PROPOSED SCHOOL COUNCIL RESOLUTION:

To the Superintendent and members of the School Committee:

The ______________School Council wishes to express our grave concern about the
impact of the MCAS tests on curriculum and on our students. There are three
major problems with these tests:

1. The time required for the tests in 4th and 8th grades is excessive, resulting
in serious disruption of the curriculum in April and May. The long, open-ended
time frame required for the tests is difficult for teachers to plan around, and
especially for fourth graders the time required goes far beyond what is
educationally reasonable at that grade level.

2. Some of the tests are heavily based on specific content, so that a high
proportion of students are graded as "failing" even though they may be working
hard and doing well in their studies. We believe that this sends damaging
messages to students. It risks having students accept a definition of themselves
as "failures". The problem is particularly severe for bilingual and special
needs students.

3. There is inevitably a growing pressure on teachers to "teach to the test", not
just in terms of broad curriculum areas, but in specific topic presentation. This
pressure is reinforced by official statements that schools and teachers will be
evaluated on the basis of MCAS results. Thus rather than simply measuring
acquisition of skills and knowledge, these tests represent an attempt to impose a
specific curriculum. Much richness and innovation in the curriculum could be
lost if this pressure forces teachers to abandon existing in-depth curricula to
pursue the narrower goal of maximizing test scores.

We call on the Superintendent and the ********  School Committee to replace the
current goal of raising MCAS scores with more educationally sound evaluation
methods including school-based competency assessments, portfolio evaluation, and
regular school quality reviews.