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Feds Slam the Door on Students Seeking Technical Training
Uncle Sam won't help Bay State public school students pay for college unless they have passed the MCAS, Massachusetts officials learned this week.
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige denied the state's bid to allow students
who have passed all graduation requirements except the high-stakes test to tap into more than $80 billion in federal grants and loans.
``It's very much the difference of going on to college and not going on to college,'' said Brad MacGowan, a guidance counselor at Newton
North High School.
Paige wrote to Massachusetts Education Commissioner David Driscoll on April 18
that he supported the state's effort to keep educational opportunities open but could not free up aid to those who have not passed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.
Students can be given a ``certificate of attainment'' if they have passed all high school requirements except passing the MCAS, which is necessary for the first time this year. More than 6,000 high school seniors, or 1 in 10, have not passed the test so far.
Paige wrote that Massachusetts could try again in a year or more if the state can show its students without diplomas succeed nearly as
much as students with them.
While federal aid like Pell Grants and Perkins Loans are used by students everywhere, MacGowan said the students hurt most by the federal ruling are ones seeking technical degrees for everything from HVAC technicians to day care workers.
``My feeling is a lot of them would say forget it, I'm going right into a job . . . I need to get on with my life,'' he said.
MacGowan, also the vice president of the New England Association for College Admission Counseling, recently received a similar
decision from the federal government in response to his group's request.
The federal ruling bolsters critics of the certificate program who say it only waters down the accountability standard demanded by the
state's 1993 Education Reform law.
John Silber, a former Board of Education member and current Boston University Chancellor, said the certificates were ``giveaway programs by teachers'' easily given out.
Students who cannot pass the already low MCAS standard of ``one point above abject failure'' should be kept from moving on to higher
education, he said.
``They're not qualified for any range of educational opportunity. Let them go back to high school and pass the MCAS,'' he said.
The state Department of Education will decide in a few years whether to ask again for federal approval, said spokeswoman Heidi B. Perlman.
Neil Sullivan of the Boston Private Industry Council, which helps city kids pass the MCAS and get workplace training, said the certificates aren't meant to replace diplomas.
``I would never suggest the certificate of attainment should be anything other than the next step toward a diploma,'' he said.
The ruling also affects the handful of Bay State seniors who have purposefully not taken the MCAS.
Brookline High School senior Terri Deletetsky's doesn't regret boycotting the MCAS even though her father had to sell off stocks to pay for
the full freight at Clark University, where she has already been accepted.
``It's one of the best decisions I've ever made, it's the most important. I knew I would feel the affects of it negatively and positively and I think this has been the only negative one,'' she said.
The 17-year-old may try to get her GED instead.
— Kevin Rothstein
Kids must pass MCAS to get fed financial aid
Boston Herald
April 24, 2003
http://www2.bostonherald.com/local-regional/mcas04242003.htm
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