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<h2 class="node-title"><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal;" class="">This article is written by Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher and advisor to the Black Student Union at Garfield High School in Seattle, where he led a boycott of the state tests. He is a founder of Social Equality Educators, an author, editor at Rethinking Schools magazine, and a blogger at <a href="http://IAmAnEducator.com" class="">IAmAnEducator.com</a>. </span></h2><h2 class="node-title">
<a href="http://www.progressive.org/pss/six-reasons-why-opt-out-movement-good-students-and-parents-color" class="">Six Reasons Why the Opt Out Movement is Good for Students and Parents of Color</a><img scale="2" src-orig="https://jessehagopian.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/cps_teaching_not_over_testing_sarah_ji1.jpg?w=620" originalw="620" class="wp-image-2056 size-full alignnone" src="https://jessehagopian.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/cps_teaching_not_over_testing_sarah_ji1.jpg?w=1240" alt="cps_teaching_not_over_testing_sarah_ji" height="325" width="620" style="text-align: right;"></h2><h2 class="node-title"><strong style="text-align: right;" class=""><a href="http://www.progressive.org/authors/jesse-hagopian" class="">By Jesse Hagopian, first published in <em class="">The</em> <em class="">Progressive </em>magazine</a></strong></h2></div><div class="node-content">
<div class="field-label-hidden section field-name-body field field-type-text-with-summary"><div class="field-items"><div class="odd field-item" property="content:encoded"><p class=""><span style="font-size: 20px;" class=""><strong class="">C</strong></span><span style="font-size: 14px;" class="">orporate
education reformers who seek to reduce teaching and learning to a
single score are beginning to realize they are losing the public
relations battle. Hundreds of thousands of families across the country
are opting out in what has become largest revolt against high-stakes
testing in U.S. history. </span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Because most of their arguments are
increasingly discredited because of this uprising, they are desperately
attempting to cling to one last defense of the need to subject our
students to a multibillion-dollar testing industry. </span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Charles F. Coleman, Jr. supported this
last ditch effort for the “testocracy” when he took up former Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan’s argument that opposition to standardized
testing was only from out of touch “white suburban moms.” Coleman has in
the past <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-coleman/michael-dunn-verdict_b_4798633.html" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">written pieces in support</u></a> of making black lives matter, but in this careless piece he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-coleman/opting-out-is-the-wrong-c_b_9255936.html" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">dismissed the opt out movement</u></a> as a privileged white effort:</span></p><p style="margin-left:36pt; margin-right:36pt" class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Boycotting
standardized tests may seem like a good idea, but hurts black learners
most….White parents from well-funded and highly performing areas are
participating in petulant, poorly conceived protests that are ultimately
affecting inner-city blacks at schools that need the funding and
measures of accountability to ensure any hope of progress in
performance.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Here are six reasons why Coleman’s
belief that opting out hurts students of color is fundamentally flawed
and why his belief that accountability and academic success require
high-stakes standardized testing is just plain old wrong.</span></p><p class=""><strong class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">1. Extreme over-testing disproportionately harms students of color.</span></strong></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Coleman admits in his essay, “there
should be concerns raised over excessive testing and devoting too much
classroom instruction to test prep.” But he doesn’t acknowledge how
destructive excessive testing has become (especially for children of
color) or credit the opt out movement for revealing the outsized role
that testing is playing in education. No one—certainly not the
media—would even be talking about the excessive testing in schools if it
wasn’t for the opt out movement. And the amount of testing in the
public schools today isn’t just excessive—it’s extreme. The average
student today is <a href="http://www.cgcs.org/cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/4/Testing%20Report.pdf" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">subjected</u></a> to 112 standardized tests between preschool and high school graduation!</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">But the crux of the issue is that the <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/racial_justice_and_testing_12-10.pdf" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">highest concentration</u></a>
of these tests are in schools serving low-income students and students
of color. Schools that serve more black and brown students have become
test-prep factories rather than incubators of creativity and critical
thinking. The corporate education reformers behind high stakes testing,
like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family want their own kids to
have the time and support to explore the arts, music, drama, athletics,
debate and engage in a rich curriculum of problem solving and critical
thinking. Rote memorization for the next standardized tests is good
enough for the rest of us. </span></p><p class=""><strong class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">2. Communities of color are increasingly joining and leading the opt out movement.</span></strong></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">While it’s true that currently the
students opting out are disproportionately white, to portray opting out
as a white people thing is to make invisible the important leadership
role that people of color have played around the country. Chicago
Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, a black women, is one of the most
important leaders in the country against corporate education reform, and
she led the union in the “Let Us Teach!” campaign against high-stakes
testing. The <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2016/03/01/the-testing-resistance-and-reform-movement/" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">Black opt out rate reached 10 percent</u></a>
in Chicago last year. PTA co-chairs Đào X. Trần and Elexis
Loubriel-Pujols at New York City’s Castlebridge Elementary School
(comprising 72 percent students of color) led the opt out movement
there. They gained national prominence and helped to ignite the opt out
movement across the country in 2013 when <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/parents-opt-city-test-article-1.1492127" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">more than 80 percent of families refused to allow their kids to take a standardized test</u></a>. The school had to cancel the test altogether. </span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">One of the largest student protests against high-stakes testing in U.S. history occurred last spring when many <a href="http://www.katc.com/story/28242091/new-mexico-students-join-others-in-nation-against-new-tests" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">hundreds of students</u></a>
in New Mexico—at schools that served 90% Latino students—walked out of
school and refused to take the new Common Core exams. In Ohio, <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2016/03/01/the-testing-resistance-and-reform-movement/" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">a recent study</u></a> shows that communities of color and low-income communities opt out at nearly the same rates as whiter and wealthier ones.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">In my hometown, the Seattle/King County
NAACP hosted a press conference last spring to encourage parents to opt
out of the Common Core tests. As Seattle NAACP president Gerald
Hankerson put it, “…the Opt Out movement is a vital component of the
Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles for social justice in
our region. Using standardized tests to label black people and
immigrants ‘lesser,’ while systematically under-funding their schools,
has a long and ugly history in this country.” </span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Or check out the brilliant podcast, <a href="http://www.progressive.org/pss/new-progressive-education-podcast-gets-heart-philadelphias-opt-out-movement" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">“These Tests Will Go,” The Opt-Out Movement in Urban Philadelphia</u></a>, which<strong class=""> </strong>documents
the uprising of African American parents determined to make their kids
more than a test score and fighting for the programs their kids deserve.</span></p><p class=""><strong class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">3. The federal government hasn’t punished schools for opting out.</span></strong></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Coleman argues that if the number of
students taking the required standardized tests drops below 95 percent,
the government can cut funding to schools, and that will be most
damaging to students of color. However, </span><a href="http://www.fairtest.org/why-you-can-boycott-testing-without-fear" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; text-decoration: none;" class=""><u class="">the federal government has never—not even once—cut funds to a school district for its high opt out numbers</u></a><span style="font-size:14px" class="">.
While No Child Left Behind initially had a provision for penalties
against large opt out numbers, which carried over to the new Every
Student Succeeds Act, the “testocracy” seems to be too afraid to use
this clause.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Moreover, the opt out movement holds the potential to actually <em class="">increase</em>
the amount of school funding. The many millions of dollars wasted on
ranking and sorting our children with standardized tests every year
could be spent on tutoring programs, counseling services, art teachers,
nurses, librarians, music programs, ethnic studies classes, and many
services our children deserve. </span></p><p class=""><strong class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">4.Test-and-Punish policies are cruel and inequitable.</span></strong></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">High-stakes tests are being used around
the country to label children and schools as failing, to prevent kids
from graduating, to fire teachers, and to close schools. Chicago Board
of Education <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/28/chicago_to_shutter_50_public_schools" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">voted</u></a>
in 2013 to close some 49 of the city’s public schools—schools that
served approximately 87 percent black students. In 71 percent of the
schools had a majority of teachers and staff were African-Americans. The
standardized tests the students take register racial and class bias,
measure the lack of resources available to schools, and then provide
cover for shutting them down.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">A review by the National Research
Council concluded high school graduation tests have done nothing to lift
student achievement, but they have raised the dropout rate. African
American, Latino, American Indian and low-income students are far more
likely to be denied a diploma for not passing a test. High stakes tests
often inaccurately assess English language learners—measuring their
understating of English and the dominant culture rather than the subject
they are being tested in. Boston University economics professor Kevin
Lang’s 2013 <a href="http://therealnews.com/t2/?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10458" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">study</u></a>,
“The School to Prison Pipeline Exposed,” links increases in the use of
high-stakes standardized high school exit exams to increased
incarceration rates.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class=""><strong class="">5) Standardized testing was invented by white supremacists and maintains institutional racism today.</strong></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Once you know the history of
standardized tests in public schools, you can never fall for Coleman’s
absurd assertion that, “boycotting standardized tests may seem like a
good idea, but hurts black learners most.” Standardized tests first
entered American public schools in the 1920s, at the urging of
eugenicists whose pseudoscience proclaimed that white males were
naturally smarter. As <em class="">Rethinking Schools</em> <a href="http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/28_03/edit2283.shtml" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">editorialized</u></a>,
“high-stakes standardized tests have disguised class and race privilege
as merit ever since. The consistent use of test scores to demonstrate
first a ‘mental ability’ gap and now an ‘achievement’ gap exposes the
intrinsic nature of these tests: They are built to maintain inequality,
not to serve as an antidote to educational disparities.”</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">One of these early eugenicists was Carl
Brigham, a professor at Princeton University and author of the white
supremacist manifesto, <em class="">A Study of American Intelligence. </em>Brigham
developed the Scholastic Aptitude Test, known as the SAT. Some of the
most important early voices in opposition to intelligence
testing—especially in service of ranking the races—came from leading
African American intellectuals such as <a href="http://iamaneducator.com/2015/04/10/opt-out-now-the-seattle-naacp-revives-the-legacy-w-e-b-du-bois-demands-an-end-to-common-core-testing/" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">W.E.B. Du Bois</u></a> and Howard Long. Horace Mann Bond, in his work “Intelligence Tests and Propaganda,” <a href="http://www.rethinkingschools.org//cmshandler.asp?archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">noted</u></a>
in 1924 what today we call the “Zip Code Effect”—what standardized
tests really measure is a student’s proximity to wealth and the dominant
culture.</span></p><p class=""><strong class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">6. There are better ways than high stakes testing to improve education for children of color.</span></strong></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Coleman asserts that, “Standardized
testing, albeit imperfect, remains one of the best ways to ensure that
teachers, schools, and school districts are held accountable for making
sure children are succeeding.” A huge <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/k-12/authentic%20assessment" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">body of evidence</u></a>
contradicts this statement, and points to the power of an inquiry based
pedagogy, coupled with authentic forms of assessment. Take, for
example, the <a href="http://hechingerreport.org/nyc-schools-that-skip-standardized-tests-have-higher-graduation-rates/" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">New York Consortium Schools for Performance Based Assessment</u></a>.
These fully public schools have a waiver from state tests and instead
use performance-based assessments. Students work with a faculty mentor
to develop an idea, conduct research, and then defend a body of work to a
panel of experts—including school administration, other teachers, and
outside experts and practitioners in the field of study.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">If the testocracy is right—if it’s true
that high-stakes standardized testing is the key to improving
accountability and performance—then these New York consortium schools
that don’t give the state standardized test should be the very worst
schools in New York City. However, <a href="http://performanceassessment.org/articles/DataReport_NY_PSC.pdf" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">comprehensives studies</u></a>
show Consortium Schools have higher graduation rates, better college
attendance rates, and smaller gaps in outcomes between students of color
and their white peers than the rest of New York’s public schools.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class=""><strong class="">Conclusion: Hold the system accountable</strong></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Coleman’s arguments lamenting students
of color score worse on the tests than their white peers—without
acknowledging the ways in which systematic underfunding of schools,
poverty, and institutional racism have disfigured our school system—end
up pathologizing communities of color rather than supporting them. The
U.S. school system is more segregated today than at any time since 1968.
The majority of students attending public school in the U.S. today live
in poverty. The school-to-prison-pipeline (including disproportionate
suspension rates and the use of high-stakes testing) has contributed to
the fact that there are now <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander-more-black-men-in-prison-slaves-1850_n_1007368.html" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">more</u></a> black people behind<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander-more-black-men-in-prison-slaves-1850_n_1007368.html" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class=""> </u></a>bars, on probation, or on parole than were slaves on plantations in 1850. As education professor Pedro Noguera has <a href="http://iamaneducator.com/2015/08/06/jesse-hagopian-and-pedro-noguera-take-on-the-testocracy-in-nationally-televised-debate-is-public-education-in-the-u-s-broken-beyond-repair/" style="text-decoration:none;" class=""><u class="">said</u></a>, “We’ve developed an accountability system that holds those with the most power the least accountable.”</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Our task must be to build multiracial
alliances in the opt out movement that can produce the kind of
solidarity it will take to defeat a testing juggernaut that is
particularly destructive to communities of color—while causing great
damage to all of our schools. And while must begin by standing up to the
multibillion dollar testing industry by opting out, we must also create
a vision for an uprising that opts<em class=""> in</em> to antiracist
curriculum, ethnic studies programs, wrap around services to support the
academic and social and emotional development of students, programs to
recruit teachers of color, restorative justice programs that eliminate
zero tolerance discipline practices, and beyond.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class="">Now, back to writing that opt out letter for my son.</span></p><p class=""><span style="font-size:14px" class=""><img alt="" src="http://www.progressive.org/sites/default/public_files/images/JesseHagopian%20%281%29.jpg" style="border-style:solid; border-width:2px; float:left; height:116px; margin:2px; width:100px" class="">Je<em class="">sse
Hagopian is the Progressive Education Seattle Fellow. Jesse teaches
history and is the co-adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield
High School–the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. </em></span></p><p class=""><br class=""><br class=""></p></div></div></div></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""></body></html>