Parents all over U.S. 'opting out' of standardized student testing

Via: CNN Digital Correspondent Kelly Wallace - April 24, 2015



Since one of my daughters is taking the public school state tests for the first time this year, I thought I paid fairly close attention to the debate surrounding the tests themselves, and the concern that schools are too focused on "teaching to the test."

 The high-stakes of standardized tests

I heard that some parents might engage in a form of civil disobedience and "opt out" -- they would refuse to let their children take the tests. I thought only a few were making that stand.

But then I learned from a friend whose daughter attends a Long Island school that only two kids in her third-grade class took the test. That means 20 or more of her classmates didn't. 

I saw local media reports about similar stories in other schools on Long Island, in New York City and its surrounding areas, and in upstate New York.

Something bigger is going on, I thought.

Just how many students opt out this year won't officially be known until this summer when the state education department releases test scores. But, according to one of the groups leading the opt-out movement here -- the New York State Allies for Public Education -- 156,000 students refused to take this week's English exam, and that's with just from 50% of the districts reporting their numbers.

With approximately 1.1 million students eligible to take the tests in grades 3-8 in New York, that means at least 14% of students are projected to sit out this year. According to the state education department, last year about 49,000 (4%) didn't have a known valid reason for not taking the English test and 67,000 (6%) didn't take the math exam.

"I'm ecstatic," said Bianca Tanis, a co-founder of the New York opt-out group. "I guess I'm not really surprised, because I think we could all feel this coming."

"For the past two years, parents have been lobbying the governor, the Board of Regents, the legislature, demanding a reduction in high-stakes testing, demanding to have their classrooms be returned and we've been ignored, and enough is enough," said Tanis. Her children, ages 10 and 14, are not taking the tests.

Adding to parents' anger and frustration were reforms pushed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that would evaluate teachers more heavily based on test scores.

"So we were really left with no choice," Tanis said. "Rather than responding to parent concerns, he doubled down on the use of testing."

Opinion: Why Common Core tests are bad

The Board of Regents says the tests provide an "important source of objective information" to see where students are and what help they need but should never be the only measure of students' progress.

"Those who call for 'opting out' really want New York to 'opt out' of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well students are doing," said Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the Board of Regents, in a recent statement.

"We cannot go back to ignoring the needs of our children. It's time to stop making noise to protect the adults and start speaking up for the students," Tisch said.

Opting out across the country

New York is not an isolated case. Examples of the fallout from rigorous annual testing are popping up nationwide.

Earlier this week, some Atlanta educators were sentenced to prison time after a massive cheating scandal. Administrators and teachers were convicted of racketeering and other crimes related to inflating test scores of students from struggling schools.

In New Jersey, lawmakers recently approved a measure that would require schools to accommodate parents who opt out of testing by providing alternative activities such as independent reading for their children.

And in Indiana, the state's 2015 superintendent of the year recommended that parents home-school their children during the testing weeks instead of having them take the tests.

Opinion: Common Core promotes student success

"We've heard from almost every state in the country there's opting out going on," said Monty Neill, executive director of the testing reform advocacy group FairTest. "Last year, we probably heard from half."

Neill chalks up the growing movement to an increasing number of parents who believe there's too much testing and that's it's not educationally helpful.

"There've been a number of surveys in states as well as national surveys that are showing (frustration with testing) as a reaction among parents and the public generally, so there's a sense that this testing has just gone round the bend," said Neill, a former educator and school administrator who has been leading FairTest for nearly 28 years.

Also in the mix are parents' frustration with more rigorous academic standards called Common Core, which have been implemented in 46 states and the District of Columbia, and upon which the state tests are based.

Tanis, who is also a special education teacher, said there is "no flexibility" in the standards. And, she says, given the high stakes of the testing, "you are saying to teachers, OK, you have to fit in all these standards by April, and so the test starts driving the pace of instruction."

Speaking out on social media 

When I posted on my Facebook page that I was interested in hearing from parents who opted out and promised I would share their comments without identifying them, I got an earful: They say the tests are developmentally inappropriate, too long and difficult, and shouldn't be used to evaluate teachers.

Prison time for some Atlanta school educators in cheating scandal

"To me we are setting our kids up to fail. The reading passages are three levels above the child's current grade level," said a teacher and a mom of two who has opted out her kids for the past two years. "Many teachers have posted that their students were crying because they did not have enough time to finish the test and bubbled in random answers."

Another mom of two, who also opted out, argued that the tests don't benefit the children -- they only benefit the industry behind Common Core and the tests themselves.

"Unfortunately, these tests have nothing to do with determining the effectiveness of teachers," she said. "The more research I did, the more disgusted I became. It's all about money and our kids are pawns. It's very scary and it's unfolding before our eyes."

Tanis, the New York opt-out group leader, said the movement is not "anti-testing. We are anti-these tests."

Tanis said she got involved in the movement after she tried to keep her younger son, who has autism, from taking the test two years ago. 

While he loved school and had terrific teachers, he was still far below grade level and she didn't think it made sense to put a test in front of him that he couldn't read, "let alone even cognitively understand exactly why he was being given a test that was so far above his grade level."

She said that at every turn, she was told her son was absolutely obligated to take the test. The law is the law, she was told. It wasn't until other parents started refusing to have their children take it that she felt free, too, to refuse for her son.

 The great homework debate: Too much, too little or busy work?

"I think the awareness of how flawed these tests are, and the ramifications, have taken time for everybody to understand ... but the fact that these tests are abusive for students with disabilities and English language learners was really easy for people to see."

To that point, Tisch, of the New York State Board of Regents, has said that the tests actually help the most vulnerable children in our schools, whose needs were too often disregarded in years past.

"Without an objective measure of their progress, it was easy to deny special education students and English-language learners the extra resources they need," she said. "Opting out could cost us much of the progress we have made and damage the work that still needs to be done for our most vulnerable students."

In the middle of the debate are parents and teachers who feel there could be improvement to the Common Core and that schools should not be teaching to the test, while also believing the standards and the tests help kids learn to solve problems and think in ways many of us didn't when we were growing up.

"It's really a way of making children think for themselves and have teachers speak less and students become more responsible for their learning," said a teacher and a mom of two who didn't want to be identified. "I feel the teaching has become better because of what's expected. Where we go wrong is understanding that the Common Core is a guideline and we still have to meet the needs of the students where they are academically."

She also said parents -- rather than educators -- too often are the ones putting too much stress on students about the test.

What happens if students don't take the tests?

Under federal regulations, if fewer than 95% of students at a school participate in the state tests, that school could lose federal funding, according to the New York State Department of Education.

That message was reportedly conveyed by some school districts in letters to parents that said state aid could be withheld if too many children boycott the tests.

But Neill of FairTest says people don't believe that will ever happen.

"They don't believe the loss of federal money because it's basically not really true," he said. In fact, no school district to date in New York has lost money for not meeting the 95% requirement for student testing, according to a state education department spokesperson.

"They're trying to basically bully parents into toeing the line and at least in a lot of places, it's not working," Neill said.

How can we compete globally?

I posed the question to Tanis: If we don't have difficult tests and tough standards, how will we compete globally, against children from countries where rigor is the norm?

The United States has the largest number of patents per capita in the world, she noted. "So we are an extremely innovative society, and the system that they're imposing diminishes innovation, diminishes creativity." 

That may be the heart of the debate -- a debate that is likely only going to intensify because the opt-out movement is gaining in strength, and that means at some point lawmakers may have to start listening.

Do you think there is now too much of an emphasis on testing in public schools? Share your thoughts with Kelly Wallace on Twitter or CNN Living on Facebook.

Washington State Lawmakers Clash on K-12 Funding

Article via: May 12, 2015 - Education Week Andrew Ujifusa

Washington state lawmakers are struggling in a special session to agree on a strategy to pay for basic education. But as they try to build a system that bridges deep partisan divides over tax policy, they must also resolve to what extent greater state aid for K-12 will lead to reduced financial and political clout for local districts and union leaders.

Looming over the process that began April 28 is the state supreme court, which held the state in contempt last year over its failure to satisfy a 2012 decision that ordered legislators to reform and increase K-12 spending by 2018. Lawmakers must make significant strides toward meeting that mandate this year, or face court sanctions.

As states like Washington look at how to overhaul their funding formulas to smooth out inequities, there's a corresponding tension between state officials and local K-12 leaders about the strings that come along with greater support for some districts.

"What the districts really want is the increased commitment without increased control. But that's not going to happen," said Michael Griffith, the senior school finance analyst for the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. "Now I hear it constantly [from state lawmakers]: We're willing to spend more money, but we want to know what we're going to get for our money."

Broader debates about the proper relationship between the sources of school funding and authority over K-12 have been in the spotlight nationally since at least the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. In that case, the court held that using local property taxes as a basis for financing schools was not unconstitutional.

The political landscape in Washington state is sufficiently complex that as lawmakers there push their own solutions and resist those from the other party, "we have Democrats complaining about Republicans raising taxes," said Frank Ordway, the chief lobbyist for the League of Education Voters. The Seattle-base group supports full-day kindergarten and charter schools.

Trends and Roadblocks

Recently, states in general have shown limited appetite for pushing school funding burdens onto their local districts.

From 1991 to 2011, on average, the percentage of total spending on public schools coming from local tax sources dropped by 5 percentage points, according to Jennifer Schiess, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

"The general trend over the last 20 years or so has been reduced reliance on local taxes in school funding—but it's not a dramatic trend," said Ms. Schiess in an email, citing data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

That doesn't mean the shift is easy in individual states. An Illinois bill introduced during the state's previous legislative session by Democratic Sen. Andy Manar would have altered the influence of property taxes by redistributing funds from wealthy to poor districts. But that bill has so far failed to pass, and it faces an uncertain future in this session.

And officials in Pennsylvania, faced with huge funding gaps between rich and poor districts because of property-tax disparities, are trying to craft a new funding system that might dramatically affect some districts' budgets, creating clear winners and losers in local school financing that could instantly divide lawmakers.

There, as in Washington state, any tax hike to pay for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's proposed spending increase for K-12 must first pass muster with GOP lawmakers.

Basic Obligations, More Revenue

The Washington state high court's 2012 ruling in McCleary v. State of Washington said that the state had fallen short of providing adequate resources for basic education. The court specifically called on lawmakers to meet prior commitments to fund class-size reductions in grades K-3, to provide full-day kindergarten, and to increase support for transportation needs and schools' materials and operating costs. Lawmakers increased basic K-12 spending by $982 million in the state's 2013-15 budget, but it did not satisfy the court.

The special session is set to last 30 days, although Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, can extend it. The state uses biennial budgets. Complicating the matter is that control of the legislature is split, with Democrats holding the House of Representatives and Republicans the Senate.

Washington currently has no tax on personal income or capital gains, and Democrats, including Gov. Inslee, want to change that in order to resolve the school funding fight.

The House Democrats' budget plan, released in March, includes a new 5 percent tax on capital gains as part of a blueprint for increasing K-12 spending by $3.2 billion for the 2015-17 biennial budget. Of that amount, $1.4 billion would be earmarked for K-3 class-size reduction and other obligations under McCleary. Gov. Inslee also proposed a new capital gains tax of 7 percent in his 2015-17 budget.
State Rep. Ross Hunter, a Democrat and the lead budget writer in the House, stressed in an April 30 hearing that he is more narrowly focused on adequate funding for basic K-12 education as called for in the McCleary ruling, and not on broader issues in play like setting basic teacher salaries at the state level.

"I view our need to comply with the state constitution as the state funding basic education. I don't think the court is requiring us, nor do I think it's a good idea, to limit communities from providing additional services," Mr. Hunter said.

The Democrats' plan also includes a cost-of-living pay increase for K-12 teachers, to the tune of $154 million, and would pick up a share of local school employees' health-care costs.

'Fundamentally Inequitable'

But Republicans who run the state Senate and want no part of a new tax on capital gains or income are exploring a change to the relationship between existing local and state taxes designated for schools, in order to meet the state's K-12 obligations to all districts.
In part, their budget proposal relies on $3 billion in estimated additional revenue generated from the state's existing tax system over the 2015-17 budget period. About $1.3 billion of that funding would go toward satisfying the McCleary ruling.
Republican Sen. Bruce Dammeier argued that state lawmakers must no longer shove 30 percent or more of the funding responsibility for schools onto districts, since in such a system, wealthy districts and local unions drive up teacher pay in their districts, while teacher salaries elsewhere fall far behind.
Mr. Dammeier's plan for changing local levies is technically revenue-neutral. But it would increase the state's common schools levy while simultaneously lowering state property taxes, and moving what the senator says would be $1.5 billion in new revenue for the state into the K-12 budget. Roughly 40 percent of districts, many of them relatively wealthy, would effectively experience a tax hike in Mr. Dammeier's plan.
And he said that requiring basic teacher compensation to be set at the state level, with possible enhancements for teachers in certain areas with high costs of living, would help lawmakers fulfill their obligation to fund basic education that includes fair and reasonable teacher salaries.
"Our system is fundamentally inequitable right now," Mr. Dammeier said. "Our students' education is not supposed to be dependent on their zip code."
But the 86,000-member Washington Education Association has decried plans to set teacher compensation at the state level, calling it an attack on local control of schools.

Getting the Votes

Any plan to satisfy McCleary and fix school funding should ensure a net revenue increase, but also shore up the state's control over basic education funding, such as changes to how local property taxes work, according to state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn.
Mr. Dorn has his own plan to satisfy McCleary that would create $2.2 billion in new spending.

"I'm not promoting one or the other," he said of the competing House and Senate tax plans. "I'm just happy if we can get new revenue."

Yet Mr. Dorn's plan would also ask the court to extend the deadline for meeting the requirements of the McCleary ruling to 2021. And Mr. Ordway of the League of Education Voters cautioned that the court will likely not tolerate anything less than "specific and real" commitments in any budget deal.
"Neither one of them really want to do the things that are hard for their party politically," Mr. Ordway said.

Vol. 34, Issue 30, Pages 1,20-21