Contextual Decision-Making: How Parents Make Choices to Opt Out of State Testing

• In Event: Navigating Accountability: Graduation Rates and Decision Making in High-Stakes Education

Abstract

Growing opposition to standardized assessments galvanized efforts to “opt-out” of state testing between 2015-2018. Research on this movement has focused on parents and activists with strong ideological positions against testing. Drawing on interviews in a high opt-out context, this paper explores how parents negotiated decisions about testing, in ways that were complex, shifting and contextual. Parents, even with strong viewpoints against testing, nonetheless participated because of considerations about their school communities and their child’s circumstances. Likewise, parents who opted out shared the shifting and flexible aspects of their decision-making. This nuanced, contextual view of opting out underscores the need for states and districts to provide opportunities to discuss the aims of testing with diverse stakeholders.

Author

• Terri S. Wilson, University of Colorado - Boulder