I immediately turned to the C's, and compared my hometown's Chelmsford High School with my alma mater, Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. I also looked up my school's rivals, Acton-Boxborough, Belmont and Lexington.
The public MCAS rankings were not intended to become a competition, but a way for a community to become aware of their school's success or failure, as compared to the rest of the state. But no sooner were the first results published than did students start claiming victory over their rivals.
Introduced in 1998, as part of the implementation of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, the MCAS is a series of tests lasting anywhere from seventeen to twenty hours, administered over the course of three weeks. Students are tested in a broad range of subjects.
The MCAS is scored with rankings of "Advanced," "Proficient," "Needs Improvement" and "Failing." Beginning with the class of 2003, a student must achieve a level of at least "Needs Improvement" in all four sections of the test in order to receive a high school diploma. But, in the 2000 administration, over 40 percent of high school sophomores received "Failing" grades in math.
I was a member of the first class to take the MCAS. My school performed well, with only about twenty students receiving "Failing" rankings. Most students who failed chose not to take the test seriously, knowing that it did not impact their graduation. The school gave out "I survived the MCAS" buttons (I still have mine hanging on my wall at home) to all students in my class, and continued as though the results were exactly what they had expected, ignoring the state's recomended changes intended to improve school scores.
I found that the time I spent taking the MCAS, which totalled nearly 30 hours, to be a total waste. Ed Reform also requires that all students spend 990 hours of Structured Learning Time (SLT) per year. The time spent taking MCAS did not fit the state's definition of SLT, so I outright lost 30 hours of class time.
Because MCAS is a graduation requirement, it tests all high school level topics. Unfortunately, the test is given in the middle of the tenth grade year, so the Science and Technology MCAS tests knowledge of earth sciences, biology, chemistry and physics, after only a year and a half of high school science can be taught. Districts are required to restructure their entire K-12 curricula in order to fit 12 years of state frameworks into 10 years of teaching. The cost of such changes often comes at the expense of subjects overlooked by MCAS, such as music or art programs.
MCAS demonstrates the failure of Ed Reform, which was initially proposed with the aim of closing the gap between rich towns and poor towns. This gap has not shrunk at all; in fact, it has grown. <i>The Boston Globe</i> compared students' performance on the 1998 eighth grade test with the same group's performance two years later on the tenth grade test. In suburban, often regional schools, the average score of all tests taken increased by between three and four points, while urban districts showed little or no improvement, or in some cases, a decrease in scores. All of Massachusetts' major cities placed far lower than small suburbs like Harvard or regional schools, like Concord-Carlisle.
The MCAS is a horribly inadequate test. The test's three-year introductory period was intended to give schools time to adapt to the test. However, the test has been significantly different each year-the 1998 test had at least one more test hour per subject than the more recent administrations.
In addition, the MCAS unfairly penalizes non-English language students by requiring them to take the same tests, with all instructions and questions given in English. The test includes a way for students to identify themselves as non-English language students, and the Department of Education publishes non-English students in a separate category in its summary of results, but those students are still held to the same high standards as native English students. The test similarly holds learning-disabled students in the same standards as the rest of the population. Because of the MCAS graduation requirements, Massachusetts schools are threatened by an explosion of fifth-year seniors, in many cases learning-disabled or non-English students.
Officially, the MCAS tests are untimed tests, though they are given in 45-minute blocks. If students require additional time, they continue working instead of going to their subsequent classes, putting themselves at risk of falling behind. At my school in 1998, nearly two-thirds of all students required additional time, as many as four hours more, to write the "long composition." Despite the long efforts, only 18 percent of the students received "Advanced" rankings. Test correctors were originally allotted an average of 15 seconds to read each paper, resulting in delayed returns of results.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association has recently begun to air television ads suggesting that the MCAS be reworked or eliminated before it becomes a graduation requirement, claiming that it was against the very nature of Ed Reform. Instead of promoting a more diverse educational program, the teachers argue, MCAS and the educational frameworks prevent creative, broad and innovative curricula. At many high schools throughout the state, students staged boycotts of the MCAS. Newton South High School drew criticism from the state for refusing to discipline students who staged walkouts. Many test papers were submitted blank, and test readers complained of obscene compositions. One student was asked to write a formal apology to a reader who was offended.
Poor schools will soon find their battles to catch up with their affluent counterparts more difficult. Massachusetts voters recently passed Question 4, rolling back state income taxes from 5.95 percent to 5 percent. As a result of Governor Cellucci's proposed budget, poor failing schools unable to draw money from their communities will lose much of their state support and fall further behind their affluent counterparts.
As Massachusetts high schools prepared for their annual Thanksgiving day football rivalries, a new rivalry began to brew. Schools compared their MCAS results instead of their team records. <i>The Boston Globe</i> listed notable rivalries in which the football underdogs had trounced their opponents on the academic field. Other portions of the Ed Reform Act, such as teacher recertification and new teacher testing, have been challenged and criticized, but none as vocally as MCAS. When senior class sizes begin bulging as this year's sophomores reach what should be their final years, the state will have to reevaluate MCAS, hopefully eliminating it.
J. Robinson Mead is an opinion editor for <i>The Student</i>.