The Revolution Will Not Be Quantified (Seattle boycott solidarity)
This post was a submission to my local Patch news site as part of the national Garfield solidarity day today. Also I would like to thank Katie Strom for some of the information and wording on high stakes tests.
Revolutions are rarely, if ever, sudden. They are a final breaking point – the product of collective acts of resistance over a period of time. When we teach our own American Revolution, it is important to reinforce to students that Lexington and Concord and the Declaration of Independence were the culmination of thirteen years of colonial resistance – sometimes highly organized, sometimes spontaneous, and inclusive of far more events than what makes it into textbooks. When it comes time to write the history of resistance to the so-called education “reform” movement, we will also tell the story of a gradual collection of acts – some individual and anonymous, some concerted and highly visible – that reversed an assault on public education that is not only morally bankrupt, ideologically driven, and flat out factually wrong. The “reformers” obsession with standardization and quantification will be seen for what it is: an educational paradigm of school-as-workforce-preparation aligned with the needs of the American capitalist class rather than with our students’ needs as human beings.
Today is a national day of action in solidarity with the brave teachers in Seattle’s Garfield High School, who are refusing to administer the state standardized test for ninth graders, the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP).