James McDermott is a former Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, member of the MCAS Development Committee and now an Assistant Professor of Education at Clark University. He was a major booster of MCAS when first implemented.
I am no longer an MCAS booster.
My reform beliefs have been hijacked. I realize now that MCAS is not viewed as a means to a much higher end. MCAS has become the end.
The consequence? Lower expectations.
Yes, the focus on testing actually lowers expectations for our children when it takes the focus away from teaching for understanding.
I’ve seen it happen and it breaks my heart. I’ve seen great teaching and learning suspended in favor of weeks or even months of MCAS preparation.
For those of us who believe that putting so much emphasis on a single measurement–MCAS scores–among myriad of metrics available to gauge student performance is absurd, this is a reaffirming read.
If the MCAS is to be used in any way as a diagnostic tool, then the state must to a much better job of correcting the exams and returning the results to the schools BEFORE the start of the next school year.
even a good diagnostic tool. It’s a very blunt instrument. The standards, at least in ELA, are too broad and inclusive to figure out what a kid needs to work on. Thus the actual test questions aren’t linked to skills discrete enough to work on.
I guess it depends on what “work on” means.
When kid #1 took the 4th grade ELA, a bunch of the kids at the school missed some of the same questions and I was told that they understood the issues and would make changes to ensure better results in the future. Five years later, kid #2 just took the grade 4 ELA. Was there some serious difference in the education received? Hardly. Kid #2 was instructed to read the questions before the passage in order to know beforehand what to look for in the passage.
Am I supposed to feel better if kid #2 gets three or four more questions correct because of that?
increasing test scores by means other than learning content. Grade 10 ELA has about 3 context vocabulary questions. If a kid misses one, does he need more work or is the result a blip? Not enoug questions to tell.
being told by one of the forces that inflicted this mess on our children doesn’t really make me feel much better. McDermott doesn’t exactly assume the mantle of Diane Ravitch with this admission. A group of us, back in the day, tried to organize a “Mass Refusal” around MCAS because we knew going in that it would result in what McDermott now acknowledges. When the test score is all that matters…the test score is all that matters. The entire history and theory of “knowledge tests” tells us that MCAS is exactly what it could have been predicted to become.
This was all done to please corporate poobahs who complained that they had to train workers, and that kids weren’t self-starting, problem solving, thinking-and-writing machines.
Twenty years later, have they agreed that we have reached educational nirvana? Hell, no.
Oh, well, Mr. McDermott, better late than never. Now, do something about it, beyond a Worcester op-ed, and hand-wringing.
suckered into supporting MCAS. Jim McDermott is a great guy. He led the MCAS correcting the two years that I did it. One of my teachers who worked on developing MCAS questions also got to know McDermott. My friend was similarly disillusioned.
at the time to have avoided “suckering”. One needed only to know about the science of testing, especially in the social sciences and education. Hey, I’m an old guy, but I remember reading “The Tyranny of Testing” by Banesh Hoffman, which came out in 1962. The difference between a diagnostic test and MCAS is breathtaking.
Seriously, there was no excuse for educators falling for this…crap.
…but not much credit for being late. The excuse of “I never thought the obvious would happen!!!” doesn’t much wash with me. Glad he’s figured it out now that it’s far too late, but it’s of limited help.
was generational. Pablo, I think you were more politically aware than the average teacher. We’re talking prior to the internet, to put some context to the situation. I don’t know Jim personally, but like my friend, he didn’t seem political. Was he active in the MTA? My friend wrote questions for years. He thought he was doing a valuable thing. I don’t think either understood the high stakes issue very well. It took Diane Ravitch a lot longer to realize the error of her ways and she was scholar with time to think about things. She wasn’t teaching 120 kids a day.