Jon Campbell Albany Bureau

ALBANY – About 1.1 million students across New York will be eligible to take the state’s English language arts and math exams beginning this week.

For the third year in a row, much of the focus will be on those who don’t.

An unprecedented boycott of the state’s standardized exams will enter its third year Tuesday, when students in grades 3-8 sit for the first of three days of English testing followed by three days of math testing next week.

State education officials are hoping a regime change and a series of changes to the standardized tests and how they’re crafted are enough to stem the heavy flow of testing opt-outs, which included about one out of every five eligible students last year.

The parent- and teacher-led groups that gave rise to the movement say otherwise: They’re hoping and expecting to see yet another rise in test refusals, which grew from about 67,000 students in 2014 to approximately 220,000 on last year’s math exam.

Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, who took office after last year’s exams, acknowledged the state has “much work to do.” But she’s hopeful the changes the state has made – as well as her statewide tour touting them – will help increase the number of students taking the tests.

“We have listened,” Elia said last month. “We have made some changes, and we believe that is important for people to be aware that we are listening to them and making changes based on the input that they’ve given us.”

Change at the top

Much has changed at the state Education Department since last year’s round of tests, spurred in part by the force of the opt-out movement.

Elia was selected commissioner in May, taking over for now-U.S. Education Secretary John King, who had become a frequent target of parents and opt-out leaders for his embrace of the Common Core, the oft-debated education standards the tests are based on.

Since then, Elia and the Education Department have made changes aimed at easing parent concerns, eliminating some questions and reading passages on the tests to make them shorter while removing a strict time limit that had been enforced in previous year.

A task force created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo recommended a temporary pause on counting the tests against teachers or students.

Pearson, the London-based testing giant that has crafted the state’s tests the past five years, was ousted, though the company still crafted this year’s exams. At least 20 teachers from across the state were asked to review the exams before they were sent out.

In October, Merry Tisch announced she wouldn’t seek another term to the Board of Regents, the state’s education policymaking board. Tisch – who, like King, had been a frequent target of criticism from opt-out organizers -- had been the board’s chancellor since 2009.

Tisch was replaced last month by Betty Rosa, a Bronx-based Regent who had support from the groups leading the opt-out movement.

The nod to the impact of the boycott was apparent: Rosa herself said she would refuse the tests – if she had a school-aged child and wasn’t a member of the Board of Regents.

Not enough

Those changes, however, haven’t pacified opt-out leaders, who have continued their efforts to encourage more parents to refuse the exams.

Lisa Rudley, a co-founder of NYS Allies for Public Education, a parent-led group whose website has become a clearinghouse for parents seeking information on how to opt-out, said she’s again expecting a high rate of opt-outs.

“I can’t predict, but I definitely know it’s not going away,” said Rudley, a parent from Ossining, Westchester County. “I can’t say if it’s going to double or not, but we’re going to see very high numbers again. I think we’re going to see New York City with a lot more than we did last year.”

Last year, the districts with the highest rate of opt-outs were generally on Long Island and in western New York, including the Fairport district in Monroe County, which had about 67 percent of eligible students refuse the tests.

According to the state Education Department, students who didn’t take the tests last year were “much more likely” to be white and “much less likely” to be economically disadvantaged. They largely hailed from “low-needs” school districts, which are generally in suburban areas.

Teachers push

Local teachers unions in Westchester and Putnam counties have funded advertisements in the Lower Hudson Valley directing parents to the website of NYS Allies for Public Education website.

In a letter to parents last month, Mahopac Teachers’ Association president Tom McMahon said the changes “lack any substance for our children” and are “designed to placate parents into believing our voices have been heard.”

About 51 percent of students in the Mahopac School District in Putnam County refused the tests last year.

“Yes, New York fired Pearson, but this year’s exams are still Pearson tests,” McMahon wrote. “Yes, New York reduced the numerical length of the exams, but, at the maximum, by only three questions. Yes, test time limits have been eliminated -- only to make the potential time-length extendable into hours.”

High Achievement New York, a coalition group with support from business organizations, is countering with an advertising push of their own, hoping to encourage more parents to opt their children in.

“Parents asked for their students to spend less time taking tests and more time learning,” said Stephen Sigmund, the group’s executive director. “The new tests do just that. Parents asked for fewer time restrictions and less pressure on students. These tests do that, too.”

In the Rochester area, the Monroe County Federation of Teachers passed a resolution opposing the tests in their current form, promising to rally its members against them.

“The Monroe County Federation of Teachers opposes standardized high stakes testing currently pushed by New York state because this testing is not being used to further instructional outcomes for children,” the resolution reads.

The statewide teachers union, New York State United Teachers, has taken a less-active role this year.

Last year, NYSUT President Karen Magee encouraged parents to opt their children out, which provided a major boost to the opt-out movement in the weeks before the exams were administered.

Her comments came as state lawmakers and Cuomo were negotiating a change to the state’s teacher-evaluation system to make it more reliant on student test scores. Since then, Cuomo and education officials agreed to a moratorium on counting the grade 3-8 tests against teachers.

NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn said the union still supports parents’ right to refuse the exams.

“When parents make decisions in the best interest of their children, NYSUT is going to support that decision 100 percent of the time,” Korn said. “NYSUT has encouraged its members who are parents to consider opting out of the state tests.”

Top officials split

Most of New York’s top education officials say they’re hoping that the changes to the testing regimen are enough to tamp down the number of test refusals.

“We’ve put those measures in place and those concerns were in large part driving the opt-outs, so hopefully we will see less,” said Regents Vice Chancellor T. Andrew Brown, a Rochester attorney. “But certainly we want to continue to move in the direction where we are seeing less over time.”

In a letter last week to The Buffalo News, Elia asked parents to “trust in the adjustments we’ve made so far and the purposeful changes we’re going to make.”

“Opting out of the 2016 tests is not the answer,” she wrote.

Rosa, the new Regents chancellor, hasn’t backed the push for reducing the number of opt-outs. Asked three times at her introductory news conference if she wants to see fewer test refusals this year, Rosa didn’t say yes or no.

“I want us to get to a place where we come to the table and examine the current tests and move forward in a way that parents have a sense of full trust,” she said.

JCAMPBELL1@gannett.com

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