In a backlash against perceived overtesting, many students’ parents are choosing to “opt out” of mandated standardized tests, including those aligned to the common core, like those from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Research for Action, an educational research nonprofit, ran a simulation to determine how the opt-out movement could affect schools’ ratings. The researchers used data from Pennsylvania’s school rating system, which determines teacher and principal effectiveness and measures state compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act and the law’s waivers.

Their findings, illustrated below, showed that a relatively small number of homogenous students opting out could tip a school’s rating into a different score bracket, and possibly trigger sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education.

In a school of approximately 200 students, it could take as few as 11 high-performing opt-outs to drop the school’s rating into a lower score category. Twenty low-performing opt-outs could inflate the school's rating by one score category. Results in either direction could complicate federal K-12 funding.

The school’s original rating was 72.2, with no students opting out. By clicking on the buttons below, see how the school rating changes based on the number of students opting out.