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Thousands of FCAT Protestors Sound Off at Governor's Office
Thousands of protesters rallied against Florida's high-stakes standardized test Thursday, including hundreds of children who skipped school to attend the event.
Invoking some of the civil rights movement's most powerful images, community and political leaders condemned a new state policy that denies diplomas to students who cannot pass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
''I'm hoping the governor will realize that it's hard enough being black in America today,'' said state Sen. Frederica Wilson, who believes the policy disproportionately falls upon minorities. ``For children without a diploma, it will be triply hard.''
The two-hour rally kicked off a boycott against major Florida industries, including tourism and citrus, to put pressure on state officials.
The coalition is demanding Gov. Jeb Bush grant amnesty to the estimated 12,500 Florida high school seniors who will be denied diplomas, as well as more than 40,000 third-graders will be held back because of poor FCAT reading scores.
BISHOP'S CHARGE
''The only thing [Bush] will listen to -- and the only thing his big brother [President George W. Bush] listens to -- is M-O-N-E-Y,'' said Bishop Victor Curry of New Birth Baptist Church, a leader of the boycott.
The rally was held outside Bush's Miami office on Florida International University's West Miami-Dade County campus. FIU police estimated attendance at 2,500.
The protest began at Curry's church and moved to FIU in a motorcade that organizers said stretched for five miles and included more than 500 vehicles. It ended with Curry delivering thousands of petition signatures asking the governor to reconsider the FCAT policies.
Bush was in Tallahassee, but an aide in the Miami office promised to deliver the petitions. His press secretary said the governor is not considering waiving the graduation or retention policies but has introduced new programs to help those students earn a diploma or General Equivalency Diploma in the future.
OFFICIAL RESPONSE
''It would be unconscionable for us to graduate students who have not grasped the subject matter,'' press secretary Alia Faraj said. ``Students who can't pass the FCAT after having attempted to do so several times will be provided options to ensure they can succeed and move forward.''
Although the bulk of the 2003 scores have not been analyzed by race, Bush's staff has calculated those statistics for a handful of age groups that they have tracked since the test began in 1998. According to their most-cited statistic, 41 percent of black fourth-graders scored at or above grade level on the reading exam this year, up from 23 percent in 1998.
The overwhelming majority of protesters were black, but Curry stressed that the issue was broader.
''This ain't a black thing. This is our children's thing,'' he said, his preacher's voice cutting through the intermittent rain.
FOCUS ON POLICY
The boycott itself was sparsely mentioned by the parade of speakers, who instead focused on their beliefs that high-minority, high-poverty schools are insufficiently funded and that the new policies will shatter the hopes of black and Hispanic youth.
''For this school year, it needs to be total amnesty, because the state did not prepare these families for this punitive measure,'' said Wilson, D-Miami.
The boycott coalition's base is clearly South Florida, but Wilson said churches and elected officials from Tampa, Jacksonville and elsewhere are participating.
Education Commissioner Jim Horne has dismissed the boycott as a political attack on Bush, who has made the FCAT a cornerstone of his education reform.
Bush and Horne have tried to focus attention on the dearth of protest that accompanied mass failures of the previous graduation test, the High School Competency Test. Last year, 10,000 seniors failed that exam, which was designed at an eighth-grade difficulty, as opposed to the FCAT's 10th-grade level.
`TRULY POLITICAL'
``We can have differing opinions on some of the processes and steps, but clearly this organized opposition is truly political, Horne said last week.
Children of all ages, most accompanied by their parents, attended the protest.
''It's only one day, and one day won't hurt,'' said Janet McGregor, mother of a 16-year-old high school student. ``There's a lot of schools that are empty today.''
The presence of so many students irked the administration.
''The responsible thing to do would have been to ensure that students were in school, studying, reading and writing,'' Faraj said.
Miami-Dade school district officials said 25,129 students missed school Thursday, 3,711 more than were absent last Thursday.
''We study and practice, but [the FCAT] is hard,'' said Ambrelle Bomar, a fourth-grader at Santa Clara Elementary.
Organizers specifically asked parents to pull the children out of school for the event.
''They need to see what's going on, and they need to be active,'' said Rep. Yolly Roberson, D-North Miami. ``Students need to take a part, because this is going to affect their entire lives.''
— Mathew Pinzur
FCAT PROTESTERS SOUND OFF AT GOVERNOR'S OFFICE
Miami Herald
May 23, 2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/5925250.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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