High school students in Bloomington and Normal, Illinois, have organized a student union to oppose PARCC. it is called the Blono Student Union.
In a statement, these super-smart students said:
PARCC Refusal Campaign
Refusing the PARCC
An effective way to resist standardized testing is to simply not participate in it; refusing state tests is a common, legal strategy used all over the nation. Students and parents around the country are becoming more and more fed up with the excessive testing in our public schools, causing a massive opt-out/refusal movement.
Illinois State Board of Education does not explicitly recognize opt-outs; however, students have the right to refuse to take state tests in Illinois. Parents are encouraged to notify the principal and superintendent in writing that their child will be refusing. To send a notice of refusal for your child, see our letter template here.
Illinois State Board of Education recognizes that students may refuse testing. Refusing will have no negative academic consequences for students, and despite what ISBE says, will not result in loss of funding. See our full explanation of refusal rights and implications here.
What Is The PARCC Test?
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test is the new Common Core standardized test that will be used for state level accountability measures. This test will replace the ISAT for elementary schools and PSAE for high schools. This year (spring 2015) is the first time the PARCC is being administered. In Unit 5, the PARCC will be administered to students in grades 3-8 and high school students that are enrolled in English II and Geometry (or have previously taken geometry). PARCC is expected to take up just under double the amount of time the ISAT and PSAE assessments took respectively. See full testing times here. Testing dates will be sometime between March 9 to April 3, 2015 and April 27 to May 22, 2015.
In future years, the PARCC is intended to be a state graduation requirement for 11 graders and is intended to be available to use for college entrance, in addition to being administered in elementary/junior high. These policies are not in place yet. 2015 is a baseline year, so the PARCC will have no consequences for schools or students.
Why Are We Against It?
Since No Child Left Behind was passed, testing in schools has become overused and overemphasized. Excessive testing takes away from classroom time for authentic teaching and learning. Especially in elementary schools, test preparation takes even more away from instructional time. This leads to loss of curiosity and creativity. Emphasis on these tests also leads to a narrowed curriculum, taking focus away from untested subjects.
We reject the use of test scores to dictate the success of schools, students, and teachers. This only induces competition between schools through the means of a less rigorous learning experience for students. These scores are not representative of a student’s growth, as they only test a narrow set of skills. Also, some students get anxiety upon taking these tests, and some students are just better test takers. Standardized testing primarily measures a district’s socio-economic characteristics; wealthier districts, with access to more resources, score higher on tests. Attaching high stakes to these tests only perpetuates inequity.
PARCC has shown to be poorly designed and developmentally inappropriate for each grade level. Also, administration of the PARCC is extremely costly. With the abundant amount of technology needed, some districts in Illinois are struggling to finance the administration of the PARCC. A week of PARCC testing means a prolonged use of schools’ resources; computer labs will be closed off for testing and not available to any student that needs to use them, which is especially problematic in the high schools. And since the test is highly dependent on computer skills, some students are left at a disadvantage.
More reliable and effective forms of alternative, performance-based assessment are available. Proponents claim that the PARCC allows to compare students around the nation; however, fourteen out of twenty-five states have already dropped the PARCC in the past year.
To read more about the flaws with the PARCC, click here.
Other Resistances to the PARCC
Parents and students around the country are refusing testing in record numbers. Specifically, people are taking action against the PARCC more than ever. There are only ten states left that are administering the PARCC; among them are increasingly large refusal/opt-out movements.
There is already widespread opposition to the PARCC in Illinois; Chicago public school district has expressed concern with administering the PARCC, over 40 superintendents in Illinois urged the state to delay administration of the PARCC, and one superintendent in Illinois even wrote a warning letter to parents and community members about the PARCC . Meanwhile, Chicago parents and students are actively organizing to refuse the PARCC. If more communities in Illinois organize together and speak up, we will not be ignored.
By uniting in opposition locally, we can add our voice to a nation full of teachers boycotting tests, parents opting their kids out, and students walking out of tests. We are in the midst of a wave of resistance to standardized testing in order to reclaim our public schools. Join the movement. Refuse the PARCC.
Refusal Rights
Students have the right to refuse state tests. Illinois State Board of Education acknowledges that students may refuse to participate in testing. ISBE provides a list of reasons for not testing for districts to use when stating why a student has not taken a state-required test (medically exempt, homebound, in jail, etc.) Code 15 on this list is refusal. It is state mandated that districts administer the PARCC, but there is no legal way that a school can force a student to test. For younger students and students with special needs, parents can notify the school of their child’s refusal to ensure that the student will be treated fairly and not compelled to test after refusal.
The district will not lose funding if a large amount of students refuse to test. This is a baseline year for PARCC testing (meaning the data will just be used to establish cut scores since this is the first year it is being administered), so ISBE has stated that there will be no consequences for schools or students this year. There will also be no federal penalties since students that refuse to test will be marked by code 15 of reasons for not testing; code 15 does not count against the school’s adequate yearly progress participation rate. No Child Left Behind requires that schools test 95% of their students in order to make adequate yearly process; however, Illinois is one of the forty one states that has a waiver from the US Department of Education that eliminates sanctions brought to schools that don’t make adequate yearly progress. There is also no federal or state law that requires penalties for schools or districts if parents/students opt out or refuse the test.
No student will be penalized for refusing to test. Students cannot be penalized for exercising their refusal rights. There is no basis for any state agent to take any action against parents’ and students’ explicit refusal, and/or take any action that causes the student emotional, psychological, and/or physical harm against their refusal. Also, there are no academic consequences for refusing. PARCC has no effect on students’ grades, and it is not a state graduation requirement for high school students this year. Again, this is a baseline year, so there will be no consequences for students.
Send a Notice of Refusal
Notice of Refusal
Your Name:
Your Email:
Child’s Name:
Child’s School:
Letter:
Dear Principal,
My child, [CHILD’S NAME], will be refusing to participate in PARCC testing this spring. I am fully aware of my child’s right to refuse state testing, and as my minor child’s legal representative, I am informing you that he/she will not be taking the PARCC this March and May.
I expect my child to be treated with kindness and respect upon this decision, and be allowed a meaningful learning opportunity, or be able to read or do other work as other students test. No state agent should harass, intimidate, or attempt to force my child to test after he/she has respectfully refused.
Please respect this decision and have your staff treat my child appropriately upon this notice of my child’s refusal.
The school should code my child’s test as Reason 15 for not testing (refusal) so that this refusal will not count against the school.
Thank you for your support,
[YOUR NAME]
[To read all the links, open the students’ statement.]
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Illinois is spending $59 million on CRRAP testing this year alone. Our plutocratic governor charter-lovin’ governor is getting ready to dump all public employees (save his police and firefighter unions) in unstable 401K plans.
Our district (ranked in the bottom 5 percent per NCLB idiocy) started PARCC testing this week. So far, the library (home to one of our computer labs) has been closed to students and staff. All other computer labs are also closed. Students working on Quarter 3 research papers are totally out of luck if they don’t have internet access at home (many don’t). This madness was scheduled to go for four days in February, 8 days in March, 4 days in April, and 8 days in May.
Our students are losing library and lab times for 26 days (more than 5 weeks’ worth of instruction).
May Bill Gates, the Walton Family and the rest of the plutocrats destroying public education rot in hell! (Sorry, I am really angry abut this.)
You have every right to be angry.
They need to put the money towards hiring an keeping good teachers, keeping computer labs and libraries and music and art programs.
Glad there is protesting starting to grow. Regrettably the “testing beat” moves steadily forward as state after state will be taking one of the two high stakes common core-tied tests in upcoming weeks. Ca… Ching to Pearson who is laughing all the way to the bank at the profits. And if Duncan has his way… professors in higher ed will be following higher ed mandates verbatim … which of course will necessitate Pearson texts and testing documents. This Yahoo article is revealing on so many fronts..
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/unbelievable-things-chinese-students-doing-202022977.html
Greed, arrogance, and being selfish seem to be a common malady among the politicians and the oligarchy.
I have seen this reported here (maybe I missed it), but Nathan Hale High School in Seattle has voted to not administer the Smarter Balance tests:
The Seattle Times reports the reaction of State Superintendent Randy Dorn:
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/nathan-hale-to-boycott-new-test-faces-loss-of-some-federal-money/
One big issue with PARCC, aside from is it the right or wrong tests, is that the US just does not have the technical infrastructure in place for a totally digital learning environment. Schools lack the proper number of PCS, laptops, tablets, etc. Most schools do not have adequate bandwidth on their networks. Even when a district has a 1-2-1 initiative, students may or may not have Internet access at home.
And a lot of these problems are created by out capitalistic society. You gotta pay to play. We in the US refuse to spend money on programs that benefit all of us and let us move forward as a group. It’s 2015, Internet access should cheap, readily available, and treated like a utility. It’s too important to be sold as a “luxury item”.
Normal needs to rename itself. Since the election of Rauner, there is no normal in Illinois.
What intelligent, bright, courageous students! Go students. You got it!
“In a statement, these super-smart students said:”
“What intelligent, bright, courageous students! Go students”
I always thought that there was quite a bit of praying before any test. Now refusing to take the test clearly indicates that the students are super-smart courageous, bright and intelligent. I wonder, will they be admitted to Harvard, Berkley, Yale or other Ivy league schools?
If people want to boycott tests, they should have the courage of their convictions and stop attending public school altogether. If you’re going to take $10,000 to $20,000 of public tax dollars per year for your kid to attend a public school, you may just have to accept a few conditions that improve democratic accountability.
They have a right to get angry. Kids are well aware that high-stakes madness is going haywire.
This assumes that these types of testing improve accountability and educational outcome. Do they really?
Well why not get a voucher, take that $10-$20,000 out of the public school district, attend a charter school and watch the public school system go down the drain. I don’t think you fully understand how bad these tests are and how they are simply setting public schools up to fail. The students WILL do badly (the test are designed that way), people will leave and go to charter schools, with the hopes of avoiding the tests and all the TAX DOLLARS you’ve paid for years to build great public schools will be for nothing. The state will hand over your schools to what ever charter school hits down first! So I say boycott and stand UP for YOUR own public schools and keep YOUR tax dollars out of Pearson’s pockets.
Reblogged this on Eshan Singh and commented:
This was nice.
These are my neighbors!! Way to go Blono!! We have many refusals taking place in Morton, IL as well!! Kudos to these kiddos for taking an active role in their education!
Does anybody have the legal court cases from another website that backs the refusal letter? My district is giving me a rough time about it, and says students can’t refuse.
Contact United Opt Out to learn about legal cases and laws for opt out
Interesting that Geneva 304 district schools are testing high school students that are enrolled in Algebra 1 or English 1 or English 1 honors.
When I was in school there was one test per year but it took a couple days to finish. That felt very excessive then. It’s good there’s a higher refusal rate because it’s getting out of hand now.