The majority of teachers and principals in Pennsylvania hate standardized tests.
An increasing number of parents are refusing to allow their kids to take the tests.
And there may be better alternatives to the state’s Keystone Exams.
These were just some of the key findings of a blockbuster report from June 2019 by the state General Assembly’s Legislative Budget and Finance Committee.
However, now that things are returning to some semblance of normalcy, it seems that bureaucrats from the state Department of Education (PDE) are taking the wrong lessons from the report while the legislature seems to have forgotten it entirely.
The report was conducted because of legislation written by state Sen. Ryan P. Aument (R-Lancaster County). It directed the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to “study the effectiveness of standardized testing, including the Keystone Exams and SATs, and their use as indicators of student academic achievement, school building performance, and educator effectiveness.”
The key findings are as follows:
1)The majority of principals and teachers disapprove of the state’s standardized tests – both the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests given in grades 3-8 and Keystone Exams given in high school. They think these tests are ineffective, expensive and harmful to district curriculum and students.
2) State law allows parents to opt their children out of testing for one reason only – religious grounds. Parents are using this religious exemption in increasing numbers. This puts districts in danger of violating federal participation and accountability standards.
3) It has been suggested that the state allow two additional reasons for parents to opt their children out of testing – philosophical grounds and health concerns. It is unclear whether doing so would increase overall opt outs or not.
4) The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed in 2015 allows the use of the SAT and/or ACT test to take the place of high school standardized testing. It has been suggested the Commonwealth replace the Keystone Exams with these tests. The report finds the ACT and/or SAT would successfully determine college readiness and reduce the overall amount of standardized testing. However, this would not allow other uses of current state tests like evaluating teacher effectiveness and school building performance.This may not matter though because the report also casts doubt on whether the current tests (PSSA and Keystone Exams) do an adequate job of assessing teacher or building performance now or even if student tests can be accurately used to evaluate teachers and schools.
There’s a lot of information here. Let’s look at each finding in turn.
1) PA Educators Hate Standardized Tests
When it comes to the PSSAs, 67% of principals and 76% of teachers said the tests were ineffective indicators of student achievement.
There was slightly more support for the Keystone Exams. This time 45% of principals said the test was an ineffective indicator of student achievement (with 27% saying the tests were effective). Meanwhile, 60% of teachers said the test was ineffective.
Both principals and teachers said their curriculum had been narrowed to prepare students for PSSAs and Keystone Exams. Instead of going into more depth on regular classwork or learning new skills, the focus shifts to teaching to the tests.
Most principals (approximately 80-90%) said that students are taught test-taking skills, and their schools administered practice tests, bench-mark tests, and/or diagnostic tests to prepare students for the PSSA exams. This held for teachers, too, with 81-88% saying they teach test-taking skills and administer practice tests. Principals also said the costs of this additional test prep varied from $200 to more than $100,000.
Taking the tests also eats up valuable class time. Administering the assessments takes between 5.7 to 8 days for each kind of test – the PSSA and the Keystone Exams, according to Principals.
In addition, the report details the cost of giving these tests. In fiscal year 2017-2018, PDE paid $42.17 million for these tests. This is part of a national trend:
“Standardized tests and test preparation have subsequently become big business and that multibillion dollar business continued to grow since the enactment of NCLB and the subsequent enactment of ESSA. According to the Pew Center on the States, annual state spending on standardized tests increased from $423 million before the NCLB (enacted in 2002) to upwards of $1.1 billion in 2008 (to put this in perspective this reflects a 160 percent increase compared to a 19.22 percent increase in inflation during the same time period). A more recent study by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brooking put the cost at upwards of $1.7 billion in 2011 related to state spending on standardized tests.”
2) Opt Outs on the Rise
Many states allow parents to opt their children out of standardized testing. Some do so in cases of a physical disability, medical reasons, or emergencies. A few allow opt-outs based on religious objection – like Pennsylvania. Some states allow opt-outs for any reason whatsoever.
The religious exemption is not used widespread throughout the state and most schools meet the 95% participation rate required by the federal government. However, use of the religious exemption is definitely on the rise – enough so that the authors of the report find it alarming:
“Meanwhile, as previously indicated in this section, schools throughout the country are experiencing and grappling with an increase in the number of parents seeking to have their children opt-out of standardized testing now that new state assessments have been implemented pursuant to the federal requirements. Pennsylvania is no exception to this trend and is also experiencing an increase in the number of parents utilizing the religious opt-out.”
For the PSSA tests, opt outs increased from 2013-14 to 2016-17. However, total numbers in school year 2017-18 decreased sightly.
Opt outs went from 1,886 to 6,425 to 15,644 to 19,012 to 16,961.
During the same time period for the Keystone Exams, opt outs steadily increased each year but were at lower overall rates.
For the high school test, opt outs went from 382 to 666 to 1,000 to 1,313 to 1,633.
These are vitally important figures because opt out data is rarely tabulated and released to the public. Many media accounts actually state the opposite of the data in this report – in particular that opting out has decreased since Congress passed the ESSA in 2015. Apparently the media got this one wrong.
Though the religious opt-out is the only reason specifically allowed in state Chapter 4 regulations, PDE reports there are five additional ways that students end up not taking the tests:
1) Other Parental Request – parents simply refusing to let their kids participate but not objecting based on specifically religious reasons.
2) No Attempt and No Exclusion Marked – students who are given the test but do not answer enough questions to receive a score.
3) No Test – no test record on file for unknown reasons.
4) Extended Absence – a student missed the testing and make-up window due to absences.
5) Other – does not fit any of the other categories.
Federal law – in particular No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and subsequent reauthorizations of that legislation – requires states to use student participation in standardized testing as a factor in a state’s accountability system. According to the report, any district with less than 95% of students taking the test should be “addressed.”
The report does not go into any further detail about what this means, other than to say that falling under 95% can:
“…ultimately result in a reduced achievement/proficiency measure… If the student participation rate falls below 95 percent, states are required to calculate student achievement/proficiency by dividing the number of students scoring proficiently by no less than 95 percent of the total students (which effectively assigns a score of “0” to all nonparticipants once the participation rate has fallen below 95 percent).”
In effect, the district gets a bad mark on a piece of paper. So what?
Under NCLB, schools with poor performance could receive sanctions like state takeover or lower funding. However, this is extremely unlikely – especially since the passing of ESSA. This newest reauthorization of the law gives states leeway in designing their accountability systems. It leaves the enforcement of this 95% participation rate up to the states, requiring them to develop an accountability plan in the event that a school or district fails to meet this standard.
So a school would only be punished if the state decided to do so. If a state legislature decided to allow parents to opt their children out for any reason at all, they would not have to take any punitive measures. Since the ESSA, the buck stops at the state house door on this one. California, for example, takes note of low participation rates but these rates are not factored into a school’s rating. On the other hand, Florida mandates direct intervention from the state’s Department of Education until participation rates are met.
3) Impact of New Reasons to Opt Out
This is where things get a bit sticky.
The report mentions the idea of expanding the options for opting-out of statewide assessments (e.g., PSSA and Keystone Exams) to include objections based on philosophical grounds or due to health issues.
On the one hand, the authors write “The impact of adding opt-out categories may be minimal.” They don’t know if more people would use the expanded options or if the same numbers who use the religious exemption today might simply divide themselves up among all three options.
The authors worry, however, that new pathways to opt out may increase the total number of people refusing the tests for their children and would reduce Pennsylvania’s participation rate in standardized testing.
This is a particularly troubling paragraph:
“The existence of opt-outs (religious or otherwise) has the potential to negatively impact a state’s participation rates and may potentially impact a state’s [Local Education Agency (LEAs)] and schools achievement/proficiency rate and ultimately the ability of a state to be in compliance with federally required assessments and accountability measures. Furthermore, providing opt-outs and giving parents notice of such has the potential to conflict with the message about the importance of standardized testing. Ultimately placing the state departments of education and local school districts in the potentially awkward position of having to explain why it is important for students to participate in testing (given the federal requirements), while also giving and notifying parents of the opt-out options for their children. In 2015, US Department of Education sent out letters to a dozen states flagging their low participation rates (statewide, or at the district or subgroup level) on the 2014-15 school year assessments and indicated that they needed to create a plan to reduce opt-outs due to low participation rates.”
This seems to be the order of the day at PDE. It’s why earlier this year, school administrators were advised by state officials to crack down on parents opting their children out of standardized tests.
And all of it is based on a cowardly and incomplete understanding of federal law. If Commonwealth schools fall below 95% participation in the test and get a bad mark on a worthless metric, it doest have to matter. No matter how many letters the federal government sends to the state legislature or PDE, the law is clear. The state is in charge here. Our legislature can choose to side with taxpayers, residents, and citizens or with civil servants and strongly worded letters.
4) Replacing the Keystone Exams
There’s not much more to add to this than the initial finding.
The authors of the report say there would be no problem with replacing the Keystone Exams with the ACT or SAT because these national tests would properly assess students’ college and career readiness.
The report is actually pretty shoddy in this regard not really examining the claims of the College Board which makes both tests. The authors just pretty much accepted the College Board’s word wholesale. Nor was their any evaluation of what teachers and principals thought about these tests like there had been for the PSSA and Keystone Exams.
However, the report does make a good point about test reduction. Many students already take the SAT or ACT test, so eliminating the Keystones would reduce the over all amount of tests they had to take.
Also the authors deserve credit for writing about how using student test scores to evaluate teachers and schools is seriously bad practice.
According to the report, 77 percent of principals and 93 percent of teachers said PSSA tests were not effective indicators for teacher evaluations, with similar figures for the Keystone Exams and building performance evaluations.
While everything in the report may not be 100% accurate, it includes important information that should be wider known.
In addition, the report has trustworthy data about opt outs throughout the Commonwealth. Unlike what has been reported in the media, opting out is not on the decline, it is on the rise.
The Keystone Exams should be thrown in the trash, because that’s what they are – trash. At very least they should be replaced with the SAT or ACT. Even better to remove any requirement for standardized tests wholesale – and that includes the PSSA.
The ESSA allows states a lot of leeway about how and what accountability system they use. There is no need to worry about some imperial federal power invading Pennsylvania to force our hand with standardized testing. We should call their bluff on this. I’ll bet that if we did so, many other states would do the same.
Standardized testing is another failed education policy. Our legislators would do good to read this report and make up their own minds about it.
Though a few years and disasters have happened since its publication, it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten by the very people who ordered it to be written in the first place.
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Students are not required to take the CDT in the Commonwealth unless their district decides to give it. The test is encouraged by the state as a way of telling how students will do on the required tests.
With this new option, parents finally can give multiple choice standardized tests to their own children on-line.
Which is kind of hilarious because no one really asked for that.
But the folks at DRC, a division of CTB McGraw-Hill, have been busy, too.
The Minnesota-based corporation sent out an email written by Matthew Stem, Deputy Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) to district contacts from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia encouraging the use of this newly available online CDT.
“I am pleased to announce that PDE is providing the Classroom Diagnostic Tools (CDT) as an optional additional resource for your Continuity of Education Plan,” Stem began.
“We anticipate that this option will be available through the reopening of schools in 2020.”
So if school boards and administrators choose, districts could assign the CDT at the end of this school year, during the summer or at the start of next school year even if school buildings are not yet open due to lingering pandemic problems.
For some state officials and testing executives perhaps it’s comforting that no matter what happens in this crazy world, at least we’ll still be able to sort and rank kids into Below Basic, Basic, Proficient or Advanced.
The rest of us would prefer more authentic education and assessment.
EVERYDAY USAGE
It should be noted that the CDT is not, in itself, a high stakes test.
Normally, districts are encouraged (but not required) to give the CDT to students multiple times a year to determine where they’ll struggle on DRC’s other fine products like the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests given to children in grades 3-8 and the Keystone Exams given to high schoolers.
A child who scores well can get in the advanced courses and gain access to all the field trips, guest speakers, pizza parties and other perks. Kids who score badly are often placed in remedial courses where they forgo all the glitz for extra test prep and the abiding label that they’re inferior to their classmates in the higher academic tracks.
But at least now with the reintroduction of the CDT, we can continue to discriminate against the poor black kids while privileging the richer whiter ones.
In some ways, that’s just the everyday injustice of American school policy.
However, the method DRC and PDE are using to clear the way for this particular scheme is truly spectacular.
A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN
They’re enlisting parents as test proctors.
Normally, as a classroom teacher when my administrator demands I give the CDT to my students, I have to block out a few days and give the tests, myself.
I have to pass out entry tickets with each student’s username and password so they can login to the DRC app on their iPads and take the test.
If there’s a problem signing in, I have to try and fix it.
If kids are kicked out of the testing program and can’t sign back in, I have to deal with it.
If there’s a problem with the Internet connection…. I think you get the idea.
And all of these problems are extremely common.
In the last five years of giving the CDT, I have never had a single day go by when I didn’t experience multiple technological snafus, disruptions or downright clusters.
And that’s not to say anything of the times students read a question, don’t understand what it’s asking, wave me over and I’m just as dumbfounded as they are.
When presented with this nonsense, many kids simply zone out, clicking random answers so they can be done as soon as possible and then put their heads down for the remainder of the time.
This is the lions den the state wants to throw parents into.
PARENTS AS CORPORATE DEFENSE
Admittedly, parents won’t have a full class of 20-30 students to deal with, but complications are guaranteed.
However, the good folks at DRC are prepared for that.
“Parents/Guardians should remind their student that the CDT test content must remain secure at all times. None of the materials from the online test may be copied or recorded in any manner.”
That’s quite a step down from what the same company warns students on the PSSA:
“…Copying of material in any manner, including the taking of a photograph, is a violation of the federal Copyright Act. Penalties for violations of the Copyright Act may include the cost of replacing the compromised test item(s) or a fine of no less than $750 up to $30,000 for a single violation. 17 U.S.C. $ 101 et seq”
The guide also cautions that the test only may be taken using a Google Chrome Internet browser. If students don’t have one installed, there is a link for parents to follow so they can install it for their kids.
For some parents, I’m sure this would be no problem. But many of my students’ parents have little access or knowledge of technology. They would pull out their hair at the very suggestion and come running to teachers and administrators for help.
“If technical issues arise during testing, parents/guardians are asked to contact the student’s teacher and/or the student’s school office for technical support. DRC customer service staff cannot directly support issues related to each home’s technology configurations.” [Emphasis mine.]
And this is true even if the test, itself, directs parents to contact the corporation:
“If a student receives an error message during the test administration that includes instructions to contact DRC for technical support, the parent or guardian who is assisting with the test administration should contact the student’s teacher or school office for additional instructions. Parents or students should not attempt to contact DRC’s customer service directly for technical assistance.
Teachers and/or a school’s technology staff will have the information needed to provide parents/guardians with the level of support to resolve most technology issues. If additional support is required, a school or district representative will reach out to DRC to determine a resolution.”
This is certain to put quite a strain on districts since these technological problems will occur not as they normally do within school buildings but potentially miles away in students’ homes.
Moreover, one of the most common glitches with the CDT often occurs with the entry tickets. These are typically printed by administrators and distributed to teachers who give them to students on test day. Students use the logins and passwords to gain access to the tests.
So this requires yet another level of distance and technological competency from parents and students just to access the tests. And once that access is gained, these logins need to be readily available in the highly likely event that students get booted from the program and have to reenter this data.
I’m sure there will be noooooooo problems at all with this. It will run very smoothly.
PARENTS AS PRISON GUARDS
But let’s say parents are able to help their children login to the test and no technical problems arise.
Can parents let their kids simply take the test alone up in their rooms?
You can let your child have scratch paper, highlighters and calculators. But no preprinted graphic organizers, cell phones, dictionaries, thesauri, grammar or spell checkers, other computers or devices.
One concession DRC makes is that parents are encouraged to give the shorter Diagnostic Category CDT and not the full version. I’m sure distinguishing between the two on your child’s screen will be no problem at all.
This would reduce the test to 35-45 minutes – about half of the full CDT. However, times may vary – my own students have taken more than 180 minutes sometimes to finish the full version.
Still, none of this comes close to my favorite part of this catastrophe in waiting.
These are pretty much the same videos teachers are required to watch every year before giving the CDTs.
As you can imagine, they are perhaps our favorite moments of the year. We sometimes watch them over and over again. Not because they’re so riveting but because we’re required to before we give these infernal tests!
Oh, parents, you are in for a treat if your district decides to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity!
AN IMPOSITION ON PARENT’S TIME
Speaking of which, I wonder when Stem thinks parents will have the time to do all this.
If a kid falls asleep, it’s up to me to somehow prod him awake over the Internet. If a child isn’t paying attention or playing on her phone, it’s up to me to direct her back on task.
In class, that’s fine. It’s my job and I’m right there in front of the child.
On-line, I cannot do it nearly as effectively. But I do my best because I can’t realistically expect all parents to step in here.
Yet DRC is expecting parents to do just that by becoming test proctors.
CONCLUSIONS
This is a terrible idea.
It will lead to fabulous disasters where teachers, administrators and parents fumble to make things work as DRC pockets our tax dollars.
Even if we could give the CDTs seamlessly online at home, it would hurt our most underprivileged children by taking away opportunities and unjustly labeling them failures.
Our kids and their families deserve better than this.
Contact your local school directors and demand they NOT give the CDT – not now, not during the Coronavirus pandemic, not when the crisis is over, not ever again.
The following communication was initially broadcast by the Pennsylvania Department of Education on May 18, 2020. DRC is forwarding the same message to the district and school contacts on file in our databases.
May 18, 2020
To: Superintendents, Principals, Charter School CEOs, and IU Directors From: Matt Stem, Deputy Secretary Subject: Availability of the Classroom Diagnostic Tools (CDT) for use by students at home
I am pleased to announce that PDE is providing the Classroom Diagnostic Tools (CDT) as an optional additional resource for your Continuity of Education Plan. The CDT is a set of online tools designed to provide diagnostic information to guide instruction and provide support to students and teachers. It is aligned with the content assessed on the PSSA and Keystone exams. We anticipate that this option will be available through the reopening of schools in 2020.
This at-home testing option will allow students to access the CDT from a “public” browser without having it installed on their computers or being configured to their District’s Central Office Services network. The test-setup tasks that teachers/school assessment coordinators routinely complete for classroom administrations of the CDT are the same for the at-home administrations. Test tickets (login credentials) will be distributed directly to the students by school staff. Teachers will have access to all CDT data/reports from the at-home administrations as usual. An overview of the at-home testing option and a guidance document for parents/guardians can be accessed from the following links (or directly from DRC’s INSIGHT Portal under General Information >> Documents >> 2019-2020 Classroom Diagnostic Tools >> Memos/Documents).
All CDTs (Full and Diagnostic Category) are available for use. However, it is highly recommended to only have students take the Diagnostic Category CDTs at this time. Students and their parents/guardians may benefit from a much shorter testing experience using the Diagnostic Category CDTs that are aligned to current instructional content. The shorter, more focused testing will still provide teachers and administrators with the same level of reporting and resources to adjust instruction and planning during distance learning.
Thank you for all your efforts to support students during this challenging time. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact the curriculum coordinator or CDT point of contact at your local Intermediate Unit. If you are interested in using CDT for the first time, contact PDE here.
Sincerely,
Matthew Stem
Deputy Secretary, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
Pennsylvania Department of Education
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The federal government still requires all states to give high stakes tests to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school. So states require their districts to give the tests – despite increasing criticism over the assessments’ validity, age appropriateness, racial and economic bias and the very manner in which the scores are used to justify narrowing the curriculum, school privatization, funding cuts, teacher firings and closing buildings serving the most underprivileged children.
Most administrators don’t actually go so far as out right refusal of a parent’s demand to opt out their children.
That’s especially true in states where the right to opt out is codified in the law.
Three states – California, Utah, and Wisconsin – have enacted legislation permitting parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. However, at least five others, including my home of Pennsylvania, have laws respecting parents’ opt-out wishes for certain reasons. In others states there may not be specific legislation permitting it, but none have laws forbidding it either. At worst, test refusal is an act of civil disobedience like tearing down a confederate monument or freedom rides.
In Pennsylvania, the school code specifies that parents can refuse the test for their children for “religious reasons.” Those reasons and the religion in question never need be named. Citing “religious reasons” is rationale enough.
(4) …If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied upon written request that states the objection to the applicable school district superintendent, charter school chief executive officer or AVTS director.”
So when a parent provides just such an objection, it’s there in black and white that administrators must comply with that request.
However, some administrators are trying to game the system. When the other students are taking the state standardized test, the opt out students are rounded up and forced instead to take a district created assessment that just so happens to look almost exactly like the test their parents explicitly asked they not be subjected to.
So in my state, some parents have opted their children out of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) or Keystone Exams, but administrators are requiring them instead to take an assessment they cobbled together themselves that closely resembles the PSSA and/or Keystone Exam.
They take a little bit from the PSSA, a bit from the Partnership for Assessment of Reading Readiness for College and Careers (PARRC) test, a question or two from the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and voila! A brand new Frankenstein’s monster of standardized assessment.
Does that violate the law? Parents did not want their children to be assessed with a standardized test, and that’s exactly what the school did anyway. The only difference is the name of the standardized test they used.
I am not a lawyer, but I’ve contacted several. The answer I’ve gotten is that this may not be technically illegal, but it does at least violate the spirit of the law.
Districts are given a certain latitude to determine their own curriculum and assessments. This kind of runaround is ugly, petty and possibly just on the line of legality.
But our administrators are not done. Not only are they requiring such students to take a cobbled together standardized assessment, when children are done, they are forced to do hours of test prep for the state assessment that their parents refused for them.
Imagine opting out of the PSSA and then being forced to spend that time preparing for that very test. Imagine refusing to allow your children to take the Keystone Exam but then having them forced to prepare for it instead.
Petty, small-minded, punitive and – in this case – possibly illegal.
“(d) School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians have the following:
(3) …The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.”
Again, I am not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that this, at least, is a violation of the law.
They can request their children not be given specific instruction – in this case test prep. Yet that’s exactly what administrators are doing anyway.
So what are opt out parents to do? Should they lawyer up?
Possibly. Though no one likes to have to take their own school to court. Any monetary damages thus recovered come from the collective pot that should go to help all students learn. It’s unfortunate that some administrators play so freely with taxpayer dollars when it would be a simple matter to safeguard them AND respect parental rights.
We’re not some charter school where school directors are appointed to their positions, hold their meetings in private and rarely if ever have to account for their decisions.
It’s shocking that in an age when public schools are often set against privatized ones that we’d allow such foolishness.
Opting out of testing is one way to deny this data to the state so that they can’t use it against the school.
Certainly having high numbers of students opting out can, itself, become an excuse for punitive action from the state. But nowhere in the country has it ever actually happened.
State legislatures, too, are run by majority rule. The same with the federal government.
Our lawmakers have no authority to tell voters they can’t opt their children out of testing. It is the voters who are the boss.
Fewer states require high stakes tests as graduation exams and/or use them to evaluate their teachers. Across the nation, states are cutting the size of standardized tests or eliminating them altogether. And more state legislatures passed laws explicitly allowing parents to opt their children out of the tests.
I think we have different definitions of “Slows” and “Crawl.”
That may not be surprising since we also seem to have different definitions of “Anti-Test.”
The Opt Out Movement is not “Anti-Test.” It is anti-high stakes standardized test.
It is against the federal government forcing states to use corporate written, corporate graded and corporate remediated standardized assessments.
It is against the federal government requiring each state to participate in a corporate boondoggle that not only wastes billions of tax dollars that could be better spent to educate children but also unfairly assesses their academic progress and feeds the push to privatize public schools.
Calling these folks “Anti-Test” is like labeling those pushing for stricter gun regulations “Anti-Gun” or smearing those protesting government corruption as “Anti-Government.”
And that’s just the title!
The author Alyson Klein further misdirects readers by conflating opt out rates and test resistance.
She implied that the only measure of opposition was the percentage of students who opt out. However, as noted above, there are multiple measures of resistance.
Moreover, few states advertise their opt out rates. Especially after the movement began, states made that information harder to come by to dissuade more people from joining it.
Of those states where information is available, Klein puts the most negative possible spin on the facts in order to make her point – a point that it seems to me is not at all justified.
“At least some of the steam has gone out of the opt-out movement in states such as New Jersey and New York, considered hotbeds of anti-testing fervor.”
And New York is one of our most densely populated states. That percentage represents more than 225,000 parents across the Empire State who refused to let their children take the tests despite threats from many administrators and district officials for doing so.
In New Jersey, opt out rates were marginally lower this year than last year. They went from 7% to 5%. But once again New Jersey is a populous state. That percentage represents about 68,500 students.
In addition, this is after massive opt outs three years ago that forced the state to change its federally mandated assessment. Testing boycotts pushed the state education association to get rid of four PARCC assessments and allow students who fail the remaining two tests to take an alternative assessment. And this is in a state where there is no law explicitly allowing parents to opt out of the tests.
I don’t know if I’d call that running out of steam.
And it nearly doubled in Utah over the past two years to about 6%. In some schools in the Beehive State, rates are much higher. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, 1 in 5 students in the Park City school district refused to take the tests.
Though my own state of Pennsylvania has been mum on last year’s opt outs, from my own personal experience as a teacher in suburban Pittsburgh, I never had more students boycott our federally mandated standardized test than I did last year.
There were so many they had to be quarantined in a special room.
Moreover, an increasing number of parents ask me about the issue, express concern and wonder about their rights.
So even when examining just the rate of opt out, I don’t see any reason to assume the movement is slowing down.
As recently as 2012, half of all U.S. states required high school exit exams in order for students to graduate. Today that number has dropped to 12. The reason? Exit exams don’t raise student achievement – they raise the dropout rate. At least that’s what The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences tells us.
And when it comes to opt out, two more states – Idaho and North Dakota – now have explicit laws on the books allowing parents to refuse the test for their children – in whole or in part. That brings the total number of states up to 10. It would have been 11, but Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a Republican, vetoed an opt-out bill. The federal government still wants us to penalize these districts for non-participation in flagrant violation of its authority. But as more states respect parents’ rights on this matter, it will be increasingly difficult for the U.S. Department of Education to continue trampling them.
There is already some proposed legislation to make positive changes. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation last year to replace annual assessments with grade-span tests. The United States is, after all, one of the only countries in the world – if not the only one – to require students be tested every year. These proposed changes are not nearly enough, but they’re a step in the right direction.
One of the biggest obstacles to abolishing federally mandated testing last time was that some of the oldest and most well funded civil rights organizations opposed it. Many of them get their money and support from the same billionaires who profit off of the standardized testing and privatization industries.
The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization has come out against high stakes standardized testing.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) distributed an issue brief yesterday at its national convention in San Antonio, Texas, titled “NAACP OPPOSES HIGH-STAKES EDUCATIONAL TESTING.”
The brief stated that the organization has concerns about using a single standardized test as a graduation requirement, as a prerequisite for advancement to the next grade or otherwise blocking students from receiving various educational opportunities. In its place, the organization favors the use of multiple measures, which may include standardized testing but should also include other assessments such as student grades and teacher evaluations.
In short, the brief concluded:
“Using a single standardized test as the sole determinant for promotion, tracking, ability grouping and graduation is not fair and does not foster equality or opportunity for students regardless of race, income, or gender.”
This is a huge policy shift from where the organization was just three years ago.
At the time, Congress was getting ready to pass a new education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The civil rights organizations – many of whom had just asked Congress a year earlier to reduce standardized testing – suddenly demanded it be kept a federal accountability standard and that taking these tests was, itself, a civil right.
At the time, many education activists were shocked by the turnaround obviously coerced by the standardized testing and school privatization industry. For instance, see this email from Teach for America alum Liz King giving organizations an ultimatum to sign.
The new issue brief is more in-line with the NAACP’s history of opposition and activism against corporate education reform.
Once again we have the NAACP that advocated against standardized testing in the Debra P v. Turlington case (1981), where the Florida legislature made passing a single standardized test a graduation requirement. The NAACP supported black students who had a disproportionate failing rate on the test and claimed the Florida legislature was violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The courts eventually ruled against the plaintiffs but the issue has remained contentious to this day.
Of particular note in the new issue brief is the caution that, “…when standardized tests are used by schools and school districts, that the tests be valid and reliable, measure what the student was taught and provide appropriate accommodations for disabled children.”
Many would argue that the new batch of Common Core aligned tests being used by states do not meet this requirement. They do not test what students have been taught – they test students’ ability to spit back the same kind of thinking of the person who wrote the test. Moreover, special needs students are rarely afforded the same accommodations on federally mandated standardized test day that they are allowed during every other assessment they take during the school year.
The brief continues:
“Furthermore, the NAACP is opposed to individual students being unfairly denied critical educational opportunities because of their performance on a single, standardized test.”
Organizations like the Journey for Justice Alliance (JJA), a group made up of 38 organizations of Black and Brown parents and students in 23 states, have never wavered in their opposition to high stakes standardized testing. In 2015 while the NAACP and other well established groups defended testing, JJA was joined by 175 other national and local grassroots community, youth and civil rights organizations asking Congress to stop requiring standardized tests at all.
It is nice to see the NAACP returning to the activism on which it built its justly deserved reputation.
What follows is the full text of the new NAACP issue brief:
“ISSUE BRIEF
Date: Summer, 2018
To: Concerned Parties
From: Hilary O. Shelton, Director, Washington Bureau
NAACP OPPOSES HIGH-STAKES EDUCATIONAL TESTING
THE ISSUE
Many states are relying on a single examination to determine decisions (such as graduating from high school or promoting students to the next grade), despite the fact that leading education experts nationwide recommend multiple measures of student performance for such decisions. While these “high-stakes” tests serve an important role in education settings, they are not perfect and when used improperly can create real barriers to educational opportunity and progress. Furthermore, one-time, standardized tests may have a disparate impact on students of color, many of whom have not had the benefit of high quality teaching staff (urban school districts have the greatest challenge in attracting and keeping high qualified teachers), adequate classroom resources, or instruction on the content and skills being tested by the standardized tests. Considering additional measures of student achievement, such as grades and teacher evaluations, adds not only to the fairness of a decision with major consequences for students but also increases the validity of such high stakes decisions.
Due to our concerns about the fairness of such testing, as well as the potential impact these tests have on the lives of our children, the NAACP has supported legislation in the past that would require that States follow the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, the bills require that High Stakes decisions be based upon multiple measures of student performance and, when standardized tests are used by schools and school districts, that the tests be valid and reliable, measure what the student was taught and provide appropriate accommodations for disabled children. Furthermore, the NAACP is opposed to individual students being unfairly denied critical educational opportunities because of their performance on a single, standardized test.
The NAACP will continue to promote the initiatives that ensure equal opportunity, fairness, and accuracy in education by coupling standardized tests with other measures of academic achievement. Using a single standardized test as the sole determinant for promotion, tracking, ability grouping and graduation is not fair and does not foster equality or opportunity for students regardless of race, income, or gender.”
Special thanks to Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig who first released the issue brief on his education blog.
“Students, parents, teachers and others have told us that too much time in the classroom is used for test taking,” he said.
“We want to put the focus back on learning in the classroom, not teaching to a test. Standardized testing can provide a useful data point for a student’s performance, but our focus should be on teaching students for future success, not just the test in front of them.”
So at his urging we made slight cuts to our Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests – the assessment for grade 3-8 students.
We removed two sections of the PSSA – one in math, one in reading – and reduced the number of science questions.
But it’s not exactly the kind of sea change the state claims, given the Department of Education’s recommendations for additional tests on top of the PSSA.
That’s right. The state wants schools to give the CDT assessment an additional 3 to 5 times a year in reading, math and science.
Unlike the PSSA, this is a voluntary assessment. Districts can decide against it, but the department’s flunkies are crisscrossing the Commonwealth advising we all give the CDT as much as possible.
So that’s between 50-90 minutes for each assessment. A district that follows the state’s guidelines would be adding as much as 270 minutes of testing every seven weeks. In a given year, that’s 1,350 minutes (or 22.5 hours) of additional testing!
Pop quiz, Governor Wolf. Cutting testing by 115 minutes while adding 1,350 minutes results in a net loss or a net gain?
The answer is an increase of 1,235 minutes (or more than 20 hours) of standardized testing.
In my classroom, that means students coming in excited to learn, but being told to put away their books, pocket their pencils and put their curiosity on standby.
The folks who work at the Department of Education instead of in the classroom with living, breathing children, will tell you that these CDT tests are a vital tool to help students learn.
They provide detailed information about which skills individual students need remediation on.
But who teaches that way?
Billy, you are having trouble with this kind of multiple-choice question, so here are 100 of them.
We don’t do that. We read. We write. We think. We communicate.
And if somewhere along the way, we struggle, we work to improve that while involved in a larger project that has intrinsic value – such as a high interest book or a report on a hero of the civil rights movement.
When learning to walk, no one concentrates on just bending your knees. Even if you have stiff joints, you work them out while trying to get from point A to point B.
Otherwise, you reduce the exercise to boring tedium.
That’s what the state is suggesting we do.
Make something essentially interesting into humdrum monotony.
I know if my students can read by observing them in that act. I know if they can write by observing them doing it. I know if they can communicate by listening to them arguing in Socratic seminar. I read their poems, essays and short stories. I watch their iMovies and Keynote projects.
I’m a teacher. I am present in the classroom.
That tells me more than any standardized diagnostic test ever will.
It’s ironic that on a Department of Education “CDT Frequently Asked Questions” sheet, the assessment is described as “minimizing testing time.”
When presented with the prospect of another day of CDT testing in my room, one of my brightest students raised his hand and asked if kids in the local Catholic school took the test.
I told him I didn’t know – though I doubt it. They COULD take the test. It is available to nonpublic schools, but do you really think they’re going to waste that much instruction time?
Heck! They don’t even take the same MANDATORY standardized testing! Why would they bother with the optional kind!?
I’m way too laid back for that. But my students know I will penalize them if they don’t hand in their assignments. And if it isn’t their best work, I’ll call them out on it.
The way I see it, grades and test scores offer an approximation of how well a student tries to achieve academic goals.
However, I think it transforms a self-directed, authentic pursuit of knowledge into grade grubbing. It makes an intrinsic activity purely extrinsic.
Learning no longer becomes about satisfying your curiosity. It becomes a chase after approval and acceptance.
We already know that measuring a phenomena fundamentally changes that phenomena. With a constant emphasis on measurement, children become less creative and less willing to take risks on having a wrong answer.
That’s one of the reasons I prefer teaching the academic track students to the honors kids. They aren’t used to getting all A’s, so they are free to answer a question based on their actual thoughts and feelings. If they get a question wrong, it’s not the end of the world. It hasn’t ruined a perfect GPA and put valedictorian forever out of reach.
Too much rigor (God! I hate that word!) creates academic robots who have lost the will to learn. Their only concern is the grade or the test score.
But if the goal is authentic learning, cheating doesn’t help. You can’t cheat to understand better. You can only fool the teacher or the test. You can’t fool your own comprehension.
If you find a novel way of realizing something, that’s not cheating – it’s a learning strategy.
However, classroom grades do have predictive value – especially when compared to standardized tests. Students with high grades in high school but middling test scores do better in college than students with higher test scores and lower grades.
Why? Because grades are based on something other than the ability to take one test. They demonstrate a daily commitment to work hard. They are based on 180 days (in Pennsylvania) of classroom endeavors, whereas standardized tests are based on the labor of an afternoon or a few days.
Yet even classroom grades have their limits.
I remember my high school graduation – sitting on the bleachers in my cap and gown listening to our valedictorian and salutatorian give speeches about the glorious future ahead of us.
Yet for each of those individuals, the future wasn’t quite so bright. Oh, neither of them burned out, but they didn’t exactly set the world on fire, either.
In fact, when I went to college, I found a lot of the highest achievers in high school struggled or had to drop out because they couldn’t adjust. The new freedom of college was too much – they partied and passed out. Yet a middle-of-the-road student like me (Okay, I was really good in English) did much better. I ended up in the honors college with a double major, a masters degree and graduating magna cum laude.
And it’s not just my own experience. The research backs this up.
The folks the researchers followed admitted that this wasn’t them. Many confessed that they weren’t the smartest people in their classes. They just worked really hard and gave teachers exactly what they thought they wanted.
So what’s the point?
Some people will read this and think I’m against all testing and grading.
Don’t get rid of grades and testing, just change the emphasis. Put a premium on curiosity and creativity. Reward academic risk taking, innovation and imagination. And recognize that most of the time there may be several right answers to the same question.
Heck other countries like Finland already do this.
As a result, their kids have some of the highest test scores in the world. By not focusing on standards and assessments, they counterintuitively top the charts with these very things.
There’s a lesson here for American education policy analysts.
Am I obsessed and distressed by oppressive divestment?
Oh who cares? Kiss my assessment!
Double, Double, test and trouble;
Standards stern so fill in that bubble.
NOTE: I wrote this poem during and after proctoring this year’s PSSA test for my 7th grade students. Can’t imagine where the inspiration came from! I’ll just say that the opposite of standardized testing has always seemed to be poetry. I hope you enjoyed my verses. It was either that or spit curses!
2) You say stealth testing has made the traditional standardized assessments irrelevant?
Okay. Competency Based Education is a real problem that threatens to make everyday test day – I’ll go with you there. In fact, schemes like Personalized Learning could transform every app into an opportunity to test kids without them even knowing it.
But that doesn’t mean the old fashioned high stakes tests have gone away!
Far from it. The federal government still requires all states to give these assessments to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
Let’s say the feds required teachers to give rich kids higher grades than poor children.
Or say the state commanded teachers to copy down sensitive information about students and give it to private corporations.
Imagine if the school board instructed teachers to put minority kids in slower classes than white kids.
If any of that happened, there would be wide scale revolt!
They are used to justify increased segregation within school buildings because implicit testing bias means white kids generally score higher than children of color. So the white kids get more advanced courses and the brown ones get test prep.
3) You say the Opt Out kids are just trying to get out of doing work. It’s just laziness.
First, of all, it is the parents who are opting their children out of standardized testing – not the students. Second, who are you to question their motives?
These tests are used to justify unfairly evaluating YOUR work, narrowing YOUR curriculum, repealing YOUR union protections, reducing YOUR autonomy, cutting YOUR funding, and ultimately laying YOU off.
Why are you standing up for THAT?
So why are some teachers wavering in their opposition to high stakes tests?
I think it has to do with who we are.
Most teachers are rule followers at heart. When we were in school, we were the obedient students. We were the people-pleasers. We got good grades, kept our heads down and didn’t make waves.
But the qualities that often make for the highest grades don’t often translate into action. That, alone, should tell you something about the limits of assessment which are only exacerbated by standardized test scores. When it comes to complex concepts, it’s hard to assess and even harder to determine if success on assessments is a predictor of future success.
Bottom line: Every teacher should be in favor of the Opt Out movement.
And I don’t mean quietly, secretly in favor. I mean publicly, vocally in favor.
Many teachers are parents, themselves, with children in the districts where they teach. Every educator should opt out their own children from the tests.
Next, we should force our unions to do the things that we can’t as safely do as individuals.
Call parents and ask them to opt IN!? We should be doing just the opposite, but that would put a target on our backs.
As a teacher, I can’t unilaterally call or send a letter home to my students’ parents explaining why they should opt their kids out. If I did that, I could find myself in administration’s cross hairs and face grave repercussions.
But isn’t that why we have a union? To stand up as a collective and do the necessary things we can’t do as individuals?
Imagine if the unions put pressure on the school boards to pass resolutions against testing and in favor of opt out! What effect would that have on state legislatures and the federal government?
How could the feds continue to demand we give high stakes tests when nearly every school board across the country objected and advised parents to refuse testing for their children?
Taken individually, these aren’t really all that difficult things to do.
They require a certain degree of moral courage, to be sure. And teachers have been beaten down by a society that devalues their work and begrudges them just about everything.
The tech moguls and the testing giants are salivating over the prospect of replacing us with apps and low-skilled, low paid babysitters to oversee students hunched over computers and tablets. (See? Told you Personalized Learning was poison.)
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in times of crisis, shrink from service, but those who stand up in time of need deserve the love and thanks of every man and woman.
The tests take too long. They’re not valid assessments. They narrow the curriculum. They’re dumbing down the teaching profession and ripping away our autonomy.
So, yeah. Almost all of us agree standardized testing sucks.
But when there’s an administrator present, I too often find I’m the only one willing to speak that truth. My colleagues, who are pleased as punch to gripe in private, suddenly go quiet in the presence of their superiors.
What’s worse, some of them don’t just stay quiet – they offer arguments to support whatever nonsensical test-based solution our boss has in mind today.
Let’s say an administrator suggests we do something about the handful of students who opt out of standardized tests.
We could just respect the rights of parents who have handed in their written intention to opt their children out under a religious exemption – the only option in Pennsylvania. Or we could do as the administrator suggests and force kids who’ve been opted out to take a standardized look-a-like assessment.
I hear something like that, and I’m on my feet ready to fight.
(Okay, I had to look up the particulars later, but I made sure the administrator got them.)
Consider subsection (d) (4). And I quote:
“If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied…”
Or how about subsection (d) (3):
“School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians [have]… (3) The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.” (Emphasis mine)
In other words, parents have a right to excuse their children from the tests and/or instruction such as test look-a-likes.
If we go forward with requiring students who are opted out to take tests that are just like the ones their parents instructed us NOT to give, we will be violating parents’ rights under state law.”
That seems pretty airtight to me.
But the administrator disagrees.
And I look around at the assembled mass of workaday teachers for support.
Not a peep.
Instead I get this:
-We’re being evaluated on these standardized tests, we have to make sure kids take them seriously.
-I see where you’re coming from but we have to do something about these kids who are opting out just to get out of doing the work. They don’t have any real intellectual objection. They’re just lazy.
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