Panel blasts MCAS --Minorities don't get fair shake, group says

By Monica Allen, Standard-Times staff writer

BOSTON -- A panel of educators, researchers, parents and a Boston school official blasted the state's new standardized test, saying it severely punishes minority children for failures in the state's education system. "The MCAS, as it is right now, is a method of sanctioning students for not  knowing what they haven't been taught," said Miren Uriarte, a senior researcher at UMass Boston.

Ms. Uriarte presented data which shows that Hispanic, black and American Indian children failed the math, English and science portions of the 1998 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System at rates nearly double that of the state's white population.  This same pattern was repeated in New Bedford, where 90 percent of Hispanic and 88 percent of black 10th graders failed the math test in 1998 as compared to 55 percent of their white classmates. On the English test, some 70 percent of Hispanics and 57 percent of blacks failed the MCAS as compared to 27 percent of their white counterparts. Data on the performance by race on the 1999 tests have not yet been released.

Ms. Uriarte said this high failure rate raises serious questions about the test and the state's policy of using the test to determine who will graduate from high school in the year 2003. She also said she believed it would increase the already high drop-out rate among black and Hispanic youth.

But James Peyser, chairman of the state board of education, said this criticism of the MCAS may actually hurt those under-performing students the test is designed to help. "Unfortunately, those people who criticize MCAS out of a belief that somehow they're protecting students from something are doing a grave disservice to them," he said in a telephone interview after the panel presentation at UMass-Boston. "What the MCAS are doing now is bringing into the light what has been kept in the shadows for too long, which is the actual performance of students throughout the public school system. This has brought into focus the disparity in achievement between white students and minority students. In order to improve anything we've got to measure it."

However, members of the panel who spoke at UMass-Boston yesterday unanimously opposed using the MCAS as a graduation requirement in 2003, as has been planned by the state Department of Education. The state plans to require students to pass English and math to graduate. Sandra Alvarado, the executive director of the Boston-based Latino Parental Association, called the MCAS "bad policy that should not be used to decide the socio-economic future" of the state's Latino and black students. Without a high school degree, she said these students will be sentenced to low-level jobs that pay poverty-level wages. "We know there's a problem with this test because we know our children are definitely not dumb," Ms. Alvarado said. "MCAS (is) not a valid instrument,"  she said, "Unless the purpose is to create a ready-made army of people who will clean the hotels of Boston, Springfield and Worcester."

Ismael Ramirez-Soto, the dean of the College of Public and Community Service at UMass-Boston, said the MCAS results raise serious policy  questions that should be examined by the state Department of Education,  higher education researchers and the public. "It's not sound policy to punish  kids for a defective education system," he said. He said the test should only be given to students who have been exposed to curriculum reform through their entire schooling. This would mean that the class of 2009 would be the first to take the test to determine whether they graduate.

Harold Horton, the executive director of the Monroe Trotter Institute at UMass-Boston, also criticized Commissioner of Education David Driscoll for using the test results to blame children and parents when the blame should go on policy makers. "There's a definite critical role for parents to play, but poor performance can not be blamed on parents," he said.

Although he did not attend the UMass presentation, New Bedford   Superintendent Joseph Silva said he has been dismayed by the high failure rate of New Bedford black and Hispanic students. He said he wanted to look more closely at the data before drawing any conclusions. But he said the data does cause him to question the test, especially because such a high proportion of students failed math, a subject   that does not require the same language skills as the English test.Mr. Peyser defended the MCAS and noted that the critics do not point to specific questions which show racial bias. "I'm not convinced the issue is racial bias," he said. He also defended the test as a fair graduation requirement. "Until we establish a meaningful standard we'll be debasing the degree," he said. "What we need to do is not consider this issue as one of  whether students graduate or not, but one of whether they graduate on time. We need to provide them with educational opportunities if they can't get over the bar by the end of grade 12."

Researchers at UMass also found that the rate of failure among Hispanic students was lower in the Chelsea school system, a system taken over by Boston University in the early 1990s, than in any other city with a large Latino population. While 90 percent of New Bedford's Latino students failed the math test; some 72 percent of Chelsea's Latinos failed the same test in 10th grade. This was the lowest rate among the 16 cities with the highest Latino populations. The leadership of the Chelsea schools has been critical of bilingual education. Mr. Peyser and Ms. Uriarte said they would both like to know more about why the failure rate was lowest in Chelsea. "I do think studies nationally have been very inconclusive as to whether bilingual education improves achievement," Mr. Peyser said. "There is no evidence that I have seen that bilingual education is superior to other methods of English acquisition. Therefore I'm not surprised to see results like those in Chelsea. This school system may be more aggressive in moving kids into English proficiency."