More Than a Score

by Jesse Hagopian

  As of January 2014, there are over fourteen thousand members of the Long Island Opt Out page. I believe we will win this fight. I once asked Diane Ravitch, ”The good guys always win, right?” She responded, “No, they don’t. But we will.”

  Playing for the Schools We Want

  On April 17, 2013, parents, children, and early childhood educators arrived at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters bright and early. Instead of the normal macabre theater on display at 125 S. Clark Street for board of education (BOE) meetings—in which people who attend, send their children to, or work at public schools are forced to line up hours ahead of time in order to testify for two minutes to an uninterested and unelected school board, begging for support for their schools that never materializes—we decided to sit down. Bored silly and demoralized by the over-testing and lack of play-based learning opportunities in our early childhood classrooms, we decided to bring our message to the BOE in a way that couldn’t be ignored.

  An advance team of several parents and children, arms loaded with blocks, picture books, bubbles, board games, and picnic blankets arrived at the drab BOE building in the Chicago Loop shortly before 9:00 a.m. We were joined by Julie Woestehoff, a veteran educational justice activist and leader in the movement against over-testing. We entered the main lobby and spread out a couple of our blankets on the linoleum tile floor. A couple of the kids set up a chessboard at an empty table nearby. Another child sat down on the blankets and began to draw. A parent and preschool-age child began to erect a block construction. So far, we were ignored by the folks behind the security desk. I propped up a few of the handmade picket signs designed by a preschool teacher who had to work and couldn’t join us but who wanted her voice heard too: We’re more than a score! Play is how we learn, Play is every child’s human right! A few folks walked past, hurrying for the elevators, with looks of bemused curiosity. It’s not often that children and parents make themselves at home at the headquarters of the Chicago Public Schools.

  We were soon approached by a member of the security personnel, who inquired about what we were doing. “We’re playing,” was our reply. “Who told you could do this here?” he asked. At this point, more parents and children began to trickle in. As Julie kept the security guard occupied with questions (“Who should we talk to at CPS to get permission to play?”), the rest of us welcomed the arriving families with their armloads of art supplies, dress-up clothes, and toys, and we began to stake out more space. Eventually security guards were joined by the head of security for CPS and negotiations over the location of our sit-in (or, more accurately, play-in) began in earnest. Since we clearly weren’t leaving, and as more and more arrived to join the play, the security team offered us a compromise: move your stuff to the hallway of the building, a few feet away. Since there was lots of foot traffic and good visibility there, we took this offer and spread out our materials.

  An arts educator pulled out rolls of paper, glue, collage materials, and markers, and young children dug in. Boxes of dress-up clothes were spread out and children and adults changed into costume, donning fairy wings, rainbow clown wigs, and superhero costumes. Infants crawled on blankets and gnawed on board books while toddlers chased after bubbles that floated down the hallway. Soon a couple musicians arrived, with cello and guitar, and we sang along to “This Land Is Your Land” and other protest standards. The boisterous fun was supervised by a few junior high students and their parents, wearing taffeta tutu skirts from the dress-up box and fluorescent orange crossing guard vests labeled in marker, “Play Patrol.”

  For the first time in my many experiences at CPS headquarters, children felt welcomed, and adults were laughing and smiling. We were “playing in”: Kind of like a sit-in, but with play-dough. And we weren’t going to move until our children’s laughter could be heard ringing through the halls.

  Let me explain how this came about. On March 8, I posted this on my Facebook page:

  I have simply had enough of the inappropriate academic push down into early childhood education. . . . Are you with me? Then help me organize a PLAY-IN! We’ll go down to the Board of Education with our blocks, our play-dough, our finger-paints and our children, and we will assert the RIGHT of every young child to learn through play. No more standardized test drills, no more worksheets, no more expository essays in kindergarten. Please get in touch with me if you want to help and feel free to share.

  This Facebook status struck a nerve with several of my coworkers (I’m a Chicago Public Schools preschool teacher) and friends with children in the public schools, and I received many e-mails and messages of support. As a member of the Chicago organization More Than a Score (MTAS), which is battling to save our schools from the nightmare of high-stakes standardized testing, I was already part of a network of dedicated parents and fellow Chicago Teachers Union members who were ready to help organize. MTAS had been founded earlier in the school year by parents and teachers frustrated by the sheer scale, expense, and consequences of the testing regime in CPS. We had worked together to petition and leaflet at more than thirty schools the previous February, spreading the news about over-testing and the alternatives, as part of a national day of solidarity with teachers in Seattle who had boycotted the MAP exams.

  A few days before my Facebook post, I had toured my neighborhood school’s kindergarten classrooms in preparation for registering my then five-year-old son for his first day of elementary school that coming fall. The classrooms were overcrowded with small tables and chairs—enough for the thirty or so students they’re typically cramming into CPS kindergarten classrooms these days, although many, many kindergartens have far more. Brightly colored plastic tubs full of books lined the shelves. Walls were covered with teacher-made posters about colors, shapes, classroom rules.

  All this was pretty typical, and, to an early childhood teacher such as myself, it looked pretty familiar. But something was amiss. Or I should say: something was missing. I scanned the rooms for any sign of building blocks. None. I looked around for signs of dramatic play areas or props, like puppets. Nope. Sand or water table? No. Hands-on science area, with opportunities for children to touch, examine, experiment? Uh-uh. Art materials or any sign that children were being encouraged to represent their ideas in creative or meaningful ways? Don’t even ask. What passed for creativity were displays of Xeroxed snowmen, colored in crayon, each indistinguishable from the last, and each apparently only an excuse to practice words ending in “-ow,” as their kindergarten scrawl clued me in on closer examination. No art for art’s sake here.

  I was informed by my tour guide that recess happened for twenty minutes a day, weather permitting—and this is better than many schools get, since this school has a good playground, with newer equipment and space to run. Many schools, particularly in low-income areas, don’t even have that. I left feeling depressed, wondering how my five-year-old son would possibly adapt to a seven-hour school day that allowed for a measly twenty minutes of play. I imagined picking him up after school and coming home to face the large amounts of worksheet homework CPS kindergarten teachers are now assigning in order to ensure their students are capable of passing fourteen standardized tests administered over the course of the year. It seemed impossibly cruel.

  I came home and took a look on Facebook. I read about a colleague in New York City, a kindergarten teacher, who had been written up by her administration. What was the bad practice she was being punished for? During a classroom observation, an administrator asked one of her students what they were doing during center time, and the child responded, “Playing.”

  The Forgotten Principle of Play

  The last seven years of teaching preschool has been a constant battle to defend what should be—and used to be—a given in the world of early childhood: Young children learn most naturally and most deeply through well-supported play. Play is how young children explore their worlds, build relationships, experiment with their environment, test theories, and construct knowledge. In short, play is how young ch
ildren learn and grow.

  It is both a joyful and serious endeavor, as anyone who has spent any amount of time watching young children build with blocks, play house, or attack the playground can attest to.

  Yet for all the power of well-supported play to enrich children’s spirits as well as their intellects, play in our early childhood classrooms is under threat in elementary schools around the country. The dramatic increase in testing of the very young over the last decade, in response to the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top federal education mandates, has pushed out developmentally appropriate curriculum, including play-based learning, from early childhood classrooms. The preparation for the adoption of the hugely profitable Common Core State Standards has exacerbated this trend.

  Teachers who value and use a play-based curriculum are forced to come up with creative ways to “hide” children’s play from know-nothing administrators who accuse us of promoting play because it’s “easy”—which shows how very little they know—or who belittle our classrooms for their lack of rigor and discipline. Worse is the pressure in the poorest neighborhood schools, where test scores—seen as the sole measure of the worth of our schools—are low. Teachers in these schools are told that play is a luxury that underprivileged kids cannot afford. In order to make up the achievement gap, time for play and experiential learning has got to go. The “drill and kill” of narrow academic skills isolated from context and meaning, scripted instruction, and test preparation have replaced the kind of rich educational experiences that support the intellectual and emotional capabilities of all young children.

  According to play-in participant and Concordia University associate professor Isabel Nuñez:

  One of the most destructive consequences of having non-educators running our districts and schools is that we have forgotten the fundamental principles of human development. Any developmental psychologist will tell you that young children learn through play. There is no debate on this within the discipline. Maria Montessori, Johann Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel were scientists. Their vision for education is based on research, not a touchy-feely desire to let the children play just because they enjoy it. A play-based curriculum for early childhood classrooms is developmentally appropriate, because play is the way children learn.

  As parents and teachers of young children, we know the harmful effect of high-stakes testing on schools and school systems. We have marched and protested as many of our schools in the poorest areas of the city are shuttered, punished for not winning in a game rigged from the start. We also know the harmful impact of high-stakes testing on individual children; children who we love who are being labeled failures at the age of five years old.

  We’re tired of our children being used and abused by corporations out to make money off their tests and their curricula matched to the tests. The politicians, recipients of financial kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions from these same corporations, are more than happy to throw our children’s schools into disarray and misery, as their children’s (private) schools continue to thrive with multiple opportunities for creativity, play, and experiential learning.

  Despite the peaceful and joyful experience of direct democracy experienced by all during the play-in, CPS security eventually called the police on the toddlers chasing bubbles. We had been warned a few times by the head of CPS security that bubbles represented a safety hazard, which surprised one parent of a preschooler and veteran emergency room nurse, who remarked, “I’ve been working in the ER a long time and have never once treated a patient for a bubble-related injury.” The six police officers deployed stood nearby, powerless to stop three-year-olds from pounding play-dough and giggling. After an hour and a half, and snack time, we packed up and went home for our naps, as planned.

  We played in at CPS to demonstrate our vision of appropriate early childhood education and to demand that our schools start listening to the experts and return play to our classrooms, end standardized testing for our youngest learners, and allow the joy of teaching and learning back into our schools. We’re already discussing where we’re going to play next. Anyone want to set up a play date?

  Forget Teaching

  to the Test—Castle Bridge Boycotts It!

  When I first heard from my then five-year-old daughter’s principal, Julie Zuckerman, that our school’s kindergartners, first graders, and second graders would be taking a multiple-choice (“bubble-in”) standardized test in September 2013, I thought she couldn’t be serious. But she was. And the children would be taking this test not once but twice—in the beginning weeks of school and again in the spring. I wondered who was requiring this and why. No letter had come from the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) or the city’s department of education (DOE) informing us parents of the testing our children were about to be subjected to. And when I searched online for a reason, or even an acknowledgement of this uncharted practice, I found very little. There was a story in the New York Times from the previous summer about the possibility of tests for kindergartners being rolled out, but not much else.

  Apparently the scores—specifically, the difference between how these kindergarteners through second graders fared in the spring compared to in the fall—were to be used for part of the evaluation scores of their teachers. In fact, this was the sole reason for the test.

  The Elusive Search for Play

  In 2009 when my daughter’s father (full disclosure: he is a public high school teacher and a social justice union activist) and I first started looking around for a school for our then two-year-old, we tried to envision the ideal school for her. There would be lots of hands-on, exploratory learning; nurturing teachers working with small groups of children; classrooms filled with bright natural light; lots of resources and space for art-making and imaginative play; and cozy corners for reading. But that was a short-lived delusion. After all, we live in New York City and the days of early childhood schooling characterized by play, recess, laughter, art, and singing were far past unless you were willing and able to go the private school route. As we would soon discover, we would be lucky to find a public school that even had recess.

  We were also committed to public schools and even though we live in a severely under-resourced and historically neglected school district, we wanted Quyen to attend our local zoned school. I called for an appointment to tour the school and some warning bells went off when the parent coordinator there seemed taken aback by the request—it was rare for parents to tour before deciding to enroll a child in this neighborhood school. The classrooms were big and bright, but the décor was bland and unexciting. The children wore uniforms and the teachers seemed to have a fairly “traditional” (read industrial model) approach to schooling, replete with children in rows of desks, teachers chanting “One-two-three, all eyes on me,” homework (for three- and four-year-olds!), and a behavioral shame/reward system, which in one of the classes consisted of happy and sad “bumbaloo” faces—you didn’t want to get a bumbaloo face. We met with the assistant principal, who was warm and seemed to understand where we were coming from, so we decided to give it a shot. It was just pre-K, we reasoned, and we could switch her to another school if it really didn’t work out.

  Quyen did not take to school well. She wasn’t overjoyed to be in school at all (and away from me) for so many hours, but I expected that and thought she just needed time to adjust to such a big change. She began the year speaking a fair amount of English and Spanish, but used Spanish less and less as time went on. I noticed that even though the majority of children at her school heard or spoke Spanish at home, it was not valued or encouraged at school. Although I only saw them at drop-off and dismissal for a few minutes each day, it seemed that the children were restless and joyless. I thought it might have something to do with their feeling cooped up all day, with most of the day spent in regimented, structured “learning.” I started campaigning for the school to have more play in class and outdoor recess, and was surprised to discover that recess, preferably outdoors
, is encouraged by the city DOE. Yet the teachers told me that the administration had gotten rid of recess years ago and parents did not miss it. The assistant principal in turn assured me the teachers didn’t want recess and most parents were happy not to have the children go outside since there were “safety concerns.” There was a methadone clinic nearby and school officials claimed that they didn’t have enough staff to monitor the children in the concrete yard. And besides, I was told, no one wanted to be outside in the cold. But I insisted that they try, and recess was reinstated.

  Sadly, several weeks and months into the school year, the reinstatement of recess notwithstanding, things were still not improving. Quyen began almost every morning in tears, complaining that she wasn’t well and was too sad to go to school. This was a child who was normally effusive, hard to suppress, and full of curiosity and ingenuity. I, probably channeling some of my own strict and unforgiving childhood upbringing and not wanting to coddle her, forced her to go and adapt to her new environs. But I also wanted to spend some time at her school to try and get a handle on why exactly she was unhappy. It turns out that parents weren’t welcome in the school. The teacher (who was untenured) was nervous about my being in the classroom and the Parents Association (PA) was barely functional. The several meetings we attended were run by the principal and consisted mainly of reading the minutes from the previous meeting and various announcements by the PA president and parent coordinator. I tried several times to meet with the principal to no avail. Unsurprisingly, even though I was one of two parents of Asian descent in the school and among the small handful of parents of any ethnic background who came to PA meetings, she also never bothered to learn my name or Quyen’s for that matter. And the school was clearly committed to the model of schooling that insisted low-income children of color need vast amounts of rigor and discipline instead of joy, nurturing, and creativity. We finished out the difficult and depressing year there; we had given it a try, but it was time to look for something that hewed just a little closer to our ideal, which admittedly seemed utopian at the time.