I wrote about the fact that Chicago students were organizing a boycott on April 24th. Yesterday, students from various Chicago high schools boycotted the second day of standardized testing (PSAE). They were protesting the role of testing as a factor in school closing decisions. Instead of going to school, students showed up at CPS Headquarters to make themselves heard.

Robeson High School student, Brian Stirgis, explained the reason for the protest: “We’re under-resourced, over-tested, and we’re fed up with the policies that are put in place by CPS officials.”

Laura McCauley reporting for Common Dreams wrote that “Over 300 students from over 25 different Chicago public schools ” boycotted PSAE testing yesterday.

Student protestors carried some really witty signs at the protest.

The protest was spearheded by Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS).

Brian Stirgis, high school student and CSOSOS organizer penned an op-ed where he wrote:

Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist. These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous.

My alma mater, Benjamin Banneker elementary, is one of the 54 schools on the list. But Banneker built a community around the school and around me. Although I started at Banneker as a troubled inner city child, growing up in this school taught me the transition into the real world, and how to be a man. Even now, four years after receiving my 8th-grade diploma, I still routinely visit the school to show my appreciation for what they did for me and many other students in my neighborhood.

But this boycott is about more than just Banneker, and more than just me. It’s about every child in every neighborhood. Mayor Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education are supposed to make the CPS system work for all of us. But instead they are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don’t have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported. This is what happened when 68 low-scoring juniors were demoted to sophomore status at a southwest side high school in Chicago last month, right before the state test.

The students also traveled to Banneker Elementary school, at 65th and Normal, which is one of the schools slated for closure. There, they held a press conference and rally which included students and a parent from the Banneker community who called on CPS keep their school and all CPS schools open.

We are incredibly lucky to have such committed, dedicated and socially aware young people in Chicago. Thank you for all you do!