As David Postman first reported in the Seattle Times, the union representing Seattle Public Schools teachers has written to Seattle state legislators that they are perpetrating "institutional racism and institutional classism" by failing to drop state testing requirements in reading and writing for high school graduation, until $12 million can be secured for improved class sizes, curriculum and teacher training. State legislation is already pending to extend beyond 2008 to 2010 the state math proficiency graduation requirement. In their letter, the Seattle Education Association states:

Between 40 and 45 (percent) of children of poverty, many of whom in Seattle are children of color, are not passing the reading and writing sections of the WASL. These sections will not be set aside; these children will be denied a diploma. There is no concerted funding initiative to support the needs of the students not meeting reading and writing standards. There is currently no active bill to set aside using the reading and writing (Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests) as the graduation requirement for the 40 (percent) of the Students of Poverty and Students of Color who are not meeting the standard.

This pure and simply is the definition of Institutional Racism and Institutional Privilege. (Seattle Education Association) and (Seattle Public Schools) are working to eliminate the horror of Institutional Racism and Privilege wherever we find it. The members of SEA also are fighting for a system that provides equity in the results for children and young adults, not a system that sorts children of color and children of poverty and relegates those children to lives of poverty. Seattle legislators have long held the mantle of progressives, of liberals, of men and women who care about the voiceless people. Please find your voice again and stand with the school employees, parents and students of Seattle.

The teachers union's use of the term "voiceless people" is a giveaway: despite compensatory rhetoric elsewhere, they see underachieving students of color as mute, weak and incapable of raising their academic performance and meeting a 10th grade testing requirement for graduation for 12th grade (itself a badly diluted standard). "These children will be denied" a diploma, they write. There is no hope, no chance. Failure is inevitable.

Phew. The WASL is not a perfect test, but it is a useful yardstick and more to the point, meets requirements imposed on all states under the bi-partisan federal No Child Left Behind Act, intended to help ensure schools are making measurable progress toward imparting core academic proficiencies to students. Our state legislature has already seen fit to allow up to four retakes in any subject area for a student who fails any part(s) of the WASL. Even then, alternatives including scores on other standardized tests may suffice for meeting graduation requirements.

So, Seattle teachers and state legislators: many minority students are so incapacitated that they "will be denied" a diploma because FIVE TRIES on passing 10th grade tests in math, reading and writing for 12th-grade graduation (you read that right) aren't enough? What about the majority of minority students who ARE already passing the reading and writing WASL sections? Why not commission a study on the underlying factors in their success? I hate the term "no-brainer," but truly, there it is. So much easier to talk about failure and racism, conveniently pigeonholing blacks - especially - as helpless.

Even if our family does have to suck up the very reasonable cost of an excellent private school, this sort of moonbattery is one reason why you couldn't budge me from Seattle. The limits of tolerance are being stretched daily. I disagree with strident suburban conservatives who say the city's done; for families, and for the sane, so stick a fork in it. It will be fascinating to see the political Velvet Revolution here, if and when it occurs. The initial stages could only be a few years out. Politicized, race-obsessed dysfunction in Seattle Public Schools will prove to have been a primary cause because of its symbolic heft, but "kitchen table issues" such as police staffing, municipal pension obligations, taxes and skewed city budget priorities will be drivers as well.

As for the latest WASL dust-up: The recipe for helping struggling students succeed is fairly simple: funnel dollars paying for administrative bloat and non-competitive ancillary labor in our public schools into longer school days and longer school years for underperforming students. Establish more uniform and rigorous academic curricula. Insist on a far louder, clearer and stronger public message from the Seattle Public Schools on parental involvement, and specifically the parental engenderment of values and a home environment which gird love for learning.

To dance around these essential needs for lagging minority students - as the union and leagues of cowed Seattle "progressives" do - strikes me as a flagrantly deleterious act of institutional racism.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SEATTLE, TEACHERS UNION, WASL, TESTING, MINORITY STUDENTS