By Grant Pick
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The IGAP protesters contend that the tests are not what education should be about. “Learning to me means trying to analyze things and to write and express your thoughts in a convincing and creative way,” says Tanzman, an A student. He thinks that spending his grammar-school years at the private, progressive Francis W. Parker School may be one reason he’s not impressed with rote instruction and standardized tests, yet the protesters who went to public schools feel the same way. “I never really respected standardized tests,” says John Edgerton, who attended Ray Elementary School in Hyde Park. “They wasted my time, gave me a headache, and made me pull out my hair.” He also claims that his lousy handwriting on an early test locked him into a learning-disabled program at Ray for four years. “During all that time I saw myself as below the bar,” he says.
Tanzman thinks standardized tests lower the self-esteem of students who do poorly on them. “I have this friend, and because his score on the verbal section of the PSAT was poor, he felt he wasn’t smart. Now he’s weird in English class, feeling he isn’t going to do well there.”
“Anyway, we wanted a small number of folks involved,” says Tanzman, “because we didn’t actually want to hurt the school.” By his count, eight students deliberately blew the social studies IGAP on February 2 and ten failed the science exam the next day.
The meeting in Kenner’s office ended without the students being disciplined. “I didn’t want to be punitive about this,” she says, “especially with this caliber of student.” She told schools CEO Paul Vallas about the protest. “He was disappointed,” she says. “And I’m just going to stick with that description.”
Principal Kenner has asked a state board committee to toss out the tests of seven of the students involved in the protest. If the tests aren’t thrown out, Whitney Young’s junior IGAP totals in science and social studies will drop slightly, and with them, perhaps, the school’s standing.
