High Stakes and Graduation – The MCAS Struggle
By Heidi Taylor
WASHINGTON—”Dad?” Nina Ward, a high school junior in Massachusetts recently asked her father, Larry. “So if I take the test now and pass it, do I still have to go to school?”
As Larry Ward knows, the real question is this: If his daughter fails the test next year, will she be allowed to graduate from high school and go on to college?
The exam in question is the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test that high school seniors must pass before they can receive their diplomas.
This year, the first in which the test was linked to graduation, 6,000 students across the states stand to be denied diplomas. By law, the students cannot graduate even if they have fulfilled all local requirements for graduation.
In a debate that is being carried on nationally as well as in the Bay State, proponents of testing say that students must be tested to assure that they have the skills necessary for success after school.
Critics, including Ward, a coordinator for the Massachusetts Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education, counter that tying graduation to a single test does not raise educational standards or demonstrate a student’s real knowledge.
The controversy over MCAS has been heating up the past few months as school committees in Newburyport and several other school districts voted to issue diplomas to students who have fulfilled local requirements, even if they fail the MCAS test.
Gloucester and other district school committees, though they have not gone that far, say they reserve the right to issue diplomas to deserving students if the state’s Department of Education turns down students’ appeals.
Several students from districts statewide filed a class-action lawsuit against the state in January that contends the graduation requirement is illegal. A state court refused to issue an injunction to block the testing requirement, and the case is scheduled to be heard in U.S. District Court in mid-May.
The 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act was passed years before President Bush signed the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While they differ in many respects, both the state and federal laws share the goal of education reform and offer similar strategies to reach that goal.
The federal law mandates that all students be tested, that schools and teachers be held accountable for student progress, that teachers be better qualified than they were in the past and that parents be given the right to play bigger roles in their children’s education.
The No Child Left Behind law requires that every state set clear and high standards for what students in each grade should know in the core academic subjects of reading, math and science. It further requires states to measure progress toward the standards by testing elementary and secondary school students in many grades.
If schools cannot demonstrate that their students are making headway, they will be required to pay for tutoring and to give parents the option to transfer their children to better-performing schools. Ultimately, schools could face state takeover if they show no improvement.
In Massachusetts, the MCAS tests were developed to raise academic standards. The law requires students to take the tests in grades 3 through 8 and grade 10. Most important, to graduate, seniors beginning this year must have received scores high enough to demonstrate their competence in both English and math.
While even detractors don’t deny that testing is a legitimate way to measure student and school progress, the Bush administration and the Massachusetts Department of Education have kicked the importance of the tests up a notch by attaching stakes to the results. Along with many education experts, they say that attaching stakes, such as the graduation requirement, make the tests more significant to the students and the schools.
“Stakes associated with tests are what makes performance matter,” said Paul Reville, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and chairman of the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission. Now, he said, “it actually matters whether or not they learn.”
But critics of standardized tests argue that the stakes attached to the test results unfairly punish students who have not been adequately prepared because, for example, their schools’ curricula and textbooks don’t match the test.
“Other indications, I think, ought to be included,” said Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem. “There is more to being a graduate of high school than just taking a test.”
In Newburyport, the school committee voted to issue diplomas to seniors who flunk the test, saying that graduation decisions should be made not at the state level by a standardized test but locally by teachers and administrators who know the students and can assess their knowledge more fairly.
“We feel it is the right thing to do,” said Mary-Ann Clancy, a member of the Newburyport school committee. “As of now, we voted unanimously to issue a diploma,” she said, adding that the committee is awaiting the outcome of the MCAS lawsuit.
The Gloucester school committee’s policy is more ambiguous. Chairman Michael Faherty said eight Gloucester students who have met the local requirements and who would otherwise graduate may not receive diplomas because of their low MCAS scores.
“It is a sticky situation,” Faherty said. “The policy which we adopted three weeks ago was to encourage the administration to file appeals to the state” on behalf of those students the administration feels deserve to graduate, Faherty said. He added that of the eight, several scored 218 on the math and English sections, just two points shy of the passing mark.
“We also reserve the right,” Faherty said, “to award a diploma if we feel that is justified.”
But Gloucester, he said, is clearly not in the same category as Newburyport because the Gloucester school committee has not voted to give diplomas to all students who have met local requirements. A student who, for example, missed 35 days of school, scored 200 on the MCAS test and took part in no other school activities probably doesn’t deserve to graduate even if he or she met minimum local requirements, Faherty said.
“It’s a different kettle of fish,” he said, adding that the committee decided, “You can’t have an iron-clad rule.”
If it had such a rule, he asked, what incentive would students have to try hard on the test? Furthermore, he said, even if he may not agree with every aspect of the test, “nonetheless, it has been adopted as the standard.”
State Department of Education officials said it would be illegal for any district to issue diplomas to students who fail the MCAS test, adding that the law is designed to help students who aren’t meeting the state standard.
“These districts are essentially saying that they’re going to break the law,” Education Department spokeswoman Heidi Perlman said. Regardless of how school committee members feel about it, they must follow this law, “just like they have to stop for red lights.”
During the summer, the department will check to ensure that all diplomas were given out legally, and the repercussions for districts that broke the law could be very harsh, Perlman said. Cases could be turned over to the attorney general, she said, adding that it’s more likely districts would lose some state funding.
With states across the country facing major budget shortfalls, that is no toothless threat.
For now, the state and districts are waiting to see what happens with the MCAS lawsuit, set to be heard May 15 by U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor. In state court, Judge Margot Botsford denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that such an order would be detrimental to education reform.
Nadine Cohen, one of the attorneys representing the students, said the lawsuit charges that students are being denied due process because they were not taught all the material tested on the exam.
“It really puts a stigma on the students,” Cohen said, noting that the eight students who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit have asked for anonymity. She added that because it is a class-action suit, the eight are really representing all students in the class of 2003.
Although standardized testing has a long history in this country — it first was used by the U.S. Army for recruitment in World War I — many now question whether too much weight is being placed on testing and not enough on learning.
State Rep. Frank Smizik, D-Brookline, who has opposed using the MCAS results as a graduation requirement, argues that students from poor families, minorities and those with difficult home lives often do worse on the tests and suffer greater adverse consequences if they fail than do students from affluent homes.
For example, 90 percent of all students in the class of 2003 have passed the MCAS test. That compares to only 75 percent of African-Americans, 70 percent of Latinos, 67 percent of those with limited English proficiency and 69 percent of those with disabilities.
Ward, of the Massachusetts Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education, said he recognizes that testing is necessary to gauge student progress in such things as reading and math, but insists that the MCAS test should be used as a diagnostic tool to help improve schools rather than as the high-stakes test it is now.
“It is just bizarre to require that students go through 13 years of school but then boil the outcome down to one test,” he said, adding that the Department of Education has overstepped its mandate on this issue. He accused state officials of using the test “to flunk kids out of school.”
But Perlman said that from the beginning, the plan was to attach stakes, based on certain criteria, to the test. Students are now “required to meet those standards to get a diploma,” she added.
Without the tough requirements, high standards and stakes, supporters of the tests say, schools would be doing students a disservice by allowing them to pass through the educational system without the proper skills and knowledge needed for success later in life.
“I support the test because it’s the best tool available to us for achieving the twin goals of equity and excellence” in education, Harvard’s Reville said. “This reform is not about tests,” which are only one instrument in the broader goal of education reform. “It is about high standards for all students.”
Still, some teachers say the reform may not be producing higher teaching standards. A national survey of more than 4,000 teachers conducted by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy (NBETPP), an independent monitoring system at Boston College, reported that a large majority felt “there is so much pressure for high scores on the state-mandated test that they have little time to teach anything not covered on the test.”
A majority of the teachers also said that state-testing programs had “led them to teach in ways that contradict their ideas of sound instructional practices.” And 40 percent responded that in high-stakes states like Massachusetts, their teaching was affected on a daily basis.
“Of course” teachers feel pressured to teach to the test, said Laura Barrett, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Teachers Association. “So much is determined by the results.” But, she added, “most teachers try to resist this and do what is educationally sound.”
The problem, Barrett said, is that the results matter so much. “A child’s future should not be decided based on a single test.” Nevertheless, she added, the MCAS tests can be used successfully as diagnostic tools to measure progress.
The nationwide survey of teachers also included interviews with 360 teachers and administrators in Kansas, Massachusetts and Michigan who, though critical of the tests, also noted some positive outcomes of tougher assessment systems. They said tough new standards have helped them to replace unneeded content with better material and to put a renewed emphasis on writing, critical thinking skills, discussion and explanation.
“Generally, the concern with high-stakes, no-passing-without-MCAS is that people will be denied advancement,” Rep. Tierney said. He said such things as college enrollment and financial aid should not be out of reach for students who haven’t passed the MCAS test. But he also said he recognized the importance of the tests to education reform.
“I intend to keep pushing forward with those issues,” he said, adding that he would like state education commissioner David Driscoll to remain involved in helping students who fail the test with such things as financial aid options.
The department has said that it does have those students in mind. “It is imperative that they know we have not given up on them and do not intend do,” Driscoll said in a March press release that laid out the department’s plan for helping students who have not passed.
Students have the option of going through an appeals process for graduation, and if that is unsuccessful, they can take the test again in May and in August. And as long as they fulfill local requirements, they can participate in graduation ceremonies and receive certificates of attainment.
The department is also offering a host of other options, including summer work and learning programs — which will allow students to get tutoring in the mornings and get paid to work in the afternoons — career centers that will help students decide on their next steps and remedial community college courses that would allow students to study for the MCAS.
And, Perlman said, things could change depending on the outcome of the federal lawsuit.
Published in The Newburyport Daily News, The Gloucester Daily News, and The Salem News in Massachusetts.
