Observers say bias claims hard to make against MCAS

By Adam Gorlick, Associated Press, 9/19/2002 18:44

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) Public schools aren't giving poor and minority students the education they need to pass the MCAS, an exam that state education officials illegally turned into a high school graduation requirement, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the state Thursday.

Lawyers for six unnamed students from Holyoke, Northampton and Springfield who failed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System say the test discriminates against black and Hispanic students, students with limited English skills and disabilities, and vocational students.

Education observers, however, say the plaintiffs may have a hard time making their case.

''We haven't found anything in the MCAS that would be supportive of the claim that it's biased,'' said Stephen Sireci, co-director of the Center for Educational Assessment at the University of Massachusetts.

Sireci, who has conducted independent studies of the MCAS, said the plaintiffs are correct in their claims that minority and poor students in city schools don't score as well as their white peers in affluent and suburban schools. But the reason is not the MCAS itself, he said.

''You have to focus on the problems dealing with the inequities, like funding and resources that are available in the students' homes,'' he said. ''It's not because the test itself is discriminatory.''

Tom Frongillo, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Springfield, called the MCAS ''invalid, unreliable and unfair.''

''These students will be denied the opportunity to attend college, they will be denied many job opportunities in the private and public sectors,'' Frongillo said. ''In addition they will be stigmatized, branded as failures.''

The plaintiffs want a judge to order the state to better train teachers and stop using the MCAS as a graduation requirement.

Education Commissioner David Driscoll, who is named in the suit along with the state Board of Education and the Holyoke public school system, said 12,000 students in the class of 2003 have not passed the MCAS.

Overall, 81 percent of seniors have passed.

Eighty-seven percent of the white seniors have passed and 83 percent of Asian seniors have passed.

Fifty-six percent of black seniors have passed, while half of the state's Hispanic seniors passed.

Thirty-five percent of seniors with limited English proficiency have passed, and 55 percent of seniors with disabilities have passed.

Driscoll defended the test and said it has raised student performance. He said 16,000 students flunked the test two years ago, 4,000 more than the current failure rate.

''We are making progress,'' he said. ''What kind of progress were we making before MCAS?''

Holyoke School Superintendent Eduardo Carballo said his students have ranked last in the state on some MCAS tests. Still, he said, the city was prepared to defend its work in helping students learn the material covered on the test.

''We're fulfilling the state requirements like everyone else,'' he said.

But the lawsuit says schools have not done enough to teach students what they need to know in order to pass the MCAS.

''State education officials have utterly failed to satisfy their important obligation and responsibilities to to the state and its public school students,'' the lawsuit says.

Other lawyers have made similar claims in unsuccessful lawsuits in other states.

In 2000, a federal judge rejected claims that the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills discriminated against black and Hispanic students in that state.

''The claim that minority students aren't doing well on these tests hasn't been enough to give the courts reason for racial discrimination and bias,'' said Martha McCarthy, an educational law and policy professor at the University of Indiana. ''These claims don't sound unusual, and similar suits just haven't been successful.''

The plaintiffs in the MCAS case also say the Board of Education broke the law by making passage of the test a requirement for high school graduation.

They say the Education Reform Act of 1993, which led to the creation of the MCAS, never intended the test to be used as a graduation requirement.

The lawsuit says the MCAS designed to be one part of an improved system to improve education.

Education officials say the plaintiffs are looking at the law wrong.

''It is spelled out in the Education Reform Act that it is perfectly legal for the Board of Education to have made passing the MCAS a graduation requirement,'' said Education Department spokeswoman Heidi Perlman. ''It says so very clearly in the law.''

Preston Green, a professor of educational law at the University of Massachusetts, said the plaintiffs would likely have a hard time proving the MCAS is being used illegally.

''Generally, state agencies are given a lot of flexibilities in interpreting how they apply laws,'' he said. ''It would be surprising if the court accepted this argument.''