Can communities of resistance and transformation be born from the social context of school?

Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2003 by Gibson, Rich

On September 10, 2002, the San Diego State University Teacher Education Social Justice Cluster, representing more than one-third of the faculty of the School of Teacher Education, following considerable deliberation, passed this motion regarding SB 2042:

We reject the California Teacher Credential TPA/TPE process for which we initially volunteered, in good faith. Our experience with the process leads us to conclude, furthermore, that we must reject the standards that give the process motion, and the law which gives it force. We believe this is not a process to improve teacher education, but to regulate and standardize knowledge, not only in colleges of education, but throughout the university system, in a manner which is not in the best interest of our students nor ourselves. We believe the standards are partisan standards, the tests that will follow will be partisan tests, with profound problems of class, race, linguistic, culture, and disability bias.

Therefore, we call upon all college of education faculty in the California university and college system to follow our lead, to say no to this intrusion. Moreover, we will inform our students and the community of our action in hopes that we will be able to spark additional resistance to the one-size-fits-all high-stakes testing movement which we believe will not improve assessment, but deepen segregation and promote the irrational worship of exam scores - scores which measure, above all, inherited capital.

We believe that while we are indeed working within a state teacher credential program, we have rights of academic freedom which not only make it possible for individuals to reject this proposed regulation, but which exist as a treasure to the community, reflecting the vital role of a university where people can gain and test knowledge in a reasonably free atmosphere, and to offer that society criticism which may not be possible elsewhere.

This sharp statement of resistance came from a cluster of committed lifelong educators. Their declaration represented, for a great majority, their experience with a process which they came to believe, from their own participation within it, was designed in the manner of the old folk saying: "Come cooperate on my web whispers the spider to the fly."

SDSU's resistance to external standards, the regulations on university knowledge, and the high-stakes tests that are their twins, is a recognition of deepening historical experience. Over the last decade, external school standards and tests were used in every instance to intensify segregation and to stifle creativity and freedom in schools. The regulations are designed to rob educators of their most precious commodity; time with unique students. Those who choose not to see this issue of resegregation cannot be dismissed as uninformed anymore, but must be considered incredibly naive or as partisans - on the side of segregation. At issue now is: How can reason connect with power in order to forge a conscious movement that relates social change to education?

Shortly after the motion was passed, the SDSU College of Education withdrew from the California Teacher Credentialing pilot project.

Then parents and students at a nearby San Diego elementary school went on strike for a day against the regimentation of their classrooms via the county school "CEO's" Blueprint for Success, a regimented project that stresses phonics-driven reading programs, and scripted mathematics, and excludes all else. This sharp action followed the efforts of parents, students and school workers in LaJolla, a wealthy area inside San Diego. These people threatened to withdraw their schools from the local system, to turn the schools into charters, if the CEO did not remove them from the strictures of curricula regulations and high-stakes tests. Fearing that LaJolla's birthright-based test scores would be erased from the district averages, the CEO agreed that those with capital do not have to submit to the Blueprint. According to the CEO's own statements, LaJolla was exempted from stupefying external standards because the area's kids are born with the resources to get high scores (Magee, 2002)

So far, parents, students and teachers in poorer areas have not picked up the cry that the Blueprint is too dumb for their kids, and taken action. Experience elsewhere, like in Michigan where boycotts in wealthy suburbs in part laid the groundwork for a massive Detroit wildcat strike in 1999, indicates that there is more to come. Resistance among school workers is on the rise, a logical and requisite working out of struggles at most work places where people not only must seek fair pay and benefits, but they also struggle for freedom and creativity. Soon, a dozen Chicago teachers will refuse to administer their "CASE" test, which like the rest of the Big Tests measures class and race, declares that to be science, then sharpens the lines of segregation. However, if education is going to be a place where people can construct real hope by using reason in a relatively free atmosphere in order to gain and test knowledge in a struggle for the truth, then this resistance is going to have to be elevated by deeper theory of how to transform what is to what ought to be. Let us look at what is (Gibson, 1999 http://eserver.org/clogic/2_2/gibson.html).