Thoughts On MCAS

I have made it well known I believe, here and elsewhere that I oppose MCAS as the single determining factor of a child's graduation from high school. I thought now would be a good time to elaborate further, as I was reminded by Emily that MCAS starts this week.

Decisions about student promotion or graduation should always be based on more information than can be gathered by a single test. Many students will be seriously harmed by this slim definition of what it means to succeed. A few examples:

-students who don't test well but in another setting know how to and can do successfully the material being covered on the test.

-special needs students who can not reach the standards required of other students and are labeled as "failing" despite hard worked for progress they may be making in general.

-transfer students who will not be taught the MA curriculum but will be expected to pass the MCAS to get a diploma.

-students in under-resourced schools who will be punished for something that is not in their control-their larger class sizes and overall lower level of resources available to them.


It seems to me that we are spending millions of dollars on a test that tells us what we already know: schools in our communities are under-resourced and need our help. Our resources should be spent directly on improving schools and classrooms, providing professional development for teachers, and on developing better ways to measure what students are learning. This can not be determined by a standardized, "across the board" test. To assume that it can, is not doing what we as parents and educators should be setting out to do in the first place: providing a well-rounded, multi-faceted program of education which spends more time on the individual student than the student body as a whole.