This week there was a parental revolt on Long Island of historic proportions as record numbers of students opted out of state mandated high stakes tests. Newsday called it an "Opt-out revolution" in its cover story today. As many as 80% of some districts opted out.

We at AERO have been against high stakes testing since the 1990's. When No Child Left Behind came along with thought it would run its course in a few years, as the back to basics mania did in the 80's. But it has persisted, like a chronic infection. This is why I think that the Common Core and its related testing has been such a great thing: It is so draconian and wrong-headed that even the average grass roots parent has come to see how bad it is for their children. The Common Core test is like a satire of itself. It is unnecessary to demonstrate the test's absurdity by exaggerating its flaws. The tests do that all by themselves. I have been amazed to see average suburban housewives standing on the back of a flatbed truck with a bullhorn, exhorting parents to boycott the tests! Maybe we are finally seeing the Education Revolution.

According to a Newsday report, the numbers of students on Long Island opted out of this year's English test went from 10,765 last year to 71,764 so far, over 40 % on Long Island and 155,000 state-wide!

We are against the tests philosophically because they are antithetical to a learner-centered approach. They skew the curriculum to a top-down, teach-to-the-test approach. They even tend to militate toward eliminating art, music and physical education, among other things. We believe that children are natural learners.  We believe that, the Common Core approach tends to extinguish that natural ability. It seems that many parents have come to the same conclusion. A grassroots movement already stopped the attempt at centralizing all student data. We may be watching a new rebirth of learner-centered education with the opt-out movement.

See below for related stories.

MAHOPAC, N.Y. - Tens of thousands of parents expressed disapproval of New York's reliance on standardized tests by having their children refuse to take the tests earlier this week.

Several districts in the New York City suburbs reported that at least 25% of students had refused to take the tests. In at least two, that number rose to 50%.

Mahopac Central School District's interim superintendent, Brian Monahan, said 55% of his system's middle school students and 45% of the elementary school students had refused the tests. At North Rockland Central School District in Garnerville, N.Y, 63% of middle school students refused the tests with the overall district refusal rate at 49%.

Half of Hillburn, N.Y.-based Ramapo Central's middle school students skipped the tests.

Remember the number 999.

It's the computer code that keeps track of what will go down as a historic grass-roots movement in public education in New York State.

Tens of thousands of parents rebelled this week against years of standardized testing from the politicians in Albany. They joined the national opt-out movement by refusing to allow their children to take the annual state-mandated English Language Arts exam.

The movement has grown so rapidly in recent years that the state instructed teachers beforehand to bubble in "999" as the final score for any child refusing the exam - the code for opt out.

During my stay in Scotland last year, I interviewed secondary school teachers regarding their experience in teaching and practicing children's rights, the United Nation Convention of Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in their schools. Generally, their opinions are very positive since there were numerous progressive changes in the school culture, while one of them commented, 'this is the best thing I have ever done'. These transformational changes were inspired by UNICEF UK who initiated Rights respecting School Award (RRSA), which aimed to improve the children's rights status, in the school, for the community and around the world.  

The award requires extensive commitment from the whole school level and the teachers had to make efforts to gain support from their colleagues. This is because some teachers resisted such initiative since there were misunderstandings of the nature of UNCRC as empowering children to become unruly and demanding based on the rights they were taught. However, the opposite is true: the students were more disciplined and compassionate. This has brought many teachers from skepticism to pleasant surprise.  

The magic is this: students were taught to respect peers' rights while they were having their rights met. Whenever there was misbehavior, students were told that they were being disruptive to the class and being disrespectful towards others' rights to education. Other than that, the students were reported to be more respectful towards the teachers because teachers were willing to listen. Communications were open and both parties were more ready to understand each other's situations to tackle the problems of disruptive behavior by figuring out the solutions together.  

Of course, the students demanded improvements of their schools such as lockers and cleaner toilets. These had actually made the school to become a more pleasant place to be for the students to focus on their studies comfortably. Interestingly, there was one example where teachers were requested to behave in class as not to show favoritism, shout or drink coffee during the lesson. Other than that, punishment exercise was decreased and replaced with demerit system. The result was, decreased detention and exclusion.  

The students' demands were made through student representatives meetings or pupil voice box met with funding available from the local council. This enhanced students' confidence, leadership quality and problem solving skills as these were required to hold meetings and whole school surveys. Compassionate hearts were cultured too as students were encouraged to organize charity events for fund raising and increasing the awareness of social issues, at the community level as well as global issues. 

In conclusion, the teachers in the interview found that their school had changed to a better place since they implemented children's rights into their teaching practices. Students and teachers had learned to respect others rights and assert their rights to protect everyone's interest. To me, it is a many wins situation where students and teachers were empowered: an improvement in students' confidence, compassion, soft skills and behavior as well as teachers' teaching practices. Since understanding the many powerful and convincing benefits of implementing children's rights in schools, I have been dreaming of the day that our young generations are becoming respectful citizens for the greater good of humanity, starting by learning and practicing children's rights in schools.