More Than a Score Read Online Free PDF

Under normal circumstances I am opposed to extrinsic motivators in education and I am a very strong proponent of fostering intrinsic motivation, but at that moment I got desperate and made this offer: “If you side with us, when CNN comes to interview us for our national day of action in support of the boycott, we would be proud to say that we have a real educational leader here in Seattle.” Those words brought the meeting to a quick close as Mr. Banda thanked us for our time and moved to principal Ted Howard’s office for a closed-door meeting.
    From the beginning, the Garfield High School faculty had been impressed with Principal Howard’s thoughtful approach to the boycott and his true understanding of our concerns. We also knew that he and other administrators were under immense pressure from the school district to make the boycott end. We hoped that behind that door plans were not being made to sanction any of us, but our true fear was that the school district had found the Achilles’ heel of our effort and would successfully circumvent our boycott. If the MAP were successfully given to students by the administration, the lesson people would draw around the country would be that you can attempt to boycott a test, but in the end the test-pushers are too powerful.
    At this point, if the boycott were to succeed, students—with the support of their parents—would have to go beyond a vote of support and become active participants. It was then that our social movement really caught fire. I had only read and taught about these moments in history, but I’d never experienced one myself. My parents had talked about their involvement in protesting the US war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and working to end apartheid in South Africa, but I had often wondered if I would be limited to teaching about mass struggles rather than participating in one.
    Students, on their own initiative, produced a flyer that declared their right to refuse to take the test. Juniors and seniors—even those with the well-documented and seriously debilitating disease known as “senioritis”—got to school early and distributed the broadside to their younger classmates as they arrived. The PTSA simultaneously notified parents of their right to opt children out of the test. Emails were sent, phone calls were made, and the very day after our meeting with the superintendent, dozens of parents sent opt-out letters in opposition to the misuse and overuse of standardized testing.
    Coerced administrators, however reluctantly, entered classrooms to read off lists of students who were to accompany them to the library to take the MAP, some for the second time this year (the third round of testing was scheduled for spring). Many students refused to leave their seats. They were enacting a sit-in in their own classrooms, exercising the right to refuse to be reduced to a test score. Other students marched off to the computer lab, only to express their creative defiance by repeatedly hitting the “A” key, completing the test in mere seconds and thus rendering their test scores invalid.

    Suspend the Test, Not the Teachers
    In the midst of this collective defiance we organized a national day of action to support Seattle’s MAP test boycott on February 6, 2013. We were overwhelmed by the show of solidarity. The Seattle NAACP held a press conference in solidarity with the MAP boycott, and James Bible, then the Seattle/King County president of the NAACP, joined rallying Garfield teachers to proclaim that the MAP test was part of exacerbating racial disparities because of its use as the gatekeeper to the advanced placement program that enrolled white students disproportionately as compared with students of color. Teachers at Berkeley High School in California held a lunchtime rally to support the MAP boycott and to speak out against the abuses of standardized testing. In Chicago, a parent organization called