State to consider raising MCAS bar

by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | February 15, 2005

State education officials start debate today on whether to raise the MCAS score that high school students need to graduate, a move they say would better prepare students for college.

The Board of Education has no timeline on raising the passing score, but its chairman acknowledged yesterday that the federal government requires Massachusetts to raise the bar for passing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests by 2014.

In recent weeks, board members have faced pressure from business leaders and Governor Mitt Romney to beef up graduation requirements. The original passing score was set nearly six years ago. Education officials vowed to raise it, but have not, partly because of concerns that students could not meet a higher standard.

''The real question we're wrestling with is how to encourage the system to reach higher," board chairman James A. Peyser said yesterday.

Peyser said he would like to see students eventually be required to attain a score of proficient to graduate, the second highest of four levels on the MCAS exam. Students now can graduate with a grade of needs improvement, the third highest level. A proficient score, in many educators' view, would require students to master 10th-grade work. The current standard is seen as easier; it only requires a partial understanding of each subject.

Such a change, however, could cause three times as many students to fail, particularly minority and special education students, according to a Globe review of last year's test scores. Last year, as many as 15 percent of the state's high school sophomores, about 10,475 students, flunked the MCAS graduation requirement on the first try; as many as 43 percent, or 30,300, would have failed if the state's requirement mirrored what federal law wants in the future. In Boston, about 1,000 students failed the test.

Students can take the MCAS several times to earn a high school diploma. But the retest removes the most advanced questions and is scored on a ''pass/fail" basis, so it is impossible to judge what the failure rate would be if the state raised the bar on the retest, as well, according to the state Education Department.

How quickly Massachusetts will move is unclear. A group of business leaders and school superintendents is calling on the state to gradually raise the score from 220 to 240, or proficient, by 2014, which would meet the federal government's deadline. But Peyser said the state is mainly driven by its own Education Reform Act of 1993, which sought higher standards for all students.

Officials say the federal government is requiring that students reach proficiency on state exams, but does not require them to use it as a passing standard for a high school diploma. But Peyser said the two are linked, because in Massachusetts the MCAS doubles as an exit exam.

Each state can define what it rates as proficient. Compared with other states' definition, the Massachusetts definition of proficiency is often higher, said Matt Gandal, executive vice president of Achieve Inc., a Washington nonprofit that advises states on raising school standards.

Massachusetts is seen as a leader for adopting the MCAS, making it a rigorous test, and helping more students to pass, Gandal said. But largely because the passing score is low, Massachusetts lags on an international scale. The MCAS passing score in math matches what students in other countries learn in eighth grade, Gandal said.

Nationally, several states are grappling with the question of how high to set the passing score.

Romney does not have an official position on raising the MCAS score, said Ann Reale, a senior policy adviser. However, three weeks ago the governor urged the board to add science to the math and English tests students must pass to graduate from high school. Today, the board will also discuss adding science as a graduation requirement.

The debate over the passing score sends a shudder among anti-MCAS groups and some educators who say schools need more time to help students pass. In 1999, the state debated where to set the passing score. Some leaders, including John Silber, former Board of Education member and former Boston University chancellor, argued that the score was too low; while others feared that thousands would fail, a prediction that never came to pass.

The state compromised and set the score at needs improvement to start, with the acknowledgement that the score wasn't high enough and would eventually be revised, Peyser said.

Superintendent Joseph Burke of Springfield said that his district is trying to improve scores for all students, but that urban districts need money and materials to help students get over the bar.

''Are we going to have the resources that we need to do what we need to do in the urban districts?" he said. ''That's the key issue."

Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said teachers oppose having MCAS as a graduation requirement, especially when budgets are tight.

''We do not accept that it should be a graduation requirement," he said. ''It's hypocritical to add more hurdles for kids to get out of high school without adding more resources."

William Dandridge, vice president for urban initiatives at Lesley University and former dean of the School of Education, said he worried that urban schools such as Boston's would be hit hardest by the higher score. He said teachers are ''struggling mightily" to help students pass the current test. In Boston last year, about a quarter of the students flunked the 10th grade MCAS, but if the score were higher, about 60 percent would have failed it. Scores were similar in Lowell and even worse in Lawrence and Springfield, the state's second-largest school district.

''I think it is too soon," Dandridge said. ''I know schools and teachers are working hard to help the students reach the current bar. There needs to be some reason with how we're going at this, as opposed to 'now, it's been X years, so now they should be able to do Y.' "

William H. Guenther -- president of Boston-based Mass Insight Education, a nonprofit educational research group and one of the coordinators of a coalition of business and education leaders seeking higher standards -- said the state should build on the progress over the past several years and raise the MCAS standard steadily over the next nine years.

He said that the state shouldn't raise the score immediately, but that officials also should not be held back by people who worry that thousands of students will fail. Using the current score, more than 95 percent of students pass the MCAS.