Five years ago, I wrote an opinion column in our local paper explaining why I was planning to opt my two children out of PSSA tests, Pennslyvania’s version of the high stake standardized testing mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). A few weeks later, CNN came to my house and taped a segment on the incipient OptOut movement.

Since then OptOut has mushroomed into a national grassroots movement of hundreds of thousands of parents saying no to the corporate takeover of public education by refusing to allow their children to take the increasing number of high stakes standardized tests tied to the Common Core.

While many teachers and parents hoped that the election of Barack Obama would bring relief from the NCLB testing, it unfortunately did not. Under Secretary Arne Duncan, the amount of testing has increased, the embrace of the Common Core is complete, and the for-profit education industry and the corporate “reformers” — especially the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation — have taken over public education. But parents working together at a very grassroots level have forced Washington to reevalute the amount of testing and the Common Core by refusing to allow our children to be the subject of a massive and failed experiment in education which has only served to enrich those at the top.

This year, I am feeling the Bern, because from my research, only Bernie Sanders has consistently been on the side of children, parents, teachers and educators for his whole career. EducationWeek said Bernie Sanders was “supportive of opt-out before opt-out was cool.” In 2012, grassroots education activists organized a march on Washington call, Occupy the DOE.

“The agenda included a meeting with a representative from the office of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to discuss, among other ideas, creating a model opt-out policy that would protect parents who prefer that their children not be tested.”

Sanders has actually been in the classroom: He taught both preschoolers for Head Start and Harvard Kennedy School graduate students in political science. One of the signature issues of his campaign is tuition-free public colleges. I attended the University of California in the late 1970s when it was still tuition-free, so I know it’s possible.

However, the issue I care about the impact NCLB has had on public school K-12 education. The American Federation of Teachers asked Sanders, “What is your view of the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as the No Child Left Behind Act)? What changes, if any, would you make to the law, and why?” Sen. Sanders’ answer impressed me.

I voted against No Child Left Behind in 2001, and continue to oppose the bill’s reliance on high-stakes standardized testing to direct draconian interventions. In my view, No Child Left Behind ignores several important factors in a student’s academic performance, specifically the impact of poverty, access to adequate health care, mental health, nutrition, and a wide variety of supports that children in poverty should have access to. By placing so much emphasis on standardized testing, No Child Left Behind ignores many of the skills and qualities that are vitally important in our 21st century economy, like problem solving, critical thinking, and teamwork, in favor of test preparation that provides no benefit to students after they leave school. In my home state of Vermont, almost every school is identified as “failing” under the requirements of No Child Left Behind, despite the fact that we have one of the highest graduation rates in the country, and students from Vermont continually score among the highest in the country on annual NAEP assessments. As a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, I have worked to reform No Child Left Behind. My top priorities during the most recent iteration of the bill have been:

• Reducing the high-stakes nature of standardized tests by basing accountability on multiple measures of a school’s effectiveness.

• Including a pilot program that allows states to implement innovative systems of assessment that do not rely on standardized tests. Instead, new innovative assessments will empower educators by providing actionable information during the school year that can inform instructional practice.

• Maintaining federal support for afterschool programs provided through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program.

• The inclusion of wrap-around support services like health, mental health, nutrition and family supports. I believe guaranteeing resource equity is a core tenet of the federal government’s role in education policy, and if elected, I will work to reduce the resource disparities that currently exist between schools in wealthy and low-income areas. In addition, I strongly support increased emphasis on a well-rounded curriculum. No Child Left Behind’s narrow focus on math and literacy has deprived children, especially low-income children, from critical opportunities in the arts, music, physical education, civics and STEM fields. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/election2016/candidate-questionnaire-bernie-sanders#sthash.1md6tqAO.dpuf

Sen. Bernie Sanders has been consistent his entire career. He’s strongly opposed to corporate education reform. He has supported opting out of testing. He supports a well-rounded curriculum that includes art and music. And he opposes the use of high-stakes standardized testing to measure the success of a school. He has my vote, and I hope he has yours, too.

I am happy to finally have a candidate I can vote for, rather than always having to vote against a worse alternative. Nevertheless, in the interest of completeness, here’s what my research on the other major candidates turned up.

Hillary Clinton: She supported NCLB. Like Arne Duncan, her Department of Education would side with the business interests that want to see the Common Core implemented come hell or high-water. The Gates Foundation is the single largest contributor to the Clinton Foundation, and the Clintons have long supported standards-based reform. The Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation have also made substantial contributions to the Clinton Foundation and to her campaign. Furthermore, according to OpenSecrets.org, Susan Brophy, who is what the site calls a “revolving door lobbyist,” worked in the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. She is now a lobbyist for Pearson Education and HoughtonMifflin, and was a major fundraiser for the Ready for Hillary PAC.

John Kasich seems the most reasonable of the GOP candidates, but he is a big supporter of the Common Core and his record on charter schools has apparently been a nightmare of pay-to-play, benefiting big donors at the expense of students and tax payers. David Hansen, Kasich’s appointed ‘Director of School Choice,’ resigned last July after a grade-fixing scheme to benefit big donors/for-profit charter operators. Two specific big donors also happen to run two of the largest charter operations in Ohio — and they have received state funding increases topping 100 percent over the past few years while other public schools (including high-performing charters) have been left short. Their two charter operations, incidentally, are also two of the consistently lowest-performing schools in the state … and yet they continued to grow. Anyone casting a vote this November should conduct a quick search on Ohio charter schools. A lot of damage has been done to kids, communities, and the reputation of the charter movement in general.

Marco Rubio sounds like pretty standard conservative Republican when it comes to education. He doesn’t like the Department of Education, the Common Core, or public schools in general, hailing charters as the answer to all education problems. However, in his book, “An American Son: A Memoir,” Rubio said he was “very proud” that while he was speaker of the Florida House “we continued the accountability-based education reforms begun by Jeb Bush.” By the way, that would be the same Jeb Bush, who with his brother invented No Child Left Behind.

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump just scare me. For example, some of Cruz’s biggest financial backers are fracking industry billionaires who believe that the Bible should be the primary textbook in public schools. Trump’s biggest contribution to eduction has been running a scam called Trump University.