The Pew Charitable Trusts

Fifth grader Connor Murphy of Minden, Nevada last week joined a growing rebellion against the latest fashion in public education -- standardized testing. With a nervous stomach, he took his pencil and drew a line through the answer column of his state's mandatory reading, writing and math test.

The youngster was protesting his school's refusal to let him boycott the exam. "My heart hurts that he has to do this on his own," said Connor's mother, Michelle.

Critics of standardized tests complain that the exams force teachers and students to focus on rote learning rather comprehension. They also point out that there have been several embarrassing instances in which companies that prepare and grade the tests got it wrong, needlessly forcing students to attend summer school or put off graduation.

In May, 1999, the errors of just one company -- testing giant CTB-McGraw Hill -- negatively affected students in Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin and New York City, the New York Times reported last month.

When Connor boycotted the standardized tests in March, the Douglas County School System called him a truant and threatened him and his mother with jail. Connor asked his mother why his teacher taught him about Patrick Henry and the American Revolution, but would not allow him to refuse to sit for the standardized exams.

"We can't just teach our kids what it means to be an American. They need to learn to live those ideals," Murphy told Stateline.org. "I don't object to an in-class test that his teacher is giving him. It is these standardized examinations that are outside of class that have no bearing on the curriculum." Throughout the country, an increasing number of parents, students, teachers and administrators are questioning testing. State legislatures have set standards of learning for each grade level, and have been requiring tests to find out if students meet the benchmarks. Thirteen states will not promote a child to the next grade if the child fails a standardized test. In twenty-four states, a student cannot graduate from high school unless he or she passes an exit exam. (Two other states --Delaware and Wisconsin -- also administer exit exams, but a passing score is not a prerequisite for attaining a high school diploma.)

In the state of Washington, the exit exam requirement has sparked a political backlash. Parents and educators in the state who disagree with the high stakes requirement want to force candidates for public office to take the exam and have their scores made public the same way student scores are made public - on the Internet. A ballot initiative that would put the politicos on the spot will be voted on this November.

In affluent Scarsdale, New York, a group of mothers concluded that preparation for the state test was taking up too much class time and undercutting classroom creativity. So, 67 percent of the town's 8th graders didn't sit for the exam in May. This boycott had the support of the school superintendent.

Boston -- true to its rebellious heritage -- was the scene of the first testing protests two years ago after the state initiated the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in an effort to hold schools and students accountable for learning achievement.

Across the Charles River in Cambridge is the home of Fair Test , a nonprofit organization that helps opponents of testing share ideas and strategy.

Fair Test activists dubbed May the "month of resistance" and helped to organize rallies in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Washington. Teach-ins were held in Sacramento, California, Panama City, Florida and Portland, Maine.

These rallies coincided with debate in Congress over President George W. Bush's education plan. Activists are particularly concerned with a requirement to test students on reading and math every year in grades 3-8. Rewards and punishments will be doled out based on improvement on tests. Bill Cala, Superintendent of Fairport Schools in Upstate New York says,"We have 28 standards and the test probably has a 20 percent correlation (between test questions and what the state expects students to know), which is ridiculous." Cala was among 1500 people who protested New York's new testing regime in Albany in May.

A yet to be released study conducted in North Carolina found that between 50 and 80 percent of the improvements in student performance measured by tests are temporary and fail to predict any real gains in student learning.

Cala doesn't think President Bush's plan to expand testing will ever come to fruition. "Individual states are pulling back from testing left and right. Forget federal funding, it is next to meaningless, it is seven percent of the education cost. Some states may simply say, if it means damaging our kids then I guess we will not accept federal funds," he said.

What happened in Scarsdale has had a national impact, Cala says. "It has given other parents courage to say I think I'm going to put my foot down too. In our own district we have a parent who said he's going to organize a boycott. I think you will see more of those around the state and country."

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, a 90,000-member teacher union -has paid out $6 million for anti-MCAS television ads.

In many states, the teacher doesn't have access to the completed test to see how their students performed on each question. The main reason for that is that states would have to create new exams every time they test which is expensive.

The fact that Michelle Murphy couldn't see tests given Connor is what set her against Nevada's testing system.

"People don't understand how testing is used to control the curriculum and how that might connect very intimately to our democratic rights. If teachers don't have the right to teach something different from the government line then the government has such control over our education system that they can turn our children into anything they want," she said.

Murphy, a college English professor and a self-described liberal Democrat continues, "I probably sound like some wacko paranoid freak but the fact of the matter is that I'm not. I'm just one mom in a small county sounding the alarm bell."