Background Information
Class Action Complaint
[for a copy of the legal complaint (in Microsoft Word-77 pages) click here]
INTRODUCTION:This is a class action brought by Massachusetts public school students challenging, on constitutional and statutory grounds, the nature of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam (the “MCAS exam”), and its use as a graduation requirement.
The MCAS exam is a “high stakes” test that public school students must pass to receive a high school diploma. Beginning with the Class of 2003, all public schools students must pass both the grade 10 English Language Arts and Mathematics sections of the MCAS exam to graduate, even though they have satisfied all other state and local school district graduation requirements. Students attending private high schools in Massachusetts are exempt from taking the MCAS exam.
The plaintiffs are public school students in the Class of 2003, who have failed the 10th grade MCAS exam. Thus, they are precluded from receiving a high school diploma. The plaintiffs bring this class action on behalf of themselves and a class of students who have failed the MCAS exam. The class includes the following six subclasses: (1) Black/African-American students, (2) Hispanic students, (3) students with limited English proficiency, (4) students with disabilities, (5) students attending vocational technical education schools, and (6) students attending schools in the Holyoke School District.
Currently, an alarming number of students in the Class of 2003 - over twenty-four percent (24%), or at least 16,000 students - have failed the MCAS exam. The vast majority of these students are minority students, students residing in poor school districts, students attending low or under-performing schools, vocational technical education students, students with limited English proficiency and students with disabilities. The disturbing failure rate has troubled educators, parents and legislators.
SUMMARY OF COMPLAINT
1. The Board of Education, the Commissioner of Education and the Department of Education have utterly failed to satisfy their important obligations and responsibilities owed to the public and its public school students. They did not establish the requisite “curriculum frameworks,” including those for Mathematics and English Language Arts, in a timely manner. That undue delay hampered teachers’ ability to learn the “curriculum frameworks” and then incorporate them in their class curriculum and instruction. Students, in turn, had insufficient time and opportunity to master the “academic standards” for the core subjects. The state education officials further failed to ensure that teachers in all school districts actually taught students in conformance with the “curriculum frameworks,” which adversely affected students’ ability to learn the “academic standards” for the core subjects.
2. The state education officials then exceeded their statutory authority by adopting a regulation stating that all public school students must pass the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2003. Contrary to the state education officials’ regulation, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act imposed no requirement that each student pass the MCAS exam as a high school graduation requirement. The MCAS exam was simply to be one element of a larger diagnostic and remedial system designed to improve teaching, learning and the education of all of Massachusetts’s public school students.
3. The state education officials compounded their inappropriate and unlawful conduct by developing an MCAS exam that is invalid and unlawful because it fails to comport with professionally accepted testing standards; unfairly discriminates against the plaintiffs; and has not been shown to test the plaintiffs on material that they have actually been taught. For example, many of the students who failed the MCAS exam are enrolled in school systems deemed to be “low-performing” by the state education officials. Despite admitting that the students have not been provided with adequate learning opportunities, the state education officials paradoxically seek to test these students on the content, knowledge and skills that they have failed to ensure were actually taught to the students. In essence, the state educational officials now seek to punish, sacrifice and abandon thousands of students for their own failure to properly educate those students. As implemented, the MCAS exam patently violates federal and state law, including the Massachusetts Education Reform Act.
4. The flawed and illegal use of the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement has caused untold damage to students throughout Massachusetts. Scores of students have dropped-out of school after failing the MCAS exam, while many others have dropped-out to avoid taking the MCAS exam. Students who have failed the exam cannot continue their post-secondary education, and are disqualified from a host of public and private employment opportunities. All of these students have been improperly and unfairly stigmatized through their inability to pass this fundamentally flawed test.
RELIEF REQUESTED
· The plaintiffs and the proposed class seek injunctive relief to bar use of the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement in 2003 and thereafter.
· They seek a declaratory judgment that the current use of the MCAS exam violates various federal laws, several provisions of the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Education Reform Act.
· They seek injunctive relief to order state education officials to provide professional development opportunities to prepare public school teachers to meet the educational needs of the plaintiffs’ class and the subclasses.
BACKGROUND OF COMPLAINT:
1. By the 1980s and early 1990s, unequal education pervaded the public school system of Massachusetts. Suburban schools located in wealthy school districts provided high quality educations for their students, who were predominantly white. Urban schools located in poor areas throughout Massachusetts, where most of the state minority students were enrolled, were plagued by overcrowded classes, inadequate resources and inferior learning conditions.
2. Recognizing the plight of students in poor school districts and urban areas, the Massachusetts Legislature enacted the Massachusetts Education Reform Act, a sweeping statute aimed at overhauling and improving the quality of the state’s public school system and ensuring that all public school children in Massachusetts receive a high quality education. The law required the Massachusetts Board of Education to establish an “effective mechanism” to monitor progress toward attaining that goal and to hold “educators accountable for their achievement.”
3. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act required the Massachusetts Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education to develop “academic standards” in several core subjects such as mathematics, English, science and history for all grades. The statute also required the Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education to formulate “curriculum frameworks” for the core subjects covered by the “academic standards.” The “curriculum frameworks” were to provide teachers and administrators with pedagogical approaches and strategies for assisting students in developing the skills, knowledge and competency set forth in the “academic standards.” The “academic standards” and the “curriculum frameworks” were required to be designed to avoid perpetuating gender, cultural, ethnic or racial stereotypes.
4. The statute required the Board of Education to adopt a system known as the “Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System” (the “MCAS”) for annually evaluating the “performance of public school districts and individual public schools.” The law required the development of “assessment instruments designed to assess the extent to which schools and districts succeed in improving or fail to improve student performance” in the core subjects. The law further provided that the Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education adopt a “system” for evaluating student performance “designed both to measure outcomes and results regarding student performance, and to improve the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction.” Simply put, the Board of Education, the Commissioner of Education and the Massachusetts Department of Education were legally obligated to ensure that the Legislature’s educational mandate was met and failed to do so.
Key Parties
Plaintiffs: Students from the Holyoke/Springfield area who are members of the Massachusetts public high school class of 2003, and each succeeding class, who have failed to pass the required English Language Arts and/or Mathematics sections of the MCAS exam.
Defendants: The Massachusetts Department of Education, Commissioner of Education, David P. Driscoll, Massachusetts Board of Education, Holyoke School District, Holyoke School Committee, Holyoke School District Superintendent Eduardo B. Carballo.
This information provided by the Center for Law and Education
[for a copy of the legal complaint (in Microsoft Word-77 pages) click here]
