Move over, Rosa Parks. Take a seat, Ehren Watada. Not so fast, Mahatma Gandhi.

In Seattle the new standard for civil disobedience in the face of injustice is a 60-year-old middle school teacher named Carl Chew who refused to give the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

That’s how he’s being portrayed in anti-WASL circles by the Washington Education Association and by the Seattle news media. By refusing – and being suspended without pay as a result – Chew has become a symbol of resistance.

Reality is something different. This isn’t as much about school reform and the WASL as it is about who sets public education policy.

While professionals should have influence, policy decisions are made by the elected representatives of those who pay the bills. That’s how it’s always been; that’s how it should be.

If those staff members don’t like the policy, they can try to change it or they can quit their jobs. But they don’t get to accept the money collected from taxpayers and appropriated by the representatives of those taxpayers and then pick and choose which policies to carry out and which to ignore.

Can teachers refuse to teach evolution or sex education or the Holocaust if they don’t believe in it? Would such protesters be as celebrated?

There’s another problem with Chew’s protest. Civil disobedience suggests powerlessness – that the only way to stand up is to sit down. But Chew isn’t powerless. He and all teachers are ably represented by the WEA, the most influential voice in education in the state. And WEA lobbying has succeeded in forcing changes.

It has not, however, succeeded in killing school reform, and that’s what seems to bother Chew. His isn’t a desperate cry for justice. His is a petulant response to the fact that his point of view hasn’t prevailed.

Why? Because a majority of voters and a majority of parents favor higher standards for Washington schools, and they favor demanding a demonstration that students have achieved them. They don’t want to return to the “good old days” when we gave diplomas out like greeting cards – not symbolic of accomplishment but of seat time; not a reward but an entitlement.

So now what? Chew told reporters that he will decide next year what to do about administering the tests, but he hopes for a win-win solution before then. He apparently thinks state lawmakers will negotiate with him over how to dissolve the WASL and replace school reform with a system more to his liking.

What would that look like? According to his statement, Chew said a successful education system is one in which “each child learns about who she or he is and how the world works, gains an assertive and confident self-image and feels safe, well-fed and happy.”

But unless his goals include having kids who know how to read, write, reason and compute, he is grossly out of touch with a majority of Washingtonians.

His letter also represents something of a delusion born of life in an echo chamber. Only Chew knows what he’s heard from fellow teachers, parents and students. But if he broadened his community he would hear a different perspective. Poll after poll after poll show that his is a minority viewpoint.

Kids are learning more than they have in decades. Diplomas have meaning. The system finally is being held accountable for results. The Legislature has finally begun melding school reform with the ambition of some kids to attend not just four-year universities but also technical colleges, vocational schools and apprenticeship programs.

Public schools in Washington are getting better. The anecdotes say all sorts of things, but that’s what the numbers say. That’s not as good of a news story as a protesting teacher, but it is good news nonetheless.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics