We have been critical in the past of New York state’s love affair with its tests.

Our criticism started a few years ago when, under John King, former state education commissioner, drew a hard line in the sand by saying parents had no right to opt their children out of the tests. King’s guidance led some local school district officials to take similar stances even though parents do, in fact, have the right to keep their children out of the tests.

More recently, we were critical of the state Education Department’s plan — which has since been disregarded — to make school districts that persistently have more than 5 percent of students refuse to take the tests set aside a portion of their Title 1 funding and use that money to convince more students and parents of the need to take the state’s tests.

Last week, the state Education Department released the 2018 third- through eighth-grade test results. Those results showed that only 45.2 percent of students were proficient in English language arts and 44.5 percent of students were proficient in math. For schools within The Post-Journal’s readership area, the statistics drop to 38 percent on English language arts and 38 percent for math. Those numbers are troubling enough, but a review of test refusal rates among Chautauqua County schools shows a significant percentage of students who refused to take the tests in 2018 didn’t score at proficient levels in 2017.

We know that local schools know who these children are and are deploying means to help those students reach proficiency. But the state tests and their proficiency ratings are used by the state Education Department in more ways than just allowing parents to compare their child’s progress with other students statewide. The results are also used to judge the success of local school districts in meeting the state’s chosen standards, and schools that don’t meet standards can face penalties.

Parents have a right to opt their students out of the state’s tests, but proficiency rates as determined by test scores will always be an imperfect way of measuring schools unless all students take the tests. It’s disappointing that fewer than half of the state’s third- through eighth-grade students are considered proficient. It’s downright scary that those numbers are likely inflated.