Testing turmoil likely to increase ‘opt-out’ talk

INDIANAPOLIS — Merry Juerling refused to let her children take Indiana’s high-stakes standardized tests four years ago — a choice few other parents were making.

Juerling argued that the annual tests where neither reliable nor valid measures of what her children knew. But school administrators warned of dire consequences for her children and their school if she pulled them out of the mandatory assessments known as ISTEP+

“I felt totally alone,” she said.

No more. Over the last week, a Facebook page that Juerling created to show parents how to “opt out” of the coming ISTEP tests has tripled its followers to more than 1,700. It’s unclear how many parents may join her, but the increased interest reflects what’s become a national protest against standardized testing.

In Indiana it’s directly correlated to the news, revealed at last week’s state Board of Education meeting, that more rigorous ISTEP tests that start late this month, will more than double in length when given to more than 450,000 students in third- through eighth grades.

The increased exam time — from 6 to 12 hours — didn’t just incense parents, teachers and administrators who’ve long argued that ISTEP takes time away from the classroom teaching and puts undue stress on children.

It angered Gov. Mike Pence, too. On Monday, he signed an order aimed at shortening the test times and called for an emergency review by an expert in educational assessment. He’s since said he’ll call on another expert as well.

“Doubling the length of the ISTEP+ test is unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it,” said Pence, a Republican.

He blamed state Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who’s been warring with Statehouse Republicans since taking office in 2013. Ritz in turn blames increased state and federal standards that demand routine assessments to see if students are on track to be college- and career-ready.

Her staff says Pence should have known that longer test times are partly due to the Legislature’s decision to reject the national Common Core education standards first adopted in 2009 and rewrite its own.

Juerling and others say the blame-game misses the point — a broader discontent with standardized tests their consequences, which in Indiana range from teacher pay to student retention.

“What you’re seeing across the country and in Indiana is pushback by parents against politicians and policies that have turned our schools into test factories,” said Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, a Ford Foundation-funded nonprofit dedicated to eliminating the misuse of standardized tests.

Schaeffer said there’s been an unprecedented surge in rebellion by parents, teachers and students fed up with standardized testing.

He cites a range of incidents, from an Oklahoma middle school where half the parents pulled their children from a standardized reading test in Spring 2013 to a protest last April when 60,000 students in New York were opted out of a test by parents protesting its use to evaluate teacher performance.

“It’s a form of civil disobedience,” he said.

Last April, Indiana education officials fielded what they called “numerous inquiries” from schools where parents wanted to opt out of ISTEP, or Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress. The requests came after a second year of widespread computer problems, stalling the beginning of the days-long exams that are required to be taken online.

State officials’ responded in a memo to school administrators: “Indiana law neither provides for an ‘opt-out’ procedure nor recognizes ‘opting out’ of assessments.”

But they warned of consequences. While it’s not illegal for a parent to refuse to allow a child to participate in the tests, it is against Indiana’s compulsory school attendance laws for a parent to refuse to send a child to school. The memo warned that students must take the tests to graduate.

On her Opt Out Indiana Facebook page, Juerling has posted sample letters used by other parents to exempt their children from ISTEP and says they’ve done so without consequences.

She concedes that number of parents doing so is small.

“That’s because parents feel bullied,” she said.

Some administrators don’t like the testing either, including Barbara Fondren, director of Community Montessori in New Albany, a state-funded charter school.

She said especially with younger students, these tests might not be developmentally appropriate for them.

“I think we have to be careful as a culture with what we’re creating,” Fondren said. “As a Montessori school, we don’t believe in standardization, so we’re not in favor of any kind of standardized testing. Now, we’re mandating almost triple the hours on testing, we’re increasing the anxiety on kids who don’t like testing or going to school.”

However, under the federal No Child Left Behind law, at least 95 percent of students in a school must be tested. Falling below that level can jeopardize a school’s funding and result in a lower grade under Indiana’s controversial, A-to-F school ranking system. That, in turn, affects teachers’ pay.

Ritz has called for a moratorium on using ISTEP results to determine schools’ A-to-F grades, to give teachers and students a year to adjust to its higher expectations.

Pence opposes that option, however.

“You don’t throw out the grades,” he said. “You fix the test.”