A Boston English teacher handles letters about the MCAS in the Globe's "Ask the Teacher" feature:
Q. These days, there is much pressure put on our adolescents to pass the MCAS test. In addition, school personnel often need to address youth's other needs, such as social and emotional growth, career exploration, etc. Is the MCAS exam helping or hindering our youth from achieving and being well-rounded?
K.C.M., Stoneham
A. The MCAS has had its fans and foes well before students began taking the statewide test in 1998. Proponents applaud the exam as a means of creating and measuring statewide educational standards, particularly in math and English. Critics, however, take issue with its too-high stakes (a high school graduation requirement), an apparent preference for memorization over knowledge, and a dismantling effect on teaching (faculty teaching to the test).
"Too-high stakes" - meaning Massachusetts students shouldn't be expected to master 10th-grade material in 12 years. And explain to me again exactly how you don't "know" something once you've "memorized" it, and how you can "know" a concept about which you've "memorized" no facts?
Some school districts have kept their focus on educating the whole person...
Translation: Rock-bottom test scores are okay as long as the student learns to play well in groups of properly-distributed diversity...
...while others have reshuffled course content and academic priorities to prepare students for MCAS exams. Karen Harris, who taught English at Watertown High School for 12 years, then became a teacher at Brookline High, has seen the MCAS effect from two distinct perspectives.
"At Watertown High, the MCAS became an obsession for teachers as well as students," said Harris. "Early on, many students failed the exam. After that, every faculty meeting addressed the issue of how to prepare students to pass this one exam . . . What important issues weren't we discussing as a result of this obsession?
What would Harris consider more important than the fact that Watertown students were in class eight hours a day, yet weren't mastering basic reading and math skills? I for one am delighted that the MCAS scores were the focus of every faculty meeting.
"In Brookline, where there's less anxiety about students passing the exam, you have the opportunity to turn the test into a lesson on conscientious objection, for example. I realize that's not a luxury every school system has.
No, it's most definitely not. Could you be a little more condescending about the fact that smart kids at the better schools get to be "conscientious objectors," while the kids at the poorer schools would be better off if they had teachers dedicated to helping them learn to spell those words?
"If teachers are only teaching the test, the students are receiving a very limited education. Plus, with teachers forced to wear more and more hats these days, it's increasingly difficult for many to help create the sort of capable and curious student we all want to see."
I agree that teachers are spread too thin. I also think bad teachers don't know how to teach basic skills without narrowing curriculum. But I fail to see how any student could be termed "capable" if they don't learn these skills.
Students often fare well on standardized tests when their teachers know their subject and show a passion for it. More importantly, their students appreciate that education's worth can't be quantified.
That last statement is true only in the sense that "Money can't buy happiness" is. We all know that a great education can't be wholly captured by a test, and high test scores do not by definition mean a great education. But just as money can buy everything except happiness (and make misery a whole lot more tolerable), the better the test scores, the better off the students are.
High test scores may not mean everything's going all right, but low test scores always mean that something has gone wrong. And there's not a student on earth who has ever been "hindered" by their high test scores.
Posted by kswygert at August 30, 2004 04:23 PM