A 2012 rally held by
United Opt Out (Licensed through Creative Commons (Courtesy of
Flickr user Chalkface, CC BY-SA 2.0)
At a
September 16 PTA meeting, Castle Bridge
elementary school parents received some unwelcome news:
the
New York City Department of Education was dropping new
standardized tests on their children in kindergarten through
second grade. Kindergarteners would take a break from learning
the alphabet to bubble A through D on
multiple-choice exams. Images
next to each problem—a tree, a mug, a hand—would serve as
signposts for students still fuzzy on numbers.
The district purchased
the tests to meet
the
state's new teacher evaluation laws. In elementary schools
that don’t serve grades three through eight, No Child Left
Behind testing dictates don’t apply, necessitating a
supplemental test.
Castle Bridge, a progressive K-2
public school in Washington Heights, is among 36 early
elementary schools in
the New York City targeted for
the new
assessments.
According to Castle Bridge mom Dao Tran, those at
the PTA meeting were appalled. This was the first they’d heard
of the tests. Talk of refusal arose among some parents, but
they knew that “acting as individuals wouldn’t keep testing
culture from invading our school.” They opted for collective
action.
Starting in early October, a core group organized
meetings, disseminated fact-sheets on standardized testing and
galvanized a spirited conversation at the next PTA meeting.
Parents shared their concerns, weighing the risks of refusal.
At one meeting a parent whose first language was Spanish
testified to the pain and anxiety brought on by taking
standardized tests in his youth.
Within three weeks,
80 percent of parents had submitted in
writing their intention to opt out of
the new tests. Principal
Julie Zuckerman put her weight behind
the families, agreeing,
according to Tran, that “these tests would be
the wrong thing
to do.”
In a statement, parents wrote, “The K-2
high-stakes tests take excessive testing to its extreme:
testing children as young as four serves no meaningful
educative purpose and is developmentally destructive.”
By October 28, families of 93 of the 97 students
subject to the tests had opted out. The near-unanimous boycott
is unprecedented in the city.
It also signals the first stirrings of a growing
test-resistance movement poised to reach new heights this
academic year.
---
“Who do you like more: A, Mommy; B, Daddy; or C,
Frederick Douglas?”
When eight year-old Jackson Zavala posed this
multiple-choice query to his baby sister, his mother Diana
Zavala knew something was amiss.
Jackson, a student with special needs in
communications, had been a “curious, interested” student until
third grade, the first year NCLB-mandated state tests take
effect. It was then his mother noticed that he “became anxious
and bored by school.” She saw that his homework had become
rote and repetitive, his class time devoted more to test prep,
and his speech inflected with the language of multiple choice
testing.
In time Zavala decided that the influence of
testing in class had led to “damage to his personal well-being
and originality” and “a strangling of his curriculum.”
She poked around and found a New York City-based
test resistance group called Change the Stakes. With the
group’s support, opting-out was a less fraught decision. “We
had a family, a connection with a community of people” also
resisting the test.
For the last two years, Jackson has refused state
exams.
But actions like Zavala’s have been sporadic in
recent years. It wasn't until this past spring that the
testing opt-out movement had its first bumper crop.
In January, high school teacher and activist
Jesse Hagopian helped lead
the dramatic test boycott at Seattle’s Garfield
High School. Teachers refused to administer, and students
refused to take
the state test, which organizers argued wasn’t
aligned to curriculum and provided statistically unreliable
results. After a months-long standoff with
the district which
saw teachers
threatened with suspension,
the
district relented and allowed
the high school to forgo
the
test.
Since spring, Hagopian has been traveling
the
country speaking at events and advising schools “who want to
replicate”
the success of Garfield’s boycott. He even took
part in a panel at NBC’s
Education Nation in early October to
rail against “
the inundation of our classrooms with
standardized testing.”
But while Seattle attracted
the lion’s share of
national media attention, schools throughout
the country saw
increasing numbers of students refuse standardized tests.
Denver,
Chicago,
Portland,
Providence and
elsewhere wi
tnessed opt-outs
large and small.
Parent groups in Texas succeeded in
halving the number of
standardized tests given there. Students donned fake gore for
“zombie crawls” in
two cities, highlighting
the
deadening effects of test-mania. Little ones participated in a
“
play-in” at district offices in
Chicago, living
the motto that tots “should be blowing
bubbles, not filling them in.”
This activism comes as a reaction to the growth
of a testing apparatus unmatched in US history. Bipartisan No
Child Left Behind legislation in 2002 laid the groundwork,
requiring states to develop assessments for all students in
grades 3-8, and threatening schools that fall short of yearly
benchmarks. The Obama Administration's Race to the Top
heightened the stakes, encouraging states to develop
test-based teacher evaluations and adopt Common Core
standards.
Together they aim to capture all
the complexities
of a student’s learning in a few digits that sometimes add up
to schools closed and teachers fired. Meanwhile
three quarters of districts facing
NCLB sanctions have reported cutting
the time allotted to
non-tested subjects like science and music. And since Race to
the Top’s passage in 2009, about
two thirds of states have ramped
up their teacher evaluation systems, with 38 now explicitly
requiring evaluations to include test scores.
As standardized testing has grown, so too has its
shadow. In 2011,
the United
Opt Out movement was established to counter
the
pro-testing mania sweeping
the country. Its website provides
opt-out
guides for 49 states and
the
District of Columbia, and connects a burgeoning community of
grumbling and disaffected parents.
“I didn’t ask for high-stakes testing,” says Tim
Slekar, United Opt Out’s founder. Slekar sees participating in
a large-scale opt-out movement as a way for him and his
children to “reclaim public education.”
United Opt Out currently claims six thousand
members, but Slekar says its ranks are ballooning. “I’ve
spoken to more parents in the last three weeks than in the
past three years.”
In New York,
dozens of grassroots
organizations have emerged to address testing. Parent
advocates recently formed New York State Allies for Public
Education (
NYSAPE)
to serve as an umbrella group.
The organization draws together
parents from big cities and sleepy byways, united in “seeing
the damage to
the kids,” says NYSAPE co-founder Chris Cerrone.
In
the tiny West New York district where
Cerrone’s children go to school,
the number of students opting
out
rose sixfold between 2012 and 2013.
At Springville Middle School, enough students boycotted to
trigger NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress alarms.
NYSAPE has scrutinized state opt-out procedures
and found New York has no provision for addressing student
test refusal. The knowledge that students can forgo tests
without individual repercussions has emboldened parents across
the state.
In schools from
Long Island to
Albany, from
the Adirondacks to
Lower Manhattan, students pushed
their pencils aside and refused state tests this past spring.
It was a high water mark for
the opt-out movement in New York,
but still totaled less than
one percent of students.
The question remains as to whether boycotts that
exceed 5 percent of a school’s population, and thus preclude
schools from making Adequate Yearly Progress, can invite
consequences.
National testing advocacy group
Fairtest treads cautiously
here.
Chris Cerrone calls it “a myth,” however,
pointing to the fact that despite increasing opt outs, no
school in New York has lost funding due to student test
refusal. But it's still unclear.
---
On October 27, eight days after
the Castle Bridge
boycott went public,
the Chief Academic Officer of New York
City schools
told a state Senate committee that
the K-2 bubble
tests
the city had selected in August were “developmentally
inappropriate.” He indicated that
the city would move towards
“performance assessments” in these grades, noting that
the new
state teacher evaluation law mandates some form of assessment
in these grades.
It’s the latest in a series of conciliatory
gestures by the Department of Education toward parents and
educators who’ve been raising hackles for years.
Some of
the most aggressive pushing on testing
recently comes from grassroots anti-testing group
Change
the Stakes. Incited by
the perceived onslaught of
Common Core-aligned state tests,
the group published
sample opt-out letters and rallied parents at
numerous schools in support of a boycott.
This knowledge is empowering. Parents at Castle
Bridge delighted at the realization that they could yank their
kids from tests. Don Lash, parent of a Castle Bridge
first-grader, said “just being aware there was an alternative”
was a revelation.
Similar resistance efforts are underway at Earth
School, a K-5 elementary in the same progressive network as
Castle Bridge, where 51 students opted out last year. Special
education teacher and parent Jia Lee played a central role in
organizing last spring’s boycott, which included her
fifth-grade son. Though many teachers will only whisper their
support with opt-out parents, Lee is unafraid to speak
publicly.
As a teacher, Lee wearied of the third-party
test-prep materials flowing into schools. “You don’t need
packaged curriculum to have meaningful learning,” she says. As
a parent and CTS member, she feels “the only way to stop this
is to deny the data.”
And in her advocacy, Lee sees the movement in the
city metastasizing. “Schools that weren’t talking about this
last year are starting to talk,” she says.
Parents at Castle Bridge likely won’t be backing
down. Says Castle Bridge parent Vera Moore, “I will oppose
testing as long as I am able.”
Interestingly, Shael Polakow-Suranksy, New York’s
Chief Academic Officer, isn’t drawing any red lines on test
refusal. Regarding Castle Bridge, he said there would be “no
consequences.” And children who opt out of state exams can
still advance to the next grade, so long as they submit
alternative portfolios, as per district policy. On the
possibility of future boycotts, Polakow-Suransky won’t
speculate. The recent boycott had little or no effect on his
decision to renounce bubble tests for toddlers. “Preceding the
news of the boycott we were exploring other options,” he says.
But it’s not just K-2 tests that parents are
resisting. The opt-out movement reflects the inevitable
response of citizens when dramatic changes are imposed
unilaterally on democratic institutions. Unable to influence
the content of curricula or nature of assessments through
democratic means, direct resistance becomes perhaps the only
option.
Diana Zavala says parents are taking the reins of
school governance, but with one key difference from
administrators: “You can’t fire us.”
