Chain Gang Elementary, by Jonathan Grant
Chain Gang Elementary, by Jonathan Grant
Chain Gang Elementary, by Jonathan Grant
Available at:
Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble
This book is Indie Books List’s “Book of the Month” for January, 2012. Click here to read the review.
Description:
A tale of war between parents and principals, with casualties. It’s funny. It’s not so funny.
After a murder at Bonaire Elementary, Richard and Anna Lee Gray seek a good school for their son Nick in a safe neighborhood. Their search leads them to Malliford, a ”school of excellence.” When redistricting sends scores of minority students to Malliford, iron-willed Principal Estelle Rutherford declares war on kids to raise test scores and save her reputation. Dissident parents revolt, electing Richard to head the Parent-Teacher Organization, and tensions explode. Welcome to Chain Gang Elementary, home to vast right-wing conspiracies, 3rd-grade gangsters, and bake sale embezzlers–where toxic childhood secrets boil over, reformers go stark raving mad, and culture wars escalate into armed conflict.
Excerpt:
Chapter Seventeen
The Standard Hightower Intellachievement Test
Due to federal mandate, learning was put on hold in February. The Better Schools initiative—or BS, as teachers called it—required high-stakes, curriculum-based testing. For reasons known only to bureaucrats, the state examined students on their cumulative grade-level learning with three months still to go in the school year. The state’s Department of Education had adopted the unfortunately but aptly named Standard Hightower Intellachievement Test to measure progress. Its acronym was never used, for obvious reasons. County educators referred to it as DESI (Don’t Even Say It), and some irreverent teachers called it DUMP.
Though often ridiculed, the test was no laughing matter. Pride, money, stars, and housing prices rode on the results. Teachers in schools with improved test scores received bonuses; schools with declining scores faced sanctions. In the past, Malliford had nothing to fear. But now the influx of underachievers from Chantilly Arms threatened to lower scores and put the school on the state’s Needs Improvement list (often called the s**t list, for obvious reasons). This would be an unmitigated disaster, but it could get even worse. After a school languished for three years on the Needs Improvement list, its teachers were taken out behind the trailers and shot. At least that’s how Mrs. Leland explained it to Richard.
With its status as a good school on the line, the stakes were terribly high. Since December, Mrs. Baines did little besides what she called “testprep.” No one took DESI more seriously than reigning Teacher of the Year Sarah Vandenburg, who gave her second-graders practice exams the first day of school and tested them weekly thereafter—and let them watch TV, until she got caught.
Despite the newly challenging demographics, Miz Rutherford demanded that test scores rise. She also suggested heads would roll if they didn’t. She’d already picked heads, having established scapegoats like Avon Little by filling their rooms with Underintellachievers.
Thus motivated by the principal’s shrill cheerleading, teachers masked their desperation with pasted-on smiles as testing week drew near. They tried to create a festive air in their classrooms, handing out balloons, promising parties for high-scoring classes, and sending brightly-colored notes home to parents with tips on “how to get your students on the winning team.” Miz R’s “Secret Formula for Success” called for an 8:00 p.m. bedtime and a hearty breakfast on testing days. She also suggested kids watch TV to relax.
Richard considered this last idea a terrible one, and he would have said something to the principal had they been on speaking terms. Instead, he editorialized against it in February’s Duck Call, urging kids to read a book instead, and quoted Stan to p**s off the principal even more. Unfortunately, Richard no longer knew how many newsletters actually made it home to parents, since some other teachers now followed Mrs. Vandenburg’s lead and threw them away.
Richard thought testprep was senseless. Back in August, he’d tried to schedule a Black History Month program, but the faculty-dominated School Improvement Committee shot him down. Apparently, black history lowered achievement. Miz Rutherford later regretted this decision; she needed a forum to tell African-American parents how to optimize their kids’ DESI scores. She sent Mrs. Baines to parley with Richard on February 6, the day after he’d been fired as a tutor. The vice principal chased after him so furiously he thought Rita was coming up from behind to tackle him.
“Mr. Gray,” she said when she’d corralled him, “we thought you might call a general meeting this month. Before the tests.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Ms. James and Ms. Hardwick would like to present a program for diverse parents.”
He stared at her like she was crazy. “Diverse? You mean a black history program?”
“Well, future black history.”
“What’s future black history?”
“What we make of it.” She gave him a bright, brittle DESI smile.
“I proposed a Black History Month program, remember? No one liked the idea.”
“We changed our mind.”
“Mind? Interesting use of the singular. The problem is we’d have to have the meeting this week, and that’s not enough notice. Sorry, can’t help you. Too late. Ta-ta.” He walked away.
Though appalled at the school’s excessive zeal, Richard did hope Malliford would gain a top-ten ranking on his watch. A home in a five-star school district was worth $30,000 more than one in a four-star zone, according to Barbara. If he was ever going to get out of town, he wanted cash from the deal. This made him one of many “whores for scores,” as Rita so indelicately put it.
* * *
“Devonious copied off my test today,” Nick told his father as Richard chopped carrots for stew. “I told him not to, and he said I’d better let him, or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Duh,” Nick said emphatically. “Or else I’ll get hurt.”
“I’ll talk with Mrs. Little.”
“I wish he didn’t sit next to me. He stinks and he cheats. Stinky cheat man.”
“Enough.”
“You know he smells.”
“We don’t talk about it like that, though.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“I doubt it. At lunch, he said every cuss word he knew and didn’t get in trouble ‘cause Mrs. Little wasn’t around. Dad, you know what? A lot of black people are bad.”
“No. Why do you say that?”
Nick pointed to the television. The local news happened to be on, showing police subduing a young African-American robbery suspect.
“They wouldn’t look so bad if we turned it off,” Richard said. “There are millions of black people, and that guy went out in the street with a gun. So he’s the one who gets on TV. A lot of white guys in suits and ties rob banks without guns.”
“How do they do that?”
“Computers. Lies. Conspiracies. However, it’s the guy with the gun who gets on TV. It’s what they call sensational.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly. A lot of crime gets ignored because they can’t show the arrest. Being good or bad has nothing to do with what color you are.”
“OK.” Nick thought for a moment. “Are there more good people or bad people?”
“More good than bad, I hope.” Richard shrugged. “It’s a theory.”
Nick crunched a carrot. “You wanna know what’s stupid? At lunch today, Ms. Hardwick and Ms. James went around the cafeteria waving cardboard clocks over their heads that said ‘Eight p.m. is time for bed!’ Nobody likes them. It’s not like they teach us anything. They bother me all the time. I wish they’d leave me alone.”
Richard wasn’t listening. He was staring out the window, wondering how badly he’d bungled his Atticus Finch moment.
* * *
Miz Rutherford devoutly believed a diet of grapes and bottled water for test-takers would help her win that elusive fifth star. She’d been preaching this message for months and needed the PTO’s help to get the word out to parents of test takers.
“It’s scientific,” she’d previously explained to the PTO board. “Grapes assist the brain in the hydration process, which speeds up decision making, as anyone familiar with brain-based learning models understands.” She’d finished off with an imperious glare at Candace and Cindi Lou.
“So kids still get wrong answers, just quicker,” Richard quipped from the podium.
“You’re missing the point,” she said.
Then again, he’d missed every point she’d jabbed at him. Richard turned to the Drug Awareness chairperson and said, “This grape thing explains why people who drink a lot of wine think they’re smart.”
This prompted titters, but the overall mood was sober and serious. Some board members worried about allergic reactions and frequent bathroom breaks brought on by this brain-hosing. However, most believed in trying anything that might improve test scores, so they ignored warnings about poop and pee on first-grade floors from Candace, who glared back at the principal as she spoke.
A motion calling for the PTO “to make necessary arrangements to assure an ample supply of grapes during testing” was quashed by Bessie Harper, mother of all room mothers, when she said the magic words every president longs to hear: “Don’t bother. I’ll take care of it.”
Bessie’s first e-mail to room mothers called for green grapes and half-liter bottles of water. After Mrs. Baines yelped “Wrong grapes! Wrong grapes!” in the hall to Richard, e-mail corrections went out calling for red grapes. A parent wanted to know if purple grapes were acceptable. More checking, another e-mail: “Due to lack of research on purple or black grapes, those varieties should not be used. Parents should send red grapes, seedless of course.”
Richard referred to these in his e-mails as The Grapes of Math.
A question arose: What brand of water was best? Another flurry of e-mails: Miz Rutherford declared Hydrate the brand of choice. Its parent company happened to back The Mentoring Initiative and planned to install soft-drink machines in the school. Richard tried to start a rumor that top schools used Perrier, but his pernicious claim never took hold.
“What if scores go down?” Bessie asked him during the second round of e-mails.
“Then we sell the information to Hydrate’s competitors,” Richard replied. “As a fund-raiser.”
* * *
On February 12, parents and teachers held their collective breath as students began taking DESIs with all the earnest zealousness of a “Duck and Cover” air raid drill. With rankings on the line, every other school and student in the state was their enemy, while sharpened pencils and childish wits were their only friends. One way or another, they would fulfill the BS mandate.
What kind of test-takers were these Mallifordians? Would the world bow down before them, or would they be Underintellachievers, road kill on the superhighway to tomorrow?
Deep in the bowels of Malliford, someone already had an idea how it would turn out.
Come, let us test now, said the spider to the flies.
Chain Gang Elementary, by Jonathan Grant
Available at:
Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble
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