Testimony before The Joint Committee on Education, Arts and Humanities

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System has become a single test for students even though the law calls for multiple means of assessment.  There are serious problems with the test.

MCAS is based on high standards, yet the Board of Education is using it like a minimum competency test--no pass, no diploma.  According to a 1999 BOE report on the validity of MCAS, students who outperformed 50 to 75% of the students in the nation on other standardized exams received a “needs improvement” on MCAS.  This means hardworking students, with average intelligence, may be denied a diploma under MCAS. MCAS is based on the state’s new Frameworks that are still changing.  School systems are still in the process of aligning their curriculum with the Frameworks.  As a result, some students are being tested on material they have yet to be taught. Many educators believe these Frameworks have created a curriculum a mile wide and an inch deep.  The amount of material teachers must cover to prepare students for MCAS leaves little time for a comprehensive study of any subject.

The test originally took 17 hours to complete.  The Department of Education has made some adjustments, but students still spend more time taking MCAS than a lawyer taking the bar exam.

Vocational schools have their own curriculum which is not aligned with the Frameworks.  Vocational students spend only one half the time on academic work as other students.  Yet, they will be required to pass MCAS.  There are serious concerns for our Special Education students taking the MCAS test and students who are not native English speakers are given no accommodation on MCAS.

We have many students in alternative programs that have missed significant amounts of time in their education.  The efforts of our alternative schools will be undone when these students are required to pass MCAS; many will become dropouts again.

This overemphasis on passing a single test is having a negative impact on children’s education.  School systems are shutting down art, music, home health, physical education, and hands-on, technical programs at an alarming rate.  In their effort to enable children to pass MCAS, they are forgetting the whole child and forgetting that many children have different learning styles.  They are also forgetting that art, music, etc., can be successful pathways to mastery of science, math, and English for some students.  Teachers are responsible for the growth of the whole child, not just the intellectual growth (questionable whether or not MCAS measures intellectual growth).  We are responsible for the physical, spiritual, creative and emotional growth of children. We help children become self-reliant, self-confident, honest, respectful and responsible.  There is more involved in becoming a positive, productive human being than MCAS can measure.

Mr. Peyser, Chair of the Board of Education, told a group of teachers two summers ago that in the implementing of MCAS there will be some friction, and there are bound to be winners and losers. Mr. Peyser, the friction is the grinding up of the self-confidence and self-esteem of children.  Those of us who are charged with the responsibility of educating children should never think of them as losers.

Educators are not afraid of being held accountable.  All we ask for is a fair and just accountability system.  Testing should be a tool we use to help our students grow, not used to punish schools and teachers. Tests should never be designed to harm students.

There are serious problems with the way the DOE implemented MCAS.  The first year the test was given the readability level of the fourth grade test ranged as high as tenth grade.  Knowing this, the DOE still issued the scores labeling over one half of the children as failures or needing improvement.  It has taken the DOE over six months to get results back to school districts.  And, only results come back, not the corrected test.

All of us in public education are in favor of holding everyone to high standards.  We are not against the DOE’s raising standards to historical heights.  But any system that assesses progress in reaching those standards needs to take into account where we started the climb and reward and respect the progress made.  The top rung of that ladder of standards is where we want all students and schools to be, but we are not all starting that climb from the same place.  Any system of assessment, if it is to be just and fair, must also measure growth, effort and progress.  This is simply not happening for students with MCAS.

Because we raised these concerns, and there has been little or no response on the part of the Governor and the BOE, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that they are willing to use children to further their political agenda of privatizing public education.

Massachusetts is the cradle of public education in this country.  Never before in the history of the commonwealth has the state Board of Education promulgated regulations that sort children and limit their educational opportunities.  Public education in this commonwealth has always had as one of its goals the opening of doors for our children not the closing of them.  I ask you to use your legislative authority to get the children out of harm’s way caused by the Department of Education’s implementation of the MCAS test.

Timothy T. Collins, President

Springfield Education Association