Military Exploits School Testing Opt Out Campaign

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34917-military-exploits-school-testing-opt-out-campaign



Military Exploits School Testing Opt Out Campaign
Sunday, 21 February 2016 00:00
By Pat Elder, War Is A Crime | News Analysis

Thousands of New Jersey high school seniors may be taking the military's enlistment exam to fulfill a graduation requirement because they opted out of the controversial PARCC tests when they were juniors.

Nearly 50,000 New Jersey high school seniors are required to take an alternative end-of-year assessment because they opted out of taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, (PARCC) test last year. School officials say "a significant number" of these students will now likely have to take either the College Board's ACCUPLACER test or the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, (ASVAB) as approved pathways to graduation. The costly ACCUPLACER is a product of the College Board, while the free-of-charge ASVAB is the military's enlistment test that is given to 650,000 students in 14,000 schools across the country. Its primary purpose, according to military documents, is to procure leads for recruiters.

The staggering numbers of New Jersey 11th graders who opted out of taking the PARCC test last year may have done so as a result of a coordinated campaign. South Brunswick New Jersey's Board of Education Vice President Dan Boyle explained during a board meeting last month, "Throughout the state, there are an inordinate amount of students that are not qualified to graduate," Boyle said at the time. "That is almost directly a result of the (PARCC) opt-out movement."

The robust testing opt-out movement in New Jersey and throughout the country has targeted the corporatization and standardization of American education. United Opt Out National serves as a focal point of resistance to corporatized education reform. The group demands "an equitably funded, democratically based, anti-racist, desegregated public school system for all Americans that prepares students to exercise compassionate and critical decision making with civic virtue."