MCAS Debated At Mock Hearing By Ed Oliver January 14, 2003 A panel of education experts held a mock legislative hearing in Boston last month to examine arguments, pro and con, that may be used in pending court challenges of the MCAS test graduation requirement. The forum was sponsored by the Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC, and was aimed at stimulating discussion on an important education reform issue.

Click here to read excerpts of comments from the 'legislative panel.'

Argument Against Current MCAS Policy

Kids Punished For Lack Of Quality
Education Says Professor

Opposing the current MCAS policy was Pedro Noguera, a Professor in Communities and Schools at Harvard who often works in the Boston and Cambridge schools. He assumed the role of "advocate for the plaintiffs."

Noguera said that providing a quality of education should be our focus, and we will not have accomplished very much by focusing solely on the MCAS test.

He strenuously objects to the idea that we can impose standards on kids but not impose standards on schools and school districts. He believes the crux of the problem stems from a tremendous gap between what the state legislature thinks it has done by imposing standards, and what students are actually experiencing.

"We have declared victory by saying that we imposed high standards, when in fact standards are very, very low when you look at what kids are actually receiving in our schools, particularly in schools with the highest rates of failure."

The state may legally be able to get away with its MCAS policy, but in terms of fairness and justice it is a travesty, he said.

"We have schools where the teacher's ability to teach the material is extremely limited," said Noguera. A source from one school district told him that if their teachers could only teach algebra and probability, most of the kids could pass. "There is no adult accountability in the system," said Noguera, "even at the schools with the highest rates of failure."

12,000 students may not get their diplomas this school year, said Noguera. In some schools, seventy percent and more of their seniors have not yet passed the exam, even after taking it two or three times. Students suffer from fear, pressure and tension trying to pass the test, he said.

Noguera said what energy or movement from administrators he does see is focused on test preparation, which he compared to giving vitamins to a malnourished child rather than regular meals. He found that kids who repeatedly fail have not even been exposed to required material that is necessary to have a chance to pass.

"I am not arguing at all against assessments. I am not arguing at all against accountability for students," said Noguera. "I want to point out that the world before MCAS in our schools was a miserable one in most of these urban districts. That is, there is no evidence in many of these schools that students were achieving at levels that we would expect, that a high school diploma generally represented an accomplishment with respect to learning. This is not a defense of the past."

Noguera said the test is not even being used as a diagnostic tool to identify problem areas.

"The idea that you could declare victory by calling for high standards, and have no ability to ensure that high standards are being met with respect to the quality of education children receive, I believe is a farce, it is a complete farce," said Noguera.

The professor went on to say that the FDA imposes standards on the producers, not the consumers and the Water Department imposes standards on the quality of water, so that if it doesn't reach a certain standard it is unacceptable.

"What are the standards for a quality education? What does the state have to say? What is acceptable for the State of Massachusetts to allow a school to operate? Are there any standards there?

"Now we do have an accreditation process where schools can in fact lose accreditation if they don't meet certain standards, but those standards are not written into this law. So we have lots of schools with extremely low standards and not surprisingly, very high rates of failure."

Noguera said that to ignore this issue is not only a grave injustice to the students who are denied diplomas, but it misleads the people of Massachusetts into believing we have actually accomplished something when in fact we haven't really gotten to the root of the problem

"We know the districts and the schools that have the highest rates of failure. Those are the districts and schools that serve the poorest kids. I'll be the first to say that I disagree with those who say because kids are poor they cannot do this. Not true. We have seen some schools that serve poor kids that can do it.

"What's different about those schools? Surprise, surprise, good teaching, a well organized administration, focus on quality control." If we look at the schools with the highest rates of failure, said Noguera, we will see that those conditions are not in place.

Even if we change the way tests are graded or if we give extra courses to get more kids to pass the test, the issue of a quality education at those schools will still not have been addressed, he said.

Even the kids who do well on the test are not getting a quality education, said Noguera. "At one of the high schools we worked with, we had a student who received a "4" on the MCAS the first time he took it as a tenth grader. Then he told us he was dropping out of school, dropping out to get his GED and wait until he is sixteen to get into community college. I said, 'Why are you doing this?' He said, 'I'm not learning anything at this school, they don't challenge me here.'"

Professor Noguera said a legislative approach needs to:

Impose standards not only on students, but also on the quality of teaching, making adults accountable as well as kids.

Focus also on the non-academic needs of kids, because while it is true that poor kids can learn at high levels, it is also true that there are many poor students whose basic needs are not being met.

"Now the hard work begins. The hard work is, 'How do we help those schools?' If we think we can get away with just failing a bunch of kids and say, 'What a shame,' then we will have done a tremendous disservice, not just to those students, but to the entire state of Massachusetts."

Argument In Favor Of Current MCAS Policy

"This Is Crunch Time" Says Attorney

Attorney Henry Dinger, a partner with Goodwin Proctor, argued for the Commonwealth in favor of current MCAS policy. Atty. Dinger wholeheartedly agreed with most of Professor Noguera's assessment, but said he could not conclude that the answer is to "blink," or back off from the MCAS graduation requirement. The battle is indeed only beginning, said Dinger. "This is crunch time, this is where the rubber meets the road."

Although he conceded education is a mess in some areas, for the first time in recent memory, kids who would have just passed through the system are getting a considerable amount of attention. If the legislature blinks now, all that energy will dissipate and will be difficult to recover, he said.

Saint Augustine wrote a famous short prayer, said Dinger: "'Lord give me chastity, but not yet.'

"That is what the opponents in some ways are arguing now. 'We are in favor of high stakes, but not yet. We are in favor of accountability, but not yet.'"

There will be no better time, said Dinger. Even though there may be future improvement, we know from experience that there will always be a reason not to impose high stakes and consequences.

The temptation to blink right now is enormous, but if we want to serve not only the class of 2003 but also their younger brothers and sisters and their children, 'Stay the course' is the fundamental message, said Dinger.

Dinger said it is false that kids are getting slighted in their education by focusing so much on test preparation. The MCAS exam in tenth grade is not just a multiple-choice test, he said. It also involves students being forced to write essays and to solve problems.

Dinger said that an assessment of MCAS by a national testing organization concluded that the test contains most of the important skills and knowledge that students across the world are learning today. Although the standards are higher than what our students have been accustomed to in the past, they are by no means too high. The report suggested that problems lie in other areas such as inadequate teacher training and excessive tracking of students into a watered down curriculum.

Dinger agreed with Professor Noguera that education quality problems should be dealt with, but we should not shoot the MCAS messenger.

Atty. Dinger's suggestions for a the legislature:

Don't chicken out now. There will always be reasons to put it off. You have everybody's attention right now. Keep the momentum.

One way to hold school districts accountable is to make sure that they do not lose their responsibility for the kids that fail once their classmates graduate. Provide continued support for the kids who didn't pass.

There are accountability mechanisms already in place for the adults. One is the embarrassment of school districts that have a lot of failing students. Then there are the voters to answer to.

There are also mechanisms under the education reform act for holding school districts accountable. Districts that consistently fail to improve the performance of their students are at risk of the state board of education imposing a kind of receivership--taking over the school system. The legislature should ensure there is funding to carry out those measures.

Find out what works. An advantage of the test is it identifies who is doing a good job. Find ways to reward those schools and teachers.

While the professor talks about 12,000 kids who haven't passed yet, more than 80% of the class of 2003 has, including an awful lot of kids from poor urban school districts.

Dinger concluded by saying that the MCAS is part of the solution, not part of the problem. There will never be a perfect time to impose high stakes. Perfection is the enemy of very good. This is a very good time for higher standards, and a very bad time to back off.

Excerpts Of Comments From
The 'Legislative' Panel

Pedro Arce
Member, Lawrence MA School Committee
Parents have a role in setting high standards. Just having the MCAS is not fair; there is not one test that can determine your success. A test is a tool. My policy recommendation is to view the MCAS as a tool, not the tool.

Janice Jackson
Lecturer, Lynch School, Boston College
In the end, what is the purpose of the MCAS? Is it about learning? Put money into multiple measures. Put the "Opportunity To Learn Plan" back on the table. Testing should be diagnostic.

Representative Peter Larkin
Co-Chair, Legislature's Joint Committee on Education
Don't shoot the messenger for the message. We've experimented with social advancement; we need to think differently from what we thought about education in the past. We are moving in the right direction.

Thomas Payzant
Superintendent, Boston Public Schools
We wouldn't have progressed without the pressure of MCAS. There is still a long way to go. Teachers are more accountable than five years ago.

Richard Rothstein
Research Associate, Economic Policy Institute
Former Education Columnist, New York Times
The MCAS is terribly flawed and out of balance with the rest of our social policy. A kid's chances of getting hired can depend as much on their name sounding black or white on a job application as it does on their academic achievement. Put the money into fighting discrimination that we put into MCAS. We have adopted the philosophy of moving minorities up without addressing discrimination.

Kathie Skinner
Director Mass. Teachers Association, Center for Educational Quality &Professional Development
Massachusetts is a laboratory for education reform. I have a problem with using kids as subjects in an experiment they didn't sign up for. We should all disabuse ourselves of the notion that a standardized test tells us what a child knows and is able to do. A standardized test is a snapshot.