There’s a new trend sweeping the public education sector, fueled by the increasing discontentment of those who take issue with the current nature of standardized state testing, and the manner in which it is conducted.
The Opt out of Testing Movement–whose advocates believe that there are better ways to evaluate students’ progress and teachers’ ability than the present standardized testing methods in place–has picked up an astounding amount of momentum over the last couple of years. Helmed by a slew of passionate individuals scattered all across the nation, the fervent push for testing reform has attracted an amazing following comprised of parents, children, teachers, and school administrators alike.
One of the Movement’s primary assertions is that the current tests deprive students of valuable learning time, since teachers are made to spend hours in the weeks leading up to the tests preparing for them, subjecting kids to long and tedious exercises (such as ones that instruct how to properly bubble in a scan-tron form).
Proponents have also pointed out that because educators have to tailor their classes to accommodate the tests (which only cover math and ELA), the time they have left to focus on other topics such as social studies, music, art, foreign languages, science, and physical education decreases severely. They also argue that the tests wrongly intertwine teachers’ performance evaluations with scores that they claim do not even accurately reflect children’s achievement, provided that test results have been shown to vary depending on test-takers’ mental and emotional state, as well as unavoidable disparities in testing conditions.
This push for standardized testing reform has garnered support largely through penned protests, signed petitions, and social media efforts. In truth, New York has become one of the states in which the movement has amassed tremendous support, particularly on Long Island (where the Movement has gained an extremely strong foothold).
The Movement has valiantly made its way into the City, too.
The Brooklyn New School–one of the highest achieving public elementary schools in its borough–revealed that a significant percentage of its third, fourth, and fifth graders decided to opt out of standardized tests this year: a stunning phenomenon, evidently spurred by the fervent actions of parents and educators, whose collective efforts have greatly been spearheaded by the school’s principal, Anna Allanbrook. “When teachers and administrators can’t figure out the answer to questions on a third grade test…[and] find themselves questioning the developmental appropriateness of some of the texts on a third grade test, something is very wrong,” Allanbrook recently wrote in a weekly letter to BNS families.
Tish Doggett, a BNS parent of one child in the second grade and another in the third, became an ardent supporter of the Opt Out Movement long before her firstborn even reached testing age, as a member of the school’s Parent Action Coalition (PAC, for short): a feedback group that was originally formed to help teachers understand their students better, and to help educators determine whether or not they have succeeded in teaching all that they want to get across to their students.
At BNS, teachers formulate their own curriculums, mixing the required core in with more teamwork and project-based learning techniques. To cater to the current standardized testing system, however, educators are forced to forego their modern teaching approach in favor of more traditional––and perhaps outdated––methods. “Teachers are in a very hard spot,” Doggett says, citing one case in which a teacher at BNS fretted over the possibility of having to cancel field trips in order to make time for test prep. In the end, however, the school’s administration urged her not to. “We’re lucky at our school because [us parents] get support from our administration and the faculty,” Doggett says. “They try to defend what we want, so we’ve been able to resist––for the most part––against teaching to the tests. Our teachers refuse to spend a lot of time on test prep.”
With the support of the school’s administration, Doggett, alongside other members of PAC, has helped organize countless events aimed at raising other parents’ awareness, putting together rallies, information sessions, and community gatherings in hopes of bringing to their attention the pressing issues related to the high stakes tests.
According to Doggett, though there are no major opponents to the Movement within the school’s community, there are some parents who remain skeptics, questioning whether the push for reform is truly necessary. “The dissenters say, ‘tests are a part of life’; they just don’t quite understand how the tests–which [require] children to sit for so long, and have such high stakes around them–are inappropriate,” Doggett explains. There are also parents who appear uncomfortable with suddenly having the power to decide. “Before, people didn’t have a choice, so it’s a very confusing time,” she says. “[Especially since] there’s a lot of misinformation.”
Part of parents’ hesitance to fully support the Movement is rooted in the fact that many selective middle schools have been said to take into consideration the results of the fourth grade tests in their admissions decisions. To help put to rest this popular notion, Brooklyn New School’s PAC probed 18 junior highs in Brooklyn and Manhattan how heavily the test scores weighed in on their decision-making, and what their application process was for students without test scores. “The majority of [the schools] says that there’s no way a test score is going to be the deciding factor on whether or not a child gets into their school,” Doggett says. “Many of them also says they would happily accept a portfolio [in place of a test score].”
Kids at the Brooklyn New School who choose to opt out follow this alternative, creating a portfolio well in advance to submit in lieu of test scores. They’re not completely free from testing, however; they also have to take a substitute exam called the Blackline Master Assessment, the scores of which are submitted to the superintendent as proof that a child is ready to move on to the next grade. That said the Blackline Master exam is significantly shorter than the state tests, which take place over six days, spanning up to 90 minutes per day; in contrast, the Blackline spans only two days (one for each subject), and takes up to 45 minutes per day.
Though Doggett believes standardized tests do have a place in surveying students’ progress, she also feels they should not outweigh other methodologies, and that they should not be used at all in measuring teachers’ efficacy. “I think a standardized test is [only] one way of getting a snapshot of what’s happening,” she says. “If the tests are used, they should be randomized and done in a very methodologically sound way. I also believe educators that actually spend time in the classroom with children should have a very big role in creating them.”
