After a little over a week of silent stillness and butcher paper-covered walls, this year’s Georgia Milestones testing period came to an end. Georgia—like all states—has its public school students take statewide standardized tests as required by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And Georgia—like all states—has seen a rise in the number of parents choosing to “opt out” and not have their students participate in these state tests.
The “opt out” movement has gained greater visibility in the past year or so. In just the past week, there were opt out-related features in the AJC (about the challenges of opting out in Georgia) and in the New York Times (about the role of race in the opt out movement). There is a national coalition of groups and individuals called “United Opt Out” attempting to bring focus to varied opt out efforts. Among the primary reasons cited by those who opt their students out of standardized testing are the impact the amount of testing has on teaching and learning in schools, the consequences tied to test scores, and the rising influence of educational testing companies on what goes on in classrooms.
I share many of the concerns about testing that those who choose to opt out do. Since I started my career as an educator, I’ve seen the way that our country’s expanded use of standardized tests has often negatively affected more meaningful learning at schools in which I’ve worked.
That said, I don’t support opting out. While it’s certainly an attention-grabbing political strategy to address the problems cited above, in my opinion it’s not the most effective one because it sends a message that these tests don’t matter and that they hold no value. In fact, there is useful information to be gleaned from well-designed standardized tests, especially those in reading and math. By having students opt out of taking them, that information is missing from a complete picture of student learning.
There is a clear need to reduce our over reliance on standardized tests as the main marker of student learning/teacher effectiveness/school success, to limit the stakes associated with test scores because of the way those stakes skew the way tests are used, and to use multiple measures of what’s important for students to know and do. And there are signs that policy is starting to move in that direction, as the recent passage of Georgia’s SB 364 shows. Maybe the opt out movement played a part in bringing about that change. But I believe a better approach is to show parents, legislators, and others how standardized tests can be a part of a larger, more holistic system of assessing student learning with different and more limited emphasis on the scores rather than opting out of testing entirely.