise further awareness. And while university people, civic-minded citizens, education organizations, and others must also be involved, it turns out that parents wield a significant amount of power in this arena.  

Perhaps it is clear that I wrote this piece with two hats on, both as a parent and an educator. In the latter role, I can and should have much say in shaping educational policy. But in our test-centric environment, it is in my role as a parent that I’ve found myself to have the greatest influence.

 

 

References 

Bryant, J. (2016, March 4). The fight against standardized testing is more diverse than you think. The Progressive. http://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/fight-standardized-testing-diverse-think 

Burris, C. (2016, January 31). The testing opt-out movement is growing, despite government efforts to kill it. In V. Strauss (Ed.), Answer Sheet: The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/31/the-testing-opt-out-movement-is-growing-despite-government-efforts-to-kill-it 

Cizek, G.J. & Burg, S.S. (2006). Addressing test anxiety in a high-stakes environment: strategies for classrooms and schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 

FairTest: National Center for Fair and Open Testing. (2016). More than 670,000 refused tests in 2015. www.fairtest.org/more-500000-refused-tests-2015 

Kohn, A. (2000). The case against standardized testing: Raising the scores, ruining the schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 

Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. 

Perrone, V. (1991). On standardized testing. Childhood Education, 67 (3), 132-142.  

Pizmony-Levy, O. & Green Saraisky, N. (2016). Who opts out and why? Results from a national survey on opting out of standardized tests. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York, NY: Knopf. 

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary. New York, NY: Penguin Books. 

Sacks, P. (1999). Standardized minds. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. 

Samsel, H. (2017, October 26). 2 years after “opt out,” are students taking fewer tests? NPR Ed. www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/10/26/556840091/2-years-after-opt-out-are-students-taking-fewer-tests 

Schechter, M. (2017, December 23). Bill filed seeking relief in student testing. The State, 127 (309), 1A & 5A. 

Schweig, J. (2016, May 9). The opt-out reckoning. U.S.News & World Report. www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-09/who-does-the-movement-to-opt-out-of-standardized-testing-help  

Solley, B.A. (2007). On standardized testing: An ACEI position paper. Childhood Education, 84 (1), 31-37.  

 

Originally published in May 2018 Phi Delta Kappan 99 (8), 36-40. © 2018 Phi Delta Kappa International. All rights reserved.