More Than a Score (44 page)

Activists' goals varied, from demands to roll back the amount of standardized testing and end high stakes, to stopping or reducing specific exams, such as graduation tests. The Providence Student Union (PSU) opposed a looming graduation requirement that would deny high school diplomas to as many as 40 percent of seniors. They staged a “zombie march,” then organized a group of prominent adults to take the state graduation test, most of whom failed it. They also asked the commissioner of education to sign a symbolic check for $500,000, the average amount of an individual's lifetime loss of income due to not having a diploma. When the board of education would not reconsider the graduation test, students and their allies persuaded the legislature to pass a resolution calling on the board to do so. Because the board did not significantly alter the policy, the PSU, teachers unions, and other groups will seek a legislative victory in 2014. PSU also called for a very different assessment system, modeled on the New York Performance Standards Consortium.

Another partly effective action was a “play in” at Chicago Public Schools offices to protest the dozen or more standardized tests given to kindergarten, first- and second-grade students. It was organized by More Than a Score, a parent-union alliance. In response, CPS proposed a minor reduction in testing in the early grades. Meanwhile, student walkouts led by the emerging Chicago Students Union pushed CPS to drop one high school test. Both organizations are continuing their campaigns.

In New York, public rallies continued the momentum through the summer and fall of 2013. Fifteen hundred people rallied on Long Island in August, then twenty-five hundred in Buffalo in September. Parents, teachers, and students harshly denounced state education policies at public events organized by the New York education department itself. Some Long Island parents mailed their children's student test scores back to the state, writing “return to sender, invalid tests” on the envelopes. Parent leaders called for one hundred thousand boycotters for spring 2014. More than 90 percent of the parents at Castle Bridge School, a K–2 public school in Manhattan opted their children out of tests whose sole purpose is to judge teachers. The supportive principal scrapped the exam. Numerous local groups created an umbrella organization, New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), to build a stronger statewide campaign.

Legislative efforts took center stage in Texas in the 2013 session, where parents led a successful charge to reduce high school end-of-course graduation tests from fifteen to five. The lead parent group, Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA, often called “Mothers Against Drunk Testing”) was backed by community organizations such as Save Texas Schools, Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests, unions, administrators, school boards, and civil rights organizations. In Minnesota, teachers unions and civil rights groups, with support from the state superintendent, backed legislation that successfully repealed the state's graduation exams. Many bills to roll back testing mandates were introduced in other states as a first step in efforts to alter policy.

Public forums served to educate and involve parents, students, teachers, and community members. Groups such as the Denver students have described these conversations as essential for building a movement. Chicago parents took petitions to their schools to inform others and develop contacts, and organized public meetings in a variety of neighborhoods. Resolutions helped build the movement. More than 80 percent of Texas school boards approved a resolution in 2012 stating that high-stakes testing “is strangling our public schools” and undermining the chance for “broad learning experiences.” FairTest joined with other groups to launch a National Resolution on High Stakes Testing, signed by six hundred organizations and more than eighteen thousand individuals as of early 2014. A series of Florida school boards passed similar versions, leading the state association of boards to approve a resolution, as did the Pennsylvania association. This effort continues. In December 2013, the New York City Council approved a statement against high-stakes testing.

In some cases, testing reform actions built on or complemented other efforts to defend and improve public schools. Chicago youth linked testing to discipline issues and school closings. Youth in Portland, Oregon, also had been working on issues such as school closings. Growing efforts to connect students nationally in turn fed into the testing resistance. Students in several cities started talking together regularly, and Denver and Portland students walked out in concert.

In the fall of 2013, the American Federation of Teachers, in alliance with the National Education Association, the Opportunity to Learn Campaign, and Communities for Public Education Reform, launched “Reclaiming the Promise of Public Schools.” They used “town hall” meetings across the country to develop unifying principles. (FairTest helped develop the principle that addresses assessment.) Five hundred teachers, students, and community organizers launched the campaign at a Los Angeles conference in October. Spurred by this, groups organized actions across the nation on December 9, 2013, many of which addressed testing.

What Next?

Strong, creative actions—such as boycotts, walkouts, zombie marches, and play-ins—energize participants. They have framed issues well and effectively attracted the media.

However, many supporters cannot boycott, or cannot attend a demonstration on a workday, but want to participate. Groups need to involve significant numbers of people in forceful and visible activities that bridge opting out on one end of the protest spectrum and signing petitions on the other. They need to use a wide range of activities and means of communication to inform, educate, and shape the debate, relying on both mainstream and social media. Community meetings are essential to build support for a range of actions as well as an opportunity for people to share experiences and educate one another, policy makers, and the media.

Threats of reprisal are a real danger to boycott organizing. For example, some New York City administrators tried to keep students who opted out of testing from advancing to the next grade due to the absence of mandated test scores. Denver officials threatened to suspend test boycotters and bar them from walking in graduation ceremonies. However, pushing back against punishments is frequently successful, as was the case in New York and Denver. Anticipating such attacks and planning how to resist them, or even turn them to our advantage, are important. Seattle teachers' refusal to administer tests, combined with wide community support, including students opting out, led officials to drop threats and eliminate some testing.

It is crucial to stress that assessment can be a valuable learning tool and that schools should be responsible to their communities. Students in Providence, Portland, and Denver demanded better assessments as well as an end to high-stakes testing, as have teachers in Seattle and parents in New York and Chicago. In Texas, a proposal by a network of districts to create a better assessment and accountability system passed the legislature only to be vetoed by governor Rick Perry. Successful reform strategies often demand that a state or district shift from harmful practices to educationally beneficial ones.

If the movement only rolls back the tests without winning better alternatives, proponents of testing will use the vacuum to reassert the primacy of standardized exams. NCLB destroyed many promising assessment initiatives, but there are US and international examples, such as the New York Performance Standards Consortium. Activists can use them to counter the false claim that standardized tests are the only way to let the public know about or improve school quality. As the movement gains in strength, opportunities to overhaul assessment will open up. The movement must be ready with well-developed options.

The race and class composition of the movement is another vital concern. Urban, activist student groups are often multiracial. However, in some locales, boycott and opt-out movements are seen as mainly “white” or privileged. In other communities, activists say, privileged groups are less likely to collaborate with those from other neighborhoods. Suburban parents or teachers may not know or have ties to urban groups. Some wealthier city parents may capitalize on their children's higher scores to gain admission to elite public schools, using tests to perpetuate inequality even as they protest them. Urban parents of color are far more likely to have serious concerns about educational quality that have led many to support testing as a way of judging schools. The absence of an agenda for strengthening schools that rural, suburban, and urban communities can all support could fatally undermine the movement. Thus, activists must take steps to address race and class inequalities in schooling and in the movement.

The fundamental question is how to develop the power to win major reforms. Groups across the nation are grappling creatively with the issue as they develop strategic plans for the coming years. Facing the wealth and power of government, big corporations, foundations, and media, only large numbers of organized people will be able to turn the testing tide. Sharing experiences, analyses, strategies, and tactics, as well as providing mutual support, will strengthen our emerging movement.

Moving from resistance to legislative and policy victories is not necessarily simple or quick. Nonetheless, local campaigns have won meaningful gains in Texas and Minnesota and made significant progress in winning public opinion. Assessment reform activists have started to change the positions of journalists and elected officials in some jurisdictions. The rapidly expanding movement now has momentum and the next few years will be critical in the struggle to save public education from the standardized testing wrecking ball.

“Dear President Obama, We Need Literature Over Test Prep”

Discovering a Deeper Meaning in Life

On Tuesday, October 22, 2013, I read Valerie Strauss's invaluable education blog
The Answer Sheet
,
at the
Washington Post
, and was thrilled to learn that the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest, had spearheaded the drafting of an open letter to President Obama. Signed by some 120 authors and illustrators of books for children, the letter expressed opposition to Obama's support for standardized testing policies that were destroying children's love of reading literature, stating, “Our public school students spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations.”

I was even more exhilarated when I saw some of my favorite authors had contributed to the letter. The legendary poet, actor, and activist the late yet immortal Maya Angelou lent her name to the effort. As Valerie Strauss put it, “Angelou is noteworthy on this list not only because of her position in the literary world but because she has been a big public supporter of Obama.” It made me think of Angelou's line from her celebrated poem “Still I Rise”: “Does my sassiness upset you?” The cherished children's author Judy Blume also signed the letter. Blume's
Superfudge
is one of the earliest stories I can remember my mom reading aloud to me, so her signature was particularly gratifying. The name of the award-winning social justice children's author Alma Flor Ada jumped off the page at me as my two sons and I have enjoyed and been deeply moved by her stories and poems. I decided to contact Flor to find out more specifically what motivated her to sign this letter against the abuses of standardized testing. I also wanted to know what she thought of the Common Core State Standards' emphasis on the use of informational text over literature.

—Jesse Hagopian

Alma Flor Ada wrote this response:

Why Literature?