Students are Opting Out of Common Core Testing-Why?

Opting out of common core testing
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Standardized TestingWe’ve already explored the problems and frustrations with Common Core Standards in “Rotting to the Core”. Now, schools are experiencing an increase in parental backlash by having huge numbers of parents opting out of common core testing by not allowing their children being tested. In New York State last year, 49,000 students did not take the English test and 67,000 skipped the math portion. Numbers of refusals are expected to increase this year. What’s going on? 
Teachers, parents and students are more often believing that state tests used to evaluate both student present and future successes as well as teacher quality are flawed. Even principals have stated that students are being over tested.

On the other side, state officials are using superintendents, school boards, media editorialsand misinformation to ensure compliance. Many fear tactics have been put into place to push the testing agenda.

Let’s try to clarify what some of the real issues are with the tests.

  • 1. Many feel that teaching only for the tests has become the norm. Students are no longer being taught critical thinking, understanding of concepts or problem solving because the tests are dictating what and how teachers should teach. In addition, because the tests focus on math and English, a wider variety of subjects have fallen by the waste side i.e. social studies, music, art, languages, physical education and even science
  • 2. There is a general consensus that tests given to an eight-year-olddo not indicate if that child will or will not succeed in entering college. Labeling children at such a young age can be discouraging for life.
  • 3. People have repeatedly complained that the test questions are poorly written and ambiguous, skewing the idea that the results were at all accurate. Even principals and teachers could not agree on the correct answers to many questions.
  • 4. Parents do not receive specific details as to what their child knew or did not know from the tests. They only receive a score. Therefore, strengthening the child’s weaknesses is virtually impossible. Even the teachers only receive a vague set of data from the tests and this information is only gotten towards the end of the school year. Test questions are required to remain secretive. Who is this helping? 
  • 5. Millions of dollars have been poured into new computer systems designed for Common Core tests while national public school budgets continue to face cuts. Who is really benefiting here? 
  • 6. Poor test scores can be used to hold generally decent students back and punish teachers who otherwise get high scores by their principals but whose students do not do well on the tests. 
  • 7. Since the tests are universally the same, there is no consideration for cultural differences, students with special needs and children living under in poverty. 

What should schools and individuals do? That is a very personal decision. However, if you are considering opting out of common core testing for your child, it must be done through
written correspondences
. Students who do not get tested simply receive a code which indicates that “no valid test score” was received.

When researching this blog, I am reminded of my experiences as a student in school. My class had a wide range of students. There were those who I was sure were destined to become the next president of the United States and those who I was expecting to hear had made jail time.

At a school reunion years later, I found out that my assumptions were somewhat accurate only often the opposite of what I imagined. Many of the “troublesome” students had gone on to become doctors and lawyers while some the more “successful” students had become criminals and drug addicts.

Clearly, my theories about people were way off. Would standardized testing have been a better indication of future success? I’m not sure. What do you think?

10 Responses to Students are Opting Out of Common Core Testing-Why?

  1. This blog artcle sure doesn’t provide much data. I’m 62, but back when I was in elementary school in NJ there were already standardized tests (e.g. “Iowa Basic Skills Test”). I dont remember any option for parents to choose to not have their child be tested. Makes me think there must have been a political compromise in putting the Common Core tests in place to include an opt-out provision. What’s the history there?

    If it takes written correspondence to opt-out, is there any organized force pushing for people to opt-out and helping with a prototype letter to follow? Who is opting out? Randomly distributed students? Predominantly low-performing students? Predominantly students expected to perform well on the tests?

    The article criticizes the test for having questions where the experts dispute which answer is right. Has the test been validated with national norms experimentally determined, and score variability quantitatively determined, or are therese tests still “in beta”? e.g. launched early to gather some quantitative data to establish the parameters of the score distributions?

    There’s much worrying about schools “teaching to the test”, but as I understand it, common core curricula are not yet well established in the schools. Seems to me that we’re years away from being able to say anything confidently about how well do good common core test scores predict college readiness. I remember all the brouhaha about how terrible “new math” was when it was introduced when I ws a kid. I think that worked out OK in the long run.

    The motive for common core was a belief that the nation’s schools weren’t doing a uniformly good job of preparing their students for college. The clamor was that a high school diploma didn’t mean anything. Is the complaint now that common core isn’t popular? Or that it isn’t ready? Or that we just don’t know enough to establish national standardized curricula? What “college-ready” means isn’t necessarily the same fr a wannabe History teacher vs. wannabe engineer.

    Maybe the right uniform test for getting a high school diploma should include testing the ability to balance a checkbook, to write a letter of complaint about the plans to shift the local high school football schedule from Saturdays to Fridays, to be able to list the locally elected officials by name and give a brief statement about each one’s position on some issue.

  2. Tsivya Fox says:

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Please click the hyperlinks provided in the blog. You will find some more information (though not all the answers to your questions) along with a form “opt out” letter.

    You are correct that the common core in theory was created to improve across the board standards of education in the US. Unfortunately, there are many complaints about the program and the system. Some feel there are a few getting wealthy off the program which is not properly developed nor properly developing our students.

    The fact that the issue continues to rare its face forces one to ask, “Is the problem with the program, with the parent and student attitudes, with the students and/or with the schools?

    I don’t have the answers but I am happy to present the challenges.

    Thanks for writing in.

  3. Omar Ezzeldine, Ed.D. says:

    I’m not comfortable with this “boycott” because it doesn’t address the problem. It also denies an inevitable reality, which is that “testing” is happening whether we like it or not. We test our spouses when we ask them if they love us. The IRS tests us when we submit our taxes. We test our kids when we are holding them accountable for their chores. My 3rd grade teacher tested us every week on spelling words. I know there are many feelings about what would *should* test and what we should not, but to test *nothing* just is not right. If we boycott a test, we are simultaneously boycotting the learning that said test is measuring. Sure the tool may not be right and has a lot of improvement to go – no doubt. That doesn’t mean we don’t use any tool.

    Learning is only as good as it can be measured. Unless we have some way to determine if something was learned, we might as well have not *learned* it. Here’s a twist on the old saying, if a tree falls in the forest and there is nothing around to measure sound, can you say it made a sound? Can you even say it fell if we are not using any of our senses to make that determination?

    Boycotts in general have their place, however I’m much more in favor of *alternatives* rather than simply *not* doing something. Ever since our kids were babies, we avoided saying “no.” If they got into something we did not want them to get into, we gave them something else to get into. If we don’t like the test either come up with something else to put importance on as a family or do what we’ve always told our kids around testing season: “Do you best, but don’t worry about this test – it doesn’t define you, you define you.”

    • Tsivya Fox says:

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that there needs to be some measure of accountability for learning. There seems to be lack of universal input concerning Common Core.

    • Don Berg says:

      “Learning is only as good as it can be measured.”
      This statement implies that human beings were poor learners until the 20th century because we did not measure it until then. Obviously that’s absurd. Learning does not require measurement, it requires being alive and awake. There are plenty of specific skills that require more than that, but learning is always occurring when we are awake. The important question is what is being learned. The testing regimes are teaching unintended lessons about the irrelevance of academics to the lived experiences of children.

      Also, there is nothing inevitable about testing. There are plenty of areas of human experience that lend themselves to other ways to assess learning. There is little doubt that some form of testing is going to continue into the future, but those forms are most likely to be limited to areas in which the tests can be used productively by teachers and learners in real time. That is what is necessary for testing to be a useful tool for learning, rather than a tool of social engineering. It is the social engineering aspect of testing that should not survive in the long run.

      Enjoy,

      Don Berg

      Author of http://www.Schools-of-Conscience.org
      Building the nurturing capacity of all K-12 schools.

      New Book- Every Parent’s Dilemma: Why Do We Ignore Schools That Nurture Children?

      Free E-book: http://www.changethis.com/51.05.AttitudeProblem

      • Tsivya Fox says:

        Thank you for your comments. They are definitely food for thought.

      • OMAR EZZELDINE says:

        Great comments Don. Thank you for taking the time to submit a thoughtful reply. If I may, what I mean by learning is as good as it can be measured is that we have always (even before the 20th century) measured learning. If an apprentice could not make a shoe, he would not be allowed to be a cobbler. The way learning was measured in that context was performance based. As a society, we have evolved in what we value and how we choose to measure competence in that thing we value. As a society, we just need to be clear what we want to be learned and how we will know if it’s been learned. To remove “testing” all together and simply assume learning is “happening” as long as we are alive is limiting the value and importance of learning important things.

        As for the inevitability of testing, perhaps my attempt at being philosophical in my argument was not clear enough. I tried to explain this in my follow up (spouses evaluating each other, etc). You are testing me while you read my comment. You are trying to determine a wide range of things about me that are important to you. The rubric (polite, intelligent, good writer, etc) you use is up to you, but you have standards and you are “testing” me. The same goes for anything and anyone. I think we agree in that we should be more open-minded about the “way” we test learning. I just want to caution us about using language like “get rid of testing.” We can’t get rid of it – we are always doing it. “How” we do it must be flexible and innovative, but always clear and well communicated.

    • JESTU says:

      “Learning is only as good as it can be measured. Unless we have some way to determine if something was learned, we might as well have not *learned* it.”

      It pains me to see that you have a doctorate in education and are potentially spreading ideas to teachers that learning is meaningless without testing. Now I only have a M.Ed, but that very concept that school is about achieving grades and high test scores, not about the pursuit of knowledge and skills is everything that is wrong with the education system and is exactly why I will in the future be pursuing a doctorate of my own.

      • Tsivya Fox says:

        Thanks for the counter view.

      • OMAR EZZELDINE says:

        Dear JESTU,
        Please refrain from attacking comments like “It pains me to see that you have a doctorate in education…” Personal remarks like that are not constructive toward what I see as a shared goal for you and me – the pursuit of knowledge and skills should be valued by our schools, community and students.

        Allow me to clarify and perhaps build a collegial rather than adversarial position with you:
        When we pursue something, we need to know when we’ve achieved it. Before we set out on our pursuit, we must define how we will know if it’s been achieved. “Grades” and “test scores” are the words we may use to describe how well a pursuit has been achieved. I may want a student of mine to be more creative – that’s wonderful! How will I know when my student has become more creative? Or more importantly, how will I gauge the creative advances my student is making? We can call it a “grade” or a “test” or an “assessment,” but no mater what terminology or mechanism we agree on, we cannot deny that we are “measuring” something.

        I look forward to keeping this conversation going passionately and positively.
        Best Regards.

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