During the last days of the school year I wrote an essay for my website, I Am An Educator.com, about my kindergarten son opting out of the MAP test. I received an overwhelming number of positive responses to that piece, but none more powerful than from a mother from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kelly Pylkas-Bock expressed her …
Last week the Seattle School District told my kindergarten son to take the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test. Given my intense relationship with this specific standardized test--an exam that has forever altered the course of my life--this was a particularly unsettling moment for me. As an authentic assessment activist, I had helped organize a …
Continue reading Scrap the MAP Test: My Kindergartener Joins the Opt Out Movement!
I recently was a guest on the Laura Flanders Show to discuss the factors contributing to the mass opt out movement that has developed around the nation, now the largest uprising in U.S. history against high-stakes, standardized testing (see the below video). I have been traveling around the country on my book tour for More …
“…the Opt Out movement is a vital component of the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles for social justice in our region. Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants ‘lesser,’ while systematically under-funding their schools, has a long and ugly history in this country.” -Gerald Hankerson, current President of the Seattle/King County …
What will happen at Garfield High School with Common Core testing? I have been asked this question by people all over the country as they learned that this would be the first year that Common Core testing would come to Washington State. All year, teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School have debated whether to administer …
I AM AN EDUCATOR 
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