Foes slam bid to add tests to MCAS
Sees state misusing new federal rulesBy Megan Tench, Globe Staff, 3/24/2002
CAMBRIDGE - Calling the MCAS flawed and full of errors, opponents of the test yesterday expressed frustration that state education officials may create shorter versions of the exam to satisfy new federal rules on testing.
''It is a misuse of what the federal law actually says,'' said Larry Ward, statewide coordinator for CARE, the Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education. ''The federal law doesn't call for more MCAS; it calls for testing.''
Earlier this year, President George Bush signed into law a requirement for states to assess students' math and reading skills every year in grades 3-8. State Department of Education officials said Friday that they are thinking of developing shorter versions of the MCAS for students who aren't already tested in those subjects.
The new tests, to be implemented in 2005, will in some cases double the number of tests students take.
Students in the Class of 2003, this year's juniors, are the first who must pass the English and math on the 10th-grade MCAS to graduate. Students get five chances to pass.
State officials denied the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam is flawed. ''Our test is very carefully designed,'' said a DOE spokeswoman, Heidi Perlman. ''Teams of educators, and teachers from Massachusetts, sit down with education officials and pull out from hundreds of questions what is appropriate to put on the test. This is not a test that is sloppily thrown together.''
But at yesterday's daylong conference at MIT, several educators disputed that assertion, pointing to what they said were problems or mistakes in last year's 10th grade exam.
Rob Riordan, a former teacher and K-12 English coordinator for the Cambridge Public Schools, said he and other educators analyzed English.
''We found many questions that had more than one answer, were poorly worded, and that purported to require learning strategies but really required prior knowledge,'' Riordan said.
Eugene D. Gallagher, professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, said he told state officials the math portion also had errors.
''I wrote to Mr. Driscoll and the MCAS staff at the DOE arguing that three of the six probability and statistics questions on the 2001 10th-grade math MCAS were badly flawed and should have been deleted from the scoring,'' Gallagher said. ''I received no formal response, and the questions remained in the final scoring of the exam.''
Organizers of the conference, Cambridge MassParents for Education not MCAS, CARE, and FairTest, plan to compile the material presented into a report to send to parents and educators statewide.
MCAS opponents also discussed what they called the racial and economic disparities associated with the MCAS, as well as the exam's impact on students and teachers.
One parent said she is worried about the anxiety and pressure her disabled son, a third-grader, may face when he takes the MCAS. Last year, 699 out of 700 10th-grade special needs students failed the alternate version of the MCAS.
''It seems puzzling to me that ... MCAS proponents haven't enlisted any psychologists to press their case,'' said Lisa Guisbond, a Brookline member of CARE. ''Maybe that's because legions of reputable and world-renowned psychologists have already weighed in with a withering indictment of the psychological effects of high-stakes testing on children, particularly young children and children with disabilities.''
Jonathan King, an MIT professor and also a member of CARE, believes that parents will start opposing the MCAS in greater numbers.
''As hundreds and thousands of families realize their children are not going to graduate next year, they are going to challenge the MCAS,'' he said.
This story ran on page B3 of the Boston Globe on 3/24/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
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