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MA Legislators Try to Permit More Seniors to Receive Diplomas

Ohanian Note: Note how the so-called impartial, 'just the facts' repertorial voice uses the same perjorative descriptors as the MCAS proponents: free pass, flunk,radical, so-called.


State House pols yesterday quietly filed a radical weakening of the high-stakes MCAS test, pushing to grant thousands of students who have failed a free pass to graduation.

Students in bilingual, vocational and special education programs would avoid the graduation mandate under riders to the state budget filed by state senators but shielded from the public.

The MCAS gutting reaches beyond a House approved plan to let just special education students bypass the mandate and would include most of the 4,800 seniors now being denied a diploma.

``I would hope that the Senate would have courage to do exactly what the House did and if they go further, that would be great,'' said Larry Ward of the anti-MCAS group FairTest in Cambridge.

State education leaders cried foul and promised a fight as the Senate debates the amendments next week.

``This legislation would undermine everything in terms of the progress on education reform,'' said state Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll.

The budget amendments were filed by state Sen. Susan C. Fargo (D-Lincoln), a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

The Senate clerk said the amendments wouldn't be released until at least Monday but copies obtained by the Herald show Fargo's bills would allow school districts to grant diplomas to all special education students, vocational-technical schools and so-called limited English proficient students.

Local school districts can award a ``certificate of attainment'' to students who don't pass the test but meet all the other local graduation requirements.

Among the 60,862 public high school seniors this year, 92 percent passed the test.

But more than 2,000 special education students failed, as did more than 1,600 students in vocational programs and nearly 900 with limited English skills.

Fargo could not be reached for comment last night but state Rep. Alice H. Peisch (D-Wellesley) said there is growing support to letting special ed students through without the rigors of the high-stakes exam.

``I'm generally not opposed to a graduation requirement for those students capable of meeting the requirements,'' Peisch said. ``But, for some special education students, the math portion of the test in particular is impossible.''

Peisch proposed the House loophole for special ed students but said she wouldn't sign on to the other provisions.

But Senate Education Committee Chairman Robert A. Antonioni (D-Leominster) predicted his colleagues will reject any effort to roll back education reform.

``It's just bad public policy that would result in the redirecting of efforts and resources away from the students who need them most,'' Antonioni said.

``If districts know that they don't have to hold these students to a higher standard, it is entirely logical, and I think almost inevitable, that districts won't direct resources toward them.''

Ward, the MCAS opponent, said the Senate move shows lawmakers might soon rethink the graduation requirement entirely.

``The fact that the Senate is even making these suggestions, to me, it says some of them don't think a single test should be graduation requirement,'' he said. ``It means they should rethink the graduation requirement for everybody.''

During its budget debate two weeks ago, a veto-proof majority in the House pushed through the exemption from the MCAS requirement for special education students. It passed even over the objection of House leaders including Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and Education Committee Chairwoman Marie St. Fleur, prompting spontaneous applause in the House chamber.

Gov. Mitt Romney has strongly suggested he will veto any effort to water down the requirement.

And Antonioni predicted the governor's veto will be upheld in the House because members have had time to absorb what the bill would do.

``I think members on the House side were caught perhaps unaware,'' he said. ``I don't think any of this will pass.''


— Elizabeth W. Crowley and David R. Guarino
MCAS free pass: Thousands who flunk could get diplomas
Boston Herald
May 24, 2003
tp://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/mcas05242003.html

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