Martin Michaels
More than 300 students representing 25 different Chicago public schools staged a walkout Wednesday in opposition to standardized testing. The demonstration occurred during a scheduled testing day when thousands of students across Illinois are required to take standardized exams.
Six busloads of students representing the Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS), a burgeoning student group, went to the Chicago Public School headquarters in downtown Chicago to protest the increased reliance on standardized testing that many high schoolers contend is responsible for a spate of school closures proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The buses picked up students at their respective high schools and dropped them off for the rally. According to CBS News, the buses were funded by supportive community organizations.
Students gathered sent a clear message to Emanuel, collectively saying, “We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up.”
“We’re just trying to make a statement that tests should not determine our future or the future of our schools,” said student organizer Alexssa Moore, a senior at Lindblom High School. No arrests or suspensions were reported following the demonstration.
More than 50 underperforming schools serving impoverished neighborhoods in the city are set to close in the coming year, a plan that students believe unfairly targets poor communities of color. The decision to close the schools was largely based upon poor test results from recent statewide exams.
Emanuel, who won 59 percent of the African-American vote in the 2011 mayoral election, has seen his popularity decline sharply following the proposed school closings.
“In any city that’s as segregated as Chicago, anytime that you destroy black schools and destroy black communities you can’t call it anything but racist,” said Katelyn Johnson, the executive director of Action Now. Action Now is a multi-issue grassroots organization of working families in the Chicago metro area.
“Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist,” writes Brian Sturgis, senior at Paul Robeson High School and boycott organizer with CSOSOS.
He adds, “These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous.”
The majority of the roughly 30,000 students impacted by the school closings are African American and attend schools on the South or West Sides, or near former public housing developments. Another six grammar schools will see their staffs completely dismissed and 61 school buildings are also slated to close.