Parents Explore ​“Breaking Up” With Standardized Tests

“No tears. No stress. We are more than this test.”

Parent advocates are ready to take this chant to the Board of Education – and possibly the statehouse.

The slogan ended a two-hour-long panel and discussion hosted Thursday night at the Fair Haven public library branch by the New Haven Public School Advocates about ​“breaking up” with standardized testing (in honor of Valentine’s Day).

“We wanted to bring the community together and find out what they were thinking,” said Metropolitan Business Academy social studies teacher Leslie Blatteau.

A volunteer for NHPS Advocates, Blatteau moderated the panel and kept the small group discussions on schedule.

She said that the activist group will report out their findings at an upcoming BOE meeting. Beyond that, she said she wants to learn more about the state mandate for standardized testing as the group considers a movement to boycott it.

“We don’t want New Haven to be punished,” Blatteau said.

Tears and Stress

Those involved in NHPS Advocates were clear on Thursday: They are not opposed to tests in general. They just want those tests to be based on the performance and context of each student.

Metropolitan Business Academy was the star of the evening for its alternative approach. Metro has adopted ​“roundtables” instead of final exams, where students demonstrate what they have learned through a complex, long-term task like researching and writing an essay. They then present to a group and reflect on the process. The idea is to more directly measure the kinds of skills students will need after graduation.

Metro seniors E’moni Cotten and Flor Jimenez contrasted this experience with standardized tests, which had just meant stress and anxiety to them throughout their school years.

“Knowing I’m just a number doesn’t feel good,” Cotten told the roughly 40 event attendees.

Jimenez said that some of her classmates cried or had meltdowns when they learned their SAT scores, while others kept their scores to themselves and wondered whether they were not as smart as their peers.

Cotten noted that she and her classmates were being compared to peers at schools with more resources, like private schools and schools in more affluent regions.

Former Metro Principal Judy Puglisi earned applause when she said that these tests are often poorly written and do not respond to the cultural contexts different students know.

“My teachers helped me realize that the SAT does not define who you are,” Jimenez said. ​“If schools don’t want me with these SAT scores, they don’t deserve me at all.”

If the purpose of all this stress is to track the performance of certain schools, it does not do that very well, according to panelist Robert Cotto, Jr. Cotto is a former social studies teacher and current PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut.

Cotto published research in the think tank CT Voices in 2012 that found that the most dramatic improvement in test scores in the previous decade occurred because the scores of students with disabilities were no longer included in those results.

Funding Worries

Parents have one clear way to take their child’s high-stakes testing into their own hands – by opting out.

Pediatrician and BOE member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur told the group that she had settled on this route even before her children were old enough to take the tests, because she saw an increase in kids’ illnesses every year around testing time.

Jackson-McArthur insists that her children continue to learn while other students are taking the standardized tests, so no potential time is lost. 

She said that people often tell her not to promote the opt-out movement among other parents, out of a fear that New Haven will lose funding with fewer test-takers.

“Only a radical movement is going to steer change,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“Let’s not discount the idea that our protest can send a very powerful message.”

After the panel, event attendees broke out into three groups to create protest art, chants and an action plan.

The action planning group had the largest circle. The parents and teachers in the circle raised concerns about what could happen with particular strategies and about the feedback they might face from other parents.

Teacher and parent Kirsten Hopes-McFadden summarized their discussion for the room at the end. Elementary school testing would be the easiest to boycott, since taking the SAT is some parents’ ticket to free tuition.

“If it’s between [boycotting] the SAT and a scholarship, I would rather have the money,” Hopes-McFadden explained.

At the same time, state pressure would be important to ensuring the elementary-level protest does not harm their district, the group decided.

With murmurs of approval for these ideas lingering in the air, the room disbanded into handfuls of friends and acquaintances as library staff stacked chairs and prepared to close the building.