| September 2, 2005 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Fuck
the Test
Our schools are in crisis. Under funded, understaffed, and under pressure by fundamentalists, the public school system is taking a monumental blow. Now, thanks to George W. Bush, Con Bunde, the rest of the posers who pretend to represent their interests, AND TEACHERS WHO GO ALONG WITH IT ALL, students across Alaska are enduring vacuous test-preparation material while being denied more meaningful curricula. But think how much smarter we’ll all be. Across the state, schools are struggling to achieve a facade of educational attainment called “Adequate Yearly Progress.” As numerous educators, authors, and scholars have shown (as if they’ve had to), the standard is neither “adequate,” “yearly,” nor “progress.” Charlatans maintain this bureaucracy with a battery of “high-stake” tests that are the golden eggs of a private industry that could collect as much as $5 billion by 2008 from designing, grading and reporting the tests. With his “Every Child Left Behind” Act, Bush handed his family friends over at McGraw Hill an apple, rotted sweet with the larvae of little numbers. “If these numbers aren't enough to make you realize that the testing business is big business,” writes Barbara Miner in Rethinking Schools, “consider the pay for McGraw-Hill president and CEO, Harold McGraw: $3.14 million in 2003.” OK, enough. If you need to be convinced, please email me. For the rest of us, here’s what we need to do: 1) We need to start a statewide coalition of teachers, activists, and, especially, students to collect information and build membership in an online clearinghouse. Teachers can get started on this project right away with their students. Spokespeople for this group will challenge the dribble of nonsense that is reported every time there is a test, test results, or any other threat to the public school system. 2) We need to work with students on either an initiative to create a new law aimed at reducing punitive measures or on a referendum petition that would kill the legislation that created the high school “exit exam” altogether. 3) We need to hold a press event at which legislators take their own damn test. We can reserve a room at Juneau Douglas High School in advance of testing week, put a placard with each legislator’s name on the seat, and invite each politician down to the classroom for a few hours on a weekend. Sure, many won’t show, complaining they are important people with busy schedules. But won’t the photo of a classroom with empty desks speak 1,000 words? 4) Failing all else, we need to launch a campaign to BOYCOTT THE TEST! Yes, students across the state will ignore the command to flip over their test and, instead, rip the test in half, discard it into the recycling bin, and walk out of the classroom. Sure, there is an educational crisis. But it’s not that students aren’t meeting a homogenized set of standards. Our predicament is whether public schools can survive the assault of test-pushing, power-drunk politicians. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southeast Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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| Copyright
2005
Insurgent Media. All Rights
Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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