"In a relatively small school district like ours, every student's scores have a significant impact on our district's composite results. In some communities, citizens groups opposed to state testing have urged parents to prohibit their children from participating. There is no provision that permits a parent or student to opt out of state testing. Those districts could incur a significant drop in their district rankings if students do so. We need all of our students to participate so that the state receives an accurate picture of our students' and our district's academic performance."

Unfortunately, as a school district, we have no means of preventing parents from granting permission to their children to skip the exam and students in grades 10-12 have nothing to lose by doing so. The exams do not count toward their graduation requirements. Knowing that, several students in grades 10-12 have been granted permission by their parents to boycott an upcoming 90-minute exam. If the students do so, the impact on our school district's Performance Index (currently ranked eighth among Ohio's 611 public school districts) will be disastrous.

I am disappointed and frustrated by the actions of these students and their parents. Although I am not an outspoken defender of the ODE, I do realize that high-stakes testing is an unavoidable reality for anyone who is enrolled in college or graduate school, and to all who are considering a professional career. Regardless of one's opinion on the merits or deficiencies of Ohio's new end-of-course exams, public school districts are being rated and ranked by our students' performance. Beachwood could easily slip from eighth to 30th or lower this year in the rankings due to the boycott of such an end-of-course exam. This is a tremendous disservice to all of our students, their teachers, and their principals who have worked so hard to assure student success on these state-mandated assessments.

In the end, the greatest disservice is to our community that so generously supports its schools by providing the resources to sustain one of the strongest academic programs in Ohio. When our District Performance Index is published next year, there will be no footnote indicating that Beachwood's major drop in performance was the result of the selfish actions of a few who chose to discount the work of so many. The entire community will unfairly bear the embarrassment.

I know that some will say that the boycott of the end-of-course exam is a form of political protest. Perhaps for some, it is. For others, I believe that it is simply an easy way to avoid "wasting" 90 minutes taking a test that doesn't hold any penalty for those who refuse. Either way, it certainly indicates a lack of regard for the school district and community that will take the hit. Our mission statement is "To develop intellectual entrepreneurs with a social conscience." Perhaps we need to work harder on the last part.