More Than a Score (30 page)

After reaching this level of consciousness and awareness, there was no going back. Weeks after the semester ended, the book and what I had learned was still on my mind. That was how my blog
Teacher Under Construction
was born in January 2012. I figured if I could go through my entire K–12 education unaware of the existence of the blatant inequities in our education system, then there must be thousands of others out there in the same position. I came to this simple conclusion: nothing can be changed if no one even knows something has to be changed in the first place. I began writing as a hopeful means, as I phrased in my early blog postings, of “breaking bubbles of ignorance,” doing something similar to what the book and class did for me.

Shortly after I started my blog, I began to challenge every aspect of the education system. In essence, I was evolving into the type of student that the NCLB era wasn't meant to produce. I began connecting, via
Teacher Under Construction
, with other like-minded individuals throughout the country with whom I shared a commonality: dissent against the education “reform” movement.

From Reflection to Action

Before I could fully devote myself to the education justice movement, I had to examine where I fit in the system. Throughout middle and high school, rarely did I raise my hand in class, rarely did I have confidence to share my points of view if they conflicted with the dominant opinion of my classmates. Sure, I was able to adapt and assimilate to succeed in the system, but what does that mean in terms of the education that youth of color like myself deserve? What does it mean to have the skills to adapt to a system that is designed only to benefit a select few rather than be emancipatory for all youth? This laid the groundwork for the direction my activism would take and for my role as a future teacher. When there is something you believe is worth fighting for, you are stripped of all fear. Fear is petty in comparison to the larger goal at hand. I have a clearer sense of what I am fighting for. I have gained the courage to take actions that previously would have been unforeseeable.

For instance, until 2012, a student organization solely focused on future educators at my university was nonexistent—I, along with about seven other students, worked to change that. Within this space, we have had open dialogues about various issues regarding education and the teaching profession ranging from the problems of Teach for America to merit pay and how the increase in high-stakes testing will affect us as future teachers. My fellow future teachers and I have now taken on the challenge of making our program more democratic in regards to coursework. I believe that calling for a democratic university can result in an increase in democratic practices in the classroom.

Similarly, in November 2012, I, along with other activists from Madison, Wisconsin, helped launch Students United for Public Education (SUPE). We took aim at reactionary, neoliberal organizations such as Students for Education Reform that manipulate students into advocating for corporate education reform. With this national organization, college students across the country had a means of fighting for various issues surrounding public education on their campuses. Some of our chapters' most memorable actions included working with local Chicago youth and standing as allies at local protests, petitioning against the Parent Trigger Bill in Florida, and launching our first national campaign: Students Resisting Teach for America. Yet, some of the greatest “victories” and hints of progress do not only exist in relation to our actions and strengthening of organizations but in the very act of normalizing dissent against the corporate education reform movement. Simply raising questions in class such as “Aren't there more effective ways to assess student progress?” or “How does high-stakes testing affect students in higher poverty schools compared to students at wealthier schools?” has proven to spur my classmates to think critically about the status quo.

What's Really at Stake?

The impact of high-stakes testing was not always as clear to me as it is today. Growing up, test weeks meant a whole week of half-days in school—what could be better than that?! For a lot of us, state tests were seen as a joke. Few of us took our state tests seriously because many of us knew we would pass with little to no effort. Yet I don't recognize the faults of high-stakes testing only through my own schooling experience; I am also seeing its faults and impact on students in the K–12 school system whom I mentor, tutor, and simply talk to today. As the focus of corporate education reformers' policies is strongly based on increasing test scores and making profits, the focus on the real issues that should be dealt with is almost nonexistent. When I tutored at a local youth correctional facility in Camden, New Jersey, two students stood out to me. While I tutored them in elementary mathematics and grammar, they often told stories of their experiences within the K–12 system. They discussed how they rarely had support from their schools, that living in the most dangerous city in the country consequently meant having teachers and administrators with low expectations. One said, “It's like they didn't even feel like trying because they thought we'd just become drug dealers or gang members anyway.” The other said that he felt dropping out of school was the better choice. He said that he couldn't relate to school, that what he was learning was boring. He felt that dropping out and spending more time working would get him farther and was the better option, especially because he didn't see college as an affordable expense. Some would disregard them as “dropouts,” but it is more accurate to describe them as being systematically forced out by corporate standards of education, what's also known as the school-to-prison pipeline. For them, what they were learning in school was pointless in comparison to the daily challenges they faced beyond the classroom. I came to realize that our system is designed to fail America's youth.

The Left-Behind Children's Call to Arms

As a student currently in a teacher education program, it is frustrating to be taught how to adapt to the ever-changing, increasingly high-stakes testing school framework rather than have an open discussion on what this means, why it is happening, and, most crucial, what we can do about it. Recognizing this has illuminated the importance of finding ways and the courage to make that space where such a space was never meant to exist. When I am eventually in the classroom, I aim to provide a liberating education, not a standardized one. I hope to give my students an education that provides them the tools and opportunities to challenge the systems that oppress them rather than simply assimilate to them. Yet, I know this will be almost impossible if we do not continue challenging and resisting profit-based school reforms pushed for by neoliberals. In essence, I have to recognize that the most crucial challenges our students deal with will never be resolved in a multiple-choice bubble form. This leaves me, as an educator, unable to teach for liberation under the paradigm of high-stakes testing. If liberation is denied, resistance becomes necessary to education. Luckily for aspiring teachers, resistance has already begun.

The next generation of teachers—me included—are the students who were “schooled” in the NCLB era. It's obvious in working with and talking to other future teachers that we've been conditioned to see standardized testing as inseparable from school, education, and—well, teaching. Getting those scores to meet that “standard” are what we know and what we grew up believing was elemental to an “education.” This becomes problematic because as “products” of NCLB, many future teachers won't push back against something that has been ingrained as the norm—unless they recognize not only how boycotts such as that against the MAP in Seattle can in fact be victorious but also why
they
should boycott high-stakes testing, and what type of education can emerge when our schools are freed of these standards.

But, unfortunately, many future teachers believe that an education system freed from high-stakes testing is impossible. And this is one of the driving reasons I'm still pursuing the profession, and why I find it critical that we collectively work to assure that other future educators are aware of this movement and fight against high-stakes testing. We need to encourage future teachers to continually ask themselves: Why are you becoming a teacher? Because 99.9 percent of the time, the response will include some desire to positively change young people's lives. We need to make sure we connect this desire to the movement against high-stakes testing.

As proven by the Chicago Teachers Union strike and the boycott in Seattle, changing lives and making an impact on students can't and shouldn't be limited to only what we do inside a classroom. Actions such as the victorious MAP boycott and various student protests play a critical and absolutely necessary role in this fight. These moments of pushback and challenging these tests are rarely—if ever—discussed in teacher prep programs. We're being taught to simply adapt to the new policies and standards rather than say what we all know each other to be actually thinking: these policies do nothing for student learning, and they are not what education should be.

To my fellow future teachers: Our fight begins now. If your college program fails to reveal and provide the space to discuss what is happening to our education system and to our profession—which we know deserves a hell of a lot more respect than it currently gets—then you need to make that space. If you know what you want for your future students, then you must fight against the policies and reformers who will do everything they can to prevent you from giving it to them.

It is our duty to not only create space now but later, too. We are going into this field because we believe we will have the ability to create an environment that fosters growth, creativity, and courage in our future students. Our space, our teaching, has the potential to build that space where students discover the volume of their voices, the power in their actions—that is our space, and we cannot stand by and let people who have no idea what this profession requires rip that away from us.

Student Revolution

The first standardized test I ever took was the TerraNova. I was in Ms. Racovitch's third-grade class at Charles Campagne Elementary School in Bethpage, New York. It had been a handful of years since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act had been put into effect by president George W. Bush. The law required states to implement tests in reading and mathematics from third to eighth grade. In order to prepare for these tests, we were forced to complete hours of reading comprehension worksheets every night for homework. We also learned countless test-taking strategies and how to correctly bubble in Scantron sheets. The process, which lasted many months, was miserable for the students. And the teachers were clearly bent out of shape.

A few months after the administration of the TerraNova, we received our scores in the mail. I remember that I did well on the mathematics section, but did fairly poorly on the reading section. I couldn't understand how such a beautiful and elegant language was being condensed into absurd multiple-choice questions. It felt very unnatural to me. I had been someone who was a voracious reader, consistently consuming roughly a hundred books every year.

Overall, my first brush with standardized testing made me begin to think that there was something obviously irrational with the school system. I was told that these tests were for “my own good” and that “I better get used to them” since these rituals would continue every year for at least another decade.

During my experience in school, I have been used as a guinea pig by various politicians and education officials to try out their neoliberal education reform experiments without my consent. The verdict is in: they have all horribly failed.