Opt-Out Won’t Hurt Central School Ratings

Opt-Out Won’t Hurt Central School Ratings

In an exclusive interview with the Central Wildcat Tuesday afternoon, Board of Elemen-
tary and Secondary Education chairman Chas Roemer said the board will not allow the Central Community School System to be penalized because a large number of students have opted out of PARCC tests being administered this week.     Roemer said the board had anticipated that many parents would opt out of the tests around the state but the large number in Central came as a surprise.
“We’ve told state Supt. John White to give us an analysis of how many students have opted out in each school district. But the
fact that they have opted out will not affect the school’s performance score,” Roemer said.
“In other words, if you’re an ‘A’ school, you’re not going to become a ‘B’ school because of students opting out. Central will have to go through the process we established to deal with testing just like everyone else.  That will be a fair process.”
Roemer said opting out of standardized tests is nothing new.  It simply has not gotten a lot of publicity in the past.  “I urge parents to have their children participate in these tests, but students have every right to opt out, and we support that. They also have a right to opt out of LEAP and iLEAP. But PARCC has been more controversial, and more students have chosen to opt out of this exam.”
Roemer said BESE’s policy is that students who do not participate in PARCC will get a zero on the test for statistical purposes but that will not affect the student or the school’s performance rating.
Although Roemer was questioned about how parents opting out of PARCC would affect Central’s school performance scores,  his answers apparently apply to other school districts around the state where large numbers of students opted out of the tests.
The PARCC test results will not be released until this fall, Roemer said.

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