Dive Brief:

• Fourteen Louisiana schools are have requested "penalty waivers" for parental opt-outs from Common Core testing.
• Currently, the state Department of Education and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education mandate that districts get zeros for the scores of every student that opts out.
• Since scores are tied to things like teacher evaluations and school closings, these zeros could have dire consequences, and the districts do not believe they should be held responsible for a parental decision.

Dive Insight:

While it's unclear how many students plan to skip out on the testing, it is certain that districts are nervous. It is also important to note that scores will not affect teachers or schools for the first two years of the Common Core rollout. However, these districts are making inroads for the future.

The last few years have seen an increase in parents choosing to opt their students out of tests. Los Angeles Times columnist Karin Klein penned an editorial last April detailing her decision to allow her daughter to opt out of the California standards tests, stating that the exams “were never useful for my kids.” Klein, who has three children and had been through the standardized testing rigmarole for 16 years at that point, said that, as an education journalist, she was always aware of how “thin and fault riddled” the exams could be, but she never thought to opt her children out because she viewed the tests as more of a civic duty to measure the progress of the schools, districts, and states.

While she wrote that she still saw the value in the tests potentially being a guide to better teaching, Klein felt frustrated by how test-prep and standardized testing has in many ways co-opted the various creative pursuits that once were standards at her children’s public schools.