Spirited Rally at Graham and Parks School in
Cambridge to protest the Department of Education’s
Release of Scores at this site – Fall 2002

With less than 24 hours notice, some 20 adults and half a dozen students demonstrated in from of the Graham and Parks School before and during  Thursday’s DOE press conference. 

Carrying signs saying “Education not MCAS”  “Our  students learned more math without the MCAS”,  “MCAS Scores = Phony Math”  “38% failing is not a cause for celebration”,  parents and students formed a picket line that was an effective gauntlet that through which state bureaucrats and reporters had to pass as they entered the school.

Many thanks to the parents from Graham and Parks and other schools who were able to get there, and to all those who sent letters protesting this outrageous dog and pony show. Many G&P students wanted to join the demonstration but were not allowed to leave the school. Some upper grade G&P teachers quietly boycotted the event by taking their students on “nature walks”. In fact the actual assembly was half-empty.

The demonstration was covered by channels 4, 5, 6 and 7 on the 5:00 PM and 5:30 PM news, as lead-ins to the MCAS stories. All major news outlets reporting the MCAS scores included quotes from the demonstrators. Though pulled together with less than 24 hours notice, it reminds us of the continuing value of trying to “speak truth to power”. Thanks to Jackie King, Larry Ward, Anna Ward, Decia Goodwin, Tim Plenk, Leslie Cohen and others who rounded up people and signs on very short notice.

Other posts will describe the deep travesty of G&P students, teachers and parents being forced to sit quietly as G&P’s principal Emily Ostrower, Supt Bobbie D’Alessandro, Mayor Sullivan (with Nancy Walser also on the podium) touted  the “successful” results of this deeply biased tests. Please note that Graham and Parks is the site of the Haitian bilingual program and derives its name from the civil rights struggles of Rosa Parks and Saundra Graham. The abuse of the traditions of Rosa Parks and Saundra Graham could not have been deeper. (A second post will have more details on the DOE presentation and misrepresentation).

The announcement of the legal suit against the MCAS as both deeply discriminatory and illegal under the 1993 Ed Reform Act opens up opportunities to continue to resist the MCAS’reactionary stranglehold on public education.

As Jackie’s post suggested, please send any letter written to Emily or the Supt. to the Cambridge Chronicle, perhaps in slightly shortened form. We will also send a collective letter of protest to the Cambridge School Committee.

For those outside of Cambridge, MassCARE has just mailed to school  committees the call to grant diplomas regardless of MCAS. Please consider calling school committee members in your community and ask them to get copies from their chair or clerk, perhaps noting the recent civil rights lawsuit.