Last year, stress about Pennsylvania’s state standardized tests caused third grader John Michael Rosenblum to start scratching himself so hard in his sleep that he bled. That’s when his mother Michele Gray knew she’d had enough, the Huffington Post reports. So she opted out. “I realized standardized testing isn’t serving our communities or schools,” Gray says. “The amount of money we spend for these tests is in the tens of millions. Couldn’t that be spent on other things, like more teachers?” After conducting some research and finding The Huffington Post blog of opt-out advocate and Penn State University associate professor of education Timothy Slekar, Gray decided to pull her son John Michael and his brother, Ted, out of standardized testing. Instead, after consulting with her school, they spent test periods on writing projects and constructing small machines…
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