World of Opportunity background

By Steve Orel

[The following is an excerpt taken from a September 2000 online conference “Roots of Resistance”.]
A wonderful new program called World of Opportunity arose in 2000 from out of the rubble of a skirmish with Birmingham City Schools over the misuse of standardized testing.
World of Opportunity offers exploration and discovery of careers, skills, adult education, and literacy to poor and working class adults and young adults in our community.
In March of 2000, I noticed an unusual influx of high school students enrolling in the Birmingham City Schools Adult Education Program where I instructed. The students presented similar documentation from their high schools, which stated, “Withdrawn. Reason: Lack of Interest.” The mere fact that these students were standing in our classroom, eager to continue their studies, contradicted the notion of a “lack of interest,” to me. These students told us they were not referred to our adult education program. They found us on their own initiative.
When I asked my supervisors and other instructors what was the meaning of these withdrawals, I learned that the students who came to our program were administratively withdrawn prior to the administration of the SAT9 test. I found some other common characteristics. All of the pushed out students I came in contact with were African American teenagers. Many were not functioning at their grade level. Many had poor attendance habits. None had voluntarily withdrawn. Some had gone back to the school with their parents and guardians trying to get re-enrolled but they were refused. Several of the students were actually pushed out of school precisely on their 16th birthdays.
Even some of my superiors told me that the reason the students were withdrawn was to remove low achieving (i.e., low scoring) students out of the test pool with the aim of raising SAT9 scores. Six local high schools were placed on an academic alert status by the State Department of Education. Low SAT9 scores this year would mean school takeovers by the state, and the local Board of Education was apparently willing to do anything to prevent that.
Ms. Virginia Volker is one of two student advocate members (along with Ms. Mary Moore) of our local Board of Education. She inquired about the withdrawal situation at Board meetings, but could not get straightforward answers. When she raised her inquiry publicly, the local media began to cover the issue of the withdrawn students.
As my knowledge of the withdrawals increased I wrote a term paper for a course at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), entitled, “In what direction is education heading when we view our students as ‘interfering’ with student achievement test scores?” The paper challenged the significance and misuse of standardized tests. The term paper documented the withdrawals and included statements from some of our students. Somehow, without my permission, my term paper was turned over to the Board of Education.
At first the Board administration denied that there were any mass withdrawals at all. They said that they looked into the situation and there was no merit to the allegations.
Within a few days, they conceded that 115 students had been withdrawn at one high school alone, and by the end of July they admitted that in fact 522 students, or 5.6 percent of the entire high school student body in this city, were withdrawn for “lack of interest” in 1999-2000.”
The Board began demonizing the withdrawn students. They publicly characterized these students as thugs, hoodlums, arsonists, even rapists. They blamed the withdrawn students for all of the chaos in the local high schools. One Board representative challenged the public to “walk in our shoes and spend a week in school with these students.” That challenge was my opportunity to speak out and defend the students who had enrolled in our adult education program.
I responded to all of the slanders made against the students by explaining that those who enrolled in our program buckled down, and tried their best to complete their assignments. They applied for library cards, began taking books home to read, and those over 18 registered to vote. They engaged in dialogue journal writing assignments and began to reflect on their schooling, lives, careers, ambitions and insecurities. I explained that there had not been one single fight, nor fire, nor disruption by the withdrawn students who enrolled in our program. In fact, several attended class during Spring Break and into the Summer even though their classmates were not in school. Most had made measurable progress in our program. One student had designed a website.
In late June, I was called on the carpet by the Board administration and asked about my term paper. They wanted to know whether I had received permission to conduct research on this matter (My paper was a term paper, not a research paper). I was also asked whether I had received permission before making my public statements to the press in which I defended the students. At no time was I ever asked whether my allegations that students had been pushed out of school were accurate, or more importantly, what we could do to retrieve the pushed out students and get them back into the educational fold.
In early July my supervisor abruptly shut down our summer program altogether. In March and April, the students were pushed out of school, and now in July, they were locked out once more.
The students and parents shared with me what had happened to them and I felt it was critical to get their stories out. Consider the statement of Brad, a recently “withdrawn” student who described the situation at his high school:
“I used to be a student in Birmingham. About two or three months ago, there was a school assembly. Everyone in the school attended the assembly. The principal...spoke to us.
“The principal said that he didn’t want any students to interfere with the SAT scores. He said that the SAT scores were already low, and that the State was going to take over. He said that he would try to get out the students out of the school who he thought would bring the test score down. He also gave us this same message over the intercom a couple of times after that.
“On the last day that I went to school, I was told to report to the principal’s office because my name was not on the roster. I was given a withdrawal slip which said“‘lack of interest.’
“I did miss a lot of school days. I had family problems. I had allergies. I wanted to get back in school so I enrolled in a continuing education program in early April and have been attending regularly.”
Within two weeks of being withdrawn for “lack of interest,” Brad enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship construction training program and an Adult Basic Education GED preparation class just a couple of miles from the school he was expelled from. Now, does Brad sound like a student who “lacked interest”? And he is typical of the character of a pushed out student with whom I had the joy of working.
I asked and received permission to speak at a Board meeting, at which time I presented a proposal to retrieve the withdrawn students and get them back into an intense reading remediation program at their respective schools. The Board gave me 3 minutes to present my views. What was their response? The Birmingham City Schools terminated me the next day.
From the very outset, administrators within the academic and teaching community cautioned me that my job would not survive bringing these revelations to the light of day. But I knew that I was speaking the truth and I was duty-bound to defend our students. There seemed no choice to me but to speak the truth, stand beside the students I worked with, and try to put an end to this standardized test-driven madness.
I stumbled across this pushed out situation, and I was compelled to speak the truth. Birmingham, Alabama is one of the cradles of the civil rights movement in this country. As a civil rights and human rights community, we tend to cherish our children with a special passion unique to our city. We know where hatred, bigotry, and anti-humanitarian views can lead. The death of four little girls and two young men on September 15, 1963, is forever etched into the psyche and humanity of our community. This is why this enormous pushout of 522 high school students is especially difficult to comprehend and so very tragic. Since the pushouts began, at least one of these students, 16 year old Timothy Harrison, has been shot and killed on the streets.
A very interesting chain of events has taken place since I was fired. Our program had been a very successful and thriving program last year. In fact, our participants received quite a few awards for our literacy and GED work. When word got out that I was fired, I was offered a position by Catholic community activists, as Assistant Director / Lead Instructor of an expanded adult education program which was reopening at the exact same location. This would afford me an opportunity to work with many of the same students. Opportunities like this do not come often in a lifetime. So, despite the fact that I had to take severe cuts in income and benefits, I wholeheartedly accepted the job.
When Birmingham City Schools learned that I had been hired by another agency, they pulled out of the partnership completely, taking boxes and boxes of text books and testing materials with them.
Despite this setback, the World of Opportunity opened its doors on September 5, 2000. As I submit this update, 67 students have enrolled in the World of Opportunity program and this is only our 12th day of operation.
Many of the students have been pushed out of their former high schools. They see the World of Opportunity as a second chance, or as one student put it, “making ways out of no way.” As much as possible, we are matching instructors and tutors to work one-on-one with our students in literacy, GED preparation, and exploring and discovering job and career skills for employment or promotions.
One of the biggest boosts to our program and spirits came from support which we received from activists on the Assessment Reform Network (ARN) e-mail list. When our program was shut down and I was fired, education reformers from around the country wrote letters urging the local and state boards of education to reinstate the 522 pushed out students and rehire me. Another important source of support is the National Coalition of Advocates for Students who filed a freedom of information request with Birmingham City Schools to determine the scope of the pushout problem.
Our lifeline has been the concrete assistance which Susan Ohanian (Vermont), and Gloria Pipkin (Florida) have organized through the Committee to Recognize Courage in Education (CRCIE). The Ohanian/Pipkin team solicited donations for books to replace those removed from our premises and donations from their contacts around the country. We have received hundreds of dictionaries, text books, reference books, history books, novels, children’s books (the majority of our students are parents and they are now reading more with their children). We have accumulated a substantial library in our building, and we also are in a position to give away books to our students and encourage them to build their own libraries at their homes (and we are holding on to books for some of our homeless students who have no place other than our school to store their books).
Locally, through the efforts of the Catholic community, and also by secular activists like myself who work with the Birmingham Human Rights Project, we are making this school a success story. Several Alabama civil rights attorneys have also been a great assistance to right the wrongs against the pushed out students and my termination.
I never intended to work outside of the public school system, but after I was fired and sent into exile, this was the only way to continue working with and teaching these students.