TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey's top education official is warning that school districts could lose some federal funding if too many students skip a new standardized test that is being given this month.

Education Commissioner David Hespe appeared Thursday before the state Senate's education committee to defend the PARCC exams that some parent and educator groups vigorously oppose.

A sign outside Livingston High School announcing PARCC testing
A sign outside Livingston High School announcing PARCC testing (CBS New York)
loading...

Hespe said critics of the test are judging it too quickly. There could be some hiccups in its administration, he said, but the tests will generate reports that will zero in on exactly how students are doing.

"The success is going to be when parents see those reports and teachers see the reports," Hespe told the panel. "That's going to be the aha moment when they say, 'Yes, this really does provide me with the information about my child's performance that I need.'"

There has been a push to boycott the exams, which were developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and are being given this year in New Jersey and a dozen other states. Opponents of the test question its appropriateness, cost and the consequences of relying so heavily on its results to judge teachers and students.

The tests are being administered to students in third through 11th grades this month and again in May.

Hespe said the state does not have data now on how many students are skipping it.

Using open-records laws, an activist received a record showing that more than 2,000 students in the well-off Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill were refusing to take the tests. While most of the younger students are taking it, nearly three-fourths of 11th graders are skipping it.

The problem, Hespe said, is a federal law implemented more than a decade ago that requires 95 percent of students at each school and in each subgroup — including students with disabilities, low-income students and students in various racial groups — to take tests.

The law, designed to make sure schools were not keeping low-performing students from taking the tests in an effort to boost overall scores, says the federal government can withhold funding from districts that fail to meet the standard.

Hespe shared a letter the U.S. Department of Education sent him last month spelling out that possibility.

Still, some activists said they had doubts about whether money would be withheld if students refuse to take the tests. Julia Sass Rubin, a member of Save Our Schools New Jersey, a group that opposes the PARCC, noted that funding has never been withheld before under similar circumstances.

At the hearing, Hespe also said that the state has not calculated how much school districts have spent to buy computers to administer the exams, which are given online.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

More From New Jersey 101.5 FM