A couple of weeks ago, Gwen Ifill and the PBS News Hour crew flew to Seattle. They spent one day following me and one day following the richest person who ever lived, Bill Gates, to ask us about our ideas on education reform. I was simply shocked to hear that they would be running an …
Last Thursday I flew to New York City to take on Peter Cunningham, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education (under Secretary Arne Duncan, during President Obama's first term), in a debate hosted by Al Jazeera America’s program The Third Rail. We debated the question, "Is public education in the U.S. broken beyond repair?" I …
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!
Twelve national civil rights organizations released a statement today in opposition to parents and students who opt out of high-stakes standardized testing--what has now become a truly mass direct action campaign against the multi-billion dollar testing industry. I believe that their statement titled, “We Oppose Anti-Testing Efforts,” misses the key role that standardized testing has …
I AM AN EDUCATOR 
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