UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
______________________________________________________
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STUDENT 1, A Minor, by His Aunt and Next Friend, )
STUDENT 2, A Minor, by Her Mother and Next Friend, )
STUDENT 3, A Minor, by Her Mother and Next Friend, )
STUDENT 4, A Minor, by His Mother and Next Friend, )
STUDENT 5, A Minor, by His Mother and Next Friend, )
and STUDENT 6, A Minor, by Her Grandmother and )
Next Friend, on Behalf of Themselves and All Other Persons )
Similarly Situated, )
)
Plaintiffs )
v. )
)
DAVID P. DRISCOLL, As Commissioner of Education, )
Department of Education for the Commonwealth of )
Massachusetts, Department
of Education for )
the Commonwealth OF MASSACHUSETTS, )
MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF EDUCATION, )
JAMES A. PEYSER, Chairman, Massachusetts )
Board of Education, HENRY M. THOMAS, III, ) CIVIL ACTION
Vice-Chairperson, Massachusetts Board of Education, ) NO.
CHARLES D. BAKER, Member, Massachusetts )
Board of Education, J. RICHARD CROWLEY, Member, )
Massachusetts Board of Education, JUDITH I. GILL, )
Member, Massachusetts Board of Education, )
WILLIAM K. IRWIN, JR., Member, Massachusetts )
Board of Education, ROBERTA R. SCHAEFER, )
Member, Massachusetts Board of Education, )
ABIGAIL M. THERNSTROM, Member, Massachusetts )
Board of Education; HOLYOKE SCHOOL DISTRICT, )
HOLYOKE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, )
MARGARET M. BOULAIS, Member, Holyoke School )
Committee, WILLIAM COLLAMORE, Member, )
Holyoke School Committee, BARRY D. CONWAY, )
Member, Holyoke School Committee, YVONNE )
GARCIA, Member, Holyoke School Committee, )
MICHAEL J. MORIARY, Member, Holyoke School )
Committee, JOHN C. PIETRZYKOWSKI, Member, )
Holyoke School Committee, MARY C. PLANT, Member, )
Holyoke School Committee, PATRICK SHAUGHNESSY, )
Member, Holyoke School Committee, MARY S. SIGNET, )
Member, Holyoke School Committee and EDUARDO )
CARBALLO, As Superintendent of Holyoke Public )
Schools, )
)
Defendants. )
)
1. This is a class action brought by Massachusetts public school students challenging, on constitutional and statutory grounds, the nature of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam (the “MCAS exam”), and its use as a graduation requirement. The MCAS exam is a “high stakes” test that public school students must pass to receive a high school diploma. Beginning with the Class of 2003, all public school students must pass both the grade 10 English Language Arts and Mathematics sections of the MCAS exam to graduate, even though they have satisfied all other state and local school district graduation requirements. Students attending private high schools in Massachusetts are exempt from taking the MCAS exam.
2. The plaintiffs are public school students in the Class of 2003, who have failed the 10th grade MCAS exam. Thus, they are precluded from receiving a high school diploma. The plaintiffs bring this class action on behalf of themselves and a class of students who have failed the MCAS exam. The class includes the following six subclasses: (1) Black/African-American students, (2) Hispanic students, (3) students with limited English proficiency, (4) students with disabilities, (5) students attending vocational technical education schools, and (6) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
3. Currently, an alarming number of students in the Class of 2003 -- over twenty-four percent (24%), or approximately 16,000 students -- have not passed the MCAS exam. The vast majority of these students are minority students, students residing in poor school districts, students attending low or under-performing schools, vocational technical education students, students with limited English proficiency and students with disabilities. This disturbing failure rate and the damage it is causing to the Commonwealth’s students has troubled educators, parents and legislators.
4. The genesis of this lawsuit is the calculated and unlawful use of the MCAS exam as a means of covering-up the historical and continuing failure of various state and local education agencies and officials to ensure that all Massachusetts public school students receive a high quality education as required by law. From the inception of the Commonwealth, as reflected by the Education Clause in the Massachusetts Constitution, the public education of all its children, including those of lesser economic means, has been a central tenet of state public policy. Unfortunately, by the 1980s and early 1990s, unequal education pervaded the public school system of Massachusetts. Suburban schools located in wealthy school districts provided high quality education for their students, who were predominantly white. Urban schools located in poor areas throughout Massachusetts, where most of the state minority students were enrolled, were plagued by overcrowded classes, inadequate resources and inferior learning conditions. Consequently, thousands of public school students in urban and poor school districts received substandard, inferior and inadequate education.
5. The gross inequality of public school education galvanized several school districts to commence litigation against Massachusetts, asserting that the state had failed to provide all public school students with an adequate education in violation of the Massachusetts Constitution. In 1993, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in the landmark case of McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education, ruled that the executive and legislative branches of Massachusetts were obligated to provide an education for all public school children designed not only to “serve the interests of the children” but also “to prepare them to participate as free citizens of a free State to meet the needs and interests of a republican government.”
6. Recognizing the plight of students in poor school districts and urban areas, the Massachusetts Legislature promptly responded by enacting the Massachusetts Education Reform Act, a sweeping statute aimed at overhauling and improving the quality of the state’s public school system. A “paramount goal of the commonwealth,” the statute declared, was “to provide a public education system of sufficient quality to extend to all children the opportunity to reach their full potential and to lead lives as participants in the political and social life of the commonwealth.” Consistent with that goal, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act’s express purpose was to ensure that all public school children in Massachusetts receive a high quality education. Moreover, the law required the Massachusetts Board of Education to establish an “effective mechanism” to monitor progress toward attaining that goal and to hold “educators accountable for their achievement.”
7. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act imposed rigorous requirements on the Massachusetts Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education to achieve its avowed goal of providing a high quality education to all students. The law required them to develop “academic standards” in several core subjects such as mathematics, English, science and history for all grades. The statute also required the Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education to formulate “curriculum frameworks” for the core subjects covered by the “academic standards.” The “curriculum frameworks” were to provide teachers and administrators with pedagogical approaches and strategies for assisting students in developing the skills, knowledge and competency set forth in the “academic standards.” The “academic standards” and the “curriculum frameworks” were required to be designed to avoid perpetuating gender, cultural, ethnic or racial stereotypes.
8. Significantly, the statute contained express provisions requiring state education officials to hold schools accountable for properly teaching their students. It required the Board of Education to adopt a system known as the “Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System” (the “MCAS”) for annually evaluating the “performance of public school districts and individual public schools.” The law required the development of “assessment instruments designed to assess the extent to which schools and districts succeed in improving or fail to improve student performance” in the core subjects. The law further provided that the Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education adopt a “system” for evaluating student performance “designed both to measure outcomes and results regarding student performance, and to improve the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction.” Simply put, the Board of Education, the Commissioner of Education and the Massachusetts Department of Education were legally obligated to ensure that the Legislature’s educational mandate of improving the education of all public school students was met.
9. The state education officials have utterly failed to satisfy their important obligations and responsibilities owed to the state and its public school students. They did not establish the requisite “curriculum frameworks,” including those for Mathematics and English Language Arts, in a timely manner. That undue delay hampered teachers’ ability to learn the “curriculum frameworks” and then incorporate them in their class curriculum and instruction. Students, in turn, had insufficient time and opportunity to master the “academic standards” for the core subjects. The state education officials further failed to ensure that teachers in all school districts actually taught students in conformance with the “curriculum frameworks,” which adversely affected students’ ability to learn the “academic standards” for the core subjects.
10. The state education officials then exceeded their statutory authority under the Massachusetts Education Reform Act by promulgating a regulation stating that all public school students must pass the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2003. Contrary to the state education officials’ regulation, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act imposed no requirement that each student pass the MCAS exam as a high school graduation requirement. Rather, the MCAS exam was simply to be one element of a larger diagnostic and remedial system designed to improve teaching, learning and the education of all of Massachusetts public school students.
11. The state education officials compounded their inappropriate and unlawful conduct by developing an MCAS exam that is invalid and unlawful because it fails to comport with professionally accepted testing standards; unfairly discriminates against the plaintiffs; and has not been shown to test the plaintiffs on material that they have actually been taught. For example, many of the students who failed the MCAS exam are enrolled in school systems deemed to be “low-performing” by the state education officials. However, despite admitting that the students have not been provided with adequate learning opportunities, the state education officials paradoxically seek to test these students on the content, knowledge and skills that they have failed to ensure were actually taught to the students. In essence, the state educational officials now seek to punish, sacrifice and abandon thousands of students for their own failure to properly educate those students. As implemented, the MCAS exam patently violates federal and state law, including the Massachusetts Education Reform Act.
12. Prompted by the initial, draconian MCAS exam results, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly publicly questioned the fairness of an education system that failed to support all students equally. In an Op-Ed piece published in The Boston Globe on December 11, 1999, the Attorney General expressed his grave concerns:
As a
state, we are treading on the brink of a crisis that threatens to move our
children into two separate and unequal school populations. Reports on the MCAS results tell us that
Latinos and Blacks failed at a rate twice that of white students. We also continue to see poor scores in
districts where more of the students live below the poverty line and, as other
statistics tell us, where there are more families at risk, more families headed
by single parents, and more children suffering from the effects of abuse and
neglect. We find the better scores in
the wealthier districts, districts where we find more economic stability and
more intact families or families with extended support groups. Each
new round of test results -- however we interpret the statistics -- emphasizes
the danger that many of our school children from predominantly minority
families and families in urban areas will be denied an education and so lose
out on uncountable opportunities (emphasis supplied).
Attorney General Reilly’s voiced fears have become a stark reality.
13. The flawed and illegal use of the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement has caused untold damage to students throughout Massachusetts. Scores of students have dropped out of school after failing the MCAS exam, while many others have dropped-out to avoid taking the MCAS exam. Students who have failed the exam cannot continue their post-secondary education, and are disqualified from a host of public and private employment opportunities. All of these students have been improperly and unfairly stigmatized through their inability to pass this fundamentally flawed test. Ironically, despite the Commonwealth’s expenditure of millions of dollars on education reform, the Massachusetts public school system is in the same state of disarray that existed before education reform, and remains an unequal school system.
14. The plaintiffs and the proposed class seek injunctive relief to bar use of the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement in 2003 and thereafter in a manner consistent with their Request for Relief. They also seek a declaratory judgment that the current use of the MCAS exam violates various federal laws, several provisions of the United States Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution and the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Moreover, the plaintiffs seek injunctive relief requiring state education officials to provide professional development opportunities in order to prepare public school teachers to meet the educational needs of the plaintiffs’ class and the subclasses.
II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE
15. The jurisdiction of this Court is invoked pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(a)(3) and (4), 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 42 U.S.C. § 1988, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1706, 1708 and 29 U.S.C. § 794a. This Court also has supplemental jurisdiction over all state law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a). Venue is proper under 28 U.S.C. §1391(a) because the defendants are located in the District of Massachusetts and the causes of action arose in the District of Massachusetts.
A. PLAINTIFFS
16. The plaintiffs are students of the Massachusetts public high school Class of 2003 (the “Class of 2003”), and each succeeding class, who have failed to pass the required English Language Arts and/or Mathematics sections of the MCAS exam.
Student 1
17. Plaintiff Student 1 is a Hispanic student who resides in Leeds, Massachusetts, and attends a public vocational High School in Northampton.
18. Student 1 has been classified as having specific learning disabilities and receives special education. Student 1 was provided with an IEP that provided for him to receive vocational education. Student 1 has received good grades in mathematics and has excellent school attendance.
19. Student 1 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the Mathematics section, he has passed the English Language Arts section.
20. Student 1 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclasses of (1) Hispanic students, (2) students with disabilities and (3) students attending vocational technical educational schools.
21. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 1 brings this action by his aunt, IS, as next friend.
Student 2
22. Plaintiff Student 2 is a Hispanic student who resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and attends a public High School. Student 2 has limited English proficiency.
23. Before attending High School, Student 2 attended the Peck Middle School. The Commonwealth has identified the Peck Middle School as an “under-performing” school under M.G.L. c. 69, § 1J and 603 C.M.R. § 2.03. Both schools are part of the Holyoke School District, which has been adjudicated by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have previously provided unequal educational opportunities under the Education Clause of the Massachusetts Constitution.
24. Student 2 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the Mathematics section; she has passed the English Language Arts section.
25. Student 2 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclasses of (1) Hispanic students, (2) students with limited English proficiency and (3) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
26. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 2 brings this action by her mother, ER, as next friend.
Student 3
27. Plaintiff Student 3 is a Hispanic student who resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and attends William J. Dean Vocational Technical High School in Holyoke.
28. Student 3 has been enrolled in the Holyoke Public Schools system since kindergarten. The Commonwealth has determined that Holyoke public schools include some of the poorest performing schools in the state. The Commonwealth has identified the William J. Dean Vocational Technical High School, where Student 3 is currently enrolled, as one of 21 high schools in the Commonwealth that met the criteria for consideration as a “chronically under-performing” public school under M.G.L. c. 69, § 1J and 603 C.M.R. § 2.03. The William J. Dean Vocational Technical High School is in the Holyoke School District, which has been adjudicated by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have previously provided unequal educational opportunities under the Education Clause of the Massachusetts Constitution.
29. Student 3 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the Mathematics section twice; she passed the English Language Arts section.
30. Student 3 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclasses of (1) Hispanic students (2) students attending vocational technical education schools and (3) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
31. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 3 brings this action by her mother, RO, as next friend.
Student 4
32. Plaintiff Student 4 is a Hispanic student who resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and attends the William J. Dean Vocational Technical High School.
33. Student 4 is enrolled in the Holyoke Public Schools. The Commonwealth has identified the William J. Dean Vocational Technical High School, where Student 4 is currently enrolled, as one of 21 high schools in the Commonwealth that met the criteria for consideration as a “chronically under-performing” public school under M.G.L. c. 69, § 1J and 603 C.M.R. § 2.03. The Holyoke School District has been adjudicated by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have previously provided unequal educational opportunities under the Education Clause of the Massachusetts Constitution.
34. Student 4 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the Mathematics section; he has passed the English Language Arts section.
35. Student 4 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclasses of (1) Hispanic students (2) students attending vocational technical education schools and (3) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
36. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 4 brings this action by his mother, MC, as next friend.
Student 5
37. Plaintiff Student 5 is a Hispanic student who resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and attends Holyoke High School.
38. The Holyoke Public School District has determined that Student 5 has a specific learning disability that affects his ability to read and requires him to receive special education. Student 5 has received special education under an Individualized Education Program (“IEP”) developed by the Holyoke Public Schools.
39. Student 5 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the English Language Arts and the Mathematics sections. One hundred percent (100%) of the students with disabilities enrolled in Holyoke High School have failed the MCAS exam.
40. The Holyoke School District was among the Massachusetts school districts monitored by the United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programming in 1997. It found that the Holyoke School District denied students with disabilities opportunities for participation in the general curriculum and to learn what all students are expected to learn. The Holyoke School District was also previously adjudicated by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have provided unequal educational opportunities under the “Education Clause” of the Massachusetts Constitution.
41. Student 5 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclasses of (1) Hispanic students (2) students with disabilities and (3) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
42. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 5 brings this action by his mother, MS, as next friend.
Student 6
43. Plaintiff Student 6 is a Black/African-American student who resides in Springfield, Massachusetts, and attends a public High School.
44. Student 6 has taken the MCAS exam and failed the Mathematics section twice; she has passed the English Language Arts section.
45. Student 6 represents the class of students who failed the MCAS exam and the subclass of Black/African-American students.
46. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(c), Student 6 brings this action by her grandmother, RN, as next friend.
47. The plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves, all past and present Massachusetts public school members of the Class of 2003, and members of each succeeding class in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who have failed the MCAS exam. The class includes six subclasses, which are described in this Class Action Complaint.
48. The plaintiffs bring this action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23. With respect to this class:
(a) It is so numerous that joinder of all members is impractical, since there are approximately 16,000 public school students who are or were members of the Class of 2003 who have yet to pass the MCAS exam. As of September 2002, these students constituted over twenty-four percent (24%) of all members of the Class of 2003, which consisted of 68,118 students in 2001, and 63,767 in the fall of 2002;
(b) There are questions of law and fact common to the class, in that they have failed or will have failed the exam, and are protected by all statutory and constitutional provisions pertinent to this action;
(c) The claims of the named plaintiffs are typical of the claims of the class;
(d) The named plaintiffs will fairly and adequately represent the interests of the class;
(e) The defendants have acted in a manner generally applicable to the class, thereby making appropriate final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief with respect to the class as a whole.
1. Black/African-American Students
49. The plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves and all present and future public school Black/African-American students in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who have failed the MCAS exam. With respect to this subclass:
(a) It is so numerous that joinder of all members is impractical since as of September 2002, there are approximately 2,233 Black/African-American public school students of the Class of 2003 who have yet to pass the MCAS exam. These students represent approximately forty-four percent (44%) of all Black/African-American students who are members of the Class of 2003;
(b) There are questions of law and fact common to the class, in that they are Black/African-American, have failed or will have failed the MCAS exam, and are protected by all statutory and constitutional provisions pertinent to this action;
(c) The claims of the named plaintiffs are typica