Education Committee Hears About MCAS

July 2001

On June 20 the Education Committee heard testimony on 45 different bills dealing with the MCAS, also known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.

Starting in 2003, high school students will be required to achieve a passing score of 220 on the tests in English and math before receiving a diploma. Students take the tests in grades 4, 8, and 10. The tenth graders who are just graduating are the first class which will be held to the standard.

The legislature appears to be solidly behind the testing, but the largest teachers' union is unalterably opposed.

The President of the Mass. Teachers Association, Stephen Gorrie, has been criss-crossing the state for several years whipping up anti-MCAS sentiment. He tells union-laced audiences everywhere that the tests are unfair to students and teachers alike. According to the MTA's website [www.massteacher.org], union members at a meeting in May complained about many things.

The members talked about "the quality of the tests themselves; how they are scored; the seemingly arbitrary way cut-scores were established; the accountability system under which minor variations in test scores year-to-year are being used to reach conclusions about the quality of education in a school or district; over-emphasis on MCAS is distorting the curriculum in some schools, including vocational programs; pressure from districts to tie MCAS scores to teacher compensation; and continued fears that the MCAS testing system will increase the state's drop-out rate."

Lawmakers don't tend to see things in the same way as the union. In large numbers they have been declaring themselves on the side of standards and accountability. Senate President Thomas Birmingham (D-Chelsea) said in January, "Lawmakers must stand firm on the MCAS as a graduation requirement." He was willing to entertain, however, discussion about easing standards for special ed, bilingual and vocational students. Improving public schools is the "greatest challenge we face," he said.

Senate Co-Chairman of the Education Committee, Sen. Robert Antonioni (D-Leominster) said the new session's agenda consists of "MCAS, MCAS, MCAS." Funding will also be an issue, but will likely pale beside the increasingly bitter debate over MCAS, he said. When told that then-Gov. Paul Cellucci planned to launch an ad blitz defending the MCAS against attacks by the teachers' unions, Antonioni response was, "Oh, good."

The union, on the other hand, ran television ads in April attacking the MCAS as a standard for graduation from high school.

More recently, Antonioni said that he is preparing to fight off any budget amendments aimed at weakening or abolishing the MCAS graduation requirement.

Led by Speaker Thomas Finneran (D-Mattapan) and Minority Leader Francis Marini (R-Hanson), the House also seems poised to defeat any attempts to emasculate the graduation standard. Although the House never voted on the MCAS graduation requirement, it defeated an amendment to cut the Department of Education's budget by $500,000 to prevent the agency from running ads that promote the controversial exams.

"It's important for the public to understand there's a lot at stake here, particularly in terms of the implementation of an objective standard of accountability, which heretofore has been all but absent," Antonioni said.

The exams, everybody realizes, are not without some problems. The Board of Education, like Finneran, is watching results and the process itself, hoping to make the barely-tested test a reliable measure of educational attainment. The board has approved a new "technical" appeals process which allows students who fail the 10th grade MCAS by four points or less to argue before school and state officials that their tests should be re-scored.

In January it gave the nod to one new policy which will make the MCAS system appear less harsh. Students who fail the test - and therefore are ineligible for a high school diploma in Massachusetts - will be allowed up to four more tries. Some students will even qualify to take a test with the most difficult material removed.

The bills before the committee seek a variety of outcomes. Some call for an end to any system which requires students to pass a basic exam before being allowed to graduate from high school. Others seek a moratorium, while many would budget more money to continue the testing system.