Writing and Doing: Women in Civil Rights

By Joanne Grant

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 6

A spate of recent conferences has a common purpose: to assess the civil rights movement and place it in historical perspective. They have a common thesis as well–la lutta continua, the struggle goes on.

Clayborne Carson, historian at Stanford University, described as “long-distance runners” the participants at a session of the June colloquium at the University of Virginia on women in the civil rights movement. The colloquium, sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute, brought together a hundred activists and academics for an exchange on “The Roles of Women in Civil Rights Struggles.”

Almost every speaker–panelists, commentators, and participants–linked what had gone before to the present and talked of their continued concern for social issues.

The concept of continuous struggle was brought home from the opening session, when panelists Virginia Durr, Modjeska Simkins, Johnnie Carr, and Anne Braden recalled the civil rights struggles of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. From the floor Oliver Hill reminded participants that in 1904 blacks in Richmond, Va., walked for a year rather than ride segregated buses. “We have to stand on the shoulders of those who went before,” he said, “and do our part while we are here.”

Another theme running through the conference was summarized by Mary Frances Berry of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: “Government doesn’t do anything unless you push it.”

Despite the common themes, however, there were two major areas of disagreement. One was the question of whether women had played a subordinate role in the civil rights movement which led to discontent and hence to the development of the feminist movement. This concept has been discussed at several civil rights conferences over the past year and and [sic] seems to be based in a retrospective assessment in which historians view the earlier movement through the prism of the much later feminist viewpoint.

The second area of disagreement was over the question of whether racism or economic inequities lies at the root of social problems. Anne Braden, the veteran activist from Louisville, Ky., said, “Racism, and the struggle against it, is the key to understanding this society and changing it.” Others argued that the issue of class is paramount.

Notably, several conference speakers pointed to the contributions of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party leader, and Ella J. Baker, a founder of he Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and an organizer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Joyce Ladner, a sociologist at Howard University, said, “It can be argued that there are some women whose public service and leadership careers transcend the boundaries of feminism, as it is popularly defined…Perhaps Ella Jo Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer can be cast within such a tradition.” Many others cited the work of these two women as exemplars of the role of women in the movement including Raymond Gavins of Duke University and Martha Prescott Norman of the University of Michigan.

The work of Southern black women, it was pointed out, is largely underrated in historiography. Activist Cora Tucker of Halifax County, Va., in detailing the civil rights struggles in her area, said the work done by local people is just as important as that of national leaders. Her own contributions have stretched over three decades [Southern Changes, October-December 1985], but what seems significant is that today she is developing young leadership and has stretched the boundaries of the civil rights struggle to include concern for the Third World, world peace and the environment.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the colloquium, as Victoria Gray–a leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party–put it, was providing a setting in which “the people doing the writing are exposed to the people who are doing.”

In general there was agreement that historiography needs the insights of activists and that local organizers could benefit from a historical perspective.

Joanne Grant is a writer and filmmaker. She edited the anthology, Black Protest, and produced the film, Fundi, on the life of Ella Baker.

Hooked on the Drug Problem

By Ralph Mason Dreger

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 7-8

How do we fight the drug problem? Well, first, it must be recognized that it is not “the drug problem,” but a whole congeries of problems:

• the growing in other countries of crops of what we call “illicit drugs” but which are the sole sustenance of multitudes of farmers;
• the creation of “narco-millionaires” in Columbia, Peru and elsewhere;
• the illegal importation and/or growing of drugs here (such as U.S.-grown marijuana)
• the shipment of drugs through other countries (as in the Bush-Noriega connection);
• the impotence of law enforcement agencies that are overwhelmed in attempting to combat drugs;
• the high profits from smuggling and “dealing” on our streets;
• the extreme poverty in the midst of extreme plenty, as an underclass looks with envy on prosperous drug dealers, and the flaunting of the leisure class in the face of the unemployed and underemployed;
• the easy access to “licit” drugs (Tylenol, alcohol, Demarol) for relief of mental or physical pain or production of pleasure
• the breakdown of families;
• the use of long sentence and capital punishment for street criminals juxtaposed against plush federal prisons (or probation and restitution) for white collar criminals;
• and so on.

The “Drug Problem” is such a host of related issues that it is an almost impossible morass. As such, “it” has no simple solution.

How then do we fight the drug problem? Not how we have been fighting it–or at least not how our governments have been fighting it. Multiplied millions have been spent, armies of drug fighters spread from here to the growing regions of Columbia and Peru, and local law enforcement agencies have been overwhelmed with drug operatives. The government links anti-Communism with the fight against drugs even though officials know that in Latin America, Communist insurgents and the drug kings are mortal enemies who visit murder campaigns on each other. It is considered “patriotic” to support all these huge expenditures and extraordinary efforts, to excuse the unconstitutional actions of the Drug Enforcement Agency and its allies in the name not only of fighting drugs but of Americanism. The Right postures about a federal death penalty for drug kings–a notion which would be as ineffective against drug traffic as it has been in deterring murder.

Observers fairly well agree that the War on Drugs has failed. So what do we do in response to our evident failure? We appropriate not millions but billions, we appoint an official “drug czar” (we have had at least ten called by different names since Nixon began The War), and we beef-up the same fruitless activities in which we have been engaging.

Before offering some suggestions about how to deal with the drug problem, let me point out some of the human rights violations the War on Drugs is perpetuating. The DEA itself has acted in ways that are a “mixture of the illegal and the unscrupulous” (Gierginer,D., “Inside the DEA,” Reason, December, 1986, pp.23-29). On the merest suspicion of engaging in illegal drug trafficking a person’s entire property can be confiscated, however false the suspicion actually proves. Law enforcement agencies have been using the so-called anti-racketeering RICO statute in ways scarcely envisaged by Congress. Now, all that you own can be taken away from you–and you have no recourse in law, for that is the law. The police are protected fully in violating your Fourth Amendment rights, in searching and seizing upon suspicion alone.

Let me add one note which demonstrates how the War on Drugs can be used to undermine people’s rights: This spring David Duke introduced into the Louisiana legislature a bill (which fortunately died in committee) which had a high note of righteous justification for promoting the safety and welfare of children and adults.

The heart of the bill was this: “The legislature hereby establishes a mandatory drug testing program for adults in public assistance programs without the requirement of individualized suspicion.” There are some of us who object to mandatory drug testing programs anyway, with all their errors and invasions of one’s body, except for those directly involved in the safety of the public, and under very

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restricted circumstances at that. If Mr. Duke’s bill is not a direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment, I do not recognize one. And if any reader does not know who David Duke is and what he represents, and what he actually meant by his bill, then it would be well for them to find out. I fear that we shall hear more of Mr. Duke and others of his ilk who have a chance to rise to power on such issues as the War on Drugs.

What, then do I advocate to fight the drug problem?

I urge that drugs be decriminalized and that the country back off on its present War on Drugs. We are repeatng the vain efforts of Prohibition.

It is estimated that one-quarter of the U.S. population uses illegal drugs. If they wish to do so, and are allowed to do so without being branded as criminals, all the vast apparatus which is now spinning its wheels in a vain efforts to stem the flow of drugs can be disbanded. Police can do the job they are supposed to do without having to detect whether someone has a fraction of an ounce of marijuana or cocaine or crack or whatever, or having to put someone in jail for what would otherwise be considered legitimate activities. Of course, I am speaking here of search and seizure operations, not of checking for DWI.

Police have enough to do just to cope with the ordinary problems in our society. To ask them to enforce the unenforceable makes their job virtually impossible, to say nothing of the pressures put upon those often underpaid and overworked officers in a climate where drug money flows so freely.

I would go farther than mere decriminalization of drugs, which is really only the first step in a genuine fight against the drug problem. I shall assume only that the monies which now are being wasted on the War on Drugs will be available for a sensible war. The next thing is to set up clinics for treatment of addicts, with free distribution of the substance(s) to which a person is addicted.

Support services with trained personnel as well as lay helpers from the several treatment programs, formal and informal, which have grown up in the last few years would be fully funded. Religious institutions and networks of the country would be enlisted, not in an attempt to co-opt religion into a governmental program, but to assist in doing what a number have been able to do in rehabilitating people.

Educational programs would, of course, be part of the plan of dealing with addicts or abusers. But such education would go far beyond rehabilitation education and become part of the curriculum in schools and colleges.

I should go even farther in my War on Drugs. I could suggest that more research needs to be done as to why people turn to drugs in the first place. Perhaps there should I be more research, only I think that enough has been done to enable us to get the general motivational picture: the need of youth to experiment is surely one reason. Peer pressure is already well known. Many in poverty seek ways to avoid despair and hopelessness. The same magical mechanism operating in the criminal who believes “I can’t get caught” is a secondary motivation after the start along the way of drugs. The general acceptance of the licit drugs in our society promotes illicit drug use, as young people tell their oldsters, “I see no difference between what you are doing and what I am doing except that what I am doing is artificially classified as criminal.”

Even though the general picture may be outlined, there may nevertheless be a need for research in motivation aimed, say, at specific drugs and their motivational influence or at other problems not sufficiently understood now. And, yes, such research as shown to be needed should be well-funded.

The War on Drugs is not only futile but dreadfully corrosive of our civil rights. If you don’t like my way to fight drugs, then use your best ingenuity to devise a better one, one that will not undercut our Constitution, one that is compassionate and just, and one that will be reasonably successful.

Ralph Mason Dreger, a former member of the Southern Regional Council, is professor emeritus of psychology at Louisiana State University. Council members, life fellows, Associates and other members of the SRC extended family are invited to submit essays from The South at Large.

Stopping the Overuse of Standardized Tests

By Monty Neill

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 9-10, 12-14

During the past decade, a tidal wave of standardized testing has washed over the school systems of America. In its report, Fallout From the Testing Explosion, FairTest (the National Center for Fair and Open Testing) calculated that at least 100 million tests are given in the public schools each year. And, FairTest found, testing is more frequent in the Southern states than in the rest of the country.

In the past several years, however, a movement to turn back the wave of testing has developed. In 1988, North Carolina passed a law banning the use of standardized achievement tests in the first and second grades. Mississippi will discontinue use of its kindergarten test after the 1988-89 school year. Georgia will do the same, even though it only enacted the testing requirement last year. And in June, Texas approved legislation to eliminate its first grade test.

These are contradictory trends: simultaneously a continuing push toward more testing and an effort to reduce the massive overuse, misuse and abuse of standardized testing. To understand why the testing explosion has generated a growing movement for testing reform, we need to answer a number of key questions:

What are the effects of tests on students?

How does testing hurt school curricula and instruction?

Why does testing negatively impact on school accountability and reform?

What are the limitations of standardized tests?

Why are standardized exams biased?

After responding to each of these questions, we will discuss what is being done in the South to counter the dangers of too much testing.

Harming Individual Students

In the U.S., children from lower-income, rural, inner-city and minority backgrounds often receive an inadequate education. To some extent, the lower average test scores of students from these backgrounds reflects this fact. But often at a very young age, children are tested and placed in programs that virtually guarantee they will never receive an adequate education.

Based on standardized test scores, thousands of children are placed in programs for the “educable, mentally retarded” or similar special education programs. Students in such programs rarely rise out of them. Instead, they usually fall further and further behind more advanced students.

Minority students are far more likely to be placed in these programs than are majority-group students. For example, across the nation, blacks are three times as likely as whites to be in “educable mentally retarded” or similar programs. After hearing evidence about the construction of the exams, a California federal judge concluded that “IQ” tests had never been validated for use on black children. Basing himself on information about placement and construction, the judge banned the use of “IQ” tests in assigning black children to special education programs anywhere in the state.

The same tests are also a common method of determining eligibility for “gifted and talented” programs. Blacks are only half as likely as whites to be in these programs, which often provide a more enriched education. Despite the racial disparities and the California decision, test uses such as these remain all too common elsewhere in the U.S.

Students also are put in or removed from Chapter I, bilingual and other remedial programs on the basis of their test scores. In many districts, scores are used to keep children out of kindergarten or first grade or to place them in “transitional” programs.

Testing is also an important factor in decisions to retain students in grade. Not only are the tests of questionable merit in such decisions, but retention itself is of dubious educational value. Current evidence indicates that at the end of the third grade, children who were retained before grade three do not perform better than others who scored the same but were not held back, even though the children who were held back are a year older at this point.

Students who have been retained are also more likely to drop out of school. So using tests to retain children often does not help them but only increases the likelihood that they will drop out or otherwise fail in school.

Tests are also misused for placing students in tracks within schools. Tracking is often justified on the grounds that it protects slower children from being overwhelmed and helps advanced children by keeping them moving at a faster, more interesting pace. In fact, research shows that tracking does not help advanced students–they do just as well in a mixed-ability group–but does hurt lower-ranked students.

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In many districts, tracking based on test scores begins at a very early age. At every grade, low-income and minority-group students are more likely to be in the slower tracks. As a result, they are put at greater educational risk by the testing and placement process.

However, many students who do not score well on tests can in fact do regular academic work. This was demonstrated recently when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) adopted Proposition 42, which barred awarding athletic scholarships to students who did not score 700 on the SAT or 15 on the ACT. That is, the NCAA concluded that a student who scores under 700 or 15 could not do college level work. But a recent University of Michigan study found that 86 percent of the athletes who would have been denied entrance because of low test scores actually succeeded in their freshman course work. A large percentage of them went on to graduate. Evidence such as this has forced the NCAA to reconsider the wisdom of Proposition 42. It confirms, yet again, the fact that tests are extremely fallible devices for predicting how well an individual will perform.

Thus testing acts as a major barrier to gaining a decent education and reduces the life-chances of many children. This barrier affects students from low-income and minority backgrounds most strongly. Facts such as these have helped create an emerging testing reform movement.

Damage to the Curriculum

The damage caused by testing does not stop at barring minority and low-income children from access to a quality education. Tests have also come to control the curriculum in many schools, with often-disastrous results.

Several major reports issued during the past year all concluded that U.S. students are not developing “higher order thinking skills.” Research also has shown that the methods commonly used to raise standardized test scores–drill, memorization, rote learning and repetition–are counterproductive to teaching higher order skills. In preparing students to score high on the tests, teachers divert educational time and energy from the “higher order” curriculum, as well as from any nonacademic efforts.

As tests have come to drive the schools, the curriculum has been “dumbed-down.” For example, basal readers often contain material of little interest to students, written in a totally dry manner using none of the language of real life or good literature. Children who score high on the tests at the end of each basal lesson are given the opportunity to read other things. But children who do not do well are given more of what did not work the first time. This simplistic and repetitive curriculum bores them and turns them off to schooling.

The point is not whether children need basic skills or whether there is a role for memorization or repetition. They do, and there is. But these methods are not the essence of education and learning.

Unfortunately, testing’s harmful effects on curriculum and instruction fall most heavily on those who have already been victimized by standardized tests. For too many of today’s students, especially those from low-income and minority families, schooling has been reduced to test-coaching.

A Spurious Accountability

Despite these flaws, testing is often defended on the grounds that it improves the ability to assess the performance of students, teachers, schools and districts, and thereby improves accountability. However, instruments as full of problems as standardized tests can never be adequate measures of educational quality. Reducing accountability to test scores provides the illusion of quality without its substance.

As testing spreads and increasingly defines the content of the curriculum, decision-making power over our schools is removed from parents, teachers, and local government. Control either shifts to the testing office of the state education department or is put in the hands of the testing industry.

Unlike food, drugs or transportation, the billion dollar a year testing industry operates with little public oversight or control. Moreover, as the late Oscar Buros, founder of the authoritative Mental Measurement Yearbook, lamented, “It is practically impossible for a competent test technician or test consumer to make a thorough appraisal of the construction, validation and use of standardized tests…because of the limited amount of trustworthy information supplied by the the [sic] publishers.”

Advocates of standardized testing expect parents and community to leave important decisions about the lives of their children in the hands of this unregulated, unaccountable industry.

Limitations of Tests

Reliance on standardized tests will ensure that quality education remains unavailable to many students. Moreover, the problems of testing cannot be fixed simply by changing some of the questions or other minor tinkering. The basic structure of the standardized test means that it is an extremely limited tool for measuring learning.

The typical multiple choice format prohibits measuring more than a very narrow range of student performance. In the real world, people are not given a problem designed to confuse and mislead and asked to pick the one correct answer out of four or five options.

Real world problems may have more than one correct answer. Though many questions on standardized test also have more than one correct answer, the format allows for only one to be marked as “correct.”

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For example, consider this question, presented by Hoover, Politzer and Taylor (in Negro Educational Review, April-July 1987, p.91 ): “Father said: Once there was a land where boys and girls never grew up. They were always growing. What was Father telling? the truth, a lie, a story.”

As the authors explain, “The ‘right’ answer could be any of them. Metaphorically, it could be the ‘truth’ if the growth were mental and not physical. It could be a ‘lie’ in that the word ‘lie’ in black speech can also mean a joke or a story, and it could also be a ‘story.'” This question demonstrates how tests can penalize creative thinking or cultural diversity.

It also indicates that understanding how the test maker thinks is a key to doing well on these exams.

In general, standardized tests cannot measure knowledge in any complex or in-depth fashion. They often trivialize subjects in order to fit the multiple-choice, one correct answer format.

They emphasize simple, memorizable definitions and formulas. And they certainly do not measure critical thinking, problem-solving skills, use of knowledge in the field, or creativity.

Moreover, test reliability and validity is often inadequate for the purposes to which tests are put (see related article [Al Clayton. Issues of Reliability and Validity. Vol. 11, No. 4]).

Test Bias

Misuse of standardized tests is one major reasons why children from low-income and minority backgrounds are so often mix-placed on the basis of test scores. Bias in the tests themselves is another important reason.

Test proponents claim that standardized exams are “objective.” However, the only thing about them that is objective is the mechanical method by which they are scored. The decisions about what academic areas to cover, what questions to put in the test, what language style to use, how difficult to make the test, and how scores are interpreted and used–all these are subjective, not objective, decisions. All can be biased.

As with any human activity or product, every test is grounded in a particular culture. Contemporary U.S. society contains many cultures organized around factors such as language, regional or national origin, race and ethnicity, gender and class.

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Basing a test on one culture can lead to its being biased against people from other backgrounds.

Consider the following item from the WISC-R (Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Revised), the most widely used “IQ” test: “What is the thing to do when you cut your finger?” Two-point response: “Put a Band-Aid on it…” One point response: “…Go to the doctor (hospital)…Get it stitched up…” Zero-point response: “…Suck blood…Don’t panic…Let it bleed.”

A Maryland sociologist discovered that minority children usually score low on this item. She asked youths in inner-city Baltimore why they answered the question the way they did. She found that many answered “go to the hospital” because they thought that “cut” meant a big cut. When told it was a small cut, almost every child said to use a Band-Aid.

Even getting a few questions like this “wrong” can dramatically lower a child’s “intelligence” score. However, on the WISC-R as on many other tests, the problem is not one or two questions but that the cultural background built into the exams simply does not match the experiences of many children.

Item selection and norming are the processes that enable individual scores to be distributed on a “normal” bell-shaped curve. In order to construct the curve, item selection and norming must be based primarily on the responses of subjects from the majority culture. As a result, all major tests in the U.S. are constructed to fit the culture of white middle to upper classes. Thus, they are biased against those who are not from that culture.

Standardizing a test means standardizing bias. Assuming that a given test has some validity as a measure for the majority population, bias means that the test will not adequately measure the true abilities of people from minority groups. That means the tests will not be valid for use on minority populations. It was for reasons such as this that the California court found that “IQ” tests were biased against black children.

Test-makers do not recognize that they might be measuring class or culture rather than ability or achievement, and do not grasp the fundamental nature of bias in testing. Thus, the procedures test-makers use to remove bias treat the problem as occurring only accidentally, in an occasional item, not as underlying the instrument as a whole. As a result, test-makers’ “fairness standards” fail to eradicate test bias. Deeply rooted bias is one additional

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reason why standardized tests are inadequate as primary tools in educational evaluation.

What Can Be Done?

Test misuse and overuse threatens the educational health of our nation. But what can be done about these problems?

To develop a strong educational system for all, the testing tidal wave must be fumed back. In its place, more useful, appropriate and unbiased assessments must be developed and implemented. Parents, educators and concerned citizens need to make certain that standardized, multiple-choice tests are not used to harm students or dictate the shape of education.

FairTest believes that education can be improved if all testing programs are evaluated on the following principles:

• Tests must be relevant. They should only be used where they can be shown to be directly helpful to educators and students. The quest to score high on standardized exams must not be allowed to drive schooling.
• Tests must be open. Parents, teachers and independent evaluators should have a right to know how tests are constructed, validated and used.
• Tests must be fair and unbiased. No student should be assessed based on culturally specific instruments.

FairTest is working closely with groups around the nation to implement this agenda. In mid-March, FairTest convened, in Atlanta, a Southern Regional Conference on Testing Reform in the Public Schools. Civil rights, educational reform and children’s rights advocates from many Southern states attended. This conference launched the Southern Network for Testing Reform.

Thus far, its major emphasis has been on repealing the use of tests on young children. For example, educators from Alabama plan to win a moratorium on all mass standardized testing through grade three. In this, they are largely following the example of North Carolina, where the Atlantic Center for Research in Education (ACRE) initiated a campaign to ban testing in grades one and two after the state mandated use of the California Achievement Test (CAT) in those grades [see sidebar]. ACRE opposed the tests because they have low reliability and validity for young children, the scores are not useful to teachers, too much time was spent on testing, and the tests began to drive the curriculum.

ACRE’s testing reform initiative was joined by the 1700-member North Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children. The two organizations developed a strategy of public education, watch-dogging the state’s Testing Commission, and lobbying the legislature. In time, they were joined by teacher organizations and school psychologists.

In 1987, the legislature ended funding for testing in grades one and two. The following year, the state legislated an outright ban on the use of standardized achievement tests in those grades and mandated that alternative assessments be devised. These alternative evaluation tools were developed out of an analysis of the state’s curriculum and are based on child development theory. They will be introduced across the state in the fall of 1989.

The movement to stop testing young children is only the beginning. While testing young children often causes the most harm, test misuse does great damage all the way through high school graduation–or non-graduation. Activists in each state and district must consider how best to combat all types of test misuse and abuse.

In summary, standardized tests are being used to deprive many children of a quality education. Though the negative effect falls most heavily on young children and students from low-income and minority backgrounds, test overuse blocks the ability to improve education for all students.

While many of these problems are due to misuse of the instruments, the instruments themselves are often flawed. Therefore, standardized tests should be used with great caution, and even then only with additional information about students or programs.

Readers who are interested in working with others in their state on testing reform should contact FairTest. We will put you in touch with local activists, send you information, and help you initiate and develop coalitions and campaigns to end the overuse, misuse and abuse of standardized testing.

Monty Neill is the Associate Director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair Open Testing. Documentation, as well as a more extensive discussion of most of the points in this article, can be found in Fallout Prom the Testing Explosion: How 100 Million Standardized Exams Undermine Equality and Excellence in America’s Public Schools, by Noe Medina and D. Monty Neill, available for $8.95 from FairTest, 342 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139; (617) 864-4810.

Issues of Reliability and Validity

By Al Clayton

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 11

Too often, standardized exams are not accurate even within the narrow range of things they are able to measure. The reasons for this problem can be found in the somewhat technical areas of test reliability and validity.

If we could administer a test to a person, then have that person completely forget what is on the test, and finally re-administer the test, would the two test scores be the same? If the answer is yes, the test is reliable. Since people do not forget the test they take, test-makers use a variety of statistical methods to determine reliability and report the results on a scale from zero (no reliability, the score was a random-chance accident) to one (perfect reliability.)

Reliability over 0.9 is considered quite good. Most major achievement tests (such and the California, Iowa, Stanford, and Metropolitan) reach this level.

Sub-sections of these same tests ( e.g., a subsection on calculating percents in an arithmetic test) provide the more detailed information that could be useful in teaching. Sub-test scores, however, are often far less reliable than the whole exam. Many achievement tests report such sub-scores, with the cautions against making decisions based on unreliable sub-test results buried deep inside complex manuals.

Tests for young children are particularly unreliable, with typical ratings only from 0.5 to 0.7 This is largely due to the rapid developmental changes children go through. Young children are also less able to subordinate their immediate thoughts and emotions to a task such as taking a test. The lack of reliability in the tests of young children contributes to the dangers of using such tests for placing them in special programs.

Decisions about students should never be made solely or primarily on the basis of test scores. Since reliability is never perfect, such decisions will be wrong a certain percentage of the time. The lower the reliability, the higher the “measurement error” and the more likely a mistake will be made. Despite this fact, and even though test manufacturers admit tests should not be used as sole determinants, they often are used for deciding placement, grade retention and graduation.

Validity encompasses a set of concepts designed to answer the question, “Are we measuring what we think we are measuring?” A test is only valid in relation to the use made of it. A test that does not measure what it claims to measure is not only invalid, it is dangerous.

A number of aspects of validity should be considered in assessing a test’s utility, but test-makers rarely look at more than the most simple. Partly this is because doing a comprehensive validation study can be expensive and time-consuming. More fundamentally, examining the deeper issues of validity can call into question the entire test itself.

Construct validity examines how well a test actually measures the underlying theoretical construct it claims to measure. For example, does the test accurately measure “academic potential” or “competence” or “reading”? To answer these questions requires a theoretical grasp of the construct to be measured (e.g., “reading”) as well as knowledge of how the tests scores will be used.

Consider, for example, a “spelling” test in which a student is expected to find the correctly spelled word among four or five choices or decide if an underlined word is already spelled correctly or incorrectly. This is actually a test of spelling recognition. Test manufacturers treat the two, spelling and spelling recognition, as essentially the same tling, and the test will often be used as an indicator of the ability to spell.

Often, however, tests are a bad substitute for the real thing. For example, “reading tests” do not measure reading, they measure some reading skills. Because reading is more than the sum of a set of separate skills, reading tests are based on a faulty understanding of reading and learning to read. Similarly, a test that is used to make statements about “school achievement” may really be a test of another construct such as “verbal ability.” Many tests are used as if they possessed wide-ranging validity when there is little evidence supporting such assumptions.

These are the tests that are used to determine the educational fate of children and the content of school programs. Making educational decisions based on instruments that fail to measure what they claim to measure is a recipe for disaster for many children, most of ten those from low-income and minority-group backgrounds.

How Acre stopped testing in North Carolina

By Page McCullough

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 12-13

In 1987, the North Carolina legislature voted against giving the California Achievement Test to first and second grade children. In the following article, Page McCullough, the former executive director of the Atlantic Center for Research in Education (ACRE), explains how this victory was realized. Since its founding in 1978 as a group of parents, teachers, and teacher educators focusing on the needs of poor, minority and handicapped children in North Carolina’s public schools, ACRE has actively worked against misuse of standardized tests. [In 1988, the state banned the use of standardized achievement tests in grades one and two and directed the Department of Education to construct developmentally appropriate individualized assessment instruments.]

The North Carolina campaign to stop norm referenced standardized testing in the first and second grades began in 1983 when the state’s General Assembly voted to start using the California Achievement Test (CAT) in the early grades. ACRE opposed the use of the tests for many reasons: normed group achievement tests have low reliability and content validity for young children; the scores provided little useful information to teachers; the curriculum was becoming “test-driven”; and too much time was spent on testing.

Our work to repeal this mandate has been as much as a state of mind as any set of techniques. We knew we were in for a long battle because many politicians and parents want accountability and they see these tests as a good way to get it. The new testing program also enjoyed the fervent support of then Governor James Hunt and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Craig Phillips.

In such an unfriendly atmosphere, ACRE began the campaign by researching the issue, monitoring relevant boards, educating parents and teachers, introducing ourselves and our position to the legislature, building a constituency, training citizens to lobby and “waiting for daylight.”

ACRE’s campaign efforts included monitoring meetings of the State Board of Education and the North Carolina Testing Commission, which is responsible for advising the State Board on all testing programs administered by the state. Our observers made it possible for us to know when questions were being raised about the CAT in early grades. When an elementary school principal asked for a review of the program, ACRE and the North Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children, (NCAEYC) got on the agenda to present our views. We learned to hone our arguments, and we learned that the testing commission was never going to recommend a change in the program.

When the legislature was in session, we monitored relevant committee meetings and made our position known. Not more than a dozen legislators supported us at first, but we learned how the General Assembly worked and we became familiar faces.

ACRE educated parents and teachers about the issue whenever we could. We held workshops and published articles about the issue in our newsletter. We created our own “Parent and Citizen Test Review Commission,” which publicized our position opposing the testing of first and second graders. With these efforts, we built a small group of dedicated teachers who were willing to learn to lobby.

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ACRE found a firm ally in NCAEYC. This group has what our small organization does not: 1,700 dues-paying members. NCAEYC is composed of professors, teachers and day-care providers concerned with the quality of services for children from infancy to 8 years-old. ACRE had experience lobbying and cutting through the bureaucratic maze of the State Department of Public Instruction; NCAEYC had voters in every district. There’s nothing like a lecture from one’s first grade teacher to change a legislator’s mind!

In 1987, a member of NCAEYC persuaded a respected and popular legislator, who had young children, to introduce a bill to stop testing altogether in the first and second grades. By this time we had a different governor, who was not interested in the issue, and legislators were beginning to hear complaints about the time testing was taking and the stress it caused young children.

ACRE’s and NCAEYC’s years of organizing paid off as teachers testified before legislative committees and our phone trees went into high gear. ACRE presented our position paper, signed by many elementary school teachers. Our most persuasive arguments were that young children were poor test takers, so the results were not reliable, and that the test ignored very important goals of our curriculum which cannot be measured with paper and pencil tests. The unanimous vote for the bill in the Senate represented a major change in perspective by lawmakers.

However, the bill stalled in the House when opposition from Superintendent Phillips and former Governor Hunt surfaced. Our legislative allies then attached a provision to the education appropriations bill eliminating the requirement for testing, and this provision was enacted.

Since our initial success with the issue, the NC Association of Psychologists and the NC School Psychologists have joined with ACRE, NCAEYC, and the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) to form a larger Coalition. ACRE continues to monitor and keep our network and key legislators informed. The proponents of testing are attempting to restore state-mandated use of the CAT in grades one and two.

Our campaign suffered from the usual lack of time and money. Six years is a long time to sustain a volunteer group and we are no match for the personnel at the disposal of the bureaucracy and the test companies. Our work also suffers from a lack of parental support, which is a serious flaw. Parents have every right to know about their child’s progress in school and we have not done a good job offering alternatives to the lousy measures now being used.

Our strengths in this campaign included an astonishingly persistent group of volunteers who became increasingly skilled in lobbying in a timely manner. We did our homework and knew a variety of arguments to use and with whom to use them. We were pragmatic and non-partisan and in the end had votes from the black caucus, liberal Democrats, and conservative Republicans. Finally, we owe a great deal to three experienced women lawmakers who were willing to work hard and trade chips for this issue.

Our conclusion is that successful campaigners must be prepared for a protected battle, must organize a coalition that can develop significant public support from critical sectors, must diligently monitor relevant state bodies, must find the persuasive arguments and evidence to influence decisionmakers, and must locate legislators willing to take the issue as their own. Finally, victories must be defended and hopefully expanded.

Reprinted from the FairTest Examiner, Spring 1988 quarterly newsletter of FairTest. A free sample copy is available from FairTest, 342 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139.

H.L. Mitchell, 1906-1989

By Mike Land and Randall Williams

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 15

H.L. Mitchell, co-founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and a life-long Southern radical and activist, died August 1 in Montgomery, where he had lived in semi-retirement since 1973. He was 83.

“I always believed that if you raised enough hell, something would be done about a problem. And I always tried to do that,” Mitchell said in an interview for the March 1987 issue of Southern Changes. Armed with a socialist’s convictions and a cutting dry wit, Mitchell raised hell far and wide.

In 1934 he helped found the STFU, perhaps the nation’s first truly biracial labor union. In the 1940s he became president of the National Farm Labor Union, and in the 1950s he was leading migrant workers in California–he issued Cesar Chavez his first union card. In the 1960s, Mitchell organized sugar cane workers in Louisiana.

Even in retirement he stayed active, writing letters to newspapers and lobbying Congress for a new homestead act to help small farmers. He found time to write his autobiography, Mean Things Happening In This Land, and to shepherd the production of a film, Our Land Too: The Legacy of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. And he lectured widely on college campuses.

Only in the last few months did he markedly slow down. And August 1, when Harry Leland Mitchell died at a Montgomery hospital, he left a rich legacy of his own: a legacy of social ideals, pragmatic action, and colorful expression. He was, in essence, a great American character.

Telling of his 1930s visit to the white House to meet Eleanor Roosevelt, he recalled riding “right through those iron gates, the same ones where Reagan always stands and waves with all those damn dictators.”

Then there was his first meeting with Reagan, at a 1950s American Federation of Labor meeting. Mitchell was there as head of the NFLU and Reagan as head of the Screen Actors Guild. “One day I saw Ron standing there, looking wise like he does, and I said, ‘Ron, I’m H.L. Mitchell. I want to talk to you. People keep tapping me on the shoulder and calling me Ron.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m glad to meet you because I always have people saying, “Hey, Mitch, how are the farmers” And I don’t know a damn thing about farmers.’ And he still doesn’t,” laughed Mitchell.

Mitchell was laughing and joking about the issues he took so very seriously right up to the end of his life. He remained an advocate for small farms and believed a combination of agricultural cooperatives and a national homestead act could help a new generation of farmers make a living off the soil. He believed small farms were inherently more efficient and also better for workers, especially for individuals who are unemployed today and untrained for an increasingly technological world.

He had traveled far for a sharecropper who was a Tennessee native and who had become a socialist by reading tracts during breaks from pressing clothes in a dry cleaners’ in Tyronza, Arkansas.

In his autobiography, Mitchell had described the funeral he wanted. He didn’t get it–being buried just up the hill from Lurleen Wallace in a Montgomery cemetery–but the words said a lot about the spirit of the man:

“When I have lived out my life I have asked that my body be cremated, and that my ashes be scattered in the wind over eastern Arkansas. Then, if any one of the plantation owners or their descendants who know of me still survive, may they some day look up in the sky, and if something gets in their eyes, they can then say: ‘There is that damned Mitchell again.'”

One Less Voice for Discrimination

By Stetson Kennedy

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 16

Any time a racist organization or hate sheet goes out of business is a time for rejoicing. The recent obituary in The Spotlight announcing the demise of The Citizen, standardbearer of the White Citizens Councils which flourished at mid-century, makes very good reading indeed.

The appearance of these Councils on the local and state levels in many parts of the country was part and parcel of the last-ditch effort to perpetuate apartheid in America.

The agreed-upon division of labor was for the Councils to wage terror by day, and the Klan by night. To rope and faggot were added firing, foreclosure, eviction and denial of credit.

There was nothing new about this conjoining of economic lynching with the more conspicuous forms. The same “double whammy” was employed during the holocaust which overthrew Reconstruction, restored white rule and institutionalized apartheid. Again, at the turn of the century when blacks thought they saw hope in Populism, demagogues like Tom Watson prescribed the same medicine.

The White Citizens Councils of more recent memory were wont to refer to themselves as “respectable elements” but they were terrorists nonetheless. Denial of livelihood has always been tantamount to denial of life itself.

We would do well to ask ourselves why it is that The Citizen, after thirty-four years, decided to give up the ghost.

Hopefully, the cause for which it labored, an apartheid America, is a lost one, no less than that of the Confederacy. Except for the black ghetto, Jim Crow has been dumped upon the ash heap of history. And yet, I submit, where once we had segregated racism, we now have desegregated racism. If in this modified environment the Klan can find plenty to do, why is there not enough to fill the sheets of The Citizen?

Part of the answer, in my opinion, is that its editors have concluded that with plainclothes counterparts in the executive branch, and black-robed counterparts on the federal bench, they can afford to relax and go back to “discrimination as usual,” i.e., on a more covert, individual basis.

What has happened is that recent administrations have been doing the job of the Citizens Councils for them. Capitalizing on the so-called “white backlash” against busing, “reverse discrimination” which they helped conjure up, these administrations picked up the ball in the ongoing game of keeping blacks, women, and others in a disadvantaged status. The lynching, in one form or another, still goes on by day and by night . . .

To put it into another metaphor, in the great American crap game blacks, women and other minorities have always been up against loaded dice. School busing and affirmative action have been the only means in sight for evening the odds. In one of the great turnarounds in human history, a nation which had virtually prescribed discrimination proscribed it.

But the odds are a very long way from being even yet, and if we let anyone take us bade to the loaded dice, we will all be in for a hard twenty-first century.

Some cynic among the philosophes once said, “The forms of exploitation change from time to time.”

Woody Guthrie was also well aware of the versatility of exploiters when he sang:

As through this world I’ve rambled,
I’ve met lots of funny men;
some will rob you with a sixgun,
some with a fountain pen.

But Woody was an activist, not a philosopher, and he wasn’t buying any.

With this issue, Stetson Kennedy joins Southern Changes as a contributing editor. His four books, which at mid-century raised the standard of total equality and called for an end to Jim Crow–Palmetto Country (1942); Southern Exposure (1946); The Klan Unmasked (1954);and Jim Crow Guide (1955)–are all being brought back into print by the University Presses of Florida (15 N.W. Fifteenth St., Gainesville, FL 32603). Palmetto Country has already appeared, and the others, as well as a new work on Reconstruction, After Appomattox, are scheduled for 1990.

Contemporary Hate Activity

By Staff

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 16-18

EDITOR’S NOTE: As Stetson Kennedy points out[see “One Less Voice for Discrimination, Vol. 11 No. 4], the problems of bigotry, violence and discrimination remain very much a part of the U.S. landscape. The following incidents were compiled for Southern Changes by Leonard Zeskind, research director of the Center for Democratic Renewal.

* Violence

Asian beaten to death

Two white men are charged in the Raleigh, N.C., beating death of an Asian man. According to eyewitness accounts and statements to police, Ming Hai Loo and four Asian friends were in the Cue-‘N-Spirits poolroom and bar on July 28 when Robert Piche and Lloyd Piche started calling them “gooks, slanteyes and chinks.” The Piches also declared that they had lost a brother in Vietnam. The

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Asians reportedly left the bar but were followed into the parking lot where one of the Piche brothers confronted Ming with a shotgun and a pistol. Ming was struck on the head and died three days later.

Police handled the incident as an unprovoked, racially motivated attack but the DA charged only one of the Piches, and him only with second-degree murder. A spokesperson for North Carolinians Against Racial and Religious Violence said this was the first recorded incident of anti-Asian violence id North Carolina in this decade. A 1986 U.S. Civil Rights Commission report concluded that anti-Asian violence was a national problem and found that anti-Asian incidents rose 62 percent in 1985 over the previous year (no later statistics are available).

Racist assault in New York

One black youth was killed and three others were attacked Aug. 23 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, according to press reports. The attackers were a group of 10 to 30 white teenagers who were armed with a least one gun and seven baseball bats. The dead youth, Yusef Hawkins, 16, was shot to death. Police are treating the incident as racially motivated.

Letter Bomb Injures 15 at NAACP

Persons in Southeastern Regional Office of the NAACP in Atlanta and an adjoining medical office were injured Aug. 21 by a tear-gas bomb received through the mail by the NAACP. Some 15 persons were injured, including a four-month-old baby. The FBI is investigating.

Skinhead Sentenced in Alabama

A 19-year-old skinhead was sentenced to three years in prison for defacing a Mobile, Ala., synagogue and a Jewish community center. Two 17-year-olds were given probation.

Flag Burning Provokes Racial Confrontation

Arkansas neo-Nazi Ralph Forbes was among some 400 whites who surrounded, taunted and jostled a small group of blacks who attempted to burn a U.S. flag on the steps of the Arkansas state capitol in Little Rock on July 4. The object of the attempted flag-burning was reportedly a protest against drugs and homelessness.

Third Kluxer Sentenced in Donald Death

Former United Klans of America member Frank Cox Jr. was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the 1981 murder in Mobile, Ala., of a black teenager, Michael Donald, who was kidnapped at random and killed by a local Klan group in retaliation for the failure of a local jury to convict a black man accused of murdering a white police officer. Two other Klansmen have previously been convicted in the case; one faces the Alabama electric chair and is currently represented in the appeals process by an attorney procured by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Black Family Attacked in Queens

A black family watching a July 4 fireworks display in Queens, N.Y., was attacked by more than 30 white youths, some wielding baseball bats. One youth was arrested; police were looking for others. Several family members were hospitalized.

White Youths Sentenced

Three white youths have been sentenced–to write an essay, 15 days in juvenile detention, and 32 hours of community service, respectively–in a May 8 baseball bat attack on black students in Auburn, Wash.

WAR Member Arrested in Florida Threat

Walter Komorowski, who says he is a member of White Aryan Resistance and the John Birch Society, was arrested Aug. 15 on charges of making written threats against government officials in Port Lucie, Fla. Police confiscated handguns, knives, 1,200 rounds of ammunition, and 15 rifles, including an AK-47. Komorowski allegedly stated that he bought the AK-47 after viewing television news about the Stockton, Calif., shooting of school children by a gunman using an AK-47.

Mexicans Harassed in Georgia

Officials of the Mexican government have expressed concern after Mexican citizens working in the Gainesville, Gal, area received leaflets distributed by the Invisible Empire Knights.

Racist Graffiti in Georgia

“Nigger Go Home” was spraypainted Aug. 1 on the car of a black person living in Stone Mountain, Ga. A car belonging to a black teenager in Carrollton, Gal, was vandalized outside a pizza restaurant on July 21. A KKK “calling card” was left on the teenager’s car.

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Also in Georgia, a sign marking the construction site of Temple Beth David, the first synagogue in rapidly growing Gwinnett County, has twice been defaced by swastikas. On the morning of a community meeting to condemn the antisemitism, area mailboxes were stuffed with hate literature.

Confrontation in Oregon

A group of blacks chased by a group of skinheads in Portland, Ore., on July 22, turned on the skinheads and began beating them. One skinhead, Walter Evans, was knocked unconscious, but on reviving began screaming, “White Power!”

* Politics

LaRouche to Campaign from Jail

Lyndon LaRouche reportedly will run a campaign from his jail cell for Virginia’s 10th District Congressional seat. Also running in Virginia on the LaRouche ticket are Nancy Spannaus for a state senate seat and Harry Broskie, Clyde T. Mayberry and Nereida Thompson for delegate seats.

LaRouche Front Meets with Congressional Aide

A LaRouche-organized “Food for Peace” delegation met with Fred Clark, associate counsel for the House Committee on Agriculture. Included in the delegation were former National Farmers Union Virginia state director Jack Hall and former Philadelphia NAACP president O.G. Christian.

Opinions Differ on Minority Set-Asides

A recent poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 29 percent of Southern whites believe a fixed percentage of city government contracts should be awarded to minority firms; 59 percent of blacks supported the set-asides. In Louisiana, minority set-asides were one of the key issues in the successful state legislature campaign of former KKK leader David Duke.

Contra Supporters Convene

Tom Posey, leader of the Civilian Materiel Assistance, recently held a four-day conference in Madison, Ala., and told the press he is ready to resume shipment of weapons to the Nicaraguan contras. Posey was recently acquitted on charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws by a federal judge who reasoned that the U.S. was not in a neutral military position against Nicaragua.

Studies Show Widening Gaps

The Population Research Center in Chicago reports that housing segregation has increased in the past decade but that the ten worst segregated cities were in the Northeast and Midwest, not the South.

The National Academy of Sciences found that income for black families, as a percentage of income for white families, declined from 1974-1984. The Academy also reports that black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die in infancy, that black students drop out of school at twice the rate of whites and are less than half as likely to finish college.

Duke Bill Fails

A bill by Louisiana State Rep. David Duke, former KKK leader, forbidding the use of state funds for affirmative action programs was tabled on a 48-37 vote near the close of the 1989 legislative session.

NAAWP Candidate in Memphis

Scott Shepherd, a white supremacy activist in Memphis, has announced that he will seek a local House seat in 1990. Shepherd has been a spokesman for David Duke’s National Association for the Advancement of White People and has sponsored a white supremacist television show, “Race and Reason,” on community access cable television for the past three years.

* Fashion

Two workers were fired in June for wearing KKK hoods while walking through the Southington, Conn., Pratt Whitney plant. In Philadelphia, Pa., five civilian employees of the Graterford Prison were suspended following an incident in which two of them donned Klan costumes and harassed black and Puerto Rican inmates. None of the five, are known Klan members.

* Rallies and Meetings

Klansmen and skinheads held a meeting and Crossburning July 1-2 near Kansas City, Mo. Mississippi white supremacist Richard Barrett held a small rally in Dawsonville, Gal, on July 4. A chapter of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Hancock, Md., on July 29. The Populist Party, which has a number of white supremacists in its current and recent leadership, held or planned to hold state-level meetings in Florida,Aug.18-20; Maryland, Sept. 9; Georgia, Sept. 16; Texas, Sept. 23; New York, Oct. 7; Alabama, Oct. 21; Louisiana, Nov. 4; Arkansas, Nov. 11; Tennessee, Dec. 2. Southern White Knights leader Dave Holland was an organizer for this year’s annual Labor Day Klan march and unify rally at Stone Mountain, Ga. The scheduled speakers included J.B Stoner and Ed Fields of Georgia, Thom Robb of Arkansas, and Richard Butler of Idaho. Some 50 neo-Nazi skinheads and members of the True Knights Klan faction rallied in Villa Rica, Ga., on Aug. 5 . A man calling himself Bobby Norton has applied in Pulaski, Tenn., birthplace of the original KKK, for an Oct. 7 march permit on behalf of the Aryan Nations.

Publications

By Staff

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 20

War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It by movement lawyer Brian Glick traces “the history of CIA style ‘covert action’ by the FBI and other homefront police agencies” to show “how this hidden war has be come a permanent feature of U.S. politics, directed against a very broad range of domestic movements for peace and social justice.” Glick “details practical steps. . .to combat covert measures.” $5 plus $1.50 postage and handling from South End Press, P.O. Box 7816, Edison, NJ 08818.

Thc State of Working America by the Economic Policy Institute concludes that average workers lost ground economically over the last decade. Hourly wages in 1979 averaged $9.65 in 1987 dollars while today they average $8.98 per hour after adjustment for inflation. Young families are hardest hit, with the income of families whose main breadwinner is under 25 declining by 3 percent a year since 1979. The typical young working family today has has [sic] almost $4,000 less to spend than in 1967. The report is $5 from EPI, 1730 Rhode Island Ave., NW, Suite 812, Washington, DC. (202-7758810).

Thc Greenpeace Guide to Toxics in thc Home contains recipes for alternatives to toxic cleaners, polishes and sprays commonly used in most U.S. households. The pamphlet is free to anyone contributing $15 or more to Greenpeace. For info, write P.O. Box 3720, Washington, DC 20007.

Quarantincs and Death. The Far Right’s Homophobic Agenda is a new booklet analyzing the differences between white supremacists who are also homophobic and general homophobia on the New Right. Written by Mab Segrest and Leonard Zeskind and published by the Center for Democratic Renewal, the report argues that issues of anti-gay violence ought to be included within the framework of all anti-hate group activity. $4 from CDR, P.O. Box 50469, Atlanta, GA 30302 (4042210025).

Shopping for a Better World is a 128-page pocket rating guide for “socially responsible supermarket shopping,” published by the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities. Do you buy Meow Mix for your cat? Using this guide you discover that Ralston Purina receives poor ratings on charity giving, women’s and minority advancement, and right to know; a moderate score on community involvement; good ratings on animal testing, South Africa, military and nuclear involvement; and inconclusive scores on the environment. In all, 138 companies and 1,300 brand-name products are rated on 10 social criteria. The book is $4.95 from CEP; 30 Irving Place, New York, NY10003.0r call 1-800-826-4357.

Hormone-free Texas. Beef Ships Out

By Staff

Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, p. 21

Twenty tons of hormone-free Texas beef left the Port of Houston in late July on their way to European customers. The shipment was the first U.S. beef allowed into Europe since the federal government and the European Economic Community reached an impasse over the issue of artificial growth hormones in cattle, resulting in an embargo of U.S. beef on January 1. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower rounded up Texas ranchers who raise cattle without hormones and worked out the “Texas Plan” for reopening the U.S.-European beef trade.

Hightower called the recent shipment the start of a “modern day cattle” drive that can bring extra money to enterprising ranchers, and create jobs for both agricultural workers and members of longshoremen’s unions. While most of the U.S. trade community protested that the hormones were necessary for profitable operations, Hightower and some Texas ranchers set about to prove them wrong. “From the outset, we felt that more was at stake than steak, and a whole lot more was at stake than growth hormones,” he said.