This is a book you will want to read if you are a parent, a teacher, a teacher educator.
Opting Out: The Story of the Parents’ Grassroots Movement to Achieve Whole-Child Schools is an essential addition to your bookshelf.
It was written by Professor David Hursh of the University of Rochester and parents leaders of the New York Opt Out movement Jeanette Deutermann, Lisa Rudley, and Hursh’s graduate students, Zhe Chen and Sarah McGinnis.
Together they explain the origins and development of the one of the most significant parent-led reactions against high-stakes testing and in favor of education that is devoted to the full development of children as healthy and happy human beings. The media liked to present the Opt Out movement as a “union-led” action, but that was always a false narrative. It was created and led by parent activists who volunteered their time and energy to save their children from test centric classrooms and wanted a “whole-child” education that helped their children become eager and engaged learners.
David Hursh has written and lectured about the assault on public education and the dangers of high-stakes testing.
https://www.waikato.ac.nz/wmier/news-events/prof-david-hursh-on-the-takeover-of-public-education
University of Rochester Meliora Address (2013): High-stakes testing and the decline of teaching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIQu2Hh_YkI
Keynote address: New York State as a cautionary tale (2014). New Zealand union of primary teachers and administrators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4vZGsLiL4
The parent co-authors are leaders of the New York State Opt Out movement, primarily through their role in New York State Allies for Public Education, which has organized hundreds of thousands of parents to say no to excessive and pointless testing, whose only beneficiaries are the big testing corporations.
The parents of the Opt Out movement are a stellar example of the Resistance that is bringing an end to this current era of child abuse and test-driven miseducation.
I was happy to endorse the book and am pleased now to recommend it to you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have ordered it.
From: Diane Ravitch’s blog
Reply-To: Diane Ravitch’s blog
Date: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 at 11:01 AM
To: David Hursh
Subject: [New post] Opting Out: The Story of the Parents’ Grassroots Movement to Achieve Whole-Child Public Schools
dianeravitch posted: “This is a book you will want to read if you are a parent, a teacher, a teacher educator. Opting Out: The Story of the Parents’ Grassroots Movement to Achieve Whole-Child Schools is an essential addition to your bookshelf. It was written by Professor”
Opters Out are heroes.
Opting out is a reasonable response to an unreasonable, harmful school policy. Likewise, I believe parents should be able to refuse a steady diet of cyber instruction if they see it is having a negative impact on their child.
it would be good to see a national “opt out of screentime” movement start and grow
Opters Out are heroes as Left Coast Teacher says.
They may save one feature of what has made American public schools great while losing the battle to save public education if they fail to fight against the Catholic church’s political role in undermining public education funding.
State Catholic conferences in R.I. and Tennessee are but two, that have web pages showing the Church’s efforts to deliver on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’s commitment as “strong advocates of parental school choice”.
One major city’s Superintendent of Catholic schools is a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara Institute. Cristo Rey’s model for Catholic school chains should be on everyone’s radar, particularly the 66% who believe in separation of church and state.