Title: As Common Core Testing Is Ushered In, Parents and Students Opt Out - The New York Times
Headings: As Common Core Testing Is Ushered In, Parents and Students Opt Out
As Common Core Testing Is Ushered In, Parents and Students Opt Out
Content: A new wave of standardized exams, designed to assess whether students are learning in step with the Common Core standards, is sweeping the country, arriving this week in classrooms in several states and entering the cross hairs of various political movements. In New Jersey and elsewhere, the arrival has been marked with well-organized opposition, a spate of television attack ads and a cascade of parental anxiety. Almost every state has an “opt out” movement. Its true size is hard to gauge, but the protests on Facebook, at school board meetings and in more creative venues — including screenings of anti-testing documentaries — have caught the attention of education officials. Some school superintendents have bemoaned the exams, while others have warned that they were obligatory. And even parents who share in the antipathy toward the tests are torn by the implications of formally allowing their children to bow out of them. Colorado’s Board of Education voted in January to allow school districts to skip portions of the state tests, only to be told by the state’s attorney general that it did not have that authority. At a testing information session for parents in Sparta, N.J., according to a local news report, an assistant superintendent repeatedly said: “ I’m not here to fight with you. I am here to give information on the mandate.”