Tonight at 7 p.m. at Nicola's Books, 27 young poets from Ann Arbor Open School will celebrate the release of their new anthology of poems, "Why Is the Sky Purple?" The event is free and open to the public, and promises to be outstanding.

The following essay was written to serve as the book's foreword. It will tell you something about the amount of brilliant writing and growth these student-poets have accomplished this year. It also constitutes something of an argument regarding the goals of public education — what I think they have been and what I think they should be.

In December 2009 I wrote a column for AnnArbor.com in which I discussed my experiences working with young poets through the Dzanc Writer-in-Residence Program. In the column I touched on my educational philosophy, and my concerns about recent educational trends, as follows:

With so much of America's educational system moving toward standardized curricula to produce standardized results on standardized tests, it seems there is less and less space for students to stretch their imaginations, to enjoy the playfulness of words, the power of words. But I believe that when students are given that space they are capable of extraordinary things.

One reader saw things quite differently, and responded with a comment arguing for a more rigidly structured approach to teaching creative writing — culminating, indeed, in standardized testing. I found the suggestion rather alarming.

A standardized test for creative writing? Who would set the standards? I understand that there are correct solutions for "x-squared minus 2x plus 1 = the square root of 625," a correct definition of "bicameral legislature," and a correct date on which the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

But what is the correct adjective for watermelon? What is the correct texture for sadness?

Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of standardized testing as a pedagogical tool, period. But it especially concerns me in its increasing application toward writing. After all, writing is meant to be read, and who wants to read the standardized?

Nothing in this world is more boring to read or to write than a standard five-paragraph essay with the thesis statement underlined and a concluding paragraph which restates the opening paragraph. Yet this is precisely the kind of essay that many schools' writing curricula are designed to produce, and which standardized writing tests are designed to favor.

Of course, the pressures around quantifiable educational "standards" these days are enormous — even for schools like Ann Arbor Open School, and programs like the Dzanc Writer-in-Residence Program. At the beginning of this school year, I was asked by Dzanc if there might be some sort of standardized test we could administer to show improvement in my class's writing as a result of the program. I sent back a rather angsty response, and the idea didn't go any further, but I don't blame them for asking.

The fact is, Dzanc depends on grant money to sustain their Writer-in-Residence programs, and because the terms of the educational conversation are increasingly framed by such faux-objective measures as test scores, grant foundations want to see quantifiable results to justify their spending.

What you are holding in your hands is something I don't know how to quantify.

I could tell you about the nearly 500 pages of typed poems I have on my hard drive produced by Ann Arbor Open students this year, or the hours of classroom writing time they have put in. I could count up the hundreds of instances of metaphor and simile and parallelism and juxtaposition; of meter and repetition, perfect rhyme and slant rhyme. But none of that is what's worth remembering about the students' experience this year with poetry.

A couple of months into the school year, one mother pulled me aside to tell me about how the Writer-in-Residence Program was affecting her son. This boy, she said, had always been a reluctant writer but had come home this year beaming about the poems he'd written, and eager to write more. In a few weeks' time of being encouraged and trusted to write poems, he had gone from apprehensive to enthusiastic about writing.

Then, just a week ago, I spoke with this mother again, and she reiterated how excited her son was about the poems he's been writing and about the forthcoming book. And I was able to tell her how excited I was about the conversation I'd just had with her son regarding revisions to one of his poems: how he had decided to add a self-deprecating and tragic twist, because he'd noticed several of his peers had similar poems with triumphant endings, and he wanted his to be different. In other words, he observed a literary trend in the class, and chose to set his own work apart.

That is a sophisticated literary decision for a fifth-grader who began the year without much interest in writing. That is a transformation I don't think you can capture in any sort of test result. And it's just one story out of many.

The poems in this book are really, really good. For real. In my experience, adults don't often understand how smart, observant, inventive, and profound their children can be. Often while I'm reading the kids' latest work, I can't contain my excitement, and have to forward something to one of my poet pals for a response. In the past two weeks alone, in such fits of glee and admiration, I have emailed several students' poems to at least four other poets.

Here's a quick sampling of some of their responses, no two in response to the same poem or poet:

"Wow, way to stick that ending, Zach. Oof."
"Omg laughing so hard. Your kids are the greatest."
"Magic in my inbox first thing. Thank you so much."
"I wish I wrote that."
"I wish to register the fact that I find "Calvin" CAPTIVATING."
"It makes me think about what it's really like to be that age and think, thank god somebody who actually is that age had the talent and the guts to write this."
"I read the poems and realize I like them better than at least a third of the things I read in college."

In a couple of cases, I asked my friend Fiona Chamness (who the students know from her guest appearances in class) for last-minute editorial advice when a student and I were having a hard time choosing which poems to include in the book. For one student, there was a set of three poems she had NOT chosen that I love tremendously, and I wanted Fiona's input on whether (and how) I should ask this student to reconsider. Ultimately, I did talk to the student again, and one of the three poems is now in the book (along with four other dynamite poems by this poet).

One thing Fiona said about these poems during that conversation really strikes a chord with me, and speaks strongly to why I value this work:

I guess what I would say about all three of them is that grown people frustrate me a lot, and if I wanted to show them poems to make them see how complicated younger people/poets can get, those are the poems that I would absolutely trust to make them shut up. And listen better.

I would trust the poems in this book to show anyone interested how amazingly thoughtful, complex, and imaginative young people can be, if we give them the space and the encouragement to express it.

I believe that an education that values these capacities in our young people is what we need for our children, for our families and communities, and for our country. And I don't think it can be quantified.

Scott Beal is wrapping up his third year as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School.