More Than a Score (29 page)

i've assumed every problem must have a multiple-choice solution

every year since the third grade my future has been led

by the tip of a number two pencil shading in

alphabetized answers on a Scantron

to determine what class i might end up in,

by inhaling test-prep booklets lower, upper or middle

since the third grade I've inhaled test-prep booklets

commanding me to “concentrate,”

“be patient, careful, to choose the correct solution”

or “eliminate answers you know are wrong”

and since the third grade it seems Chicago has choked

on all of the above

except the
process of elimination
.

 

when a board of ed ignores the voice of the throat it plans to close

it shows we are number two

pencils shaven to fill in

applications for Walmart, or boxes of prisons, or row houses

or apartments pushed outside the city,

flushed out, we are number two

to boards of education who are better at plumbing than their namesake  

the school-to-prison pipeline drains so many, so well

when a mayor bullhorns to a city of unions on big shoulders,

and says “no choice, no funding” stiff as a neckache, says eliminate fifty schools

and in the same breath heaves public dollars on a new stadium for DePaul,

and in the same breath regurgitates a request for more charter schools

he suffocates and strangles classrooms packed like sardines,

reeking of sweat & one teacher with merely two hands

not wide enough to hand out quality education

the only cutting in line students fear

is from their district's budget

we are blaming public schools for being stumped

without looking at the root causes

since the third grade fed the illusion we have multiple choices  

but when an unelected board

closes schools

in black and brown neighborhoods for the past decade

it is from new lumber we are hanging

by a thread sewn around our necks

what choices are we given then,

except to become pendants of freedom, too

 

a closed school means a door may block our entrance

but our people were born at the exit,

we stand, we fight back, and we organize,

even after tested by people who control our schools

who have never been inside of them, will never send their children there

because we have numbers, too.

because Santa is a black woman somewhere

wrapping her son's gift to place it under a tree

not see a city hang his future from one

for our schools are pillars, not to be pillaged for capital gain

for our choice will not be determined by a Scantron,

or by politicians who make squad cars out of school buses,

or by developers who displace communities cloaked in an urban
renewal banner

or taken away by a board of education unveiling its splinters.  

 

Modern-Day Slavery

Falmata Seid

The things that I found and will say

sway the opposition in ways that make you reassess your accusations.

We're told the key to success is education, but what's displayed in their legislation is intuitions designed to keep us chained in cages.

Pass back the fact that being black means you can't match white wages

Pass back the fact that it's always Goldman Sachs that drains your life savings

Pass back the fact that it's all done in stages

Please open your eyes; this is modern-day slavery

I've come to the conclusion that these tests are an illusion.

A disguise, a mere mirage for their lies, their crimes, underfunding education, while at the same time feeding potential Einsteins

to school-to-prison pipelines.

It's the system that I'm trying to undermine so if you don't mind

please, let me state some of my own finds:

The US ranks seventeenth in education in the world,

but what we're not told

is that it also ranks number one for the most people incarcerated—2.3 million.

Overcrowding jails to the point where there are more inmates

than there are beds to sleep in.

It costs 63 billion dollars a year to continue paying these businesses that profit off the exploitation of people?

Why is it that 37 percent of black males have not completed high school?

Why is it in Seattle there is a plan under way in my neighborhood to build a 210-million-dollar facility

for the incarceration of more youth like me.

It doesn't make sense. To combat naïve crimes that are oftentimes
nonviolent

with a hostile environment.

Instead we should help these youth by creating programs

that offer jobs that actually will hire them.

Programs that let these youth pursue an education because the public ones don't let them back.

And I'm not talking about creating more of these loosely regulated alternative schools where the only thing they do is groom these students to come back to the prison system because that's cruel.

Start cutting 60,000-dollar costs per inmate and increase the state's spending per student from 7,500 dollars.

See, Washington state spends over 80 million dollars a year on standardized testing. Administer exams like the MAP this spring but can't exactly explain what the test brings?

It's amazing.

These exams are the ones where teachers have no say on how to cater the test to a student's learning

These exams are the ones measured by a metric decided by people who have never faced adversity in their life

These exams are the ones that belittle the hopes and aspirations of kids

who were told to dream big.

These exams are Malcolm X's teacher that told him he couldn't achieve his dreams.

See, Malcolm X dropped out of school at the end of eighth grade.

He was later known by the name Detroit Red.

Now, everything Malcolm did was to accumulate the bread

because he had listened to what his teacher said.

His dreams of becoming a lawyer were, “No realistic goal for a nigger.”

In Malcolm's case he became much bigger

Than that worth his teacher slapped on the sticker.

But tell me, how much different are these tests? No really, how are they different?

They tell a student that despite his many talents if he does not shade in the correct bubble on a test,

that supposedly defines his intellect,

he is doomed to fall,

so next fall,

he contemplates whether he wants to come back at all.

Being a Future Teacher in the Midst
of the Movement

How can you go into the field knowing what is happening to it? Why don't you just stay away?
Like most teachers going into the field, I chose to pursue this profession years ago to make a positive impact on students, similar to how my teachers have made an impact on me. Yet, with about two years being involved in the movement, I have been able to articulate my reasons for continuing to enter into the field with a more clear and concise reasoning: When you see something you love, something you know that needs to be defended, you do not simply run away and hide. You do not accept the attacks passively—you do not assume you have already lost.

No. You stand up and fight like hell to protect it.

Coming to Consciousness

I wasn't always like this. Graduating from high school, I was every No Child Left Behind (NCLB) designer's dream product. I listened to what I was told, never questioned authority or any information I was told, and lacked the capability to critically think about hardly anything. Obey, obey, obey. . . . It did not matter if I knew the HSPA and the TerraNova—our state tests—were a waste of time and failed to measure my or any of my classmates' intelligence—this was just “the way things were,” and there was nothing I could do about it.

Further, just two years ago, I believed that Teach for America was the route to solving educational inequities. I imagined myself as a TFA Corps Member after graduating college. The idea and vision made me all giddy inside. Similarly, after doing a Google search looking for ways to begin working on education issues, I came across Michelle Rhee's “StudentsFirst.” Believe it or not, there was a time I was only a few clicks away from submitting an application to be a campus representative for that organization.

So, how did I eventually see through the manipulative neoliberal rhetoric? And even more important, how did I come to realize that what we do not agree with as students and future teachers is not to be accepted but rather must be challenged and can be changed? In 2011, I first discovered the inequities in our education system during my sophomore year of college. In my Introduction to Education course at Rutgers we read
Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom
by Brian Schultz. It was the first time I learned that there were youth right in our own country—hell, less than a hundred miles away from me—who were forced to endure some of the most oppressive education environments. The most extreme examples included stories from students about inadequate heat in the building, lunches eaten on the floors of the hallways, and classroom windows riddled with bullet holes.

Because of my experience in a suburban public school district in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, I assumed everyone approached school with a neutral lens as I did. I mean, my biggest concern about school growing up was wondering why we didn't have an escalator like another school had, or why our cafeteria was only one floor rather than two. I was unaware that there were students less than twenty to thirty miles away from me who were struggling to afford pencils and notebooks.

Minutes after reading our assigned portion of this book, I could feel my face flush red with anger and confusion. I was not only angry at the mere fact that such conditions existed but also that I was just finding out about these inequities. I vividly remember walking into class waiting to see my classmates in a similar distress. Sadly, I was disappointed. How was it possible that no one else was heated enough to start flipping desks? To march ourselves out of class and protest to our local government? At this point in my life, I didn't even know if protesting was an effective tactic; I just remember being pissed off and wanting to yell at whoever was responsible for such oppressive education environments. In the midst of my frustration, I was even considering changing my entire career path. I began contemplating the idea of becoming a politician, believing I'd have the opportunity to create direct change in our education system. Luckily, when I brought the idea of leaving the profession to my professor, she insisted that the most powerful work we can do regarding these inequities is right inside the classroom. She referred to the work that Schultz did with his students—incorporating civic education and social justice within his curriculum—and I realized that is what I would do, too.