Viva la Resistance!
Testing is the bane not only of students but of teachers. There is pretty much no other effective way to dismantle the entire American education system then the endless barrage of testing we have come to adopt. Georgia students must take three batteries of state and federal tests—first, there is the Georgia High School Graduation Test. Graduation tests began in Texas and I think has since spread to every state in the union—if there’s a state that doesn’t have it, I would seriously love to teach there. In Georgia, they plan to one day replace the High School Graduation test with End of Course Tests. You see, Georgia thinks I’m incompetent and so all of my students are required to take a test which is designed by the state and that I am not allowed to see. This test counts as 15% of their grade for my class and there is currently a plan to put their scores on their high-school transcripts. The End of Course Test is still in the experimental stages, so current students have to take both the four subjects of the graduation test and the End of Course Tests. On top of all that are the federal No Child Left Behind Tests for reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic. I have taught in three states, and I have never met a teacher—democrat or republican—who thinks No Child Left Behind is a good idea.The private schools don’t have to put up with all this bullshit. Those who can afford to go to private school are getting a better education because of, and not inspite of, government interference. I will now tell you the true, secret reason for these tests—I should have put it on this blog a year ago when I first discovered the secret: it’s simple pork barrel politics. The textbook companies bribe state and federal politicians to impose the testing. The allows corporations not only to profit by selling the tests to schools, but it allows them to produce study guides which go for $20 a pop. And since I’m not allowed to see the tests, the study guides are better than I could ever be.
Now my students are often so poor they literally don’t know when they’ll get their next meal. I once had to give a student a Powerbar after school because hunger pangs were preventing him from concentrating. Of course they are not going to pay $100 to buy five study guides for these tests. So my department did the only Christian thing to do: we made illegal photocopies of the review guides and gave them to our students. Somehow, the corporation found out and sent us a cease and desist letter. These corporations are literally holding student’s educations for ransom. Now you know. Tell the world.
In the ghetto, Hitler would incorporate Judenrat as liaisons between to the Nazis. Judenrat were responsible for a number of duties including deporting Jews to death camps. Divide and conquer. It’s an old trick used to oppress a population. As teachers and educators, we all hate the oppression of the testing: except the testing coordinators whose jobs have been created by the oppression. These are Bush’s Judenrat.
It is apt to compare our school’s testing conditions to a Nazi ghetto: at least in terms of the way everyone suddenly begins to follow orders to the point of madness. For example, we have to check the ID of every student who walks in to take that test: students who don’t have picture IDs must run to find a teacher who knows them can tell the proctor that yes, this really is Tavarrus Jones and not a genius with dreads and a hooded sweat-shirt who has been hired by the real Tavarrus Jones to take a test for him. I actually saw a senior teacher tell a class that they could be arrested and taken to jail for not having and ID! (While proctoring, I am also required to escort students to the bathroom, to make sure they are not accessing hidden stashes of information to help them on the test.)
Yesterday, I had to pace around a classroom for three hours proctoring one of these fucking tests. After the test I was given half an hour for lunch which was the only break I had between 7:20 and 3:00. (Naturally, I spilled coffee on myself and spent to break in the bathroom cleaning my shirt off.) I suffered through this though, because, I had been promised that today I would have time to create lesson plans and grade papers instead of taking a test. Wrong.
I arrived to work today to find a notice in my box that I was required to proctor make-up testing for students who had evaded the tests that had been run all-week. Lesson learned: never check your mailbox. This brings me to the real inspiration for this blog entry: I hate our testing coordinator. Our Judenrat is a faded blond, Southern battle-axe who embodies all the worst attributes of any Southern woman, bureaucrat, or high-school teacher you have ever met.
As a Judenrat, she is technically outside of the student-teacher-administrator hierarchy. However, she has apparently been doing various tasks around the high-school (mostly teaching gym) for a very long time. Furthermore, she manages to intimidate teachers by invoking mysterious powers of “the state.” As in, The state ain’t gonna be happy campers if you screw this up!’
I am fairly certain the Judenrat hates me too. She has told me in front of an administrator that she thinks history is pointless and not worth studying. (This from a woman who coordinates standardized tests!) Also, she has dropped in on department meetings where she has mentioned me by name in front of my colleagues as an example of the incompetence that “the state doesn’t like.” After she left, I told my department I was going to hold a really nice retirement party for her someday.
The real reason I hate the Judenrat is that she is constantly pressuring me to kick my students out of school. For a teacher, that’s a pretty hate-able offense. You see, I have students who have been dropped by every other teacher except me. If I drop the student, not only will society have completely failed to give them an education, but their scores will not be counted towards the school’s testing averages. So the Judenrat constantly sends me e-mails urging me to drop students so that their scores can be thrown out. As if our school is EVER going to famous for its test scores! The Judenrat also assumes that these students must have violated our attendance policy but that I am too incompetent to notice. It has apparently never occurred to her that students might actually be attending my class because they LIKE it.
I spent a lot of time today pacing around a room full of testing students and thinking about the Judenrat. I realized she is tall and skinny and blond, but has spent far too many years in the Georgia sun. Then it occurred to me, she probably developed her personality while she was young and beautiful and people would tolerate any abuse she wanted to dish out. Now they tolerate it because they fear her imagined authority.
After a few hours the woman who had been assigned to me as a proctor turned to me and said, “I can’t stand this anymore. You leave and do some work for an hour. Then come back I’ll leave.” I knew the Judenrat would be angry, but I had to prepare materials for my classes. “Work” involved sneaking from my desk to the Xerox machine to make copies for my students while avoiding the patrolling testing coordinators. I stepped into a hallway carrying a stack of freshly made worksheets only to see the back of a faded blonde head. I ducked back behind a coordinator. Where I had I seen this before? Oh right, that seem in The Breakfast Club where the students are trying to sneak back into detention—except I’m a grown man with an Ivy-League education.
I am realizing that I can do very little as a teacher to change this system from within. All I can do is tell my story and try to create the political will to bring down the entire system from Bush, to his masters in the text book companies, to the little Judenrat who thinks history is worthless. Viva la resistance!
