Over the last ten days, I have taken my advocacy agenda
regarding reform in public education out of the blogosphere and onto the
streets.
As a current exiled academic in the field of education studies (I hold a
Ph.D. in English Education), a father of two elementary school students, the
husband of a public school teacher, and a former middle school and high school
English teacher and English Language Arts professor, I try to do my part to
spread the word about the troublesome nature of current corporacratic education
reforms harming our children and putting their personal data at risk.
Staunchly anti-Common Core, anti-SBAC, anti-PARCC, anti-TFA,
and anti-VAM, I have blogged, tweeted, forwarded links and Facebooked regarding
education reform policies since 2013, first at *http://www.ensaneworld.blogspot.com*
but eventually here at *EduStank.* In the fall of 2013 at Washington State
University, I even attempted an all-education-reform-centric section of
Freshmen Writing 101. For the most part, though, my anti-education reform
agenda has been relegated to the Internet. Last week, I decided that needed to
change.
So, over the last two weeks, I’ve spent several mornings and
afternoons on the sidewalks across from high-traffic areas in Pullman,
Washington’s school district, focusing on the elementary schools and the one
middle school, picketing toxic standardized testing and supporting parents’
rights to opt out of the state tests. My goal was to appear pro-parent,
pro-child, pro-opt out, advertise for United Opt Out.com, and give the
impression I just wanted to inform parents of their rights to refuse the tests
for their children even if they do not care to do so. Or, my goal evolved as such, anyway.
The push to move beyond the keyboard and onto the streets
was the result of several factors. For one, I had car trouble on a day I needed
to be at a job interview and felt a need to salvage my day, given I was unable
to make the interview. The day coincided with my kids’ first day of school, so
I missed their first day photos and well-wishes for the first time since they’ve
been attending school. The day felt like a major loss in its early going.
As well, recently I
had sent a tweet to Washington State University’s College of Education
encouraging students to *ask their methods professors to answer these questions regarding their role in current education policy.* I had
sent the same request to dozens of university twitter accounts last year, but,
perhaps since I focused on the local university alone this year, my last university
of employment, I fantasized that some students had read the tweet and heeded my
advice, only to be told by a professor or two, “Well, you don’t exactly see him
out on the streets protesting these policies, do you?” Even in make-believe, I
couldn’t let that stand.
Furthermore, I live within easy walking distance of my kids’
elementary school, also where my wife works, and knew if I didn’t take the
opportunity to act on this first day of school – when parents would be more
attentive to their children and more likely to be the ones dropping them off
and picking them up compared to the coming days – I might not ever have the
courage to act on a first day of school again. I could have protested at the
start of the previous school year, after all, and considered it but chickened
out. As well, if I were to do this now, I felt it would show cowardice to start
anywhere except at my own kids’ school.
So, I crafted a hastily-made sign and hit the pavement,
noting the traffic patterns and smiling and waving at parents as they drove
into parking lots and loading zones to pick up their little scholars. That was
last Wednesday. Since then, I’ve visited every elementary school and the middle
school in the Pullman district. To date, I’ve avoided the high school because opting
out of the tests at the sophomore- and junior-levels could keep students from
graduating, whereas there are no penalties to that degree for opting out in
grades 3-9.
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| Baby's first protest sign. And my feet. |
What I learned from my first day of giving my agenda a
physical presence is as follows. I seemed to have pissed off the school’s
principal, who called me on my cell phone almost immediately after I had
vacated the premises, referred to me by my first name even though we are not on
a first-name basis (She should have referred to me as Mr. Carter at the least; Dr.
Carter to be most accurate), accused me of being on school property, and
informed me that it was illegal to be on school property doing what I was doing
and if I wanted to continue my protest – Well, I didn’t let her finish. Her
hectic, berating tone and lack of respect in addressing me was too much. I took
a page out Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and
yelled louder than my accuser. “You do what you have to do. Rest assured I’ll
do what I have to do. Goodbye,” I told her. But, she was right. After school
was over and all traffic had dispersed, I did
walk across the school parking lot as doing so was a shortcut to my home.
Whether she was referring to seeing me do that or accusing me of stepping on
school property via the adjoining sidewalks, I do not know.
I assume I frustrated some parents too, who did not appreciate
seeing a protester on their kids’ first day of school and may have tipped off
the principal, but, as I mentioned, the first day of school only comes once a
year and is prime time for getting parents’ attention.
Lessons learned? First off, I needed to contact my wife to
let her know her principal might be talking to her. Text message sent. Warning
delivered. Next, having said, “I’ll do what I have to do,” to be a man of my
word, I had to figure out what that meant.
I decided it meant researching protesting protocols and knowing
my rights – where I could be and should be to avoid problems, how to talk to
police who might approach me, and which Constitutional rights protect
picketers. I found the *American Civil Liberties Union’s Guide to Demonstrations and Protests * and learned that so long
as I was on the sidewalks and caused no disturbance, I had a right to protest;
I seemed even more protected as a protester of one if I were picketing. So, I
decided I would call myself a picketer if asked. As well, I sent the link to
the ACLU guide to the Pullman School District’s twitter account, just in case
they needed reminding of citizen’s rights and who is available to defend them
when they are violated.
Becoming a picketer meant changing my sign. My first effort
commanded readers to opt out of toxic testing, was small and obviously unkempt.
While still crowded and messy, my second sign is large, colorful, and more
informative than demanding. I hoped to appear less threatening to parents with
my second sign, less “anti-testing” and more “pro-parents’ rights.
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| The degree to which you approve of this design correlates with how much of it I'll tell you my kids created. |
To be safe regarding trespassing illegalities, I decided to
stand only on sidewalks across the street from area schools rather than on the
sidewalks abutting school property. This proved fortuitous on my second day out
at another area elementary school when one of Pullman’s Finest, Officer Bedford
(a pseudonym), approached me from his patrol car and asked me what I was doing
and what my sign was “all about.”
He asked what the SBAC was as well. I informed him about the
SBAC and that I was alone and had no sound system or leaflets to pass out but
had only my sign, was picketing to draw attention to parents’ rights (sharing a
positive message rather than an accusatory one), and was doing so as per my
First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights. (I may need to review
which Amendments support which rights).
I told him I would stay on the sidewalks and only talk to people who
asked me questions. He agreed that was the thing for me to do and asked my
name. I offered it, though I didn’t have to (again, I wanted to appear friendly
and accommodating) and confidently asked him his. He asked if I wanted a card,
and I took one. He then drove away and we were both left having an
exceptionally friendly and positive experience. I even tweeted about the kindness of the officer via the Pullman Police Department’s twitter account later that
night.
If that seems odd, keep in mind I wanted to be seen. I
wanted to be known, and I wanted to be considered a friendly, informative
source. The teachers and administrators in those school buildings are not evil,
and, as far as I know, not my enemies.
Many most-likely want kids to opt out of
testing too and would rather not have to deal with the burden of the abusive
standardized testing for they are forced to prepare and administer regardless
of their belief systems. Hell, that principal from day one might only have
called because a central office member was on hand or to offer evidence to an
irate parent that she’d made an effort to talk to the protester even though she
despises the state-mandated testing too.
I wanted to seem as though I was fighting their fight too.
I feel it is important to say I was rarely as aware of my
privilege as a white person and member of the Pullman community as when Officer
Bedford approached me. I smiled, waved, and even walked toward his approaching
car when it was clear the officer was coming to check in with me. As well,
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| Though it hardly seemed invisible as the cruiser approached me. |
To a small degree, when Officer Bedford approached me, I
already felt like I had an “insider” relationship with the local police. “Hey,
how’s Officer So-and-so?” or “Do you know Officer This-Guy?” I could have
asked. As well, I was armed with my
rights as per the ACLU information. Furthermore, I had and have access to
stakeholders and education organizations such that I could share the story of
our encounter, as I’m doing now. I knew if I were arrested or even sent away
from the picketing site, I’d have a Hell of a story to share with a nationwide
audience of bloggers, tweeters, and writers willing to help spread the news of
what happened, if not immediately, as soon as I was freed. I did not feel
threatened nor did I approach my picketing as someone wanting to appear threatening.
I do not in any way want to suggest that my local police
force holds prejudices, but given recent and
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| The PPD has served me and my family exceptionally well. |
To that end, I felt the responsibility to share my sense of
white privilege with my white sons. After detailing my first day out, they were
surprisingly excited. They wanted to join me in protest—er, picketing – and they
even helped me make my replacement sign. My wife and I had opted out our oldest
from SBAC testing last year, and we plan to do so again this year, and since
she is a K12 teacher and I have been a teacher educator with strong opinions on
how education reforms are needed but few, if any, of the current spate of
reforms change schools for the better (by making them more equitable, friendly,
diversity- and culturally-affirming places to learn critically), “education
talk” permeates our household. But, my latest actions had opened new
possibilities. After their initial excitement wore down, I called my boys to my
computer and shared some information from the ACLU guide. I focused on rights
and how to act when approached by police. As hard as it was to tell my elementary-aged
kids to always keep their hands where officers can see them, do as they
request, and do not argue, among the
other advice offered, it felt like a necessity.
My boys began daycare, pre-school, and – for my oldest –
formal public education in El Paso, Texas. It is a point of pride between my
wife and me that they are comfortable around people of color and make friends
with kids of color with ease and without any sense of tension that I might have
felt growing up in the 1980s in rural North Carolina. My kids have been the
minority population for much of their lives, and their earliest friends
constitute a multicultural cast of children. My guess is that they’ll have a diverse
friendship for as long as they live, especially considering how often
brown-skinned girls seem drawn to them! J
(Let a father brag for a moment, will you? My boys got game and don’t even know
it. Heck, that’s WHY they got game).
Capitalizing on this possibility, I informed my sons that
sometimes police treat brown people differently than they do white people, and
this meant that if they are ever hanging out with a diverse group of friends
and an officer approaches them, they need to be willing to take the lead in
modeling good behavior with the officer because doing so could help them
protect themselves and their friends.
Perhaps this sort of active allying
constitutes the 21st century version of the “White man’s burden.”
Perhaps you are appalled I had this conversation with my sons when they are so
young and had positive impressions of the police beforehand. Perhaps my notion
of the white males’ modeling “submissive” behavior for their POC friends
infuriates you to no end.
I will have to live with my decision to share such
information with my young boys, but, at the moment, I wanted them to know why I
was doing what I was doing, how I was doing it and how I had informed myself on
how to act, and I wanted them to know how to act too. Again, it was just a day
later that I was indeed approached by an officer. While I reiterated that the
police we know are nice and would never want to harm us, I felt a
responsibility to let them know not everyone is afforded such courtesies. To my
thinking, they needed to know about their white privilege as a means of
protecting themselves but also as a means of protecting their future friends.
I’ll have to wait to see if there is fallout from our conversation. Or, at least I hope I have to
wait. I saw our talk as preluding their teenage years and possible exigencies
in which they are with a group of boys who might appear rowdy or suspicious to
some. My youngest asked, “But what if the police person is brown too?” I
explained that that does not always make a difference in how police sometimes
treat citizens of color. I hold on to the belief that his interactions with his
scout master and other police officers in the community is enough to keep his
trust and faith in them. But, he will not live in Pullman forever, and even if
the information I shared jarred him, I hope it sticks with him.
Even if demographic trends evolve such that my sons are no
longer the privileged majority when they become teenagers or adults, even if
current minority advocacy groups look upon my advice to my sons as more “white
savior” racist rhetoric, even if their friends call them pussies or sell-outs
for modeling peaceful behavior when it comes to police interactions, I have the
feeling that part of white privilege in their near futures means knowing how to
work that privilege to the benefit of all people. To be sure, I hope to have
worked in that regard by picketing near those schools in the first place.
Most likely, I will not pound the pavement again until
testing season draws closer and parents and teachers are seeing clear evidence
of the miasma that such testing makes of their schools. Given that the national
parent-teacher groups have offered support for Common Core, I may see if I can
speak on behalf of United Opt Out at one of their meetings – or at least keep
an ear out for any information that suggests there is a movement to convince
parents that opting out is detrimental to the school or their children. Given
the complexities of opting out at the high school level, I may decide not to
picket near the high school.
I end this reflection with one more acknowledgement of my
appreciation of our friendly local authorities and with a set of challenges:
1. If you are a university or college education
professor or someone in the Humanities who teaches teaching methods courses,
get away from the computer, stop writing your articles and blog entries, and
show your support for parents’ rights to opt out by doing exactly as I did:
Make a sign and take to the sidewalks. Share and reflect on your experiences as
have I.
2.
If you are a parent of kids in state testing
grades, opt out and organize with like-minded parents to spread the word about
opting out or refusing these tests for your children. See all the kids at your
child’s school as your kids, as worthy of protection from abusive testing
policies as your birth-children.
3.
Join or educate yourself about organizations
like *United Opt Out*, *FairTest*, the *Network for Public Education*,
and maybe even the *Badass Teachers Association*. You are not alone. In my current
home state of Washington, *nearly 50,000 kids opted out* last year.
4.
If you think there is a better way to talk about
white privilege and the responsibilities white people have in using it to the
benefit of all people than the approach I took with my sons, let me know kindly
and respectfully.
5.
Know that if the current slate of harmful
education reforms is to be defeated and we are to pave the way for needed and
helpful public education reforms, parents will have to do the heavy lifting. Professors, principals and teachers may have
their hands tied regarding their levels of public advocacy.
6.
Know this, parents: States are required to
administer the standardized tests, but it is perfectly legal for them to administer them to
empty rooms.
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