I recently finished reading James Carroll’s epic 2001 history book Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews. The book traces anti-Semitism through church history, from the very early days of the church, through the Roman Emperor Constantine’s vision of a cross on the Milvian Bridge in Rome, all the way up to the Holocaust and beyond. On a trip to Rome this past March, my wife and I stood on that bridge, so it seemed like an appropriate time to read this book, with the memory of standing in the place Constantine stood still fresh in my mind.
One of the ongoing dynamics in the book is the Catholic Church’s ambivalence toward Judaism and Jews. The official church line for centuries was that violence against Jews was prohibited. At the same time, however, priests would preach many sermons about the evil Jews represented, even spreading conspiracy theories about them. These sermons would inflame the Christian faithful to go out and enact violence against Jews. The message was mixed. The results were harmful – to say the least. .
I suspect if I started looking for mixed messages from leaders throughout history, right up to and including the present day, I could write my own epic book. Leaders say violence is unacceptable, but then do things that promote violence, physical or otherwise.
As I finished Constantine’s Sword, I started hearing news of an assembly at an elementary school not far from me – in Bunnell, Florida.
You can read the full article from my old comics-page home, the Daytona Beach News-Journal here, but the gist of the story is this: all 4th and 5th grade African American students at Bunnell Elementary were called into an assembly last week where they were shown a slide show and told that, “AA have underperform [sic] on standardized assessment for the last past 3 years./We only have 32% of our students who are at a Level 3 or higher for ELA/Math./ We are supposed to have at least 41%.” The solution, students were told, was to have each student commit to getting at least a “3” on all standardized assessments, pass all curricular assessments with a 75% or above, and commit to maintaining high iReady (an online “learning” platform) scores. Students were also set up to compete against each other for scores in pairs, with the winner getting free McDonald’s meals.
All African-American students in grades 4 and 5 were apparently brought into the assembly, no matter what their grades or scores were like. Parents, who had been given no communication about the event in advance, were surprised, and from the sound of it, not pleased.
I was appalled by the completely race-based nature of the assembly, though it was apparently presented by a pair of African American educators (which raises issues I cannot speak of with any authority as a white male educator). I find several other things about the assembly appalling, though as well. The PowerPoint presentation seems to accuse the students of simply not trying hard enough – as if passing or failing standardized tests is simply a matter of effort. Standardized tests are notorious for being biased against minorities in terms of their content. In this particular case, this is only the second year that Florida’s new F.A.S.T. test has been used officially, so student haven’t even had instruction on the new B.E.S.T. Standards for that long. Meanwhile, their emphasis of iReady is questionable because its online platform has students doing work that is aligned to different standards – there is no correlation.
I cannot imagine any students who attended that assembly feeling anything but demoralized, criticized, and pressured. I cannot imagine any of them actually felt inspired to learn better. This transcends race. No student of any race or demographic is going to feel better after such an assembly. I have been saying for over 20 years that our obsession with testing is bad for all students, reducing them to data points and destroying love of learning for its own sake. This is just the latest edition in a long parade of misguided efforts to raise test scores that have damaged the educations of generations of students of every socioeconomic level or race. The now-banned testing rallies we used to have at schools may have been more positive, but the messaging – that you students matter because of your test scores – was almost as bad. Telling kids to “try harder” on tests is education at its worst, in my opinion.
But the thing that really struck me was that it was one more instance of a dichotomy between what we say and what we do. The interim superintendent didn’t so much apologize for the content of the assembly, or which students were called into it, but for the lack of parent communication. The news stories I saw on TV and in the paper however, seemed to find the assembly very problematic.
But really, when we live in a system that continually preaches the gospel of data and accountability, of closing the achievement gap, of raising different socio-economic and racial group’s pass-rates on tests, what did we expect? When our whole school system is being driven by school grades that use data about testing scores and testing gains in these different sub-groups, why are we surprised that this is happening. The “system” – those in charge of our educational institutions at state and district levels – like to talk a good game about being “student-centered” and of our schools and teachers being here to help students grow as people. But when it comes right down to it, no matter what they system claims, what is preached is the Test, the Data, and raising scores in sub-groups to get those school grades up. In this time of universal school choice, getting the school grade up may be a matter of survival to a public school.
I mean no disrespect in making the connection to Constantine’s Sword. Obviously, the anti-Semitism of centuries is a stain on the history of humanity on a massive, epoch-shaping scale. But patterns repeat themselves, and I believe my pattern recognition is accurate.
We say we want to help students as human beings to grow and learn and become the best they can be. But then we preach the gospel that it’s all about the Tests, so why should anyone be surprised when as assembly like the one in Bunnell takes place?
The amazing thing is that there aren’t more of them.