Refusing the Test: Youth Activism and the Right to Opt Out

• In Event: Youth Organizing and Social Change

Abstract

Through widespread “opt-out” efforts this year, activists have pressured districts, states, and the federal government to reconsider the limits of state-mandated assessments. While often framed in terms of parents’ rights, young people have often been at the forefront of opt out efforts. Such youth activism offers a new angle on longstanding legal and philosophical debates about educational authority. To what extent should young people (not just their parents) be able to refuse dimensions of public education? This paper explores these questions in conversation with an empirical study of youth activism. Drawing on a case study of youth organizing against testing, I argue that a rights-based framework fails to capture the distinctively civic and educative dimensions of young people’s activism.

Author

• Terri S. Wilson, University of Colorado Boulder