More Than a Score (28 page)

Because the PPS Student Union was not as involved with these actions, it was not split apart by the bitter debates that surfaced during the walkout. However, the financial support we received from the school district was disappearing. Student trips to Salem that were easily funded by PPS in the past suddenly could not be organized. Our adult adviser, who once spoke in support of the opt-out campaign, began to aggressively insert her pro-OAKS opinion to stall organizing. When I reached out to her to find a way to work together, she refused to meet or to return my phone calls and emails. Yet Andrea would send out emails to all the students, the board, and the superintendent about how I was “a child” and how there was “some type of relationship established with [me] and a few PAT members” and how we had an “agenda.” My principal told me that she had heard rumors around PPS that I did not actually listen to students' voices, and that I was racist.

This hostile environment made it difficult for the PPS Student Union to proceed with the campaign. It showed that Portland Public Schools only cared for student voices when it benefitted them. The second we opposed their agenda we were belittled and financially cut off, and our opinions were dismissed.

We did our best to not let this faze us. The PPS Student Union continued on its quest for high-quality assessment. Students stepped up and financed sending five students to Seattle for spring break in late March to visit Garfield High School and talk with Garfield students about their experience with the MAP boycott. We sent students to Salem, Oregon, to lobby for a higher education budget and in support of House Bill 2664—three times throughout February and March. We were able to achieve a lot without the support from Portland Public Schools, although the open attacks from PPS left students feeling hopeless, divided, and frustrated to the point that some decided to leave our organization.

By the spring, the most stable Portland Student Union branch was the Cleveland Student Union. Cleveland High School's OAKS testing had yet to come and chatter of a walkout was increasing on the Facebook walls of student activists. We set the date for April 18 at 10:30 a.m. for Cleveland High School students to walk out on being reduced to a score and walk in to the movement for a student-centered education. When Cleveland's administration found out about our plans for a walkout, they mobilized. First they threatened to prevent students who walked out from running for student government. Then they sent notes home to parents about the importance of taking the OAKS tests. Students who turned in opt-out forms were denied their right to opt out. However, students simply refused to test in numbers so large that their administration was overwhelmed and did not take any further action.

Fliers were passed out, banners were made, and a PA system was set up outside the school. On the planned date and time about seventy Cleveland High School students walked out of their front doors chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, standardized testing has got to go!” and carrying banners that read, “I Am a Student, Not a Test Score” and “Education Is Not a Commodity.” After two students gave speeches, they took to the streets and lapped the school, chanting. It was absolutely amazing.

If there's one thing I've learned from our student organizing, it's that organizations do not necessarily care that a student voice is authentic as long as it can be used to further their own agendas. From Stand for Children, Students Matter, and StudentsFirst to Portland Public Schools, the list of organizations influencing and implementing policies in public education goes on and on. These groups are happy to claim that their standardized tests, their contract proposals, and their agendas of privatization and union destruction are what's best for students. They're happy to put students' faces on their materials and to have students volunteer for them. In the case of Portland Public Schools, PPS was more than happy to provide food, transportation, and adult advisers as long as PPS could exploit students to support their agenda.

However, the minute students begin to question the authenticity of such organizations, we are met with withdrawal of financial support, dismissal of our opinions, and complete disrespect. By simply asking for the teachers union's opinion, or proposing that students and teachers should not be evaluated based on how well students can pick A, B, C, or D gave PPS permission to leave us behind.

Our year ended there, but the battle continues. The PPS Student Union continues under the name “PPS Student Association,” and the students are rewriting district policy to ensure the PPS Student Association officially exists under board policy. Andrea Wade, our adult adviser, was moved to a different department in PPS and has been replaced by PPS's political consultant Jon Isaacs. I've heard that whenever the actions taken by the PPS Student Union in 2012–13 are brought up, Jon Isaacs changes the conversation. From what I can tell, PPS was successfully able to rein in those students. The Portland Student Union remains in its rebuilding phase. It ran an incredible PAT Solidarity Campaign in the 2013–14 school year during the contract negotiations between PPS and PAT. From walkouts to mic checks the students proved stronger than ever.

poems

High School Training Grounds

Malcolm London

He who owns the youth, gains the future.

—Adolf Hitler

At 7:45 a.m.

I open the doors to a building dedicated to building

Yet only breaks me down

I march down hallways

Cleaned up after me every day by regular janitors

But I never have the decency to honor their names

Lockers left open like teenage boys' mouths

When girls wear clothes that cover their insecurities but show everything else

Masculinity mimicked by men who grew up without fathers

Classrooms overpacked like bookbags

Teachers paid less than what it cost them to be here

Oceans of adolescents come here to receive lessons

But never learn to swim

Part like the Red Sea when the bell rings

This is a training ground

 

My high school is Chicago

Diverse and segregated on purpose

Social lines are barbed wire

Hierarchy burned into our separated classrooms

Free to sit anywhere but reduced to divided lunch tables

Labels like “regular” and “honors” resonate

Education misinforms, we are uniformed

Taught to capitalize letters at a young age

Taught now that capitalism raises you

But you have to step on someone else

To get there,

This is a training ground

Sought to sort out the regulars from the honors

A recurring cycle

Built to recycle the trash of this system

I am in “honors” classes

But go home with “regular” students

Who are soldiers in a war zone in territory that owns them

When did students become expendable?

CPS is a training ground

Centered on personal success

CPS is a training ground

Concentration on professional suits

CPS is a training ground

One group is taught to lead and the other is made to follow

No wonder so many of my people spit bars because the truth is hard to swallow

The need of degrees has left so many of my people frozen

 

I had a 1.9 GPA

I got drunk before my ACT and still received a 25

Now tell me how I am supposed to act?

Homework is stressful

But when you go home every day and your home is work

You don't want to pick up any assignments

Reading textbooks is stressful

But reading doesn't matter when you feel your story is already written

Either dead or getting booked

Taking tests is stressful

But bubbling in a Scantron doesn't stop bullets from bursting

Our direction hasn't changed

When our board of education is driven by lawyers and businessmen

One teacher sits on our boards

Now what does that teach you?

We all know the drill

I hear that education systems are failing

But I believe they are succeeding at doing what they're built to do

To train you

To keep you on track

To track down an American dream that fails so many of us all

 

Multiple Choice

Malcolm London

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.

—Denis Waitley

every morning in the third grade

I stood to pledge allegiance to a flag dangling in the front of my class.

I had not learned yet how crushed windpipes hanging

in the same fashion

were pendants of freedom, too.

before freedom was a choice to cross the street alone,

eat candy for breakfast or not bathe . . .

before I knew Santa Claus was a black woman

scraping together her last to see a smile sled

across her son's face on a winter morning,