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MCAS: Putting the Ass in Assessment
What MCAS reform means, actually, is the opposite of watering it down. It means strengthening assessment to include all learning styles. It means creating a range of graduation requirements, rather than just one. Broadening the scope of an assessment is not weakening it; it is allowing that not every child demonstrates his learning in the same way. Reform also means taking the frenzy out of the test. High stakes environments are simply not conducive to learning. High stakes environments are great for performance, but we seem to want kids to perform well without creating a situation in which they can LEARN. Mr. Lehigh also claims that the MCAS is not related to the dropout crisis: Further, when the Department of Education surveyed superintendents several years ago about why students were leaving school, the MCAS exams weren't one of the major reasons cited. Okay, deep breaths. There are two problems with this. One: They asked the Superintendents?! They wanted to know why STUDENTS were dropping out so they asked...the Superintendents? That's like saying, "Hey, I want to know why 65% of women are unhappy in their marriage. Let's survey the...um...fathers-in-law. They'll know." Two: If they HAD bothered to ask students why they left school, the majority of kids probably wouldn't have said the MCAS either. What they would have said was that they were bored or their teachers didn't care. Again, this goes back to what a test-obsessed system does to the culture of a school. If teachers are straightjacketed into a drill and kill curriculum and working under the constant threat of state takeover if those test scores don't go up, their demeanor might be less than caring. They might feel like quitting every single day. And if the curriculum is constant preparation for a test, well the boredom thing makes a lot of sense. So perhaps they didn't cite MCAS as the reason, but this is just a case of patients complaining about symptoms without naming the disease. And then this guy:
Thank you, captain eloquent. And I apologize. Were we questioning the wisdom of determining everything a student has learned in his entire academic career by one measure? Did we dare to suggest that there might be a better way? You do not have the power to declare this debate over, Senator. And, then our fair Governor Patrick had this to say to Mr. Lehigh at the Globe:
First of all, kids are still being promoted without being able to read. This one gets me particularly upset because I work in a school for kids who have been forced out of the Boston Public School system. In our school, at present, we have two teenagers with second grade reading levels and one girl who cannot read at all. All three of these students left high school in the tenth grade. Hmmm. It looks like the MCAS didn't prevent these kids from being promoted without reading ability, but it just waited until tenth grade to force them out. Second of all, the governor doesn't really want to make the call on MCAS. His readiness project is conveniently set up to decide all of that stuff for him. So our job now is to convince the various committees of the readiness project that MCAS reform is a priority, is necessary, and is the best thing to do for our kids. For more information on how to do that, please visit Citizens for Public Schools, and revel in their awesomeness. Taking aim at MCAS February 13, 2008 Boston Globe by Scot Lehigh TODAY is anti-MCAS day at the State House. Or, to put it the way the MCAS opponents do, "lobby day on MCAS Reform." And the goal of lobby day? "We will be asking our legislators and Governor Patrick to ensure high quality education by reforming MCAS now," Citizens for Public Schools, a coalition of more than 70 organizations, declares on its website. Here, "reform" and "reforming" are artful and elusive terms. What they really mean is, weaken or water down. If the group, which counts the teachers unions as "significant contributors," according to director Marilyn Segal, has its way, high school students would no longer have to pass the MCAS to graduate. Indeed, legislation that Citizens for Public Schools and the Massachusetts Teachers Association collaborated on declares that having the MCAS as a graduation requirement "violates the intent and spirit of the Education Reform Act of 1993." Its lobby-day message, meanwhile, is that "we must reduce the weight of MCAS and use a range of evidence to determine graduation . . ." (The teachers association includes the same lobby-day talking point, almost verbatim, on its website.) So as we prepare for another round of anti-MCAS arguments, let's review where we stand. Despite initial fears that the MCAS exams would doom a large proportion of the state's high school students to failure, that hasn't happened. Last spring, 87 percent of the class of 2009 passed both the English Language Arts and mathematics exams on their first try. That's up from 68 percent in 2001; on average, 95 percent of each class has passed the test by the time of graduation. Another claim legislators will probably hear is that the MCAS exams have sparked a sizable increase in dropouts. Certainly the yearly high school dropout rate is something we need to work on. Still, though the measure has fluctuated a bit, the 2005-2006 rate of 3.3 percent was a little lower than annual rates in the late 1990s. Further, when the Department of Education surveyed superintendents several years ago about why students were leaving school, the MCAS exams weren't one of the major reasons cited. "Someone should tell some of these people that the debate is over," says Senator Robert Antonioni, Senate chairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Education. "We are not going to be allocating hundreds of millions in additional school aid on the one hand, and, on the other, suspending the MCAS." With its favored legislation stymied, Citizens for Public Schools is now focusing on the Patrick administration. "Any changes to MCAS will most likely be proposed through the Governor's Readiness Project and most changes can be made by the Board of Education, without need for legislation," its website says. "That's why our target is now the Governor to include MCAS reform in his Readiness Project proposals . . ." So when Governor Deval Patrick came to the Globe recently, I read him that and asked for his current thinking on the MCAS. "My position has been that we need MCAS, we should have MCAS, and MCAS should remain a graduation requirement," he replied. Although Patrick said he had made his view plain to his education task force, he noted that "people can bring their views to the readiness project; that's what it's for." The state should "be mature enough to ask ourselves whether the test we have is . . . measuring the skills that matter," he said, adding that he had asked the readiness project for a data-driven analysis of that issue. (Our fourth and eighth graders' impressive, nation-leading performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam is considered one good indication of accomplishment at those levels.) So if the readiness project pushes for big changes in the MCAS, would he go along? "I do not anticipate my position on the MCAS changing," Patrick replied, adding: "I came to the MCAS by talking to parents of poor kids who told me that before the MCAS, their kids were just promoted on without even being able to read . . . I start, because I personally stink at standardized tests, highly skeptical of standardized tests, but I got there by talking to these parents, I mean, all over the place, talking to these parents. So it would take a lot - it would take a whole lot - for me to reconsider that position." Good for the governor. His position and the reasoning behind it are things MCAS opponents need to hear as they take renewed aim at the exam. — The Monthly Roast |
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