Dive Brief:
- Boston’s most prestigious high school, Boston Latin, is no longer a top-rated Level 1 school, according to the state, because too many white students missed last year’s PARCC assessment, which was a voluntary state pilot.
- The Boston Herald reports 40 missing white students pushed that subgroup’s participation rate below the state-mandated 95%, prompting the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to downgrade the school’s rank to Level 2.
- Roger Clap Elementary School suffered the same fate, and while the Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is fighting the decision against both schools, state officials say administrators were warned about the consequences of low participation, which are meted out to discourage schools from telling low-performing students to skip the tests.
Dive Insight:
The opt-out movement has been dominated by white families, with opt-out activists also most likely to be married, liberal and wealthy, according to a national survey conducted by researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University. Mandated participation rates came with the requirement for annual testing of students in third through eighth grade and once in high school under No Child Left Behind.
While the families most likely to opt out are white and wealthy, critics of the movement say the ones most likely to be negatively impacted are lower-income black and brown children, students with disabilities and English language learners — the students the original threshold was designed to protect. If a school’s testing data is invalidated because so few people take the tests, the accountability benefits of standardized testing disappear. These tests were originally created to make sure lower-performing students weren’t left to languish as schools and teachers focused on preparing higher achievers. While the Every Student Succeeds Act expands flexibility for schools, the same testing requirements remain. And the opt-out movement has already prompted many schools to proactively oppose any required sanctions based on participation.