MCAS in the News January 1 - January 11, 2002

News stories about MCAS are few this week:
- Some students vote to oppose the MCAS graduations requirement, while one top-scoring, award-winning student calls himself a "fan of testing."
- Impact of federal legislation on local schools is assessed;
- And factors contributing to unprecedented 10th grade MCAS gains from 2000 to 2001 remain subject to debate.

Springfield Union News, 1/10: Students from Springfield honored for MCAS mastery
http://www.masslive.com/springfield/unionnews/index.ssf?/news/pstories/ae110maw.html
.....Despite the biology deficit, [Central High senior Peter ]Dawson scored well enough to become one of Springfield Central's three recipients of the 2001 Stanley Z. Koplik Certificate of Mastery Awards for Academic Achievement. In 2001, the state Department of Education gave out 1,859 awards to students with superior MCAS test scores at 214 secondary schools. The awards entitle recipients to tuition waivers at state colleges and universities.
    In Western Massachusetts, 140 students received the award....
.... Although many students and their parents object to MCAS, award recipient Joseph M. Bisson called himself "a fan of testing."
       "People complain about how the tests hurt kids," said the Springfield Central senior. "I don't mind it. You should have to know certain things to graduate, and you should have to be accountable."
     "I'm not afraid of it," he said.
      Neither student will be making use of the tuition waiver at state colleges that the awards provide. Bisson has been accepted at Tulane University in New Orleans, though he is leaning toward the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo....
.... Dawson is bound for North Carolina, either at Duke University in Durham, or Davidson College in Charlotte.....


Cape Cod Times, 1/9:  Standard tests will increase in schools
http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/standardwill9.htm
 .....The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 won't duplicate the Bay State MCAS tests to provide accountability for education reform. But it will require all students in grades 3 to 8 to take standardized exams in English and math if MCAS tests don't cover those areas.....
.... Money appropriated in the bill will pay for more training for teachers, busing students from a low-performing or dangerous school district to schools where there is higher student achievement, and hiring tutors to help raise student performance.
      The tradeoff is that all schoolchildren in 2005 must adjust to a new battery of annual exams. Schools will be ranked locally and nationally based on those scores. ....
.... Local school officials are waiting for specific details on how they will administer the new federal mandate. In the meantime, they worry about over-testing, adding national tests to an already rigorous schedule of state exams.
       Truro Central School principal Brian Davis said the MCAS reading exams already take up a whole week in third grade. The students take the test in the morning, and then spend the afternoon reviewing old material to prepare for the next day's test.
      "Is this going to take up another whole week?" Davis asked.
       The new federal law means Massachusetts students won't have to take two tests in the same grade in the same topic. But if there is no MCAS exam in that subject, the new federally required exam would have to be given.
       In third grade for example, there is no MCAS math exam, so that grade will take the federally mandated math test plus the MCAS reading test. In fourth grade, students already have math and English MCAS exams, so they won't have to take any other tests that year. ....
.... "I think testing is good because it provides feedback to schools and families on how well kids are doing," said Hyannis West Elementary School principal Fred Scully. "My concern is, will it become the main focus?"
       Schools can decide not to participate in the federal government's new plan, but if they back out they face cuts to federal funding. The average Massachusetts school now gets about 7 percent of its operating budget from the federal government, Driscoll said.....


Boston Globe, 1/6:  Civics, Front and Center
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/006/learning/Civics_front_and_center+.shtml
     Timothy Kaldas doesn't worry about MCAS - personally, that is. He passed and will graduate from Reading Memorial High School this spring. But Kaldas believes it's his duty to oppose the high-stakes test as a graduation requirement.
       ''When I saw the results and saw what towns [low scores] were coming from, it was so clear to me that students were being punished for being poor,'' he said.
       Kaldas is on the State Student Advisory Council, which advises the state Board of Education, and is a member of the Student Coalition for Alternatives to MCAS, a student member of Reading's School Committee, and also belongs to Amnesty International.....
.... Credit the 2000 presidential election with demonstrating the value of a single vote. Here in Massachusetts, factor in student opposition to MCAS testing and then consider the sobering effects of Sept. 11, and there is reason for students to feel there are more pressing things to do than hang out at the mall.....
..... At a meeting last month of the State Student Advisory Council in Malden, some 60 student delegates made a key vote unanimous: The students will ally themselves with the Alliance for High Standards, Not High Stakes, an organization of anti-MCAS groups.
      As the meeting drew to a close, tables were strewn with thick binders and empty Starbucks and Minute Maid containers. One student sported a name tag: ''He who must not be named'' - a reference to a ''Harry Potter'' character.
      But even as students hang on to humor, they see a serious role for themselves. They want to have a strong public voice on MCAS. So members of the legislative committee talked strategy with a lawyer.     The students want to file a bill - again - to eliminate MCAS as a graduation requirement.
      It's a lost cause, said the lawyer.
      ''We know it won't pass,'' acknowledged James Madden, 18, a Randolph High School senior and chair of the State Student Advisory Council. ''But it's an effort that needs to be made.''
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 1/6/2002.


Boston Globe Learning Commentary, 1/6: A bumpy educational journey
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/006/learning/A_bumpy_educational_journey+.shtml
.... High-stakes testing adds to my concerns. As my history-student son discovered, aiming simply for high scores can hinder learning. The MCAS test - the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System - now permeates our public schools, changing curricula, altering schedules, worrying children and teachers alike.
        We've assured our daughter we won't allow her to take the MCAS this year, but she feels the tension nonetheless. The last thing our 8-year-old child needs is more pressure to conform to narrow demands devised not by teachers who know her - teachers who generally recognize her strengths even if they can't always adapt to them - but by bureaucrats and ideologues seeking to transform her into a cog in their machine.....

Springfield Union-News, 1/6:  HCC may enroll students failing MCAS
http://www.masslive.com/news/unionnews/index.ssf?/news/pstories/ch14hcc.html
     HOLYOKE — Some students who fail the state graduation test may find themselves going to college before they finish their senior year.
       Holyoke Community College is hoping to pair up with Chicopee, Springfield and Holyoke schools to offer a program that will give students intensive preparation to re-take the state exam, career counseling and a chance to take one or two college courses.
       Commonwealth Corp., a nonprofit quasi-government agency, is developing the program in at least three state community colleges, said Ephraim B. Weisstein, corporation vice president.
        Students, who are entering their senior year having failed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Systems exam and both retakes, would enroll in college instead of high school.
        "This is for a student who has the potential to pass it and is motivated," said Janice M. Hassett, MCAS secondary outreach liaison for the college.
         The seniors would take a "success seminar" 16 hours a week, that would include intensive academics, MCAS preparation and career planning, she said.
           They would finish an 80-hour internship, three long-term projects and each student would be eligible to take at least two for-credit free college courses, Hassett said.
         The students would be treated as any other college enrollee and be eligible to the variety of services like tutoring, mentoring and career guidance, she said.
          Some students will not want to leave high school, but others will welcome the extra freedom of college.
         "Some kids are ready to move on, and this would get them out of the environment," she said.
        The program would introduce students to college, give them the confidence to realize they can pass college courses and teach them about applying for financial assistance, Weisstein said.
         It is based on "Diploma Plus," which invites students who are at risk of dropping out to take college courses at the same time they are finishing a high school diploma, he said.
       Despite earlier scholastic failures, 90 percent of those students earn a C or better in college classes, Weisstein said. ....


Springfield Union-News, 1/6:  In 2001, MCAS passed the litmus test
http://www.masslive.com/springfield/unionnews/index.ssf?/news/pstories/ae11test.html
....During a news conference last fall, state and education leaders announced that 82 percent of the first students who come under the graduation rule passed the English exams, and 75 percent passed in math.
      The numbers were an improvement over last year's passing rates of 66 percent in English and 55 percent in math. And improvement came without lowering the passing score as New York has done with the Regents exams.
      "I think it's made believers out of a lot of doubters," said S. Paul Reville, executive director of the Pew Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and chairman of the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission....
.... Critics of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests think the state's biggest education story this year may be a matter of debate. Some question repeated assertions by Department of Education officials that the exams were not easier on this round.
      "It's really unprecedented, both here in Massachusetts and in other testing situations in other parts of the country," said Karen L. Hartke, project director of Cambridge-based FairTest, a testing watchdog group. "I think a lot of people were skeptical that students trying harder could explain that size of a jump." ......
...... Reville said results from the first high-stakes administration of the tests offered a very clear message. "Although we still have a long way to go, these result still show that a large number of students can in fact do it," he said.
      Still, the release of test results raised some eyebrows.
       A student's MCAS test score is derived from the percentage of correct answers, and some critics pointed out that the percentage of questions needed to attain a 220 score was 33.9 percent on the 2001 exams, down from 35 and 40 percent in the prior two years.
       But the education department brushed aside any skepticism, saying the tests went though the typical "equating" process to ensure that tests from one year to another are comparable in difficulty.
        FairTest's Hartke said the upshot of this year, for her, is that higher test scores "do not truly represent better education or better learning."
      "The average person has an almost naive sense that this is a science, rather than a creation, that it's scientific, rather than something that in reality is much more subjective," she said. "Where do you put the cut score, which questions do you use, what's really important to know?" .....