Major Papers Reject the Opt-Out Option

Last month, the New York Times editorial board (8/14/15) weighed in on “opting out”—the growing movement of parents refusing the state standardized tests administered every year to students in grades 3 through 8. Five days later, the editorial board of another major paper, USA Today (8/19/15), also voiced its disapproval of opting out, joining the editorial stance of the Washington Post (5/16/15), which criticized the movement back in May.

All three papers offered arguments that closely align with the rhetoric of corporate education reform, focusing on the plight of low-income students of color while ignoring the realities of how testing affects such populations.

The Times (8/14/15) began with a familiar criticism of the opt-out movement,  that it is driven by families who “were white and in wealthy or middle-class communities”—adding that, in New York City, “less than 2 percent opted out.” It’s a criticism that hearkens to the “outside agitator” narrative of delegitimizing the message of a protest based on those who are protesting.

But based on the Times’ own reporting from earlier in the spring (5/20/15), the state’s poorer districts—those with 60-80 percent of students qualifying for subsidized lunch—had an opt out rate between 5 and 10 percent. For those with 30-60 percent of students in poverty, the opt outs were around 15 to 20 percent.

And as Lisa Eggert Litvin, co-chair of the New York Suburban Consortium for Public Education, noted in a letter to the editor (8/21/15), the Times omitted the multitude of factors explaining why New York City students opted out in lower numbers:

Unlike in the rest of the state, these test scores factor into decisions regarding promotion, admission to public middle schools and high schools, and placement in gifted and talented programs in grades 4 and 5.

And while the Times argued that those opting out “could hurt efforts to document and close the achievement gap between low-income and minority students and more privileged students,” they failed to mention the unique learning needs of students in poverty or the inequality of resources between districts that inform that so-called “achievement gap.”

Again, according to the Times’ own reporting earlier this year (1/16/15), roughly half of New York students come from families living in poverty:

Students from such families tend to arrive at school with different needs from those from middle-class and affluent families. They may have more medical problems or behavioral issues and need extra academic help. Unlike their wealthier peers, they do not have the benefit of music lessons, private sports leagues, tutoring or trips to cultural events, and their schools are left to fill in the gaps.

The Times’ defense of standardized tests emphasizes the need to “document and close” the gaps between poor and wealthy students, but that gap and its root cause—namely, inequality—is long documented. In fact, the “achievement gap” remains largely unchanged since the introduction of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002.

Like the Times, the Washington Post editorial board (5/16/15) criticized the opt-out movement by arguing that “annual tests are a powerful tool in forcing fairness,” and that “sitting out tests that have proven essential in lifting the achievement of at-risk students is shortsighted, if not selfish.”

But as documented in the Post’s own education blog two months earlier (3/10/15), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that progress toward educational equality has actually slowed since NCLB. “Score gaps in 2012 were no narrower and often wider than they were in 1998 and 1990.” In some cases, the gap got bigger: “In three of four grades/tests, scores for students with disabilities flattened or declined, while gaps with whites remained unchanged or widened.”

Neither the Post nor the Times mentioned that marginalized populations like students with disabilities and English Language Learners (ELLs) are more likely to get low scores on the tests. ELLs, who are expected to take the exams after one year in a US school, make up about 14 percent of the student population in New York City and 9 percent of the student population statewide. Only 4 percent of them ranked “proficient” on the English Language Arts (ELA) test this year. Among students with disabilities, who make up about 16 percent of the state’s student population, only 6 percent ranked proficient on the ELA test this year.

However, “proficient” rankings are a misleading benchmark for success and failure, according to education historian and former NAEP board member Diane Ravitch. “‘Proficient’ doesn’t mean ‘passing’ or ‘grade level.’ It represents a very high level of academic performance,” Ravitch explains (DianeRavitch.net, 8/12/15). She says the national average is 35-40 percent “proficient,” which is comparable to New York students’ overall scores of 31 percent proficiency in ELA and 38 percent proficiency in math.

The Times acknowledges that the standards in New York are “some of the most stringent testing standards in the country—equal to or higher” than the NAEP, but cites new policies that reduce the role of the tests as a factor in a student’s promotion to the next grade. They also acknowledge that the tests shouldn’t be the primary factor in evaluating teachers.

Of course, those protections for students and teachers are directly thanks to the “outcry” (New York Times, 4/9/14) from parents and teachers organizing against the tests. Under New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the tests were a primary factor in grade promotion, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent much of last year pushing for the tests to be weighted as high as 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. That proposal was stopped when “unions, teachers and parents took to the sidewalks, waving picket signs” (New York Times, 3/31/15). The very safeguards that the Times editorial praised in its justification of the tests came from the same resistance efforts of parents and teachers it criticises.

For its part, the USA Today editorial board (8/19/15) leaned heavily on criticizing both teachers—“Do teachers really want to return to the days when many teacher evaluation systems were shams and even the worst teachers were seldom fired?”—and, more confusingly, parents. “What will these parents do when their child is afraid to go to the dentist? Or take a different test? Or write a class report?” asks USA Today.

Earlier in the editorial, they admit that “a focus on test-prep has shortchanged more effective ways of teaching,” under which, of course, a “class report” or a “different test” might fall. The paper simultaneously concludes that parents “who don’t like the public education system have options: They can home-school their children or send them to private schools,” and if they choose public education, “they can work within the system to improve testing or change the law.” Given that the opt-out movement is driven by public school parents, USA Today’s disdain for both parents and public schools is noteworthy and alarming.

The establishment media’s editorial backlash to the opt-out movement exists alongside the same papers’ coverage of the issues the movement seeks to address—issues that have reached crisis levels in New York and across the country. Although these newspapers suggest that high-stakes tests are needed in order for something to finally be done about inequality and student achievement, the data from these tests has been used for the last decade and a half to justify closing schools, firing teachers and holding back students with the most unique learning needs.

Many parents feel that opting out is one of the few mechanisms to disrupt this pattern—and the talking points put forward by education reformers and editorial boards alike don’t stand up to the scrutiny of those who have been paying attention.

Molly Knefel is a journalist and co-host of the daily political podcast Radio Dispatch. She is also an elementary and middle school teacher at a public school in the Bronx.