On the campaign trail in the 2nd Franklin District, as a Democratic candidate for State Rep, I have met many voters who have asked me about the MCAS Program and what I feel about the process being looked at and revamped. I am a strong supporter of ending MCAS as a “graduation requirement”. After completing nine years of elected duty this weekend on a regional district school committee, I have seen the stress this program places on students.
After completing the local requirements for graduation, a student deserve their diploma. One test should not supercede the local requirements set by each school system. We no longer teach the core values that should be taught in classrooms. In Massachusetts we teach how to take a test. That must end. I have no problems with testing that gauges the student’s levels of ability and tests the delivery of an education within a system.
Besides with the fiscal constraints coming up for FY11 and FY12 it will become harder and harder to offer programming in schools centered around compliance to the mandates associated with the MCAS program.
I’m a high school English teacher. The MCAS in English is not difficult. No student proficient in English who is a) cognitively intact and b) without documented learning disability should be able to perform at a proficient level on that exam. Any student who cannot perform at a proficient level on that exam and does not have the extenuating circumstances I mention is not deserving of a high school diploma. Something is dreadfully wrong–somewhere.
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p>I DO favor exemptions for holistically cognitively low students and for students with special extenuating circumstances–late arrivals in the United States for speakers of languages other than English and for those students whose special needs make expression in written English impossible.
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p>My middle-level sophomores have just taken their test for this year. I am confident that the instruction that have heretofore received in my district combined with my instruction this year will enable to demonstrate, at a minimum, proficiency in reading and written English. And that’s all that assessment does is provide SOME evidence of proficiency in reading and writing.
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p>I’m sorry, the test may not be perfect–and I agree with Sabutai that there is tremendous room for improvement–but a high-stakes assessment of basic skills is not an unreasonable hurdle for students without extraordinary or special needs expecting a diploma from a Commonwealth school.
students with documented disabilities are required to pass the MCAS to graduate. MCAS as a graduation requirement should not go away entirely, but it needs to be one of several measures that contributes to a decision on graduation. That decision, I believe, belongs at the local level, not at the state level.
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p>The Rhode Island model is instructive. In that system several measures of student progress are taken into account including the students’ performance in the classroom and his/her portfolio of work from their High School years.
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p>It is not unusual for us to find students who can perform well in the classroom, but find the testing situation so anxiety provoking that it is harmful to them. Including multiple measures in a system of graduation points, with a local graduation board ruling on a students’ fitness for a diploma, is a sensible reasonable proposal.
I said specifically in my comment that “I DO favor exemptions for holistically cognitively low students and for students with special extenuating circumstances–late arrivals in the United States for speakers of languages other than English and for those students whose special needs make expression in written English impossible.” Believe me–I have students on IEPs who cannot pass this assessment. I support exemptions to the requirement.
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p>However, I have maintained, assessed, and completed more EPPs for failing high school students without disabilities or second-language issues than I care to admit. The reasons for their poor performance? Poor skills sets. And whose fault is that?
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p>I would absolutely oppose in any shape or form a local determination of suitability for graduation. And should such a proposal be offered to the school committee that I serve on, I would vehemently oppose it. Alternative assessments, either by portfolio (realistic portfolio) or by some other demonstration of skill should be standardized, and the only way to do that is at the state level. Personally I favor–and my high school is moving in this direction–to a capstone graduation requirement that ensures that all students can demonstrate proficiency sufficient for state standards. There’s no reason that a standardized state assessment cannot include nontraditional methods of assessment and/or demonstration of proficiency (or exemption) suitable for students of even the most profound disabilities. Leaving these decisions at the local level, however, is a recipe, imho, for inconsistencies, low expectations, and expediency that all add up to disaster.
I can surely see validity in your responses. However I firmly believe that the MCAS Proficiency varies system to system and district to district. IF there could be a fundemental exemption process I could look at that but I do agree it should not be a local level option. Thanks for your replies. I also would point out check out the growing number of Anti-MCAS groups on Facebook.
I certainly hope we have not gotten to a place where public policy is driven by counting the number of Facebook pages for and against an issue.
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p>I cannot figure out what you’re trying to say here. Could you please elaborate?
I think what she’s trying to argue is that there are differences between and among the districts, which are revealed by disparities in the MCAS results, but often due to factors outside the student’s control. My counterargument would be that this is exactly why we need the standards and testing – so we can make sure that all districts are teaching more or less at the same level.
I strongly agree with Jim that there is no substitute for using multiple measures if we really want to prepare students well for life after high school and evaluate students’ fairly.
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p>I often agree with lightiris on many educational issues, and greatly respect her opinions, but still feel strongly that any benefits of the graduation requirement are outweighed by its harm and that there are better ways to improve school quality and measure student achievement.
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p>The argument, promoted relentless by the Boston Globe and state policymakers, is that the graduation requirement has raised educational standards and not caused undo harm to vulnerable student populations, but the evidence here and nationally does not support that claim.
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p>The Globe et al repeat ad nauseum that MCAS has made up No. 1 on NAEP, but anyone can go to the NAEP results and see that Massachusetts has performed at or near the top of states since way before the MCAS graduation requirement. (Contact me directly if you want help navigating the site and using the tool that shows how we ranked among states before and after the MCAS.) What MCAS has clearly failed to do is close achievement gaps on MCAS and NAEP, else how would Gov. Patrick and legislators have argued for their latest remedy for our stagnant achievement gaps, the “Achievement Gap” bill.
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p>The evidence is that graduation tests do not promote the knowledge and skills students need to be successful in college and career. See FairTest’s “Why Graduation Tests/Exit Exams Fail to Add Value to High School Diplomas” for more on this, with references. That’s why there’s a recent trend of states moving away from exit exams, including Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and other states.
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p>There’s an even stronger, parallel trend among colleges to deemphasize SAT scores to determine admissions because many colleges know students’ performance in the classroom is a more powerful and accurate indicator than standardized test scores of their ability to succeed in college. See FairTest’s list of more than 830 SAT/ACT-optional colleges. Colleges like Bates in Maine, with a more than 20-year SAT-optional history, have concluded that they get an academically stronger, more diverse student body by deemphasizing admissions test scores.
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p>Northeastern Professor Lou Kruger’s moving documentary, Children Left Behind, puts faces and voices to the invisible victims of our MCAS policy, kids who have good skills, knowledge and talents and are labeled defective by this narrow measure. I recommend it highly.
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p>Lou has initiated, and Citizens for Public Schools is participating in, a summit at Northeastern this Saturday, April 10, to talk about a long-term strategy to move beyond the MCAS graduation requirement and come up with a better way to evaluate whether students are ready to graduate from high school. See the Citizens for Public Schools home page for more info.
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p>Candidates and others who would like to develop a strategy for moving to a better policy, are welcome to attend.
I don’t disagree with much of what your write, but I can only speak from my own experience teaching English–the only skill-based core subject assessed. There is a big difference between the English assessment and the other content-based assessments. That is why I am adamant that any assessment of writing and reading skills has to be real and authentic. The English MCAS is not a great assessment in any grade, but it’s not an awful one, either. It does rather successfully expose the kids with terrible skill sets, but what they view as “advanced” is merely above average. That said, certainly by the sophomore level in high school, students without ELL or special needs issues should be able to pass that assessment (even as they raise the proficiency scoring standard by lowering the bar) if they’ve had proper and competent instruction.
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p>So many people don’t understand that English is unique among the core subjects. There is no reason that a baseline–and very basic–reading and writing competency assessment should not be part of any state’s minimum graduation requirements. Indeed, in my home district, we have a separate writing proficiency assessment that students must pass before we give them a diploma, irrespective of their performance on MCAS.
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p>So while I think you make good and valid points–there is plenty of room to criticize the current assessment system and I agree in theory, I do not favor removing reading and writing proficiency standards for those students who have no challenges or disabilities preventing them from performing. I’ve seen too many kids land in my junior and senior English classes unable to read critically for content, read closely for analysis, write cogently on what they’ve just read or on what they think.
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p>I have a handful of students this year who are seniors whose skills sets are “inexplicably” poor. Well, I know why they’re poor, and these students scored in the Needs Improvement range of 230 to 238. It’s no longer good enough to have boatloads of kids languishing in that range (or even in the low 240s)–it’s a disgrace and a reflection of the quality of instruction they’ve had in English during their public school tenure. That I’ve seen kids score over 260 who really are just average writers also speaks to the flaws of the assessment, but that’s another comment for another day.
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p>How the other content areas are assessed I’m not qualified to say, but on English, I most certainly can–and we have problems. Removing a minimum measure of reading and writing proficiency for the vast majority of students is completely unnecessary, and for those late-arriving students who have ELL challenges or have special needs that preclude performance at a proficient level, an adjusted or modified assessment is in order.
…what you said above could easily apply to other subjects, especially math.
I taught freshmen and sophomores at Northeastern University in the early 90s and was appalled at the writing skills of many of the students. One of my oft repeated comments was “How did these students get out of high school?” So I can understand your point about a baseline assessment of writing and reading skills. I have two points to make concerning this section of your post:
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p>1)The students you are teaching now have lived through years of MCAS testing and yet you despair of their skills. I have observed in my own children’s school and have heard anecdotally from many parents at other schools, that the preparation for these tests has taken over large parts of the curriculum. I assume that probably happened in earlier years for your students as well. Obviously, yearly MCAS testing has not brought these particular students up to par.
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p>Does this mean the teachers they had previously were subpar – or does it mean that the MCAS and MCAS driven curriculum has not really helped these students?
(Or could there be numerous other compounding factors in play here?)
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p>2) It is my opinion that MCAS prep does not lead to learning how to read critically for content or for analysis and reduces writing cogently to a formula – so I am not surprised that your students are unable to do this. We are not teaching critical thinking skills to our students – certainly not in the younger years. Rather, we are teaching them what they need to know to bring up those MCAS scores.
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p>So – although I can agree with your point that a high school diploma should stand for at least a mastery of baseline skills – I am not at all sure that MCAS is the way to assure this.
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p>Yes, I despair of their skills, but eliminating a baseline assessment is not going to improve their skills. Indeed, it is likely to result in a deterioration, imho. Improved instruction will improve their skills. One way to do that is to revisit the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks in English, which are too broad. The Frameworks discourage instructional depth, and that is a serious issue.
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p>What “curriculum” are you claiming specifically informs the English MCAS? I don’t know of any such curriculum. Are you talking about the Mass. Curriculum Frameworks? The assessment is skill-based: read the passage, answer the multiple choice questions and then (usually) follow that up with an open response question based on specific content. The composition portion of the assessment is an essay style in which students are asked to write about a human experience in the context of a text they read in or out of class. To the extent that students need to be able to read, answer questions in response to their reading, and then respond briefly to an open-ended question, the curriculum is the information acquired over some number of years that enables students to do that at an acceptable level. I would argue that English instruction has suffered due to the breadth over depth quality of the Massachusetts frameworks, and not because of MCAS in particular.
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p>I agree with the first part of this statement and have written about it extensively on this site. As to the “teaching them what they need to know to bring up those MCAS scores,” I simply don’t know what you mean by this. Sorry. There is virtually no discrete content assessed on the English MCAS other than common literary terms. Please provide specific examples of what you are claiming.
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p>Well, neither am I and have never said it is. Solid instruction in close reading, annotation, and writing with an emphasis on depth over breadth will result in better writing and reading performances on any assessment, whether it’s MCAS or some other assessment.
Hi lightiris – I think we agree more than we disagree.
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p>But to answer your questions quickly –
Curriculum – perhaps I am not using this word the technically correct way. By “curriculum”, I mean what the kids do in class over the year. I can not speak to tenth grade – but I have observed 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. They spend a lot of time during the year preparing for the MCAS. There are practise packets that are used to teach the formulaic writing they have to do for “open response.” There are also practise packets with short articles and practise multiple choice questions.
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p>By “teaching them what they need to know to bring up those MCAS scores” – I meant that they do exercises such as the above, rather than reading a whole book and discussing it or doing creative writing or learning how to critically evaluate an argument.
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p>I have been told that a “good teacher” does not have to “teach to the test” in order for their students to do well on the MCAS. IMO the majority of the teachers in our town’s schools are pretty decent teachers – but they have limited time and need to teach the kids how to take the test. The younger ones often do not have the experience to do anything else.
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p>I think that what you say in your last paragraph is what is meant by “good teachers”:
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p>And I agree that that is what is needed!
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It would be irresponsible for any teacher to ignore the materials provided by the Commonwealth that enable students to feel more comfortable with the test. I certainly use past assessments to help my sophomores become comfortable with the format, the expectations, and the length of time needed to demonstrate their skills.
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p>That said, however, I cannot imagine any responsible teacher using MCAS materials to teach English–at any grade. Periodic examples to facilitate familiarity and authority? Yes. Actually teaching with them? No.
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p>The open response “formula” is a red herring, as well. To the extent that the ORQ is designed to assess how well a student can work with text, it’s not awful–not great, but not awful. Nothing a student does on an ORQ that earns the student either 3 or 4 points could simultaneously reflect a poor skill set in this area. A student who generates a 1 or a 2, well, that student is not particularly skilled in using text, irrespective of his/her practice with MCAS ORQs. IOW, teaching a student how to work with text–paraphrase it and/or quote it competently–is a good thing, even in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade.
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p>So, while I think you might be overstating the case a bit in terms of teaching a year’s worth of English with MCAS prep materials, there may be some teachers or districts that simply have poorly trained teachers who may not be able to do much else. I fully expect their MCAS scores to be rather dismal. My experience in elementary, middle, and high schools is that all of these levels use fiction and non-fiction texts–even twinned texts–to teach reading and writing throughout the year. If there are schools out there not using traditional text to teach English, well, then, something is dreadfully wrong.
The open response formula may be a red herring to you – but I find it deeply depressing that that is how my children are being taught. There is nothing more boring than reading one set of papers after another – different story – same formula. Think of how boring this is for the students.
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p>I want my children – as well as the other children – to love to learn. I don’t find that the current climate is very conducive to this.
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p>I don’t know what the instruction is like at upper grades – perhaps they do have more time to actually read books – but at the elementary level – there is only so much time with the students per week and reading actual books in school has had to be cut way back.
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p>I also did not say they ONLY do test prep for the whole year – but they spend a significant amount of time on this.
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p>The problem is that too much depends on the scores on the test not to teach to it. (Really – much more than a bit of familiarizing goes on.)
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p>If the test were given at the end of the year, no great emphasis put on it, and not all that much test prep went on – I would have little problem with it.
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p>This is off topic though of whether a high stakes test should be THE deciding graduation requirement.
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p>Well, I would be upset, too, if that was how my son were being taught or any of the students in my school. Seems to me your school has some serious content issues that you should address with the principal. Using past MCAS exams to teach students how to answer an open response based on text is absurd.
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p>Seems like your district may be problematic. We don’t use textbooks in my high school English department, although we have a set. We use novels, plays, film, and poems selected at both the teacher level and the department level. In my home elementary district, all students grades K through 5 have 90 minutes (that’s right) daily of reading group in which students choose just-right books to read anywhere in the room they want–on the floor, in a chair, under the desk, whatever. Students love it because they can read what interests them while the teacher works as a literacy coach with small groups based on need. Our DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy) have gone up exponentially since instituting Readers’ Workshop through Tufts University three years ago. Perhaps you may want, again, to have a conversation with your school principal.
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p>My apologies. I got the impression that this was your suggestion to the extent that they weren’t doing much of anything else in class.
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p>Other tests that involve curricular content have to be given as well, so it only makes sense that math and science be given as late in the year as possible. Because English is not content driven, it makes sense that it is given first. If there is “no great emphasis” put on it, then students will not take it seriously as it is a rather onerous assessment, one that causes some test fatigue, and is demanding in the amount of original writing (in all subjects) required. It isn’t a bubble test like the NAEP.
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p>Again, MCAS isn’t perfect, but it isn’t awful either. A baseline assessment of basic skills is a perfectly reasonable way for any state to go. How the assessment is developed and used, however, is important. There is certainly room for improvement in Massachusetts, but as I said earlier, the problem in English in Massachusetts is not MCAS, it’s the Frameworks themselves.
It sounds to me as if your district may have the right attitude about MCAS – but I would guess my district is more average than yours. We are not an underperforming district – we’re somewhere in the middle – perhaps in the higher middle range when it comes to scores. It seems yours would be the exception rather than the rule and perhaps it should be held up as an example to the rest of the state.
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p>I still think there is WAY too much testing and at least half of the MCAS IS a bubble test. The writing is not graded on creativity or interest and only on content in the sense that it meets the formula’s rubric. As I said I can only speak to the lower grades here – so perhaps its different at the upper grades.
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p>Even if the MCAS is not an awful test – I still feel it takes up too much of the school year and has too much importance given to it.
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p>Also – I’m not sure the practise packets are from past MCAS exams – they may be. I assumed they were just based on MCAS and came from some testing prep company that is busy making money on test prep.
We are anything but an underperforming district. In fact, my 6th grade son’s school shows up in those little highest performing boxes in the Globe most years for one subject and grade or another. My impression is that there’s a bit too much focus on staying in the box from year to year; thus the large amount of time spent prepping for the MCAS.
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p>This year I was hard pressed to see much writing work that wasn’t tied to practicing the formulaic writing required for the MCAS.
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p>It’s disheartening if you think 6th graders should have time to look at different aspects of writing, like description, or that they might be encouraged to loosen up and find some enjoyment in the writing process.
The things they need to know to bring up MCAS scores are also the things they should be taught even without the MCAS. The whole point of the test is to make sure everyone is more or less on the same page statewide. There should not have to be that much test prep for its own sake. If the subject matter is well-taught to begin with the test should be able to take care of itself.
That makes totally sense to me Christopher!
Establish a baseline, it also gives students, parents and teachers an idea where they stand with respect to other school systems, before they graduate.
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p>This tests cover basic skills sets that we all should have but many previous high school grads are missing.
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p>I do wish the vocational schools didn’t take them as seriously, there doesn’t seem to be a place for the non-academically inclined in our school systems.
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…followed by a different standard for academic vs. vocational. I do think even vocational students should understand such things as basic math, science, social studies, and language.
But maybe loosen up a bit on the vocational schools. Students out of vocational schools are losing their vocational training.
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p>I liked the MCAS because I really knew how my kids were doing throughout their school years. Teachers can give grades for arbitrary reasons and different teachers grade differently – but the MCAS let me know how they were really doing. I felt if they are doing well on the MCAS they have the basics down.
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I agree that the ideal is not to teach to the test. I would prefer if it didn’t happen at all. However, it is a reality in many schools.
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p>It may have to do with the demographics of the school as to how much goes on. I would venture a guess that little teaching to the test goes on in certain wealthier suburbs as compared to less wealthy urban-rim communities.
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p>The vocational schools are required to pass the same MCAS 10th grade exam as “regular” high schools. So they have to take them seriously – a lot is riding on the scores.
Shorn of metaphor and doublespeak, I always presumed the point of a high-stakes test was to force people to teach toward it.
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p>Otherwise there’s no real point.
lightiris makes a good point. And the question of standards is one that is complex in large part because the term means different things to different people.
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p>There are some schools — not many, I suspect, but some — that were really not teaching much at all. In such school systems, an MCAS requirement at least enforced a minimum level of knowledge. The problem is that in order for this kind of thing to be minimal and universal, it has to be extremely minimal. Well, maybe that’s not in itself so bad, but the problem then becomes that there are school districts all over the state in which superintendents curry favor with school committees by cutting the budget and telling the S.C. that this will have no affect on MCAS scores. And they may be right. And this doesn’t just happen in sub-par systems, either. In my experience, most members of school committees, like most people in general, are largely ignorant of what education really amounts to. And this holds for people who are supporters of the schools as well. (Many think, for instance, that mathematics education pretty much begins and ends with arithmetic, and perhaps goes on to help students fill out income tax forms. “Turn to page 35 and do all the problems” is what’s in the back of the minds of many people when they think of mathematics education.) And since education generally is almost always justified solely on the basis of job training, everything else easily gets downgraded. In a town I am intimately familiar with — in a highly achieving system — we had a superintendent (widely regarded as excellent) who boasted that he had never taken calculus, and he did just fine; and argued for changing the schedule so that students would do their homework in class. As he said, “So they’ll read three Shakespeare plays instead of five.” It’s this kind of incremental dumbing down that I think high-stakes testing too often leads to.
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p>There are standards — such as the AP curriculum standards — that in fact enforce a much higher level of content and ideas. Of course these are not standards that we expect every high school student to master, and so they don’t serve as a high-stakes test. But they do prevent systems from offering “advanced” courses that are not really substantive. And that’s good.
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p>But I don’t think that’s what proponents of “standards” in the current discussion are really talking about.
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p>But this is a big discussion, no question about it.
No I certainly wasn’t suggesting that we lay our hats on policy making based upon Facebook. I was merely pointing out the growing number of parents, educators etc apprearing on the “Mass Child Abuse System” (MCAS) pages, etc. My comments regarding the fact that student achievement and proficiency vary system to system and district to district was in response to lightiris with
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p>”No student proficient in English who is a) cognitively intact and b) without documented learning disability should be able to perform at a proficient level on that exam. Any student who cannot perform at a proficient level on that exam and does not have the extenuating circumstances I mention is not deserving of a high school diploma”
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p>It is a fact that students in a lower income based district can perform lower than more affluent districts. This has alot to do with parental involvement this is not new. It has been stated many times including public meetings that these types of factors hurt performance on MCAS. I humbly disagree with your assertation too that students who cant score proficient dont deserve diplomas. Again just a difference of opinion that’s all.
…anybody who calls MCAS the “Mass Child Abuse System”, and yes, I realize that’s the name of the Facebook group and not your words, but just wanted to put it on the record.
Correct- not my words, just relaying the growing scenario over there at Facebook. There appears to be several of those groups with that reference to MCAS. Last look there were 21,000+ members on one. Quite interesting reading if you so choose.
Continuing to use Facebook as any sort of barometer and parroting idiocy like “Mass Child Abuse System” is likely to lose you votes. Your campaign message should contain informed, specific, and relevant information that suggests you actually know something about high-stakes testing, MCAS in particular, and ways in which such testing is both productive and unproductive.
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p>Right now, I have to say I’m not terribly impressed with the level of discourse you offer on this subject–and I say that as a teacher and a school committee representative. I would not be supportive of your candidacy based on this issue because I don’t get the idea you really know what you’re talking about other than some people don’t like MCAS and write about it on Facebook. Suggesting people who value or support MCAS are child abusers certainly doesn’t help, either. Whether you subscribe to that view or not, repeating it in a comment without qualification suggests you do. The characterization is offensive.
That’s okay if you feel I don’t know about MCAS, education etc. I spent the last nine years on a regional school district committee that has faced everything from state takeover, loss of accredidation of its high school as well as performance issues cited by the EQA and a Coordinated Peer Review.
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p>I do realize and understand the “high stakes testing program. I clearly stated the Facebook material as a reference. Stated it twice. Its not my words at all. I justhave a tough time with one singular device dictating graduation. MCAS is productive and unproductive. Yes! having devices to gauge the students achievement AND the districts achievments is fine andI support that end of it.
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p>Sorry if you are offended by relaying what is publicly on Facebook as well.
by the wayside. Without frameworks, you can kiss goodbye education reform, i.e. everything the educational policy establishment is about and has been about for the last 20 to 30 years. The Obama Administration is even more gung ho than its predecessors when it comes to this crap. Even worse than our own Gov. Patrick.
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p>Like LightIris, I also teach high school English. My career began the same year as the Education Reform Act: 1993. I’ve corrected the long comp for the state, taught to the test, and (tried to) analyze my high school’s scores. I know the test has limited utility; however, it has forced more attention to lower achievers. Were their other ways to accomplish this? I believe so. But as teachers we play the cards we’re dealt.
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p>Bottom-line: I think most voters want the test, for better or worse. Like most policy, however, they don’t understand it very well. Because of broad, if shallow, popular support and the sheer intransigence of the education policy-making establishment, trying to get rid of MCAS is tilting at windmills. If it gets you elected, more power to you, but the graduation requirement won’t be going away any time soon.
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p>Are you the guy with the pony tail that had a meeting at the COG thing last Saturday?
No pony tail here. Most people who have approached me regarding this have been parents to say the least. This is more far reaching than “getting me elected”. I have said this for a long time and have always defended the need for curriculum alignment, frameworks, and testing.
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p>I did not say “get rid of MCAS” I stated I do not support one test determining the eligibility for graduation especially if a student has passed every other requirement of the school. Imagine passing every grade of schooling right up until your senior year, that has followed the MAss. Curriculum Frameworks, but being unable to score “Proficient” on a singular test in the 10th grade or on retests and you get a “Certificate of Achievement”. Any correlation there to drop out rates in Mass?
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p>How about this, why not continue the program but realign the designations by adding AVERAGE to the spectrum that would be more representative along with Warning, Needs Improvement and Proficient. Again I respect all of your comments here and we all have differing opinions.
requirement, most kids have zero incentive to take the test seriously. You get rid of the requirement, you get rid of the test; you get rid of the test, you get rid of standards. I wouldn’t cry if MCAS were abandoned.
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p>I teach in a suburban school with a 100% pass rate in English. The test doesn’t matter much for schools that don’t have a lot of poor kids. The real correlational research that I’d like to see is between poverty and MCAS scores. We already know that “failing” schools serve impoverished communiies; it would be nice to see a regression analysis of individual student test performance and socio-economic status.
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p>The creators of MCAS purposely chose to leave out average. Right now they have a 4 point scale: Advanced, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Failng. They wanted to eliminate the possibility of a normative curve where the most kids would be average. Their goal is that all kids become proficient.
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p>Athol is tough. You have a lot of poverty out there. My old friend Tom Telicki chairs the English Department out there. We were at UMass together as TA’s. He’s a great guy and great teacher. He chooses to teach there. He could make more money elsewhere, but I know he’s dedicated to the kids and the community.
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p>The pony tail guy was from Greenfield and was on some regional school committee or something.
There will never be 100% proficient in the Commonwealth. I do concur with your assessment of Tom Telicki, good guy good teacher!
Mark,
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p>You could be right that without the grad requirement no one would take MCAS seriously. But then there’s MA’s traditionally high performance on NAEP. Why do you suppose MA kids tend to do well on NAEP, on average, when they don’t even find out how they did, let alone look at it as high stakes?
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p>And what would you like to know about the link between poverty and MCAS scores? Is there any doubt that MCAS scores correlate with poverty? The Globe seems to verify that every year when they line up top five high-performing towns with the bottom five. Are there ever any surprises there?
MCAS test, before it counted, it wasn’t taken very seriously. I don’t believe it would be taken seriously by many in the lower half of achievers. There would be no incentive. NAEP is a rarity among schools. It’s easy enough to build up enthusiasm for a single test once. Familiarity, however, breeds contempt.
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p>For correlations, I’d like to see an actual regression analysis, not on the basis of schools, (though that’s a possibility, now that I think of it), but on the entire population–all the kids in Massachusetts. You and I know the correlation between SES and test scores is high, but I’d like policy-makers to face the cold, hard numerical facts.
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p>I taught 8th grade for years and never once were we selected for NAEP.
Would you support a reconstituted or more accurate standardized test as a graduation requirement in the Commonwealth?
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p>I guess I’m trying to understand if your issue is with the MCAS, or with any such high-stakes test.
I would certainly be willing to look at other viable options or “reconstituting MCAS”. My point is there needs to be a bit more support of average students who can’t catch that proverbial lip from Need’s Improvement to Proficient and maybe another in between “Average” category that means the student is achieving at levels that are acceptable to the frameworks (appropriately developed by the DESE)but not to a proficient status and still meet the local requirements of the school district can receive a diploma. Another piece of this is how many colleges take MCAS results as an entrance requirement?
As one who spent my entire career in the classroom, I am very skeptical that one assessment or any one kind of assessment can tell us whether a student deserves to graduate.
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p>It is especially unfortunate that whatever arguments are used to justify the English MCAS–to the extent they are valid– are then extended to other subjects, thereby putting them (potentially) in a curriculum framework straightjacket that does real damage. It may seem only common sense to extend the rationale but it isn’t.
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p>So the rationale goes viral, in both senses of the word. Soon enough all of education is trussed up and standardized and we are all teaching to a bubble test. And everything that is exciting, thoughtful, creative gets squeezed out.
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p>How much time is taken, how many millions spent, to identify the small percentage who we know need help without the tests, whether because of disability, language, or neighborhood?
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p>The real remedy to achieving educational equity is obscured not advanced by MCAS-like solutions.
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p>Bill Schechter
My neighbor’s daughter was in the first class to need to pass MCAS to get a h.s. diploma, the Class of 2003. She is an extremely bright young woman who boycotted on principle, thinking it unfair to penalize students with disabilities or students in poverty who she thought were being punished for their lack of opportunities to learn.
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p>So she didn’t get her Brookline High diploma, but was accepted at Clark U., earned a master’s in community development and is now going to divinity school at Columbia U. for another master’s. I see the same moral instincts that led her to boycott the test at work in her choice of vocation.
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p>To me, it’s in part a civil rights issue. Are we going to perpetuate a system that causes extreme harm only to a minority group that includes the disabled and the poor, though it may cause less harm to the rest?
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p>As I said in my previous post, Lee, there’s a trend among colleges to move away from relying on standardized admissions exams because they mostly measure socioeconomic status and do not predict success in college. I’ve never seen any interest on the part of colleges in MCAS scores, other than the state program to grant scholarships to UMass to kids with certain scores.
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p>I think lightiris’s advice to you is well taken. It’s probably not a political winner to reference the Facebook site, which seems to be a place for teens to let off steam about their hatred of the MCAS. On the other hand, I think it’s not so clear that most voters support the high-stakes use of the MCAS. It seems to me that both Gov. Patrick and President Obama used certain amount of ambiguity on the issue of high-stakes testing to straddle the political divide and allow folks who wanted MCAS/NCLB reform to support them. Like Lee, they heard a significant amount of opposition on the campaign trail and didn’t want to lose those voters.
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p>They waited until after they were elected to express more clear support of the system in place.
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p>So, yes, by all means, educate yourself on the issue but don’t be too quick to abandon the idea that there is significant voter interest in real MCAS reform.
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p>Heck, even the Boston Herald’s Nanny Yvonne thinks MCAS needs to be shaped up:
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I wouldn’t mind more support of “average” students just short of proficient. However, the entire system right now is set up to favor that. Some districts explicitly instruct staff to all but ignore any other student.
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p>The ones who get screwed in MCAS are the top and bottom quintile…and with the bottom quintile heavily covered by special education law, that leaves the top quintile.
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p>I don’t think any college take MCAS results nearly as seriously as SAT or ACT results, for example, though most require a hs diploma that can only be won by the MCAS.
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p>I think the MCAS is in need of deep reform, but asking students to display a minimal level of skills and content knowledge is a fair requirement for graduation. THe form that display takes is my main issue.
…what you mean by “the bottom quintile heavily covered by special education law”? There’s nothing in sped law that excuses students with disabilities from having to pass MCAS to graduate. Or do you mean something else?
is worthless. I’ve had several students with severe cerebral palsy with virtually no motor or verbal skills. What little communication these students could generate on paper–with oversized crayons–were dutifully kept in a portfolio for this purpose. These students were cognitively intact, to the extent this was measurable, and were able to follow stories and conversations, but demonstrating graphically any comprehension was virtually impossible. The portfolios were rejected. Unfreakinbelievable.
First off, many students in the botton quintile of tests take the “MCAS Alt”, which is a portfolio-based measure of learning. It’s too labor-intensive to be a wider solution to these issues, but it is a rare recognition of true student learning, rather than profit-driven data.
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p>Perhaps I should have earlier said “the ones who get screwed by the MCAS system”. Special education law does ensure that some attention to reach personal heights is given to students with IEPs. Special education students are pushed to achieve more than the minimum; “sure passes” in the MCAS, meanwhile, are often left to languish and let the others catch up.
lightiris’ view of the way the MCAS Alt has panned out is widely shared among special ed teachers, as far as I can tell. Though portfolios could be used as a way to recognize true student learning for students, with cerebral palsy and other significant disabilities, they are a dead end for virtually all. They rarely result in a diploma.
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p>Then there are lot of kids like Shannon McDermott, who was featured in Lou Kruger’s documentary, Children Left Behind. Patti Hartigan has an excellent piece in the current Harvard Ed letter about Lou’s film than features Shannon’s story. Shannon suffers from a seizure disorder that affected her performance on the math MCAS.
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p>I’m gratified to know so many people seem to recognize the problem and plight of students with disabilities and the MCAS, but very little is being done about it.
I know the Alt experience has largely been positive and beneficial in our building. And exhausting for those who must compile them.
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p>As for the rest of the post, I don’t doubt it. I also note that once again anytime gifted & talented students are even mentioned, the response is to immediately talk about special needs. Gifted and talented are special needs, ones that are ignored in public education. Any family that has a gifted & talented student is better off pulling their student from a public education system that is indifferent, at times outwardly hostile, to them.
A one-size-fits-all educational system that revolves around a standardized test will not serve anyone well who deviates from the norm, whether “special needs” or “gifted and talented,” or the significant number of kids and people who are both.
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p>I think Deborah Meier is correct when she says that we are all gifted in some ways and disabled in some others.
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p>So maybe one size fits none.
While the current MCAS doesn’t fit most, even, I do think that a standardized regime is possible that would accurately measure most. However, a profit-driven approach to education is antithetical to that.
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p>As for the claim “we are all gifted in some ways and disabled in some others”, I agree that nobody is average in everything. I just worry about the incidental unmooring of terms such as “disabled” and “gifted” from their specific and useful meanings…