Common Core: What if they gave a test and nobody came?

When public schools across Long Island gave this year's New York State English Language Arts assessment test to students in grades 3 to 8 this week, there were a lot of empty seats. A new survey by Newsday of most Long Island school districts found that more than 2 in 5 students declined to take the test.

That's a sign of how deep the parental opposition is to the school "reform" movement's emphasis on standardized testing as the chief solution to poor educational performance.

The school "reformers" -- that assemblage of bi-partisan political backers, foundation leaders, corporate executives, cheerleaders in the news media, think tank thinkers, etc. -- are very fond of using data to judge others' performance. So here are the numbers Newsday reported:

Nearly 65,000 students in Long Island elementary and middle schools refused to take the state English Language Arts test this week -- 43.6 percent of those in grades three through eight eligible for the exam, a Newsday survey of more than 80 percent of districts Islandwide found.

In 100 of the Island's 124 public school districts, 64,785 of 148,564 children opted out of the exam, according to figures the districts reported.

"Parents are speaking and are saying 'Enough is enough,' and they have had it with students spending this amount of time taking tests," the paper quotes the superintendent of a district where two-thirds of the students did not take the test.

What these numbers show is that the school reformers get an F when it comes to maintaining school relations with parents,  a critical element in the educational process.