Opting out in the empire state: A geographic analysis of opting out in New York, spring 2015 & 2016

Abstract

Background: Recently, states have experienced widely varying participation in annual assessments, with the opt-out movement concentrated in New York State and Colorado. Geographic variation between and within states suggests that the diffusion of opting out is multilayered and an appropriate phenomenon to explore geographic dimensions of social movements in education. Purpose: The study analyzes the geographic patterns of opting out from state assessments in school districts in New York State. Research design: We conducted linear regression and geographically weighted regression on district-level proportions of third- through eighth-grade students in local public school districts for 2015 and 2016 (n = 623), excluding New York City and charter schools. Independent variables included the district-level proportion of students with disabilities, identified as English Language Learners, and identified as White; census-based small-area child poverty estimates for the districts; and the geographic population density of the district. Linear regressions excluded racial and ethnic dummy variables to reduce collinearity problems, and geographically weighted regression limited geographically varying coefficients to child poverty and population density based on preliminary analyses. Findings: The unweighted ordinary least squares (OLS) of district-level opting out in both spring 2015 and spring 2016 are weakly predictive as a whole (adjusted R2