Lawsuit says many students ill-prepared for MCAS State educators defend process and timeline By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 9/20/2002
That's where schools in the old mill town ranked out of 211 districts on MCAS scores, according to an annual Globe analysis. So the school chief increased after- class help for struggling students, added classroom time in English and math, bought tutorial software, and enacted Saturday sessions. But it might have been too little, too late. Holyoke is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed yesterday that seeks to overturn the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, on the grounds that Massachusetts has inadequately prepared students to clear the MCAS hurdle. While Carballo rebuts claims that his students received no help, he acknowledges that time is dwindling for the class of 2003 - the first group of students who must pass the 10th-grade English and math MCAS tests to graduate, and the focus of yesterday's lawsuit. ''I think there's a lot of work to do here,'' Carballo said. ''A lot of work has been done prior to my arrival. There's a lot more that has to be done, and we're doing it.'' Whether that has been or will be enough now sits before a US District Court judge in Springfield. Yesterday, lawyers representing six students from the Holyoke and Springfield area sued Holyoke and state education officials, saying the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam discriminates against minority, limited-English, and disabled students. The 77-page filing also alleges that state education officials have no authority to set the MCAS test as a graduation requirement - and that students in the class of 2003 haven't spent enough time under the curriculum standards that the exam measures. The 1993 Education Reform Act mandated curriculum frameworks for key subjects in every grade, but some have been delayed or late, the lawyers said. And the issue of time to learn, or lack thereof, might help Massachusetts' plaintiffs, legal authorities said yesterday. ''This country and this commonwealth have a long history of formulating standards without the appropriate timeline and support,'' said Lesley University President Margaret A. McKenna, a former lawyer in the civil rights division of the US Justice Department and former deputy undersecretary for the US Department of Education. ''The law has shown in and of itself, high-stakes testing will stand up. And even some disparity will stand up. But here, we've got the added issue of time and preparation.'' The suit, assigned to US District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor, involves six unidentified students who attend public schools in Holyoke, Northampton, and Springfield, court documents show. They are represented by the Center for Law and Education in Boston; the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association; the group Multicultural Education, Training & Advocacy in Somerville; and the firm Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault of Boston. ''State education officials are required to monitor schools and specifically determine that the materials in the frameworks are being taught. We're alleging that they have failed to do that,'' said Tom Frongillo, with Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault. MCAS backers said the frameworks have existed in various forms since 1995, and the graduation requirement has been no secret. ''We're confident the court will find the basic English and math requirements have been clear to both students and schools for the last four years, since testing was started in 1998,'' said William Guenther, president of Mass Insight Education, a business-backed group that supports MCAS. Lawyers in Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's office, which will defend the state, were reviewing the complaint yesterday, a spokeswoman said, and will respond within 20 days for the state Department of Education. The case is the first legal assault on what is regarded as one of the nation's toughest graduation exams, and lawyers will ask a judge to certify it as a class-action suit. Questions about the lawsuit and the graduation requirement swamped a news conference at a Cambridge school where state education officials released detailed scores on the 2002 MCAS exam. Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll insisted that the state does not discriminate against groups of students, but simply reveals the performances among groups that historically have struggled academically. About 19 percent of the class of 2003, about 12,000 high-schoolers, still have to pass the 10th-grade math or English section of the MCAS test to earn a diploma. Failure rates for minority, disabled, and limited-English students are twice or three times as high. (Students have two more chances before June to pass.) ''We are making progress,'' Driscoll said. ''I would ask the rhetorical question, `What kind of progress were we making before MCAS?''' But lawyers suing the state point to key missteps that have worsened the situation. Court documents mention studies done before the first MCAS test in 1998 that warned the state of a wide achievement gap. The studies urged an analysis of differences in access to curriculum by race ''to ensure the validity, reliability, utility, and fairness of MCAS.'' The plaintiffs say the state did nothing; DOE spokeswoman Heidi B. Perlman said officials will have to look up the report before answering any questions. Among the other allegations: MCAS is illegal because the Board of Education did not have the authority to create a graduation requirement that was not specifically outlined in the Education Reform Act. And the high failure rates of minority, disabled, and limited-English students violate equal-protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions, as well as federal acts that cover such students. Generally, federal courts have not overturned states' testing programs. In February, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Louisiana parents challenging that state's high-stakes exam in grades 4, 8, and 10. And in January 2000, a federal court found that Texas' test poses problems for minority students but does not discriminate against them. Kevin J. Hart, acting principal of Dean Technical High School in Holyoke, which two of the plaintiffs attend, said the graduation requirement has been on his students' radar screens. But he added that the class of 2003, having spent less time under the state's education overhauls, are at a disadvantage. ''For these kids coming up, where MCAS has been a part of their lives from the fourth grade and even from first grade ... they're not going to have as much of an issue,'' Hart said. ''For the class of 2003, it's a legitimate concern.'' Y vonne Abraham, Michele Kurtz, and Stephanie Ebbert of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page B10 of the Boston Globe on
9/20/2002. |
