Posted on November 10, 2015

Principal Says Standardized Testing Is ‘Modern-Day Slavery’

Carl Campanile, New York Post, November 9, 2015

In an online rant, a Bronx public school principal has likened standardized testing to slavery, redlining and crack cocaine in damaging the lives of minorities.

“Public school high-stakes standardized testing is a form of modern-day slavery, and it is designed to continue the proliferation of inequality,” Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle School Principal Jamaal Bowman says in an Aug. 31 blog entry titled “The Tyranny of Standardized Testing.”

“America was born of horror for black people and that horror continues today for brown and poor people as well. Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, crack cocaine and now standardized testing were all sanctioned by the American government. All designed to destroy the mind, body and soul of black and brown people.”

Bowman blamed the US government for perpetuating a “legacy of oppression”–with the Obama administration adopting the Race to the Top program that prodded states to use student exam results to evaluate teachers and promote charter schools.

“From the Continental Congress to Race to the Top, America has a tradition of disenfranchising the masses,” he said in an Oct. 4 post on the personal blog.

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