Testing Times

By June 1999 significant local support for a variance had been attained. The superintendent of the city schools, assured that the alternative assessments in the group waiver were, in fact, aligned with the broad state learning standards, had quietly signed on. The board of education, in turn, passed a resolution of support for the waiver, and even the editorial board of the daily newspaper changed its position and came out in favour of a variance for alternative schools. A number of local legislators had responded to the school's requests for support with letters to the education commissioner, asking him to grant the school a variance as well. There was a greater sense of optimism that a variance really was within reach, and that the school's integrity could be preserved.

It was also in June that the Durant School began to lobby the legislative chairs of the joint state education committee, an association that proved especially advantageous in the coming months. The principal had always maintained that if the state education department and the education commissioner did not approve a variance, then special legislation was another possibility. Thus, when the joint legislative education committee announced a June hearing in the state capital to examine the impact of the standards mandates and testing on schools, the principal welcomed the opportunity to make the case for the waiver and gain support for the Durant School's plight. After some preliminary strategy meetings in the weeks before the hearing, about a dozen Durant School representatives—students, staff, parents, Community Board members, and alumni—travelled over 200 miles by rented van to testify. Several other representatives from the alliance of schools seeking the group variance testified as well; and by the day's end, the committee chairs expressed sympathy for the variance request, especially as the students' testimonies to these schools' positive effects on their lives had been, in the chairs' opinion, so persuasive.

Summer 1999, though slower-paced, did see two significant developments in the fight: the mayor wrote a letter to the education commissioner in support of the variance, and a majority of the local legislators signed a pro-variance petition, also addressed to the commissioner. However, as the new school year commenced in September, the cautious optimism in the school began to wane. A ruling on the group variance, now formally submitted, remained pending, and teachers and students expressed deep feelings of anxiety and frustration as they awaited a decision. The education commissioner, they observed, seemed more intransigent than ever as he adamantly, and frequently, proclaimed in the media that there would be no retreat from the state standards—an ominous sign, they believed, for the variance. This apprehension only increased as the missives from the state education department consistently emphasized that the only viable alternative assessments to the state exams would be other externally developed tests. Performance-based assessments, it seemed, were not even considered an option. Despite this pessimism, the Community Board did sponsor another conference at the school on the effects of the standards mandates in an attempt to educate, and galvanize, the public. However, turnout was poor, and several in the Durant School community interpreted this low attendance as an indication that the standards had already been accepted as a fait accompli. They also despaired any prospect of a state-wide opposition movement. Still, a letter writing campaign, organized by a parent, was launched to intensify the pressure on political and educational leaders, and the school continued to wait anxiously for an official ruling on the variance.