The anti-testers

When several hundred thousand children answered multiple-choice questions on statewide math and English tests at Maryland’s public schools this spring, Conor and Molly McNulty were not among them. At their mother’s behest, the brother and sister—elementary students in Catonsville, Md.—have sat out standardized tests since kindergarten, sometimes reading a book or playing computer games during testing hours.

While his friends took fourth-grade tests last school year, Conor, 10, instead joined an upper-grade class for a science project. “We made a boat out of recyclables,” he said. When classmates ask 8-year-old Molly why she skips tests, she responds, “It’s really complicated.”

The McNultys are part of the “opt-out” movement, a wave of families refusing to participate in annual standardized testing. Some states have seen so many parents refuse high-stakes tests for their children that the U.S. Department of Education has threatened repercussions, perhaps by withholding federal education funding. In Washington state at least 28,000 students skipped tests, and thousands more did so in Oregon, New Jersey, and Colorado.

The movement surged this spring in New York, where over 200,000 students boycotted tests—about one out of every five eligible students. Why the testing truancy? To borrow Molly’s explanation, it’s complicated. Parents and teachers give multiple reasons for opposing high-stakes tests, ranging from opposition to Common Core to concern about kids getting stressed out.

Conor and Molly’s mom, Morna McDermott McNulty, is a former teacher, an education professor at Towson University, and a volunteer organizer for United Opt Out. She says corporate profits influence standardized tests and don’t give a reliable assessment of the most important educational factors. Boycotting the tests, she said, forces schools to “look more deeply at those factors that do matter: Their schoolwork. The teacher’s assessment of their work. Any portfolio work that they’ve done.”

McNulty noted that the new standardized tests many states have adopted align with Common Core, the controversial national education standards she called “confusing and poorly written.”

In western New York, social studies teacher Chris Cerrone noticed a few years ago that kids coming into his middle-school class had less and less knowledge of history. He said elementary schools now spend more time preparing for English and math tests and push aside history and science. Now Cerrone’s own two kids (in fifth and seventh grades) skip assessment tests, and Cerrone has helped organize Buffalo-area grassroots opposition to statewide testing that he says has become “too important” and is “driving instruction.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo inadvertently boosted the opt-out movement in his state when, with the help of legislators, he tied 50 percent of teacher evaluation scores to classroom test results. Many unionized teachers oppose that and have refused tests for their children—in the process quadrupling the New York opt-out rate.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank, empathizes with parents who worry teachers pressured to teach math and English will neglect other subjects—but he said boycotting standardized tests is a “very dangerous way to make your voice heard. … If enough parents opt out, we no longer have a good way of measuring school performance based on outcomes.” Petrilli sees testing as an essential accountability tool that has helped create demand for charter schools and vouchers.

The federal Department of Education could cut off funding from schools that don’t boost their testing rates. The big question then: Would parents accept testing or intensify the pressure?