Week 5

Larry Strauss

"Standardized Testing has sucked the life out of learning. Stop focusing on test scores."

A Focus on Massachusetts

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Standardizing learning Assessments

Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS)

What is it?

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) is a set of statewide standardizing tests. Statewide testing givse families an objective measure of their child's and school's progress and is one way for taxpayers to see the results of their investment in schools.

COVID-19 Pandemic creates more pressure on educators & students to succeed

Resistance & Boycotts of MCAS Begin

Massachusetts Voters approve proposition to eliminate MCAS graduation requirment

No Child Left Behind Act implemented

The Life of the MCAS

1993 MA Ed Reform ActLed to MCAS Creation

2024

2020

2001

1993

1993

No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was in effect from 2002–2015. It updated the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The law applied to all K–12 public schools in the United States.Before NCLB, many schools didn’t focus on the progress of disadvantaged students. For example, kids who got special education services were often shut out of general education. They were also left out of state tests.Unlike previous versions of ESEA, NCLB held schools accountable for how kids learn and achieve. It did this through annual testing, reporting, improvement targets, and penalties for schools. These changes made NCLB controversial, but they also forced schools to focus on disadvantaged kids.

Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System

MCAS came to our schools as a result of 1993 MA Ed reform act. The law has been credited with bringing standards, testing, and charter schools, also with making MA no.1 among the states on a national test.Two flaws in this narrative.1st: The impetus for the law was really the state's vastly inequitable school funding.2nd: Massachusetts was already near the top on the longstanding national test known as the NAEP, before MCAS and state standards came along. This was mostly because we have a relatively affluent and educated state, two things that are closely linked to test results.

A Brief History of Mcas

If you wish to read the full story, follow the link attached.

In the late 1990s, I was a concerned Brookline parent of a child on an IEP, and I became worried when I read about the impending MCAS graduation requirement. I helped start a local group, Brookline CARE, that was part of a statewide organization that fought to keep the MCAS from being used as a graduation requirement. We had active chapters all around the state, with many parents, teachers and students involved.

Then MCAS tests became the tool for enforcing the 2001 NCLB law. Many people, including me, predicted that NCLB was unworkable, would fail, would harm education overall and would especially harm students with disabilities, low income students, ELLs, students of color, that it would not close gaps in achievement.This prediction came to pass, until the law described by one of its authors, CA Sen. George Miller, as “the most tainted brand in America.”

In MA, former Secretary of Education Paul Reville (another Brookline resident) has said that while he saw some successes, “overall, we have failed to achieve equity, we have failed to eliminate persistent achievement and success gaps.”Others note that the harm was greatest to the most vulnerable students, which goes against the claim you may have heard that we needed and still need the tests as tools to close the achievement gap.

I just want to leave you with encouraging news. Some in other districts and states have recognized that high-stakes standardized testing is not the way to go and they are reducing testing and lowering the stakes, to the extent feasible under federal and state law. There’s been a trend toward dropping the use of state tests to determine HS grad, and now MA is in the minority of states that still do this. Just 13 now use their state test as a high school graduation requirement, down from 26. Another welcome trend is more and more colleges are deemphasizing college admissions tests, with more than 1,000 test-optional schools.

Vote yes on 2

Massachusetts Voters Approve Proposition to Eliminate MCAS Graduation Requirment

The Harvard Crimson

Massachusetts, Famed for Tough School Standards, Rethinks its Big Test

The New York Times

Educators Feel Growing Pressure for Students to Perform Well on Standardized Tests

Education Weekly

Standardized Testing is Still Failing Students

Interested in more?

NEA

Should we get Rid of standardized testing?

Presentation by Anthony Bokina

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