Love work. Hate domination. Ban standardized testing.

Every year at this time I feel the need to write about the same thing I’ve written about this time
of year since I became a public school teacher fourteen years ago and developed the practice
of self-reflection. It’s about testing. I hate it. And I hate feeling compelled to write about it every
year. Over the years I have learned how to channel the anger that this hatred inspires and this
year I’ve decided to focus it on trying to provoke a moratorium on standardized testing in
Seattle.

I know hatred is a strong word but in this case it is appropriate. My favorite Wisdom of the
Fathers right now is “Love work. Hate domination. Don’t get familiar with the authorities.” In spite
of its antiquity this saying strikes a fierce and necessary chord against domination. There is a
dominant hand on display when the testing starts. There are special conditions, special scripts
and the presence of the principal trying to not look nervous. It is evident in the roll out and
execution of the testing process. There is a distinct corporate atmosphere and the security of
the eurocentric content is protected with all of its sanctimonious pomp.

The hatred in this case is focused on the oppressor while the love from this saying is focused on
the things we do. And I love this work I do as a librarian in a school with an under resourced
population, delivering resources on target and on call. I love the fact that my job is social justice
on the go. But when I see what I think of as injustice around me I feel compelled to speak out of
my own privilege and pain. I speak from the shadow of the Nazi holocaust of the Jews which
completely discredited racism and eugenics. Here we are today using the same sorting and
ranking that was done by eugenicists to prove white superiority a century ago. Is that not
hateful? The sorting and ranking nowadays works as a type of mind control on a mass scale
because children believe these numbers have some mysterious power to determine their fate,
when in reality they are the mechanism that locks the hierarchy into place.

The hatred rises to anger which I am hoping prompts action. An action has the power to
promote change. If we are lucky enough to promote change then we will have the opportunity
for the love to take over. If that happens, then we get to do the work we know we should be
doing and that we want to do. If this could be the result of hating domination I wouldn’t turn it
down.

Then there is the realization that hating domination means not only hating the oppressor but
also hating any tendency in oneself to dominate others. I can only go so far as a provocateur
and it would be presumptuous of me to suggest solutions for problems I know nothing about.
We would clearly be moving into uncharted territory with a moratorium. It would take a
monumental effort but I think our challenge and charge deserves no less. There are a lot of
questions and I’m only aware of a few answers but what I have in full surety is the conviction
that ending this practice of stamping our children with these numbers is an anti racist action.

This moratorium would set into motion a series of responses to cope with logistics and to explore
opportunities. It would mean that there would be a period of district wide action research, which
could mean there would be 100 different research questions, one for each school, or schools
could cluster together around common research questions. All of this needs to be developed in
a collaborative effort.

This moratorium is not a move to eliminate standards, in fact it is my opinion that the standards
are too low, too few and too inflexible. They are also too eurocentric. We need to have enough
standards to be able to actually create culturally responsive classrooms. There need to be
enough measures to ensure a custom fit for all students. There also needs to be the realization
that not all standards apply to every individual.

The question comes forward, “If we remove the tests what mechanism will be in place to ensure
an equitable outcome for all students?” But the question assumes that having the tests in place
already ensures equitable outcomes when they don’t. It seems to me that they were designed to
produce unequal outcomes - so the first step in ensuring equitable outcomes is to remove the
mechanism that is preventing them from happening in the first place. Test scores most closely
correlate to zip codes, not intelligence. “Intelligence is as subjective as beauty. When will we
realize that? When will we realize we can not standardize intelligence and test those standards
and exclude people who don’t reach those subjective standards?” - Kendi. The test is the
problem not the solution.

The teaching profession as a whole is worth fighting for and this moratorium would go a long
way to returning power to the teachers which ultimately empowers the families. At this point in
history it is teachers that are leading the way in resistance to the status quo and struggle
against complacency. It is up to the teachers to inspire and instruct our families to advocate for
the best outcomes for their children and for all children, regardless of race, ethnic origin, sexual
identity, status as an ELL, IEP, advanced or struggling learner, by eliminating the most rigid
barrier of them all, standardized testing. It is the authority that we shouldn't be getting familiar with.

Skipping a Page

Whenever I hear a catch phrase like “let’s make sure we are all on the same page”, my body ripples with some species of a slithering revulsion. Even though my mind can track the reasoning, my body has its own response. Especially when the phrase is uttered by the face of corporate reach such as a school principal. My mind understands the reason a “leader” in charge of a team would want to adopt this sort of logic behind team building. It is easy to understand the need for structure if a group of people is actively working toward an objective. But my body knows there is something missing, something wrong with the picture. There is something wrong with the method.

I can remember feeling resentful as a 3rd grader when the teacher said not to read ahead. I didn’t understand the point. If I was interested in the story why should I have to wait for everyone to catch up? What if someone already read it with a parent? I’ve resented many admonitions not to wander off. But now, it is not a physical restriction I resent, it is the mental restriction because staying on the same page denies the existence of all the other pages. Good decision making cannot take place without a full examination of all pertinent pages. Our decision making process is severely handicapped by the notion of all being on the same page.

I fundamentally disagree with anything that smacks of prescriptive mono-culture. When the “leader” asserts that we should be on the page, it feels like a cultural slap in the face and personal attack on my Hebraic roots. Debate cannot be suppressed. Dissent will always exist. Isn’t there something about fencing things in to keep control? Well don't.

Here is what is acceptable, when the intention of being on the same page is to make sure everyone is up to date and filled in. What is not acceptable is using the phrase as a guilt prod to get people to fall in line with the program. That’s what makes the revulsion rise up.

We might settle on a page for a while but we humans are not just settlers, we are also hunter gatherers who seek diversity in our diets. We raise up natural scouts and sharp sighted visionaries. Being fenced into one page is too limiting, counter-productive and anti-multicultural. That  is why I recommend turning the page. Sometimes, you can even skip it.

The Death of a Bad Idea

It takes a long time for a bad idea to die. Although we ended slavery in 1863, the racist idea that empowered the institution of slave ownership is still dying a slow, torturous death. Racism was invented to justify the financial benefits that accrue to the owners of slaves who, in our country, got rich from tobacco, sugar and cotton. Today the same racist idea is used to justify the financial benefits of completely different industries, industries that use standardized testing as a weapon far more effective than shackles. Shackles only restrain the physical body while education based on the standardized testing movement uses mental restraints that numb the mind with its single purpose objective of stratifying society for the benefit of those already on top. Those people certainly don’t want racism to die. They are still getting rich off of it.

Today the same racist idea is being used to justify the financial benefits that accrue to the owners of the entire education industry, an industry that earns $1.7 billion in sales from the tests alone. The test makers also sell curriculum “aligned” to the tests, which is another money maker for them, with profits in the billions. But beyond that, the education industry serves the objectives of those who benefit from the entire profit hungry economy and who pay their underlings according to a “merit” based on the scores earned on these same tests. Many educators are still unaware of how harmful their complicity in the perpetuation of the practice of standardized testing is. But once they are all woken to the nature of the harm done they will join in the liberation efforts of those of us calling for a ban on standardized tests because:

• the tests are racist.
• they reinforce the sense of entitlement for the high scorers and the sense of unworthiness in the low scorers.
• they introduce unhealthy levels of stress into the school community.
• they reduce the learning experience to mere curriculum based on standards generated by distant technocrats.
• of the intoxicating quality of bias confirmation.

There are far too many arguments against the practice of standardized testing to repeat here, from their lack of validity to their inherent biases. It is not my purpose to catalog the erroneous notions about it. Instead, I am focused on the single most significant fact about standardized testing, its racism. And the mental lock that has been put on the well intentioned educators who continue to support it.

Here’s the conundrum for people who put religious faith in standardized testing. For all I might rail against standardized testing and the standards they purportedly measure, I actually want to raise standards not lower them. I want more not fewer standards. I want a set of standards so large that no matter what standards an individual chooses to master, there is a standard for them to use. I want individuals to each master the standards they have chosen from a set of standards as unique as they are. Without prescribed standards we can customize education for each individual's practical needs rather than base it on some unrealizable ideal.

Fighting against standardized testing is part of a liberation movement not just for the students who continue to be abused by the practice but also for the educators who labor under the misconception that testing provides some sort of social good, that testing will help make our society more fair and just because it will help eliminate racial inequality. The exact opposite is the truth, they perpetuate racism, not eliminate it. The achievement gap itself is a racist idea.

We are not going to bargain this because there is nothing to bargain. There is no compromise. We will end racism and to do that we need to ban standardized testing. Once we do that we can focus on helping students make sense of their world rather than trying to standardize them according to the racist premises of our society.