Her story mirrors my own. In Louisiana in the 1980s and 1990s, students took two standardized tests. One (the LEAP test) measured basic proficiency and the other (the California Achievement Test) measured more advanced proficiencies. In the third grade, I scored 100 percent on the LEAP test, the only student in my overwhelmingly white class to do so. The teacher Mrs. Callender called me up to the front of the room and bragged about me to all the other students. That same year, on the CAT Test, I scored in the 89 percent percentile.
Meanwhile, I noticed one day during class that several of my white classmates, among them my best friend Amanda, were all mysteriously led out of class and then returned later, with no explanation. When I asked Amanda where she’d been, she said school officials had made her take a test, but she wasn’t clear what for. She never mentioned it again.
The next year, fourth grade, I walked into a classroom and met Beatrice Gaulden, one of only three Black academic teachers I would ever have. With her neon green and yellow Hammer-pants, her penchant for drinking eight tall glasses of water a day, and her strict instructions each morning – we were not to approach her desk, but rather to wait until she moved to a stool in the front of the room for open discussion time — she was a wonder. Mrs. Gaulden is a character in most of my childhood stories of transformation because she was so pivotal to my own sense of self-worth as an outspoken, bossy, loquacious, bespectacled, ponytailed Black girl in a predominantly white classroom.
Because of Mrs. Gaulden’s instruction, my test scores leaped from the 89th percentile to the 99th percentile within one year of instruction. She never taught to the test. She simply taught.
That year, the Louisiana Gifted and Talented Program came calling for me, as they had called for my friends the year before. I took the battery of tests they offered, no doubt because Mrs. Gaulden had asked them to look at my case. They came back to her (she would tell me years later) and told her that I had not passed the tests. She implored them to rescore my assessment. They came back to her and reported an error in their scoring. (As if.) And so I became a “gifted and talented” student, with even smaller classes, more specialized instruction, early opportunities to take the ACT and SAT, and to travel. I soared with the additional resources provided by the G/T program.
Article Appeared @http://www.salon.com/2015/04/08/america_is_criminalizing_black_teachers_atlantas_cheating_scandal_and_the_racist_underbelly_of_education_reform/