Too early for MCAS celebration

By Derrick Jackson, 10/19/2001

UNTIL WE know how well children of color did, the celebration over the improved MCAS scores is a white frat party.

In a press release, Acting Governor Jane Swift said, ''We now know for certain that with resources and focus, kids can learn the skills they need to succeed.'' In the same release, Board of Education Chairman James Peyser said, ''What these results show us is that if we devote the time and energy to giving students the opportunities they need, ultimately they will deliver.''

In a joke with the media, state Education Commissioner David Driscoll said, ''Most of you think I'm smiling because of these great results. But some of you know my salary is tied to increases in MCAS scores - and I'm going to Disney World.''

The state's MCAS rush week is at best a case of hitting the keg too soon and at worst a devious diversion. Disney World is for most valuable players of the Super Bowl - after they win the football trophy. Driscoll, Swift, and Peyser know the gameof the 2001 MCAS results is only at halftime. They have not told us if the team of color, trailing badly going into the test room, has

mounted a fourth-quarter rally.

In the summaries released this week of the standardized Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, the state proclaimed massive drops in the statewide failure rates of 10th-graders in English and math, the two tests needed by the class of 2003 to

graduate. The percentage of students who flunked English dropped from 34 percent to 18 percent. The percentage of students who blew math dropped from 45 percent to 25 percent.

That is a wonderful thing for those students who are doing better since - notwithstanding legitimate criticism over whether the tests have anything to do with critical thinking - students must be able to count and read. But with no further analysis, no one knows if the drop in failure rates is uniformly shared or if it merely confirms the obvious: that white students in suburban districts are benefitting from more resources.

The state said that the percentage of students in ''urban'' districts who passed both math and English rose from a disastrous 38 percent in 2000 to 59 percent this year. Again, that could be a wonderful leap of improvement, but ''urban'' could also be an obfuscation along the lines of a business that says it has plenty of ''minorities'' when it actually has few African-Americans or

Latinos.

If the drop in failure rates for African-American and Latino students comes anywhere close to the statewide drop, it would indeed be a stunning first step. If the decline of failure rates for African-American students in English mirrored the percentage drop of the state, the failure rate would plummet from last year's 54 percent to 29 percent. The Latino failure rate for English

would fall from 58 percent to 31 percent.

If the decline of failure rates for African-American students in math mirrored the statewide drop, their failure rate would fall from 70 percent to 39 percent. The failure rate of Latino students would fall from 73 percent to 40 percent.

That only raises the failure rates from the abysmal to the inauspicious. It also has nothing to do with the gap between African-American and Latino scores. The statewide scores could be better, tilted by the fact that six times more white students took the 2000 10th-grade tests than Latinos and African-Americans combined, but the racial gap could be worse. In 2000, the English and math failure rate of Latino and African-American 10th-graders was twice that of white 10th-graders.

These gaps make it imperative that the state must immediately analyze and announce the scores by color. The last two years, the statewide summaries of the spring tests were released the following fall. Scores by color, in the past so embarrassing, were clearly banned from MCAS rush week. They are not usually published officially until a full year later, when school is over.

Anyone who wants the best for the state's children should hope that the scores of African-American and Latino children are indeed much better, so much better that it is clear the color gap is being closed.

Surely Driscoll did not mean any harm with his remark about Disney World, but its premature nature raises the possibility that the state is willing to settle for segregated results and segregated celebrations. The white fraternities of MCAS rush week have no business cavorting at Fantasyland when there is yet no hard evidence that Latino and African-American students have escaped the Haunted Mansion.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

This story ran on page A27 of the Boston Globe on 10/19/2001.

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.