Re: [five-point-plan] High-Stakes Testing and Maximum-Security

[Dave Stratman <Newdem@AOL.COM>]

In a message dated 8/1/2001 11:06:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu writes:

>
> >Dear Brothers and Sisters in Action Against Racism:
> >
> >ERASE (Expose Racism and Advance School Excellence) in
> >conjunction with the Applied Research Center (ARC) is
> >planning a National Day of Action on October 30th, 2001
> >to protest high-stakes testing and maximum-security
> >school environments.
> >
> >High-stakes testing (the SAT 9 and the High School Exit
> >Exam) is being used by the Bushes and Clintons and corporate
> >executives such as Louis B. Gerstner Jr. of IBM and Donald
> >Fisher of GAP to keep low-income people, particularly people
> >of color and students who use English as a second language,
> >from graduating from public schools and from obtaining a
> >higher education. Standardized testing is an effort to
> >brainwash every student in America into accepting
> >globalized slavery.
> >
> >Every person and group devoted to freedom of thought and
> >equality must understand that standardized high-stakes
> >testing is one of the most insidious and all encompassing
> >efforts ever made to capture the hearts and minds of every
> >public school kid in the US. All state school districts
> >(except Iowa) have been seized by corporate interests that
> >have mandated these tests. The effort to force teachers to
> >give standardized tests has been going on since 1989, when
> >George Bush Sr., in conjunction with conservative corporate
> >leaders (and excluding all educators) called together the
> >first National Education Summit.
> >

Hi, Pete--

I've been meaning to thank you for your string of very informative posts on
the Five Point Plan list--all except for this one.

I disagree with the approach of this group, "ERASE (Expose Racism and Advance
School Excellence)" on a number of counts:

1. The word "racism" is one of the most over-used and misused of words and
concepts on the left. Its use in the context of high stakes testing takes an
issue which impacts negatively everyone who is required to take or teach to
these tests and suggests that the tests impact negatively only on "low-income
people, particularly people of color and students who use English as a second
language." This approach tends to split off white or middle-class test takers
and test-opponents from minority or low-income test-takers and opponents--a
result which test promoters, at least here in Massachusetts, are trying
mightily to achieve. It makes testing a "special issue," impacting only a
relatively narrow segment of the population rather than the large majority of
people in our society.

2. Depicting testing in terms of racism also distorts the analysis of the
forces behind testing. Notice that the ERASE statement speaks in terms of
"conservative corporate leaders," as if "liberal corporate leaders" would
somehow be OK. What I mean is that the analysis here seems to back away from
exposing capitalism or the corporate system as the problem, and to suggest
rather that the problem is only with certain--conservative--corporate leaders.

3. Depicting testing in terms of racism also leaves the door open to
suggesting that testing is a white attack on black and Hispanic youngsters.
This actually is what one facilitator at a CARE conference in Boston in 2000
charged (a charge he repeated on the CARE list). It would be difficult to
imagine a more misleading, divisive, and despicable approach to the testing
issue.

As you know, I believe that education reform is part of a broader capitalist
counteroffensive against the global revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s and
early 1970s. This counteroffensive--which includes welfare reform, the
destruction of social programs, NAFTA, corporate "downsizing," the temping of
labor, TQM, speed-up, and a dozen other things--is intended to make people
more insecure and vulnerable and powerless.

This capitalist counteroffensive invites and demands a revolutionary
response. Any of these issues which we choose to take on is related to all
the others and to the undemocratic, unequal, and competitive nature of our
society. We need to pursue these issues in terms that allow us to make the
connections among all the issues and that enable us to unite the great
majority of people in an effort to break the stranglehold of corporate power
on our society and create a true democracy. The only answer to high stakes
testing or to any of these other problems is to build a revolutionary
movement. The ERASE approach seems to me to be a real step away from building
the kind of movement that we need.

Dave Stratman
Editor, New Democracy
www.newdemocracyworld.org
5 Burr Street
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-4073