Almost half of Americans don't think kids should be able to opt out of standardized tests

Americans don't think kids should be able to opt out of testing

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published 18 March 2015

Fifty-one percent of Americans believe children take too many standardized tests — but that doesn't mean they believe that kids should be able to opt out of them.

A new Huffington Post/YouGov poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe K-12 students should not have the ability to opt out of standardized tests. Only a few states have rules that explicitly allow students to opt out of exams, Huffington Post notes — and even then, students could face suspension for passing that information along to others.

The poll's language asked respondents if children should be able to opt out of testing "as a form of protest," which may have skewed the results for parents who have other reasons for allowing their children to opt out of standardized tests. Forty-nine percent of respondents agreed that the current U.S. system of standardized testing "has done more harm than good" in the past 10 years.