What if they gave a high stakes test and nobody came? That's the question being asked by United Opt Out National as well a growing number of parents and educators around the country. The organization's three day Standing Up For Action Conference begins today in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Standing Up For Action is a working session for local and national activists, concerned parents, educators, students and all who have a general interest in equitable and quality public education. Attendees will leave equipped with plans of action to refuse, resist, and disrupt corporate and for-profit education reforms that have destroyed the democratic voice in public education decision making and have forced the implementation of policies damaging to students, educators, and communities.

If enough students opt out of the high stakes tests, test results become meaningless as a way of praising and punishing teachers, administrators and schools for their overall test scores. And that's the main point for people who believe that the yearly tests are a destructive force for American education in general and students in particular.

Opting out of Arizona's high stakes tests is tough, as it is in most states. I've been gathering information about the successes and failures of opt-outers in a number of states and plan to write about them in future posts.