(last update: 08-Sep-2002)
The MCAS is promoted as an essential component of our education reform. We believe the MCAS is not only far from essential, but in many ways is counterproductive. The articles and documents contained in this web site are primarily directed at the criticism of the MCAS. However, we do provide links and arguments supporting the MCAS, so you can form your own opinions. The issues are quite complex and many, so we invite you to explore the many pages of this web site and the related links.
Perhaps the most common criticism is that the MCAS is not a direct solution to inadequate education. Even before the MCAS, we knew which schools had problem and what the problems were. The MCAS may attach numbers to the academic shortcomings, but these numbers by themselves do not fix the problems. Can we claim that the gap between the under-performing schools in Boston and, for example, Lexington schools has been significantly reduced?
When a school gets a very low average MCAS score, it does not automatically receive additional funds to reduce class sizes, hire better teachers, provide more books, or improve facilities. Instead, the state expects that the low scores themselves will somehow "whip the school into shape". How is this to happen? Does the MCAS present an incentive to the teachers and administrators, most of whom disdain the test? Or is it the threat of being fired at some future time if a school were to be taken over by the state, and is that an effective incentive? Will the state reduce funding to under-performing or insubordinate districts, and if so, is that a good idea? Is the MCAS increasing public pressure to improve the local schools, even though so many of your friends and neighbors either don't care or think the MCAS is bad?
These questions are not easy to answer, but we must keep asking these and similar questions if we are to understand the impact and relevance of the MCAS. Does it really have a positive influence on education, or is it just wishful thinking? Do the improved scores really mean improved education? Why almost all education expert take such a dim view of the MCAS and why it is so exalted by the politicians? Why the politicians view the standardized testing and education reform as inseparable?
The primary goal of the education reform in Massachusetts is the elimination of inequities among schools . This objective was forced upon the state by court decisions that eventually led to the reform. The legislators, in drafting the reform, added the second objective of improving all schools.
Our view is that the MCAS offers no solutions. It is incorrectly promoted as the means of improving education, while we think it is irrelevant at best, and quite harmful in reality. Improvement in education could be more easily, and perhaps more rapidly attained without the MCAS. Rather than creating an adversarial atmosphere through a controversial test, we believe a cooperative effort would be more effective.
Our opposition to the MCAS should not be interpreted as an unqualified rejection of all standardized tests. Such tests can be very useful if they are applied and interpreted correctly. One of our primary concerns with the MCAS is that it is given too much weight, often represented as the entire measure of quality of education in a school or a district. Such a narrow view of education, reduced to a single number, is very disturbing.
Is the MCAS a useful diagnostic tool? Does it tell us why we have such high failure rates? Is it that the curriculum has been inadequate? Or is it because teachers are under-qualified. Or do the kids simply don't care? Or can we blame it on inferior facilities, lack of good textbooks, or unsafe environment? How about poverty at home, poor attendance, bad attitude, etc. The MCAS is not designed to reveal such issues, but these are the real causes of poor performance. If the low MCAS scores were to motivate our legislators to deal with these issues directly, then we could say that the MCAS has a positive effect on our education. Regrettably, this is not the case.
Nevertheless, the schools are getting better. It is the combined awareness, the effort, and the new emphasis on writing that brings the steady improvement. The proponents of the MCAS claim that this improvement is the best evidence of why the test is important, but we do not see the connection. The improvements are not without costs. There are many who are concerned that in some respects our education is getting worse. In a few years we may be producing students who can eloquently restate scientific principles that they do not understand, and that we may discourage and suppress the eccentric genius, who may otherwise become a brilliant inventor, but who has language processing disabilities.
The one effect that the MCAS regrettably does have is on the morale and the self-esteem of some of the children. These children, many as young as nine, are being officially informed that they have not learned enough, that they are not smart, that their teachers and schools are inferior. They are told that if they work harder, their scores will get better, and the education reform will succeed.
For those who fail the MCAS, there is no statewide program to get them "over the bar", just a hodge-podge combination of local efforts. These efforts are probably not equitable, with students getting better help in Lexington than in Boston. Is this a violation of the equity objective that has been originally imposed by court decisions?
Opposition to the MCAS is often interpreted as interference with the pursuit of higher academic standards. Nothing could be further from the truth. The critics of the MCAS are strong supporters of the education reform. Teachers oppose the MCAS because they want to improve education and they consider the MCAS an impediment. Imagine a reform without the MCAS. No protest, no boycotts, no aggravation. Just enthusiastic cooperation between the state, the teachers, the schools, the parents, and the industry. That is how it was meant to be.
To obtain a high school diploma, each student in a public school in Massachusetts must pass the MCAS in the 10th grade. If he fails, he can take a simpler version of the MCAS (supposedly equally difficult), up to five times, giving him or her five more chances of passing the MCAS.
The failure rate of the MCAS has been extraordinarily high, especially in some school districts.
If the cause of the high failure rates are the inadequacies of our education system, then imposing the MCAS as a graduation requirement is equivalent to saying: "Our schools may not be teaching you well, or may not be teaching the material we want you to know, but you better know it all by the 10'th grade. Even if some of the topics will not be covered until 11'th or 12'th grade, we will start tormenting you with the possibility of failing in the 10'th grade. If you are unable to compensate for the inequities and shortcomings of your education by the 12'th grade, we will not let you graduate. We will make you suffer for our inability to achieve the goals of the education reform (or because we believe that all that is necessary to achieve these goals is for you to work much harder; that it is your indolence that is causing the high failure rates)."
We should also allow that the cause of the high failure rate may be that the test is too hard. Although many of us may have seen examples of simple questions that a significant portion of the students did not answer correctly, we should be careful how we interpret such evidence. Perhaps students who have been taking a very hard test several days, are quite tired by the time they get to a simple question at the end. Let's consider the test from a different perspective. Despite anecdotal cases of supposed graduates who cannot read or write, there is no concrete proof that the schools now are much worse, if worse at all, than they were in the past. Results of national standardized tests are roughly the same. An overwhelming majority of graduates either go on to college or find satisfactory employment. The state economy is doing well (in relation to the rest of the nation) and the job market is strong. So if the schools are more less the same as they were in the past, then we should expect that the same fraction of adults would have failed the test in their 10th grade. Moreover, many adults are likely to fail the test now, long after graduation. The MCAS is promoted as a test of skills and knowledge that are necessary to effectively function in the modern society. Would this imply that many adults who might fail the test are not able to function in the society? Perhaps the MCAS goes beyond skills and knowledge that are truly necessary. Many argue that the MCAS is best suited for a college prep level, and cover a lot more than what one really needs.
In any of these cases, whether the test covers material not taught, or the schools are inadequate, or the test is too hard, the conclusion is the same. The MCAS is unfair as a graduation requirement.
There is a further inconsistency in using the MCAS as a graduation requirement. According the MCAS proponents, the MCAS represents what we wish to achieve, not necessarily what actually is. The MCAS is, and should be, forward-looking, embodying things we would like our schools to teach. We refer to the MCAS as the means of raising the bar, or reaching higher academic standards. How then can we use the MCAS to fail students on what we hope to teach rather than what we may actually be teaching?
The Education Reform Act of 1993 does not contain anything resembling the MCAS. Instead it calls for a competency determination based on "a common core of skills". The law also stipulates a system that "employs a variety of assessment instruments" (more). To fulfill these obligations, the state should implement a graduation test that is separate from the MCAS. Such a test should be appropriate for individuals entering the job market at the low skill level and should be constrained to material that is being taught in all schools. It is also imperative that the state permits alternative assessments for special-ed students and students with unusual circumstances (more).
State officials often refer to the MCAS as "the teeth of the education reform" – the necessary tool that makes the schools accountable for the billions of dollars that the state is spending on education. More specifically, the schools are ranked by their average MCAS scores and those with low scores must submit improvement plans. If the improvement plans do not succeed in raising the scores within a set time, then the failing schools are taken over by the state, giving the state extraordinary powers to fire principals and teachers. In other words, the primary means of enforcing the reform is to impose what many perceive as an arbitrarily difficult test and then threaten the teachers and the administrators with loosing their jobs unless they make the students pass the test one way or another.
We disapprove of such a simplistic policy and we strongly oppose an accountability system based solely on the MCAS scores. As taxpayers, we demand a much more comprehensive accountability. We want to know whether all of the objectives of the education reform are being achieved. We want to know whether the money is being spent wisely. We want to know whether the foundation budget is bringing equity in education, whether the dropout rates are measured accurately and whether they are decreasing, whether the schools are becoming safer and cleaner, and whether they are providing a stimulating and challenging learning environment. The MCAS is not enough – it provides a narrow and unreliable view of the progress of the reform. By relying strictly on the MCAS, the state is avoiding genuine accountability.
The MCAS scores of inner-city schools are much worse than the statewide average. Based on this, we have a long way before the main goal of the education reform – equity in education – is achieved. How will the "teeth of the reform" solve this problem? (more)
Genuine accountability must clearly reflect the things that are important to parents. It must show the progress in reducing the class sizes, in improving the qualifications of teachers, in aligning the curriculum to the frameworks, in supplying adequate quantities of books and materials, in making the schools responsive and facilitating to the particular needs of the students and parents, in providing extracurricular programs, etc. It has to indicate whether a given school is succeeding in improving attendance and parental participation. Does that school provide an exciting and inspiring place where learning is fun, or do the kids dread going to school? The suggestion that all of these issues can be condensed into just one MCAS score is irrational. (more)
An overwhelming majority of teachers, administrators, school committees, and parents who are closely involved with schools, is opposed to the MCAS. So why our Governor, the Board of Education, and many of the state legislators are such strong proponents of the MCAS? Nationwide, the President and both political parties are in favor of standardized tests as the means of providing accountability. Why this emphasis on testing?
The official answers are almost always: "We have an education crisis and we need standardized tests to ensure that kids graduate with basic skills. We want to see and measure the improvements." (more)
Do we really have an education crisis? Do the tests verify basic skills or are they high-stakes tests with the bar set too high? Do they really measure progress towards better education?
We strongly believe that the education crisis is a fabricated crisis, not based on reality. Our schools are not perfect, there is a lot of room for improvements, but calling our situation a crisis, is a contemptible exaggeration. The notion of the crisis stems from earlier concerns about the overemphasis in schools on child's self-esteem and the consequential relaxation of curricula that lead to the "rising tide of mediocrity". This was the opinion of the National Commission on Excellence in Education in 1983. Now, many years later, it is not clear that these trends of student pampering and grade inflation actually led to more mediocrity.
The problem of lax curricula has been addressed in Massachusetts by the establishment of the statewide mandated common curriculum, the so-called frameworks. The mediocrity, on the other hand, is a perceived situation, supported more by anecdotal evidence than fact. For every statistic that show that our student do worse than in other states or other countries, there is a statistic that shows to the contrary. The reality is that there is no significant disparity between the quality of education that kids get here and elsewhere. Nevertheless, certain conservative groups latched on to the idea of a crisis and are spearheading a change towards a rigid and dry, performance-based style of teaching. In Massachusetts, they succeeded in dominating the Board of Education. The chairman of the Board has until recently been a director of the Pioneer Institute – a conservative think tank whose goal is to "drive broad-based educational reform through the expansion of competition and parental choice". Another member of the Board is a founder of the Pioneer Institute, and several other members have been influenced by the Pioneer Institute's philosophy. Interestingly, not one of the nine members of the Board of Education has ever been a K-12 teacher. They have no practical experience in the teaching profession. (The Commissioner, David Driscoll, has been a teacher, but is not a member of the Board.)
Another major organization promoting the MCAS is Mass Insight, formed by several top executives of very large corporations. The underlying thesis of Mass Insight is that high school graduates entering the labor market do not possess the necessary skills and to remedy this we must have the MCAS. Presumably, only those who pass the MCAS (and therefore can graduate) are qualified to hold a job in today's economy. With so many students expected to fail, are we going to have a labor shortage? A more cynical view is that the purpose of the MCAS is to diminish aspirations of young people, so they would be more willing to accept lower salaries, thus reducing labor cost and making Massachusetts more competitive in the worldwide markets dominated by cheap labor.
A still different point of view is that the people in power want to privatize education and to do that they need to demonstrate to the voters that public schools are not capable of providing adequate education. They want to see more charter school, more support to parochial schools, and if they are lucky, a school voucher program. The MCAS is there to undermine public education. Why else would they make the MCAS so difficult that even our best schools have many kids that fail? Why else would they insist on accountability that is strictly based on the MCAS and nothing else? Why else would they exclude teachers from the Board of Education?
The education crisis plays into the hands of politicians who like to have a safe and sound cause that they can use to demonstrate their leadership and commitment to the common good. It also lets them establish beneficial ties with active and well endowed individuals and organizations. In the times of peace and prosperity, it is not surprising that many politicians pursue the education crisis. (We would like them to deal with this crisis without the use of the MCAS.)
Public education system in America has served our country exceedingly well, and we should be wary of any attempts of making radical changes to that system. The education reform can succeed without the MCAS (although we may tolerate a much shorter version of the MCAS to be used strictly for assessing the implementation of the frameworks). The MCAS is a radical and controversial element that in our view creates the crisis. The state is trying to accomplish multiple objectives with one test, objectives of increasing academic standards, of monitoring the implementation of the frameworks, of testing the basic skills for graduation, of facilitating school accountability, and of assessing individual students. It is a flawed pursuit that should be replaced with traditional methods that have worked well in the past. The Board of Education should abandon its adversarial role and should try to restore the now-almost-forgotten collaborative energy among schools, communities and the state.
Let us fix the known problems. Let us concentrate on reaching higher academic standards. Let us erase inequities in education. But do not let us be distracted from these objectives by a misguided emphasis on the MCAS (more).
To get a good overview of the issues surrounding the MCAS, go to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
To get a more in-depth analysis of the key issues, go to Explore The Issues.
If you don't know what the MCAS is, or want to review the raw facts about the the MCAS, go to What Is MCAS.
For a summary of the MCAS criticisms, go to What Is Wrong With MCAS.
To learn what we would like to see instead, go to What We Propose.
We are also providing a number of selected documents related to the MCAS in Resources.
If you wish to see other opinions or other web sites related to the MCAS, go to Links.
For the latest information about planned activities and important developments, go to What Is Happening.
If you would like to help, go to What You Can Do.
To find out more about us, go to Who We Are.
To let us know your opinions, criticisms, or praise, go to Feedback.
And most importantly, if you would like to donate to our cause to offset our rental and printing expenses, please go to Donations.
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