'Zombies' protest high-stakes testing

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) -- A group of Providence high school students dressed as zombies Wednesday and staged a horror-themed protest against high-stakes testing.

The Providence Student Union says the "zombies" marched to draw attention to the effects of the state's new high-stakes testing graduation requirement. The group argued that the new requirement will have a deadly serious impact on youth in Providence.

“We are here to protest the use of the NECAP as a high-stakes test, and to demonstrate how this policy is unfairly putting thousands of students in danger of not graduating,” said Cauldierre McKay, a junior in Providence and a member of PSU.

“We all know that without a high school diploma, a person has drastically reduced life opportunities and a severely limited future. To take away the diploma we’ve worked for is to take away our life—to make us undead. That’s why we’re here today, dressed as the zombies that this policy will turn so many of us into.”

The crowd of zombie students staggered and lurched their way across Kennedy Plaza on Wednesday evening.

After the group arrived at the Rhode Island Department of Education, demonstrators used their bodies to dramatize the number of students the policy negatively impacted by collapsing to the ground 1 by 1.