The Boston Globe has the latest update on the lawsuit against the MCAS for alleged racial bias. The article begins with a sympathetic portrait of a black special education student who was denied a diploma because he did not pass the exit exam:
...sitting at his dining-room table one morning last week, William E. Lowe Jr. had much more immediate concerns than his ongoing lawsuit challenging the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement. The 18-year-old former high school football player was explaining why he has applied for a job at a local Blockbuster Video store instead of getting ready to study digital design.
...some legal observers doubt that Lowe will prevail in the lawsuit that he and his mother joined late last year. As the case approaches its one-year anniversary, lawyers for Lowe and nine other plaintiffs have only suffered defeats.
Both federal and state judges have rejected their requests for preliminary injunctions to block the state from using MCAS to deny diplomas to the class of 2003, the first required to pass the test to graduate...In April, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford denied the state injunction request, commenting in her written opinion: ``[T]he plaintiffs have not shown a likelihood of succeeding in their challenge.''
One attorney believes the plaintiffs have little chance of winning:
"The chances of any court overturning a state test like MCAS are very low,'' said Boston attorney Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, who represents school districts and is author of "Testing Students ... And the Law." "The best they can do is tell the state to tinker with parts of it. But the bottom line is that states are entitled and in fact have a responsibility to establish standards. And the things that go against the students are the high number of passes and the fact that we have remediation'' through tutoring programs."
What's all the fuss about? Well, over 4000 students - 7 percent of the class of 2003 - have not yet passed the required MCAS, which measure English and math skills at the 10th-grade level. While that 7 percent number doesn't seem high to me, the plaintiffs are charging that the exam discriminates "against minorities, special-education students, and limited-English students, whom it says have not been adequately prepared for the exam."
To begin with, a test of English does not discriminate against those with limited English ability. It just identifies those who don't know the English language that well, which is what this test is supposed to do. The school is supposed to teach English, to everyone; those who don't learn it don't get a diploma. That's tough, but if a diploma is supposed to guarantee fluency in English, that's the way it has to be.
The other claims are based on the fact that minority and special education students pass at different rates than other students. This doesn't mean the test discriminates against them unfairly; if they don't know the material, then they don't pass the test. The real question to be asked is: Why haven't they learned the material? It may be that special education students may never learn it, so there should be (and are) options for those students. It's not that I don't understand the plaintiff's frustration if, in fact, students were not taught the material on the exam. But the protestors are wrong to focus their guns on the exam.
What's more, they shouldn't be fighting over high school students at all. Look at these 2003 third-grade MCAS results. Go to page 4. Only 63% of Massachusett's third-graders rate as Proficient based on the overall exam. The rate for "limited English proficiency" youth is, of course, much lower.
Then go to page 5. Seventy-one percent of White students are Proficient, but only 40% of the African-Americans, and 32% of the Hispanics, meet this same standard. If these kids are doing this poorly in the third grade, how can we expect them to learn what they need to learn in high school, exit exam or no exit exam?
Removing the exam doesn't fix the problem. The signs are there from the beginning. It's time to start fighting about, and finding solutions to, what will actually help minority kids learn English and math skills, starting at the beginning, and continuing on through high school. It's time for Massachusetts to start looking at elementary schools that do well, such as those that use Open Court phonics-based instruction or a Core Knowledge curriculum, and start imitating those schools.
Posted by kswygert at August 18, 2003 01:50 PM