20% of New York State students opt out of standardised tests
New York state education officials stated on Wednesday that more than 200,000 Year 3 students declined to take the state&rsquo;s standardised tests this year, which represents 20% of those students eligible to be tested. The subsequent New York Times report states that the statistic not only showed the growing strength of the &ldquo;opt out&rdquo; movement against standardised testing, but also puts immediate pressure on state and federal officials, who must now decide whether to penalise schools and districts with low participation rates.
More than 200,000 third through eighth graders sat out New York’s standardized tests this year, education officials said on Wednesday, in a sign of increasing resistance to testing as more states make them harder to pass.

The number of students declining to take the exams quadrupled from the year before, and represented 20 percent of all those eligible to be tested, according to data from the State Education Department. The statistic not only showed the growing strength of the “opt out” movement against standardized testing, but also put immediate pressure on state and federal officials, who must now decide whether to penalize schools and districts with low participation rates.

While opt-out groups had closely estimated, based on surveys, how many students declined to take the test, the figures released on Wednesday were the nearest to an official count. The Education Department said that about 900,000 of the 1.1 million eligible test-takers took the exams, while the rest skipped without a “known valid reason,” such as an illness.

“Twenty percent of students cannot be called a fringe element,” said Loy Gross, co-founder of a refusal group called United to Counter the Core. “We’re getting the general public to understand that there are valid concerns about testings, and about the curriculum, and the direction where N.Y.S.E.D. is going. And that’s a good thing.”