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Groups support challenge to MCAS
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 3/22/2003
Groups opposed to the MCAS test this week filed court papers supporting high
school seniors who are challenging the exam's graduation requirement, decrying
the ''significant harm'' they say the test has wrought on thousands of students.
Days before a much-anticipated hearing on the lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court,
a coalition of parents, educators, and advocates submitted friend-of-the-court
briefs saying that the test discriminates against special-education and
vocational-education students.
Like the student plaintiffs, the groups argue that requiring students to pass a
test to graduate is a violation of the Education Reform Act of 1993, which
permitted samples of classwork and academic portfolios in assessing students.
The class of 2003 is the first that must pass the 10th-grade English and math
portions of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam to graduate
from high school. Statewide, about 6,000 students, or 10 percent of the class,
have yet to pass. The students' lawsuit names state education officials as
defendants.
The groups behind the 51-page brief, filed Thursday, are the Massachusetts
Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education, the National Center for Fair and
Open Testing, Cambridge Massparents for Education Not MCAS, and the Center for
Collaborative Education.
''The harm to more than 6,000 Massachusetts high school students is immediate
and substantial,'' the groups wrote. ''Their current lives have been thrown into
disarray and turmoil, their future possibilities in doubt. The harm to the
education system is longer term. The quality of education in classrooms has been
undermined.''
The coalition also alleges that a certain number of students always will fail
the exam because of the way the test is scored and how students' raw scores are
translated into categories of passing or failing. ''The MCAS ... raises the
barrier so high that failure is guaranteed for many,'' the brief states.
On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford is scheduled to hear arguments
on a preliminary injunction to block the state from using MCAS to deny diplomas.
The motion for an injunction was filed in February, after a federal judge
directed attorneys to state courts instead of US District Court.
Another brief supporting the lawsuit was expected to be filed yesterday by the
Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators, according to its lawyer,
David Mandel. The brief will argue that the MCAS test hurts vocational students,
whose education consists partly of hands-on classes in crafts and trades that
the test cannot measure, said Mandel, of the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray.
Department of Education spokeswoman Heidi B. Perlman declined to comment on the
briefs. In court documents, lawyers for the state have denied the discrimination
claims and said that the state Board of Education was within its power to enact
a graduation requirement.
A coalition of business groups - the Massachusetts Business Alliance for
Education, Mass Insight Education, and Associated Industries of Massachusetts -
plans to submit briefs supporting the state and arguing that the graduation
requirement has intensified focus on the achievement of low-performing students.
This story ran on page B7 of the Boston Globe on 3/22/2003.
© Copyright 2003
Globe Newspaper Company.
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