A Chicago Teacher Explains How Her School Fought Back Against Standardized Testing—And Won

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17412/a_chicago_teacher_explains_how_her_school_fought_back_against_standardized


t was testing day. I had just read the directions, which instructed my students to fill in the bubble of the letter that corresponds to the best answer choice and the students had dutifully began reading passages and darkly shading bubbles with their number-two pencils.

All the students had begun except for one of my eleven-year-old boys at the end of the row of desks, who had stalled and was slouched over his test booklet. I watched as he plucked out his black eyelashes one by one, agonizing over a standardized test that would determine, in part, my efficacy as teacher and contribute to the overall rating of our school.

In that moment, I thought to myself, “This over-testing is child abuse.” I cannot inflict this mental and emotional harm on one more student. That’s when the word “boycott” first flashed across my mind.

This is the story of how an emotion became a movement in which the parents, students, and teachers of Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy organized to reclaim the classroom and demand that students are more than a test score.

Boycotts do not just happen—they are organized. The testing boycott at my school was strategically planned with a multifaceted approach that included teacher, parent and student support. Although the planning and implementation of this strategy occurred in a one-month span, the agitation around over-testing and employee power in the school organizational structure was built over a couple of years.