New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Opt-out movement considered by city school advocates
NEW HAVEN — Can New Haven schools afford to opt out of standardized testing?
Is it a moral imperative to do so?
These questions and others pierced through the Fair Haven library branch like Cupid’s arrow at the Valentine’s Day-themed “Break Up With Testing” event held by the local public school advocacy group NHPS Advocates.
“I am an opt-out parent, and I have been one since day one,” said Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, a member of the city’s Board of Education and a panelist at the event. “My children have never participated in high-stakes testing and they’re 12.”
Jackson-McArthur, a pediatrician, said that even before her twins were born there was an increase in young students with psychosomatic symptoms such as headaches and insomnia during certain times of the year. A colleague of hers highlighted that the uptick in these visits correlated with “testing season.”
“High-stakes testing does not take into account the social well-being of children,” she said.
The two-hour event featured a panel discussion with multiple experts — a researcher, a former principal and students who have lived experience with standardized testing — before allowing attendees to craft several responses for future action.
“The feeling is always the same: stress and anxiety,” said Metropolitan Business Academy senior E’moni Cotton.
Flor Jimenez, also a senior at Metropolitan Business Academy, recalled that the focus on testing at her middle school was so heavy that students were made to learn a chant about the Connecticut Mastery Test.
Jimenez said that as a young English learner, adapting to English from Spanish was not an easy transition, and the inaccessible writing on standardized exams exacerbated those struggles.
“I think it’s harmful in a way. It defines your intelligence and it defines who you are,” she said.
Much of the discussion was steered by people associated with Metropolitan Business Academy, which moved away from highstakes testing as a model toward a more holistic, performance-based individualized metric under former Principal Judy Puglisi.
Puglisi, a panelist, said the positive affects are readily apparent at Metropolitan Business Academy. Instead of a high-pressure, culminating final exam, classes end with roundtable discussion where students show off some of their best work over the course of the year and discuss what they learned. Students produce college-level research papers based on topics that are personal, important or interesting to them. And in lieu of parent-teacher conferences, the school holds conferences led by the students who explain the work they’re doing in class.
“It’s more like a selfreflecting time,” said Cotton, who added that her mother is often so proud to see her daughter’s work that she takes photos of it during the conferences.
Robert Cotto, director of urban educational initiatives at Trinity College and a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut, said there’s a great precedent for protest in schools. He cited the book “Why Busing Failed,” in which author Matthew Delmont describes a school boycott that kept more than 460,000 students out of school in New York City to demand desegregation in 1964 as “the largest civil rights demonstration in the history of the United States” but is “largely absent from histories of civil rights.”
“Our protest, in an organized or collective sort of way, sends a very clear message that we’re not getting what we want. It is a powerful message,” he said.
Cotto argued that highstakes testing often is used by corporate interests and powerful lobbies to arrive at conclusions they already were prepared to make, cherry-picking data to show that school reform efforts work but also that urban, majority-black and brown schools require more services and interventions.
“There’s often discourse that says we need to test every kid every year to know how they’re doing, and it’s often racialized,” he said. “Are we using testing to improve things, or minimizing what kids are getting and narrowing the curriculum?”
The focus on math and reading, he said, incentivizes a pivot away from other subjects such as arts, music and social studies. The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act “changed the game,” he said. Before then, Connecticut had a robust system of standardized testing, but the federal decision to link school funding to test performance created higher stakes.
“We all know money is the root of all evils, but when you connect money to the lives of black and brown children, this is what you get,” JacksonMcArthur said.
Jackson-McArthur said she’s open about her stance, and even has a pre-written opt-out letter that she suggests to parents of patients seeking her care who are seeking reprieve from testing. She said that the alternative to testing shouldn’t be nothing, but rather instruction and examinations that involve teachers using their professional judgment about deficit areas and gaps to better reach students.
Jackson-McArthur said that some people in the district — not using names — warn against her being public about her position because of how it may jeopardize funding if the participation rate is too low on standardized tests. She said she is unfazed.
In a subsequent discussion about next steps that the group could organize around, teacher and parent Kirsten HopesMcFadden said she worries about the risk versus the reward. Testing, for those who are able, can deliver a lot of merit-based scholarship money for students who have financial need entering college.
Parent Jill Kelly said that more colleges are beginning to go test-optional — accepting test scores from applicants, but not requiring them.
“We need more education on the opt-out movement,” said parent Fatima Rojas.
New Haven Interim Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey said in a text message statement that tests are determined by the state.
“The district has an obligation to share results with the Board of Education,” she said.
Following the event, Board of Education school member Matt Wilcox said he, too, would like to know more about how much money is actually connected to testing. He recognizes the deleterious impacts of testing, he said, but as a board member he is wary about recklessness.
“We always need to understand the implications of the decisions we make,” he said.