Anti-testing activists honor World of Opportunity, plan national strategy

By Dave Stratman

Thirty grass-roots advocates from around the country met from March 14 to 16 in Birmingham, Alabama at the first-ever Advocates for Children and Teachers National Organizing Workshop (ACT NOW). We had two purposes: to honor Steve Orel and the World of Opportunity (WOO) and to plan national strategy for the anti-high stakes testing movement.

As regular Substance readers know, the World of Opportunity (WOO) was founded nearly three years ago by Steve Orel and other student advocates. The WOO provides an opportunity for students who left or were pushed out of the Birmingham City Schools to gain a GED and obtain meaningful employment using skills acquired at the WOO.

Steve himself had been a teacher in the BCS. His career with the BCS came to an abrupt end when he wrote a term paper showing that school administrators had pushed 522 “low-achieving” students out of the Birmingham schools shortly before a high stakes test was to be administered as a way to boost test scores and when he went public in defense of the pushed-out students. Students who had no intention of leaving school were listed as “Withdrawn,” and labeled as “Lack of Interest.” Those who attempted to be readmitted were denied permission to resume attendance.

WOO is located in a one-floor cinder block structure with an attached trailer, across the road from a large public housing project in a largely black section on the outskirts of Birmingham. Many WOO students, who range in age from 16 to senior citizen, live in the project. As soon as you walk into WOO you are struck by the warmth of the place — not the temperature, but the glow of humanity that comes from every inch of wall space being covered with pictures of WOO students and messages celebrating their many accomplishments.

One of the many inspiring things about WOO is the way that young and old students interact with each other and the roles they play in making WOO work. For example, one of our gracious hostesses was a warm and youthful woman in her 60s. Lucille is a student at WOO and is sharpening her reading skills in preparation for the GED exam. She is also a mentor to the younger students and is a member of the WOO Advisory Board. Several of the younger students were part of the conference for the entire two days, listening intently to the discussions and making up their minds on the issues.

WOO draws inspiration and support from many community members. Grace Moore, who was the first African-American teacher to integrate Hewitt-Trussville, a public school in Jefferson County (where Birmingham is located) is active in WOO and also serves on its Board of Directors. Reverend Gerry Turner, whose ministry includes the jails and prisons in the area, is Chair of the Board. Other community members and activist students serve on the Board, as do several people from other parts of Birmingham.

The first morning of our conference saw participants and WOO students paired up for tutorials focused on different aspects of the GED. It was quite a scene, observing 20 or so students hard at work around the room with our conferees, reading aloud or working through math problems. At the end of the morning, WOO Advisory Board member Glenda Jo Orel led ACT-NOW participants and 15 WOO students through the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, including the site of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church where 4 little girls were killed in 1963.

On the second day, WOO put on a delicious hot-dog luncheon and ACT NOW conducted the 2003 awards ceremony of the Committee to Recognize Courage in Education. Steve Orel and the WOO were presented with a Courage in Education Award for their courageous and tireless efforts on behalf of the young people pushed out of the BCS.

The WOO was also presented with a check in the amount of $9,000, which represents contributions from 48 states plus Cairo, Egypt. Wyoming and Delaware are missing, but maybe Substance readers can rectify this. (See the WOO Address below.)

The WOO then turned the tables and honored several individuals who have contributed to WOO’s success, not least of whom were Susan Ohanian and Gloria Pipkin, who in the last several years have raised money, collected some 5,000 books for the WOO library, and popularized the tragedy of the 522 pushed out students and the success of many of those students at the WOO. Juanita Doyon (Spanaway, WA) was honored for the WOO logo which she designed and the buttons, stickers, and t-shirts which she has made for WOO students. Bill Cala (Fairport, NY) was honored by the WOO for his courage in leading the Fairport Board of Education to oppose high stakes testing. Gloria Pipkin and ReLeah Lent (Florida) were honored for their book, “Silent No More: Voices of Courage in American Education,” (Heinemann, 2003) which shares the story of the WOO students. Gloria presented complimentary copies of their book to WOO students, staff, and supporters who are chronicled in the book.

All of us visiting WOO for the first time were deeply moved by the experience. Many of us felt that it provided a glimpse of what schools could be like.

The business meetings of the ACT NOW conference resulted in two great accomplishments: we agreed on the general strategy for building the movement, and we constituted ACT NOW as a new national organization committed to carrying it out.

Juanita Doyon, anti-testing button-maker extraordinaire from Washington State, chaired the business portion of the first day of the conference, which consisted largely of people introducing themselves and reporting on activities in their states. (Almost none of us knew each other except as email signatures; this was our first face-to-face meeting.)

Susan Ohanian chaired the second day and led off by asking, “Why are these things happening? Why are students and teachers under attack by high stakes tests and other destructive education reforms?”

There appeared to be general agreement that high stakes testing is part of a big business strategy to instill fear, lower young people’s expectations, and create a pool of cheap labor by denying high school diplomas to large numbers of students. People also saw these tests as an attack on teachers.

Then Susan asked, “What strategy makes sense to defeat these reforms?”

I described my experiences in 1985, when I was hired by the Minnesota Education Association to help it defeat the Minnesota Business Partnership Education Reform Plan, which would have changed the Kindergarten through 12 (K-12) public education system into a K-10 system. Every student would leave school at the end of the 10th grade; the top 20% of students would be invited back for a pre-college program.

The Business Partnership claimed that its proposals were intended to give students more personal freedom. We answered, “No, you’re trying to lower students’ expectations and drive thousands of young people out of school without a diploma, so the only work they can get is flipping hamburgers or working in the stockyards.”

We defeated the Business Partnership Plan by exposing its real purpose. The MEA had 37,000 members at the time; in six weeks, about 25,000 teachers went through local training workshops and emerged very clear and highly motivated against the Plan.

I posed the question, “What are the risks to Big Business in the fight over education reform?” Right now the movement mainly just points to the negative effects of these reforms; meanwhile corporate and government leaders claim to speak with the best interests of the whole community at heart and say that teachers and parents are just “special interest groups” who don’t want to be held accountable. As long as the movement protects them from exposure, the business forces can continue their attack on us at no political cost to them.

The risk to the corporate powers is that their real motives might be exposed, so that parents and teachers and the public could see that these reforms are part of a corporate strategy to instill fear and sharpen inequality and competition, and that they are part of the same strategy that is decimating people’s pensions and health care and making war in Iraq. This is the way to build a real movement.

People fleshed out this approach with many insightful comments. George Sheridan pointed out the need to keep our analysis grounded in what is happening to children in the classroom. Mary Gale Budzisz said, “The corporations want to run you and take away any sense of ownership from your work.” Norm Scott pointed out that “the schools in many places were awful” before these reforms. Rhonda Shelburne spoke of the divisive effects of No Child Left Behind because the schools’ scores are published; she said that in her community in Florida, “It’s all about forcing kids to work for $5.25 an hour in the tourist industry.” Nancy Creech pointed out that the psychological integrity of children is under attack through the tests; parents are being told that they don’t really know their children — only the “scientific” test numbers do. Judi Hirsch spoke of the need to ally parents and teachers. Gloria Pipkin said “We must create opportunities in the communities for parents to talk about what education should be like.”

Carol Holst said that, in her experience, parents were most open to seeing the corporate role in the tests where the economy is in trouble. Susan said that, “This shows the power of making connections — explaining to parents that what’s happening to their third grader is the same thing that’s being done to them at work.” Alan Young said, “People are living under a politics of fear. We have to offer them a politics of hope.”

Then Bill Cala, the outspoken superintendent of Fairport, NY, proposed that we form a new national organization to be called ACT NOW and that this be its founding convention. Bill also asked that the group endorse three courageous resolutions that his school board was scheduled to vote on the following Wednesday. The resolutions call on the state to rescind all unfunded mandates passed since 1995, to rescind all Commissioner’s regulations since 1995, and require the superintendent to return the state’s high stakes tests to the Commissioner ungraded. (The Fairport School Board passed these resolutions unanimously on March 19.)

On a motion offered by George Sheridan, we formed a national organization called ACT NOW. We also voted to send a letter of support to the Fairport School Board. In addition we endorsed a letter opposing abuses of standardized testing for Sue Allison to use in her efforts at the Maryland legislature.

Susan, Judi Hirsch, Eldon Lee, and Dave Stratman volunteered to draft a brochure, a statement of principles, and a mission statement for the approval of the whole group, reflecting the agreed-upon strategy. Susan Ohanian was elected National Spokesperson of ACT NOW by acclamation.

We adopted a temporary mission statement until we could further refine one through more discussion: “The mission of ACT NOW is to develop opposition to high stakes testing and the No Child Left Behind legislation.”

The strategy of ACT NOW is to spread an understanding among teachers, parents, and students of why they are under attack by these corporate-inspired reforms, and to build national and community-based resistance. ACT NOW activities will include:

• organizing national and regional conferences
• distributing literature
• maintaining a Speakers Bureau
• taking stands in support of state and local actions and legislation
• launching media campaigns
• soliciting grassroots involvement from people usually not heard from in policy discussions
• awarding the annual Courage in Education Award to a deserving individual.