The issue of the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) is "as divisive as any issue facing schools," according to the Boston Globe. But not for the reasons you might guess. The Globe saw fit to print quotes from a testing critic who does nothing but rehash the extreme-PC objections to standardized tests:
Marcella Lang, an elementary school teacher since 1975 who now teaches English as a second language in Somerville, wants the MCAS abolished...
Marcella: I think of MCAS as a classist, racist test. It is unfair, and it contributes to leaving behind the very students it claims it wants to help. It doesn't take a genius to see that children from affluent communities and with educated parents do very well on the test. And who doesn't do well? Special-education kids. Trade-school kids. Minorities and underprivileged kids.
And does Marcella believe this bias exists because of how the test is constructed, or because the items themselves are biased? In other words, does she have any substantive commentary on the quality of the test?
Nope, the MCAS is "classist and racist" simply because it's unfair to expect all children to perform well:
[Children are failing the MCAS because] the exam is worded in a way that loses a lot of kids and is designed in a way that is very difficult for a lot of kids to process. It's unfair to expect the same from kids who have been read to since they were born and children who have never seen a book, never been in a library.
Emphasis mine. It's unfair to expect kids who come from deprived backgrounds to, you know, learn anything in school (as Best of the Web put it, isn't that what schools are for?). The test is "classist" because kids who were read to at home aren't just lucky; they had an unfair advantage, and presumably should not be allowed to reap the benefits of high test scores. Why, what have all these parents who read to their kids been thinking? Don't they know how unfair their homes are?
The amusing part is that Marcella's daughter, Marina, supports the test. The irritating part is that Marcella is given both the first and the last words in the Globe article, and her daughter's responses, unsurprisingly, were much more polite and restrained than mine.
Posted by kswygert at March 31, 2004 10:58 AM