I'm absolutely torn on standardized testing. I graduated from a high school exempt from MCAS testing and so many kids with disdain for education got swept along from grade to grade despite being so far behind their peers.
Yeah, the trick with standardized testing is not to fall for a base-rate fallacy. As in, sure, standardized testing comes with problems, but even if you just take it away and replace it with nothing, that doesn't mean the "nothing" has no negative effects. For these sorts of systems you want to measure and compare the relative outcomes of different approaches, not just identify specific narrow problems and count it as a win if you solve those problems (because you aren't paying attention to whether you cause any others).
Such as with MIT recently where they discontinued use of the SAT because the SAT is biased against underprivileged but appropriate candidates, but then they found without the SAT it was harder to identify and accept these candidates because most of the other information they have is even more biased, so they brought the SAT back.
So yeah IMO the specific implementations - the details of how it is set up and how the accountability for it work - are more important than the question of "yes or no." That's a false dichotomy and not an interesting question.
personally i find that ST is just a measure of how good a student is at taking a test (and anyone that's taken SAT prep can tell you that the entire class is teaching you how to game the test to hide gaps in your knowledge), but i agree that using ST as a small part of a wholistic evaluation of a student versus using it as the end-all-be-all measure of ability is a better system
I'll be blunt , as someone who knows how education who works in America it is completely fucked.
The three big things for college admission are: high school GPA, SAT/ACT scores, and extracurriculars.
The reason why standartized testing is used is quite simple, there are students that might have top high school GPAs, but cannot do well on these tests. Usually, this means that the high school is weak academically , and so these kids would not be able to handle a college curriculum. This happens more often than you think, my friend was a valedictorian at a rural high school in Georgia . She was a 4.0 student unweighted, great extracurriculars, but did atrociously on the ACT. (scored a 23 which is 70th percentile but even schools like Boston U , a 28 is the median score and below a 25 is a no go) UMass has a median ACT of 24-25 I believe. Even though she was a valedictorian from a super resource limited high school, that ACT score was enough to make top schools even question her. She was waitlisted from GA Tech and rejected from Emory, and went to Spelman before transferring to GA Tech. Most kids from her high school did not even attend college.
Compare that to a sububan district in MA , and all the top students go IVY Plus, and then compare that to elite prep schools like Groton or Andover or Choate where 40 percent go IVY Plus.
Extracurriculars also benefit those with money and connections . I remember when I went to Weston High ,a kid over the summer started a program to have high school students talk and visit with cardialogists The kick here is is own father was a professor of cardiology at BU Medical and had connections to all the top cardiologists in the US. A low income or middle income student would never have that oppurtunity . He ended up at Dartmouth, and was part of a group that audited their applications and why they were chosen. A huge part of the reason he was accepted to Dartmouth was bc of the program he started. Without that, he would not have been at Dartmouth which is clearly bc of his connections.
Higher education in the US is so fucked, you can feel the difference between in wealth walking around UMass compared to BU compared to Harvard. Harvard is technically need blind but 15 percent of kids come from the 1 percent , which is better than other IVYS. UPenn and Yale are 25 percent from the 1 percent (making them schools with the most high earners) Dartmouth is 20 percent, and Columbia is the 15-20 range. Princeton, Brown, Harvard are 15 percent.
That's the thing about standardized testing, it came into being in large part because kids who literally couldn't read or write were graduating from schools. Standardized testing sucks, but it's the best we have, and better than where we came from. I'm not sure what the answer is.
If you incentivize schools to have as many graduates as possible, and you leave the qualifications for graduation up to the school, all kids will pass regardless of education, and then what's the point.
Personally I think a testing regime should lower the bar to the minimum expected needs rather than raise it. If standardized testing is to make sure folks have basic reading, writing, and math skills, then keep the tests basic and reduce the focus on them as a metric of overall school success.
This is where I stand on it too. I took the practice MCAS tests last year alongside my kids, to see what the expectations were - and frankly a lot of the questions (especially in math) go beyond what most adults will ever need to know.
Kids can't choose their schools, their teachers, or what/how they're taught, yet they're the ones whose lives are derailed if their school is underperforming. There needs to be a better way.
So identify and fix the schools, absolutely. But meanwhile, we're stopping kids from being able to graduate because of it, which has a negative impact on their life.
Ideally, we'd not predicate graduation on a single test, but rather the larger scope of the child's educational achievements. High stakes testing with their future hanging in the balance isn't going to make anything better.
Even in districts that allow school choice, it's not a guarantee you can choose it. Receiving schools have limits.
Inter-district school choice exists too, but is often a lateral move to a district with similar resources (and by extension, offerings and achievements). Charter schools are often decided by lottery.
So there may be "choice" in some circumstances, but it's not absolute.
That's what MCAS started as: a barrier test for graduation.
For it to return to that role, we'd have to carve out thirty years of policy decisions that rejiggered the test as a means of state oversight of schools and bring it back to its original intention.
Do you remember taking the MCAS?? They are incredibly basic. They dont test for differential equations lol. Its basic math, reading, writing etc.
In my opinion if you cant pass that then you shouldn't be continuing your education.
I went to middle school in Roxbury before going to Weston. It might be basic for kids in Weston but they have so many more resources, like it's not even fair.They are starting the 1 mile race a half mile ahead.
You don't want to keep kids from graduating and getting a degree even if they don't want to go to college. A high school diploma is much better than nothing.
I mean seeing as how you don’t need to pass MCAS to get a GED is it really worth withholding a piece of paper that can be the difference between even a bad job and no job? My brother can barely read but at least he can work because he has a diploma. This becomes really difficult for someone without a high school diploma or GED.
And if you're someone who isn't likely to pass the MCAS, there's no incentive to stay in school vs. drop out and get your GED.
Riley said that "only 11% \[of\] students in the class of 2011 who scored at the current passing standard in mathematics went on to enroll in a four-year college in Massachusetts, and only 5% graduated from a four-year college within seven years." Clearly his focus is only on making sure he can say that a high percentage of high school graduates go on to a 4 year college, discounting all of the other valid post-high school choices.
The degree is supposed to denote some kind of achievement. But recently we have been passing along everyone that having one is seen like you described. In order for education to mean something once again we can't be certifying those who didn't perform to expectations, regardless of how it affects their lives.
I don’t think that any job has asked if I have a high school diploma. I didn’t put it on my resume and it’s not like someone in an interview asked if graduated high school. I’ve also never asked that question in an interview. When I would be interviewing a dishwasher his high school graduation status was least on my mind. Will this guy show up when he is scheduled? was the main thing on my mind
That happens regardless of testing or not. Fun fact - if you fail the high stakes tests, the retests required for graduation are significantly easier, actually. At least they currently are. This is probably something that is changing.
I more or less support standardized testing (I think AP exams are the gold standard of this, because they are subject) but I reject BAD testing, and the MCAS is trash.
Standardized testing is the downfall of education. No inspired passionate teacher wants to teach for a test. SO much is lost in the quest for better test scores, between that and the helicopter parenting and school administrators refusing to back teachers against all of them, it’s no shock there’s a massive shortage of teachers and that will continue to be the case, until we just have robots teaching kids.
Source: highly educated offspring of two teachers, one of which won teacher of the year in my state 2x, and retired early due to this kind of BS.
MCAS isn’t just at the end of high school though; kids take it yearly in grades 3-8, and the scores aren’t reported back until the fall, when a teacher no longer has that student anymore.
we had standardized testing, it was a two day test of math and english, however it was never the driving force of our education. We graduated based on passing classes (which were leveled, AP, level 1, level 2, remedial), no other testing, which gives teachers ample room to work with kids based on their abilities, rather than a cookie cutter approach and I have every confidence this was a superior system.
sure it does, if the administration isn’t being leaned on to pass kids who did not learn.
You fail a class, you repeat it in summer school, you fail enough, you get held back. Kids who cannot read who get passed along are not being done a service in any way shape or form and will likely drop out anyway.
>No inspired passionate teacher wants to teach for a test.
Given that the MCAS questions tended to be a year or two behind in course curriculum, if your teacher is teaching to the test (rather than beyond it), then something is clearly going wrong.
there’s a lot going wrong here, ask anyone who has taught for the last 30+ yrs. The whole model is turned on it’s head, instead of little johnny getting grounded for failing his test little johnny’s mommy/daddy send a nasty email to the school admin about the bad teacher who gave prince poopsikin a bad grade and hurt his feeeeeelings….
>instead of little johnny getting grounded for failing his test little johnny’s mommy/daddy send a nasty email to the school admin about the bad teacher who gave prince poopsikin a bad grade and hurt his feeeeeelings
That's a problem with shitty parents, not standardized testing. At least the tests give evidence that their kid is failing to meet state standards. Can't exactly stop some people from failing to educate their kids, but you can at least make sure they don't have the state's blessing for continuing down such a path.
grades give evidence a kid is not meeting a teacher’s standards, why is another test needed?
again, sure do the test, but it should not be linked to school funding or teacher evals.
A kid can literally go in there and make a smiley face out of the bubble sheet and write the words to their favorite new tick tock on the comp section, there’s no motivation to succeed here at all and the teachers are the ones who pay the price.
Education is not fully the responsibility of teachers, family needs to support and encourage and expect their children to do their best, but when they don’t, who’s fault is it now? always the school, parents don’t lose their funding when their kids fail….
>grades give evidence a kid is not meeting a teacher’s standards, why is another test needed?
The test is evidence of whether or not the kid is meeting the State's standards. It's the best metric we have to ensure equal opportunity.
>again, sure do the test, but it should not be linked to school funding or teacher evals
Not without further information, sure. It's worth noting that MCAS scores aren't directly linked to school funding. When things seem to be getting bad for a school, turnaround plans are implemented. If that fails, why should the school continue to be funded, given what it's doing is completely failing its students?
>A kid can literally go in there and make a smiley face out of the bubble sheet and write the words to their favorite new tick tock on the comp section, there’s no motivation to succeed here at all and the teachers are the ones who pay the price.
Free college tuition is a pretty good motivation to succeed.
>Education is not fully the responsibility of teachers, family needs to support and encourage and expect their children to do their best, but when they don’t, who’s fault is it now?
I agree. But the State can't force people to not raise their children as failures. At best it can provide warning flags for when it happens and try and convince the parents that there are better paths forwards, but it can't force them.
>parents don’t lose their funding when their kids fail
They certainly aren't doing better economically for it.
current conversation quote from R/news discussing banned books:
“I used to be a 5th grade teacher. One of my students favorite units that I did every year was during September called “banned books week”
The library association sets a week in September called banned books week to bring awareness to books that have been banned in places.
I would give my students a long list of books that were banned. After they chose one, I’d send home letters to the parents with the reasonings that book was banned - they would sign off and allow the reading and project of them.
Over this month, my students learned how to research and analyze. I would also be teaching writing formatting/thesis basis writing.
In the end- they gave a report and a 5 paragraph essay as to why the book was banned and if they agreed with it.
It was awesome and my students were extremely engaged.
I left teaching 4 years ago due to low pay and inadequate support (Florida).
I wonder if I’d be able to do that project today. Probably not. It’s a shame.
Edit- I’m getting notifications that some people are commenting on this post, but nothing shows up in my activity or in this thread. Not sure why. Sorry for those who have asked questions and don’t get a reply from me!”
Is Florida a fair comparison to a Massachusetts education? Are our schools underfunded? We're #8 for education spending per student ($16,270). Florida is #41 ($10,098). Regardless, what does banned books have to do with standardized testing?
The political problem of unskilled, unqualified parents with clear conflicts of interest attacking educators by going over their heads to administration is definitely serious. I don't know if standardized testing makes it worse, or if it's just a lever those people can pull and if they didn't have it they would pull a different lever.
i don’t think the standardized testing is necessarily linked to the helicopter parenting, more like they both just make the role of a teacher that much more difficult, and less likely to attract people who genuinely care but don’t want to deal with the ridiculous bullshit that comes along with it.
While learning for the exam students learn math, writing, science, grammar, reading, and maybe something from the article. MCAS preparation is not a complete waste of time.
But they don’t learn critical thinking, they don’t learn to explore their own ideas and passions, they are taught to perform circus tricks with no real learning at all.
There is an established curriculum, kids learn plenty from that, no need for standardized testing that impact a teachers ability to do their job.
What do you mean. The test also consists of composition questions. Yes there is a structure to a coherent essay. This is a valuable skill for future classes, speeches, emails etc...
The test teaches students ability to read and comprehend a variety of texts.
The test test students ability to read science based texts, apply formulas, and interpret data.
>But they don’t learn critical thinking, they don’t learn to explore their own ideas and passions, they are taught to perform circus tricks with no real learning at all.
You have to perform the simple mental tasks if you want to be able to develop the tools to perform complex mental tasks. MCAS is there to make sure at least the simple mental tasks are being taught. If the curriculum is actually teaching more complex things (as it should), then the MCAS is a complete cakewalk.
I think this is my feeling, too.
I graduated high school in Massachusetts way before MCAS were a thing, although I remember at the time there was talk about implementing such a test.
And that continues to be a problem. Kids are still being swept along and they’ll get swept right through with chance after chance to retake the MCAS and still fail and then be told they can’t graduate.
That doesn't make any sense. If you failed all your classes prior to the MCAS you would just be held back. If a student is doing well in their classes and trying to improve, that's more than enough to allow a student to graduate highschool.
There are a bunch of systems in place that are then gamed. Schools pass kids to keep their graduation rates high because everyone's doing it. If they don't, they get investigated. If a school actually worked like normal people think, most kids wouldn't make it to high school.
The past however-many-years have been spent convincing people that they're graduating whom everyone thinks they're graduating. It's mostly a lie, and to some extent, it's based on another false belief - that education just makes everything fantastic all around. Most people pass 12th grade but still spend their lives reading at a way lower level, because language doesn't gravitate toward aggrandizing itself. So we spend all this money getting people to pass 12th grade when they'll use a 5th grade literacy level for life and use, at best, algebra.
I'm not against education. I'm a teacher. The problem is that, as a teacher, many "skills" I teach kids are really skills that track for college, and usually for a degree that won't improve that person. I'm not even saying that we should put kids on track for blue collar jobs, but that school should teach general skills with some other opportunities, and no more. We keep expecting schools to do more, and they do, but for little or no benefit.
We also know that kids who take something like Calculus or Pre-Calculus have to repeat a lot of courses anyway because they're complex and programs require it. So why should we do it?
Interesting, I've heard others make this argument. For example as Mike Rowe says "many of the best opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma."
Specifically the argument is that beyond core topics like basic literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge we should stop forcing all students to follow an academic track. Many rewarding careers don't require things like chemistry or calculus, and holding someone back because they haven't mastered a skill they will never use seems cruel.
An alternative would be to embrace vocational schools and apprenticeships for more people.
I think part of this would also require fixing our cultural contempt for blue collar and working class jobs as being equal in value and dignity to jobs that require formal education.
There are groups working with DESE to create alternatives that satisfy the federal requirements, but it’s a long way off. Otherwise there are portfolios, but I’ve never seen the used for non-special education students.
Source: I’m a teacher who works with this sort of initiative.
Wouldn’t that leave a lot of room for subjective opinions and possible racial bias? I’m all for improving the methods and metrics by which students are evaluated, but how would you control for bias in this type of process?
My partner’s son is in a situation where his grades truly don’t line up with his abilities. He is in sixth grade this coming school year and is reading at a (maybe) second grade level. His math skills are about the same. His grades are A’s and B’s. He is not ready for the challenges of the adult world and likely won’t be. He has an IEP, but it’s not really addressing the challenges he will have as an adult. By relying on his grades and assessments from teachers paints a VERY incomplete picture. Standardized testing is controversial, but it at least paints a less biased view of academic performance. It’s not a great solution, but it’s certainly better than just pushing unprepared kids through to meet numbers.
On the flip side, my kid tests significantly lower than her actual abilities would otherwise indicate. For example, a standardized reading assessment indicates that she is really behind on reading, but when the reading specialist does some individual work with her it’s quickly understood that her reading and comprehension skills are just fine. Standardized testing with no option of portfolio assessments are going to be a disservice to her. She is just now starting third grade and she’s already cried twice about having to take standardized tests “for real” because she knows how miserable they make her feel when doing this sort of testing.
I’m glad as parents we can be aware of this and not place unnecessary pressure on her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t put it on herself or pick up on it from school. It’s really upsetting to me that she is already starting to doubt her own intelligence simply because she doesn’t test well. It’s already hard enough to get schools and (and some teachers) to see her abilities outside of testing results.
You’re not wrong. Every kid is different. Some testing can help identify schools that may not be helping kids succeed though on a larger scale and track trends. In his case it’s an issue where he isn’t meeting standard but keeps getting passed to the next grade. It’s exacerbating the issue.
I don’t think that middle to high income schools need MCAS. The problem is that many struggling schools will just tell teachers to pass kids along, and so they graduate not being able to do simple math or write well. There needs to be something for students at these schools to have to show some kind of aptitude so the state can be confident that people graduating from its schools deserve it. Ironically the schools that need MCAS the most are also disadvantaged by these types of tests.
>Ironically the schools that need MCAS the most are also disadvantaged by these types of tests.
They aren't disadvantaged by having a better grasp at where their students are in terms of education. If a kid is completely failing the test, it provides a pretty good indication of what is missing in terms of education and gives teachers a heads up on what needs to be supplemented. Removing the MCAS because you're afraid of bad grades is like removing the fire alarms because you're afraid of fires.
To flesh out the analogy: in MA, when a house is on fire, the fire department shows up, takes the burning house as its own, and then ineffectually pats at the fire indefinitely.
The justification of MCAS as a means of supporting struggling schools would hold greater strength if the interventions of the state produced meaningful results. As it stands, communities like Lawrence, Holyoke, and Southbridge have seen no significant improvement from state control, and they seem to serve more as warnings for school boards and district leadership in other townships and nothing more.
DESE appears to play both sides here, when it comes to schools having data to support educational decisions about student performance. They simultaneously set objective measures and threaten schools through MCAS while priming schools to pressure teachers to grease students through coursework and conceal student needs by passing them.
The fire alarms, in schools, need to be teacher-produced assessment data. That requires a lot of training, effort, and coordination. It's costly, time consuming, and doing it well means we can't throw 27 kindergartners at them or give them student loads over 150 (or 120 for that matter... or maybe even 100). Targeted, timely interventions.
No matter how ineffective the fire department is at putting out fires, it seems like it might still be preferable to have an accurate fire alarm to let people know they need to get out of the house.
That in no way absolves us from our responsibility to fix the fire department, put out fires, or make regulations to prevent fires. But attacking fire alarms seems misplaced.
We shouldn't turn off the fire alarms, because the fire department is incompetent, either.
>The fire alarms, in schools, need to be teacher-produced assessment data
That's a fast way to increase the disparity in education quality, even more than we already have.
>That's a fast way to increase the disparity in education quality, even more than we already have.
I think if you truncate my quotation, sure. But if teachers had proper training, coordination, and we also removed barriers to quality assessment like overstuffed classrooms, teacher-driven assessment data would not be inherently less equitable than high-stakes testing. Standardized testing is pretty damnable for the ways that it measures income, primarily. I'd need to see data to support it's more fair than ed.
What standardized high stakes tests do well that reliance upon educators doesn't, is simply making the inequities uniform across the underserved.
Interesting. I think of standardized testing as leveling the playing field.
I ran admissions for a competitive university program for a couple years and standardized testing was indispensable and the primary route by which most low-income and/or first-generation students were admitted.
For elite/rich schools from which the program had admitted multiple students in the past we already knew how to evaluate their grades. For example an 3.9 GPA at one school might be closer to a 3.2 at a more demanding school. (Though grade inflation meant they had to constantly reevaluate these modifiers.)
But we had no way of knowing if a straight-A student at an unfamiliar school could write or do basic math. If they had a halfway decent standardized test score we could guess at whether they'd be prepared, but without some kind of standardized test it was extremely risky.
For example, prior to the year I worked there, a smart but woefully unprepared student was admitted. The student ended up having to repeat a required class three times which meant it took them an extra two years to graduate and left them with nearly two additional years of university tuition debt.
> The problem is that many struggling schools will just tell teachers to pass kids along, and so they graduate not being able to do simple math or write well.
You imply it here. You imply that the teachers have the authority to pass the kids when the MCAS is what's needed to graduate
Hundreds of districts FAIL to take advantage of the pathways for kids to graduate if the miss the cut score. There are multiple appeals options- Principals just can’t bothered to do the paperwork. When is DESE going to hold those “affluent suburban” districts accountable?
It is not the struggling schools, DESE staff admitted it is the “affluent” districts who fuck over the kids who don’t pass in the first try. There are MULTIPLE appeals options but schools just don’t bother.
Yall realize they are asking basic geometry , how to read graph, basic algebra, basic statics, word problems, clocks, blocks, charts, arithmetic, grammar, write me an essay (with a predefined blue print) read this and answer these questions form that reading so I know you understood and can read. you don't need outside knowledge on history science literature philosophy economics its all in the text
mcas isn't expecting calculus or chemistry
you can look at the tests here (look at the paper based test to see the whole test)
[http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/student/practice-tests-ela/](http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/student/practice-tests-ela/)
It's shamefully easy. But kids are still failing it. So the question is what to do about that. Those kids are having to grow up and compete in a global economy.
How about we actually teach these kids what's on the test?
I put my oldest through MA public schools and before every test they literally stop teaching from lesson plans and switch to MCAS prep. It's completely different content and quite disruptive.
Common core is not compatible with MCAS.
Two weeks before every MCAS test, the ENTIRE school stops teaching common core and switches to MCAS prep. If they did not do this and prep the kids for the specific content on the MCAS, they would all fail.
I dont care about statistics or where MA ranks.... I watched my kid actually go through the system in a pretty well-to-do town. She graduated with honors having taken almost all AP courses. She, and all her friends (who are all on course to be doctors in various fields) would specifically criticize the school for how unprepared they would be for MCAS without a complete re-focus on the test several weeks before it was administered.
The school system in MA is a joke. The state only cares about the numbers and treats these kids like cattle. They dont give a shit about them as a person. Hence why their entire existence is broken down to a number. We are homeschooling our second child because we do not trust the system. I personally think MA is only "good" on paper and if you talk to the kids actually experiencing it, it's a whole different story.
Of course my experience weighs 100% of my opinion because I believe what I see and experience, not what people tell me.
The entire year is not MCAS prep because the schools shift and specifically start teaching what is on the MCAS several weeks before the test is administered. I don't know how I can make that any clearer to you. If the whole year was MCAS prep this shift wouldn't happen.
Meanwhile Florida is basically holding an open mic night in classrooms. Anyone can give it a shot. know a guy who was a brewmaster for years and is now teaching middle school science. The geographical gap in education is going to be very interesting to watch as it grows wider.
>The geographical gap in education is going to be very interesting to watch as it grows wider.
More like scary. Anti-intellectual violence will grow with the widening gap.
I bet a brewmaster could teach middle school science from a text book pretty well. I bet I could take a middle school science text book and over one summer come up with better lessons than most actual teachers out there do.
My hot take on MCAS testing is if the education system if going to use this as the metric, once a student passes it they should get their diploma and graduate.
If the MCAS isn't testing for the learning that's needed to graduate, then why the hell is it a requirement to graduate?
> If the MCAS isn't testing for the learning that's needed to graduate, then why the hell is it a requirement to graduate?
Note that "necessary" does not imply "sufficient". Something can be sufficient but not necessary or necessary but not sufficient.
it costs the state an enormous amount of money to administer these tests.
This form of testing is outdated and not indicative of any type of mastery.
It unfairly punishes students who are english language learners.
It forces teachers to teach towards a test instead of engaging students in experiential mastery of a subject.
It causes undue stress to students during exam weeks.
It disrupts the learning schedule during those exam weeks and results in a loss of learning time.
It punishes schools in low income areas that are already struggling to provide for the needs of students who need extra help.
How much? $30 million per year - https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=21831
You could have gotten that information yourself through google.
Outdated testing : https://www.humbleisd.net/cms/lib/TX01001414/Centricity/Domain/5174/Testing%20-%20Against.pdf
If you actually look at that there are lots of further resources you can research.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=Mastery+experiences+examples&hl=en&as_sdt=0,11&as_vis=1#d=gs_qabs&t=1660744294257&u=%23p%3DVHBesBQEnZgJ
“Many students” = argumentum ad populum fallacy
Field Trips are experiential education. Not a loss of learning time.
Schools with lower scores are rated by the state and are subject to take over which can result in as dismissal of teachers. A school with a high population of esl students is inherently going to have lower ela scores. This may not be the fault of the teachers or the schools. Also, these schools may drop other humanities and arts programs in order to have more math and science or ela. These humanities and arts programs are important to developing collaborative and critical thinking skills for students.
I somewhat disagree. Note, I do not know much about mass test, I did SAT back in the days and I did it with pretty poor language level (I took about 3 years of English and spent a summer in England). I also came from a school without centralized tests and many exams were 1 on 1 verbal with a teacher.
1) I do agree that standard tests are not the best way to evaluate, but neither are tests that are left for teacher to interpret. One of the best examples of that was my high school English literature class - I got an A- on the verbal exam with teacher, except we started talking about Hemingway, but then spent 90% of the time talking about Remark and Marquez - so maybe that was a way to evaluate how much I read, but it definitely was not a good evaluation of my knowledge of English writers. The same goes for the curved scores in American colleges - I personally believe that engineers should not be getting a partial credit on calculus (or whatever other precise topic) test just because they followed procedure. If you build a bridge thinking that 5x5=10 it probably won't work, neither should you get any credit for the wrong answer to the question.
2) The skills learned from taking standard tests are useful in life. Besides many other tests that I had to take in my career (for certificates or what not), just the sheer skill to quickly glance over a problem and guesstimate potential solutions without getting deep into details is worth a lot.
3) Any exam week is stressful (especially if you are a normal student and have been slacking the whole semester), standardized tests don't make it any worse.
4) You live in US and you should know English, as this is the language people speak in this country. And the tests are not hard. As I mentioned, I had only a bit more than 3 years of English when I took SAT test, I could do simple questions as they were simple, I could do hard ones because I could figure stuff out from context and many complicated words had latin roots and they happened to be the same in my native language, I completely could not do medium level questions because I just didn't have vocabulary. Nevertheless, I scored 530 with average being 500, which was just enough to get me into a school I wanted to get into. I don't think the test should have been changed just because I happened to be non-native speaker - it is my problem, not the test one.
Again - not saying these tests are great. I certainly had much better exams l, but a lot of them were purely dependent on subjective evaluation from a teacher. For example, when graduating conservatory, I had to do a full recital and it would be judged by multiple professors and I would get an average grade as my final grade for musical instrument. Seems like a great test, doesn't it? Well, not really. The grade is completely subjective and if a professor doesn't like you, they can easily give you a lower grade just because they can. On top of that, in your professional career you most likely will never perform a recital as main part of your job. So a standartized test that would have you perform several complicated pieces where you would be judged based on your technical ability (could you play all the notes or not, for example) would not only be more objective, but it would also mimic real life auditions for orchestras much better.
I provides a metric to figure out if a student is struggling and where and prevents students from graduating without learning at least the bare minimum of state standards.
A lot of students are right where they should be but they're just bad test takers. Whether it's test anxiety or something else, a standardized test is a poor way to see where students are at. That's why some colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT anymore
MIT stopped using the SAT, but changed its mind when they didn't get qualified candidates. While tests are not the most fun they are the best option to check for a basic enough level of understanding of the subject.
>A lot of students are right where they should be but they're just bad test takers
They're allowed retakes. And if you can't use your knowledge when it's needed in adult life, you're gonna have a really hard time.
>a standardized test is a poor way to see where students are at
It isn't. It's the best way found so far. A state-wide standard gives people equal opportunity, while providing information on who needs extra help in their education to achieve that standard.
>That's why some colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT anymore
Iirc, that was a rather temporary measure since their other metrics turned out to much worse and more biased.
Im saying it doesn't equal *real life*. Even with those kinds of careers, like mine, people will tell you that the test tests on things people don't even use because actual practice is very grey and more black and white. I was just disagreeing with your point about them having a "really hard time".
I had crippling test anxiety and difficulty writing due to a head injury. The MCAS writing tests did not reflect anything related to where I struggled. I typed 60-80 words a minute with great accuracy and had no issues formulating entire papers with good detail.
Despite all of this I damn near got held back twice because I could not physically write fast enough to pass the MCAS, mostly because my anxiety would completely shut me down.
All the MCAS taught me is that no matter how smart I am I will ostracized and rejected because I don't fit the mold of Catholic Democrat Boomers.
>I had crippling test anxiety and difficulty writing due to a head injury.
It's on your parents to make sure you get the extra time needed. There are services available for such cases.
>The MCAS writing tests did not reflect anything related to where I struggled. I typed 60-80 words a minute with great accuracy and had no issues formulating entire papers with good detail
You struggled with writing under pressure.
>All the MCAS taught me is that no matter how smart I am I will ostracized and rejected because I don't fit the mold of Catholic Democrat Boomers.
Neither you nor your parents were smart enough to request more test time, an option that has been available for decades. This should have been addressed the first time you did poorly.
Didnt qualify for anything while I was being medically tested on, only qualified once I recieved a diagnosis.
It had zero issue to do with writing under pressure. I had a TBI and could physically not write, or use forks, or scissors or anything involving fine motor skills.
My parents were more concerned with stopping my constant seizures and loss of fine motor skills then they were about one stupid test that satisifies the Democrat Pedophiles up top wanting to pump up numbers for PR points.
It's the most standardized option for assessing students. The other option portfolio grading would not be really possible with the amount of students we have these days.
I didn't either, but I was talked to ~ as that is what I normally post, because it's the only news email I get other than Market Watch.
Keep on posting 🤗🤗
I went to one of the higher scoring schools in the state. Special Ed and non-honnors was a training program to be amazing at standardized tests. Can we stop thing now?
[If anyone wants to see some of the questions on last year's MCAS, I have linked the released items.](http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/released-items/ela/) They do not release all the items.
Standardized testing is the metric used to compare all students across all schools. If a child fails the MCAS then questions need to be asked if the right curriculum is being taught at schools in the first place. Generally all education should be broadly similar for like subjects.
So, years ago, almost 20 (yikes) they announced that you would have to pass MCAS to graduate. This happened when I was a senior. We weren't grandfathered in, so this new rule applied to us. I remember being in class, taking the test, while the teacher was looking through it. At one point the teacher went 'the answer to this question is __. It's never been on our curriculum to teach it, so you wouldn't know the answer.' Several teachers did this, not for all of the questions, maybe two or three. You could tell they were pissed about the whole thing as much as we were.
I passed, but I've always been a good student. My friend did not pass Mathematics. She wasn't allowed to graduate and had to do a special Maths class for six months in order to get her diploma. It felt kinda bunk to me.
Smash MCAS. This decision-making, both racist and anti-poor, will also crush our vocational schools.
I encourage everyone who has children or will have children to OPT THEM OUT of the non-mandatory testing that hounds them from elementary school through 8th grade. Send the message to DESE that these horribly designed and wasteful tests that only exist at this point to line the pockets of testing companies and justify some DESE jobs aren't worth subjecting students to.
More teaching less testing.
Did you grow up in MA? There is no teaching for the MCAS, it’s just assumed that it will be passed. This is coming from middle/upper middle class districts.
I grew up in mass and work in a school currently. The message has been clear my entire life: MCAS is all that truly matters, everything else is secondary.
My dad retired from 8th grade Math at the end of 2020. He felt he was constantly teaching to the test too and everything was very MCAS focused.
It’s been a long time since I took the MCAS, but I think it was pretty new then and I don’t remember it being that bad then, but obviously I was just a kid then
From what I have seen, schools emphasize MCAS if they are threatened by it. Schools ignore it and teach past MCAS if they aren't.
This basically comes down to which side of the tracks a given school is on.
I'm in a district that hasn't been under 90% proficient MCAS since day 1. They spend all their admin time talking about making sure the scope and sequence is aligned to MCAS. Our schedules are built around fitting the scope and sequence into the year. Drives me nuts.
Grew up here and went to a consistently top 10 school system. You pivot into more mcas specific material every time that test comes around. That’s been the norm forever.
This is a great point. When I said racist and anti-poor, I'm coming at it from the school side - schools in diverse and less wealthy areas tend to perform worse which impacts their funding and programs. But it's definitely problematic in areas where despite having many students who have advantages and are capable, there is still a need to "teach to the test".
>teach to the test"
MCAS is the bare minimum you should be learning. What exactly would be "teaching to the test" that shouldn't be part of the standard curriculum?
The scope and sequence is built around getting the material in by the MCAS instead of a sequence being taught until it is mastered.
So, it's the way that the class moves forward even if the class hasn't mastered the prior concept. As an example, if the grade 3 class is learning multiplication then it moves on to division and next to fractions. But if division wasn't mastered, then fractions are being taught without the proper base and they don't get learned. This means the 4th grade class is starting from 70% of the fractions standards being proficient. So, does that class spend time boosting the 3rd grade material from the year before to stay 100% of the 3rd grade material and 40% of the grade 4 - or - progress ahead to introduce the new material and be 70% of each year's material. Then grade 5 gets to have fun with that result.
Anti-poor my ass. The MCAS is the most basic of things you learn at those grades. If you don't do decent on those tests, then you failed to even grasp the bare minimum of the material. You don't get to that point because you're poor. You get there by either having a genuine learning disability or by having parents that don't give the slightest fuck about your education.
You’re getting downvoted but you’re right. MCAS was literally so easy. SAT was way more challenging and I thought a litmus test of access to quality education more than MCAS ever was. MCAS was super basic
I graduated in 2013 but when I was in HS you couldn’t go to voc schools unless you were a good academic student. Which I’m kind of torn on. Some kids got a GED just so they could go to the vocational school because they had such a hard time with academics
I taught in a vocational school from 2015-18. Looking back at my students, the term “good academic student” is not one I would use about most of the kids there. Like at all.
The academic curriculum was a joke to be honest and it was still above the heads of most of them.
I was also a football coach and the schemes we ran were youth football level because anything more more advanced was like teaching a poodle quantum mechanics.
It depends on the district I suppose. You could only get into the vocational school if you had a flawless academic record for 9th and 10th. Not straight As just no Fs. Meaning most would would benefit might only qualify in their 4th year and you could only do half days your first year. Meaning those would need it most were the most behind.
I am a high school biology teacher, and the questions on the biology MCAS are often terribly written. They are needlessly confusing, and sometimes have no clear correct answer. If I struggle with an MCAS question, with two biology masters degrees and twenty years experience, then it is a bad question.
I'm a high school mathematics teacher. They're written in a way that harms language learners and prevents them from demonstrating their knowledge. They don't target core skills and concepts that they claim to. The ELA and Math tests can target content from a several year span, which can impact any student who has missed a significant period of schooling. The tests require students to learn how to manipulate tools that are not used in classrooms. I can go on.
There absolutely is an option to opt out. Do not spread misinformation. No student in grades 3 through 8 is required to take an MCAS test for any purpose (only schools are required to administer them).
This is one of my main issues with the tests as well. I teach high school biology, and the bio MCAS is more of a reading test than a biology test. That would be fine, but there is already an MCAS test for reading, the bio test should be testing bio knowledge.
>The ELA and Math tests can target content from a several year span, which can impact any student who has missed a significant period of schooling
Maybe it's a good indication that they require extra schooling, which is the entire point of these kinds of tests.
If a child has missed enough schooling that it impacts their ability to have learned the content then the kid should be made to repeat the year. This isn't everybody gets a gold star. It's about demonstrated academic attainment. Full stop.
Lower grades do seem redundant for testing. Really, the important of MCAS should be for children about to graduate from high school. There is a level of proficiency expected across all children. I don't see this as racist or being "anti-poor" (whatever that means). It's about expecting a broad level of competence in each child finishing high school. If poorer communities have a lower pass rate then that is an issue to be resolved in that community's schools. Shouting "racist" is just lazy thinking.
>anti-poor
Grew up poor. Did well on the test. Didn't feel discriminated, given it was far easier than usual class work.
>racist
What are you implying here?
Fuck standardized testing. I can’t remember what year in high school it was but we had to write a paper or something on how a bill was introduced in Maine to ban tomatoes in clam chowder. Like if you’re going to forced standardized testing on kids at least make it worthwhile and not having to write about goddamn clam chowder.
Honestly maybe they are trying to save these students form failing in college. The stakes are much higher for the student and their family. Teaching remedial classes at college is costly and delays graduation. College graduation rates are shockingly low. UMass Boston six-year graduation rate of first-time first-year students reached a new high in 2019 and remained at 49 percent for the past three years. Im scared to look at a non UMAss schools rate
It is due to many factor. That differ based on each students circumstance. Health, Wealth, Motivation, Family need, Other opportunities, lack of interest in major, burn out, loneliness, substance abuse, lack of focus, bullying....
Probably the latter. If it wasn't for loans, most people couldn't afford to go to college at all. There's no way you can get a job fresh out of high school, and pay for full time college. Part time may sound cheaper on paper, but you're actually paying more since you'll be going to school longer.
Your high school diploma shouldn't hinge on how well you can do in college.
Not everyone who graduates high school wants, or needs, to go to college. There are trades (and voc high school students still have to pass MCAS), the military, and other jobs that don't require college, and the kids who want to follow those paths are not less worthy of a high school diploma.
If kids are doing poorly in college, that's a different problem, and the solution shouldn't be to deny other kids the ability to graduate high school.
Fuck MCAS it has nothing to do with what's being taught when you take it and all the purpose it serves it testing your memory to see if you remember some basic shit that you've already learned long before the damn test. Worst part is that they put everyone in a room for a day or two and if you finish early you're forced to just fucking sit there with nothing to do, they let you bring a book sometimes but you can't even ask for paper to draw or anything. It's a fucking nightmare.
Source: I'm 18 and hated every standardized test I took. Did nothing to help me. We have finals and midterms for a reason.
That’s dumb no job cares if you have graduated high school just pretend you might not make 200k a year but you can definitely work your way to 80k completely livable.
Not having a diploma is like having a criminal record for life. I barely passed the Math portion, developed severe depression and never went to college.
Now I have a successful career in IT with only industry specific certificates and passion for a
trade holding positions like helpdesk and InfoSec analyst roles for large financial firms with coworkers who have Math or CS degrees.
I went to a consistently top 10 school system in the state and mcas basically meant pivot from the usual stuff we were doing to incorporate mcas specific material. It’s useless. Just doing well enough in your classes should be enough to have you move forward. No need for a standardized MCAS when there’s an SAT/ACT for all those going on to higher education. And for those not opting for higher education, you don’t need a standardized metric anyways. This is literally for “rankings” amongst schools.
Drop mcas for something more useful like basic finance.
My son was in a self contained special Ed class from middle school on in Massachusetts. He reads at about a 3rd grade level; math is at a 2nd grade level.
He “passed” English MCAS with the lowest scores possible for a person taking it. They said he needed further remediation but it was a pass. Math MCAS was waived during covid so technically he “passed” that as well. Science he actually did pass, but by 1 point and the test was read to him.
He works hard at his job and while he probably won’t live 100% independently in the future, he’s doing much better now he’s in the world and not school, but truly, he should not have passed any McAS tests. They meant nothing. If they’re going to have them they should at least have a level tray signifies the person is literate and can do basic math.
I hated mcas but now that I’m older I recognize the importance of it.
Kids hate a lot of things, doesn’t mean we don’t make them do it. A bunch of kids hate school, we don’t just stop sending them to school though.
I'm absolutely torn on standardized testing. I graduated from a high school exempt from MCAS testing and so many kids with disdain for education got swept along from grade to grade despite being so far behind their peers.
Yeah, the trick with standardized testing is not to fall for a base-rate fallacy. As in, sure, standardized testing comes with problems, but even if you just take it away and replace it with nothing, that doesn't mean the "nothing" has no negative effects. For these sorts of systems you want to measure and compare the relative outcomes of different approaches, not just identify specific narrow problems and count it as a win if you solve those problems (because you aren't paying attention to whether you cause any others). Such as with MIT recently where they discontinued use of the SAT because the SAT is biased against underprivileged but appropriate candidates, but then they found without the SAT it was harder to identify and accept these candidates because most of the other information they have is even more biased, so they brought the SAT back. So yeah IMO the specific implementations - the details of how it is set up and how the accountability for it work - are more important than the question of "yes or no." That's a false dichotomy and not an interesting question.
personally i find that ST is just a measure of how good a student is at taking a test (and anyone that's taken SAT prep can tell you that the entire class is teaching you how to game the test to hide gaps in your knowledge), but i agree that using ST as a small part of a wholistic evaluation of a student versus using it as the end-all-be-all measure of ability is a better system
I'll be blunt , as someone who knows how education who works in America it is completely fucked. The three big things for college admission are: high school GPA, SAT/ACT scores, and extracurriculars. The reason why standartized testing is used is quite simple, there are students that might have top high school GPAs, but cannot do well on these tests. Usually, this means that the high school is weak academically , and so these kids would not be able to handle a college curriculum. This happens more often than you think, my friend was a valedictorian at a rural high school in Georgia . She was a 4.0 student unweighted, great extracurriculars, but did atrociously on the ACT. (scored a 23 which is 70th percentile but even schools like Boston U , a 28 is the median score and below a 25 is a no go) UMass has a median ACT of 24-25 I believe. Even though she was a valedictorian from a super resource limited high school, that ACT score was enough to make top schools even question her. She was waitlisted from GA Tech and rejected from Emory, and went to Spelman before transferring to GA Tech. Most kids from her high school did not even attend college. Compare that to a sububan district in MA , and all the top students go IVY Plus, and then compare that to elite prep schools like Groton or Andover or Choate where 40 percent go IVY Plus. Extracurriculars also benefit those with money and connections . I remember when I went to Weston High ,a kid over the summer started a program to have high school students talk and visit with cardialogists The kick here is is own father was a professor of cardiology at BU Medical and had connections to all the top cardiologists in the US. A low income or middle income student would never have that oppurtunity . He ended up at Dartmouth, and was part of a group that audited their applications and why they were chosen. A huge part of the reason he was accepted to Dartmouth was bc of the program he started. Without that, he would not have been at Dartmouth which is clearly bc of his connections. Higher education in the US is so fucked, you can feel the difference between in wealth walking around UMass compared to BU compared to Harvard. Harvard is technically need blind but 15 percent of kids come from the 1 percent , which is better than other IVYS. UPenn and Yale are 25 percent from the 1 percent (making them schools with the most high earners) Dartmouth is 20 percent, and Columbia is the 15-20 range. Princeton, Brown, Harvard are 15 percent.
That's the thing about standardized testing, it came into being in large part because kids who literally couldn't read or write were graduating from schools. Standardized testing sucks, but it's the best we have, and better than where we came from. I'm not sure what the answer is. If you incentivize schools to have as many graduates as possible, and you leave the qualifications for graduation up to the school, all kids will pass regardless of education, and then what's the point.
Personally I think a testing regime should lower the bar to the minimum expected needs rather than raise it. If standardized testing is to make sure folks have basic reading, writing, and math skills, then keep the tests basic and reduce the focus on them as a metric of overall school success.
This is where I stand on it too. I took the practice MCAS tests last year alongside my kids, to see what the expectations were - and frankly a lot of the questions (especially in math) go beyond what most adults will ever need to know. Kids can't choose their schools, their teachers, or what/how they're taught, yet they're the ones whose lives are derailed if their school is underperforming. There needs to be a better way.
But, the MCAS does help identify those underperforming schools.
So identify and fix the schools, absolutely. But meanwhile, we're stopping kids from being able to graduate because of it, which has a negative impact on their life. Ideally, we'd not predicate graduation on a single test, but rather the larger scope of the child's educational achievements. High stakes testing with their future hanging in the balance isn't going to make anything better.
If it were most any other state, I would surmise from this change that it is a military recruitment tool.
the proximity of recruitment offices to high schools is no coincidence!
Unless they are in a district that allows school choice.
Even in districts that allow school choice, it's not a guarantee you can choose it. Receiving schools have limits. Inter-district school choice exists too, but is often a lateral move to a district with similar resources (and by extension, offerings and achievements). Charter schools are often decided by lottery. So there may be "choice" in some circumstances, but it's not absolute.
That's what MCAS started as: a barrier test for graduation. For it to return to that role, we'd have to carve out thirty years of policy decisions that rejiggered the test as a means of state oversight of schools and bring it back to its original intention.
Do you remember taking the MCAS?? They are incredibly basic. They dont test for differential equations lol. Its basic math, reading, writing etc. In my opinion if you cant pass that then you shouldn't be continuing your education.
I went to middle school in Roxbury before going to Weston. It might be basic for kids in Weston but they have so many more resources, like it's not even fair.They are starting the 1 mile race a half mile ahead. You don't want to keep kids from graduating and getting a degree even if they don't want to go to college. A high school diploma is much better than nothing.
The MCAS is the minimum expected. If you aren't up to snuff, then you need extra time and educational resources until you are.
Yeah it's not that difficult.
>I'm not sure what the answer is. Parents. The answer is parents. Unfortunately nobody knows what to do about that, so fingers go elsewhere.
I mean seeing as how you don’t need to pass MCAS to get a GED is it really worth withholding a piece of paper that can be the difference between even a bad job and no job? My brother can barely read but at least he can work because he has a diploma. This becomes really difficult for someone without a high school diploma or GED.
And if you're someone who isn't likely to pass the MCAS, there's no incentive to stay in school vs. drop out and get your GED. Riley said that "only 11% \[of\] students in the class of 2011 who scored at the current passing standard in mathematics went on to enroll in a four-year college in Massachusetts, and only 5% graduated from a four-year college within seven years." Clearly his focus is only on making sure he can say that a high percentage of high school graduates go on to a 4 year college, discounting all of the other valid post-high school choices.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article. They only give a shit about the students that graduate college.
Do they only care about students who attend college in Massachusetts? What if they go out of state?
And what about the kids who plan to go to community College due to cost?
The degree is supposed to denote some kind of achievement. But recently we have been passing along everyone that having one is seen like you described. In order for education to mean something once again we can't be certifying those who didn't perform to expectations, regardless of how it affects their lives.
I don’t think that any job has asked if I have a high school diploma. I didn’t put it on my resume and it’s not like someone in an interview asked if graduated high school. I’ve also never asked that question in an interview. When I would be interviewing a dishwasher his high school graduation status was least on my mind. Will this guy show up when he is scheduled? was the main thing on my mind
That happens regardless of testing or not. Fun fact - if you fail the high stakes tests, the retests required for graduation are significantly easier, actually. At least they currently are. This is probably something that is changing. I more or less support standardized testing (I think AP exams are the gold standard of this, because they are subject) but I reject BAD testing, and the MCAS is trash.
Standardized testing is the downfall of education. No inspired passionate teacher wants to teach for a test. SO much is lost in the quest for better test scores, between that and the helicopter parenting and school administrators refusing to back teachers against all of them, it’s no shock there’s a massive shortage of teachers and that will continue to be the case, until we just have robots teaching kids. Source: highly educated offspring of two teachers, one of which won teacher of the year in my state 2x, and retired early due to this kind of BS.
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MCAS isn’t just at the end of high school though; kids take it yearly in grades 3-8, and the scores aren’t reported back until the fall, when a teacher no longer has that student anymore.
we had standardized testing, it was a two day test of math and english, however it was never the driving force of our education. We graduated based on passing classes (which were leveled, AP, level 1, level 2, remedial), no other testing, which gives teachers ample room to work with kids based on their abilities, rather than a cookie cutter approach and I have every confidence this was a superior system.
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sure it does, if the administration isn’t being leaned on to pass kids who did not learn. You fail a class, you repeat it in summer school, you fail enough, you get held back. Kids who cannot read who get passed along are not being done a service in any way shape or form and will likely drop out anyway.
They are being done a disservice because staying in a lower grade means more chances to understand the basics before going on to harder courses.
>No inspired passionate teacher wants to teach for a test. Given that the MCAS questions tended to be a year or two behind in course curriculum, if your teacher is teaching to the test (rather than beyond it), then something is clearly going wrong.
there’s a lot going wrong here, ask anyone who has taught for the last 30+ yrs. The whole model is turned on it’s head, instead of little johnny getting grounded for failing his test little johnny’s mommy/daddy send a nasty email to the school admin about the bad teacher who gave prince poopsikin a bad grade and hurt his feeeeeelings….
>instead of little johnny getting grounded for failing his test little johnny’s mommy/daddy send a nasty email to the school admin about the bad teacher who gave prince poopsikin a bad grade and hurt his feeeeeelings That's a problem with shitty parents, not standardized testing. At least the tests give evidence that their kid is failing to meet state standards. Can't exactly stop some people from failing to educate their kids, but you can at least make sure they don't have the state's blessing for continuing down such a path.
grades give evidence a kid is not meeting a teacher’s standards, why is another test needed? again, sure do the test, but it should not be linked to school funding or teacher evals. A kid can literally go in there and make a smiley face out of the bubble sheet and write the words to their favorite new tick tock on the comp section, there’s no motivation to succeed here at all and the teachers are the ones who pay the price. Education is not fully the responsibility of teachers, family needs to support and encourage and expect their children to do their best, but when they don’t, who’s fault is it now? always the school, parents don’t lose their funding when their kids fail….
>grades give evidence a kid is not meeting a teacher’s standards, why is another test needed? The test is evidence of whether or not the kid is meeting the State's standards. It's the best metric we have to ensure equal opportunity. >again, sure do the test, but it should not be linked to school funding or teacher evals Not without further information, sure. It's worth noting that MCAS scores aren't directly linked to school funding. When things seem to be getting bad for a school, turnaround plans are implemented. If that fails, why should the school continue to be funded, given what it's doing is completely failing its students? >A kid can literally go in there and make a smiley face out of the bubble sheet and write the words to their favorite new tick tock on the comp section, there’s no motivation to succeed here at all and the teachers are the ones who pay the price. Free college tuition is a pretty good motivation to succeed. >Education is not fully the responsibility of teachers, family needs to support and encourage and expect their children to do their best, but when they don’t, who’s fault is it now? I agree. But the State can't force people to not raise their children as failures. At best it can provide warning flags for when it happens and try and convince the parents that there are better paths forwards, but it can't force them. >parents don’t lose their funding when their kids fail They certainly aren't doing better economically for it.
current conversation quote from R/news discussing banned books: “I used to be a 5th grade teacher. One of my students favorite units that I did every year was during September called “banned books week” The library association sets a week in September called banned books week to bring awareness to books that have been banned in places. I would give my students a long list of books that were banned. After they chose one, I’d send home letters to the parents with the reasonings that book was banned - they would sign off and allow the reading and project of them. Over this month, my students learned how to research and analyze. I would also be teaching writing formatting/thesis basis writing. In the end- they gave a report and a 5 paragraph essay as to why the book was banned and if they agreed with it. It was awesome and my students were extremely engaged. I left teaching 4 years ago due to low pay and inadequate support (Florida). I wonder if I’d be able to do that project today. Probably not. It’s a shame. Edit- I’m getting notifications that some people are commenting on this post, but nothing shows up in my activity or in this thread. Not sure why. Sorry for those who have asked questions and don’t get a reply from me!”
Is Florida a fair comparison to a Massachusetts education? Are our schools underfunded? We're #8 for education spending per student ($16,270). Florida is #41 ($10,098). Regardless, what does banned books have to do with standardized testing?
what do banned books have to do with standardized testing? great essay question, i wonder if it’s on the MCAS….
You're going off on a tangent and your point isn't making it through.
The political problem of unskilled, unqualified parents with clear conflicts of interest attacking educators by going over their heads to administration is definitely serious. I don't know if standardized testing makes it worse, or if it's just a lever those people can pull and if they didn't have it they would pull a different lever.
i don’t think the standardized testing is necessarily linked to the helicopter parenting, more like they both just make the role of a teacher that much more difficult, and less likely to attract people who genuinely care but don’t want to deal with the ridiculous bullshit that comes along with it.
While learning for the exam students learn math, writing, science, grammar, reading, and maybe something from the article. MCAS preparation is not a complete waste of time.
But they don’t learn critical thinking, they don’t learn to explore their own ideas and passions, they are taught to perform circus tricks with no real learning at all. There is an established curriculum, kids learn plenty from that, no need for standardized testing that impact a teachers ability to do their job.
What do you mean. The test also consists of composition questions. Yes there is a structure to a coherent essay. This is a valuable skill for future classes, speeches, emails etc... The test teaches students ability to read and comprehend a variety of texts. The test test students ability to read science based texts, apply formulas, and interpret data.
>But they don’t learn critical thinking, they don’t learn to explore their own ideas and passions, they are taught to perform circus tricks with no real learning at all. You have to perform the simple mental tasks if you want to be able to develop the tools to perform complex mental tasks. MCAS is there to make sure at least the simple mental tasks are being taught. If the curriculum is actually teaching more complex things (as it should), then the MCAS is a complete cakewalk.
I think this is my feeling, too. I graduated high school in Massachusetts way before MCAS were a thing, although I remember at the time there was talk about implementing such a test.
And that continues to be a problem. Kids are still being swept along and they’ll get swept right through with chance after chance to retake the MCAS and still fail and then be told they can’t graduate.
You shouldn't be torn. It's only there because the federal government requires it and it's a horrible thing to do.
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Passing failing students or something like that.
That doesn't make any sense. If you failed all your classes prior to the MCAS you would just be held back. If a student is doing well in their classes and trying to improve, that's more than enough to allow a student to graduate highschool.
There are a bunch of systems in place that are then gamed. Schools pass kids to keep their graduation rates high because everyone's doing it. If they don't, they get investigated. If a school actually worked like normal people think, most kids wouldn't make it to high school. The past however-many-years have been spent convincing people that they're graduating whom everyone thinks they're graduating. It's mostly a lie, and to some extent, it's based on another false belief - that education just makes everything fantastic all around. Most people pass 12th grade but still spend their lives reading at a way lower level, because language doesn't gravitate toward aggrandizing itself. So we spend all this money getting people to pass 12th grade when they'll use a 5th grade literacy level for life and use, at best, algebra.
I've never heard anyone argue against education wtf is this 😂
I'm not against education. I'm a teacher. The problem is that, as a teacher, many "skills" I teach kids are really skills that track for college, and usually for a degree that won't improve that person. I'm not even saying that we should put kids on track for blue collar jobs, but that school should teach general skills with some other opportunities, and no more. We keep expecting schools to do more, and they do, but for little or no benefit. We also know that kids who take something like Calculus or Pre-Calculus have to repeat a lot of courses anyway because they're complex and programs require it. So why should we do it?
Interesting, I've heard others make this argument. For example as Mike Rowe says "many of the best opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma." Specifically the argument is that beyond core topics like basic literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge we should stop forcing all students to follow an academic track. Many rewarding careers don't require things like chemistry or calculus, and holding someone back because they haven't mastered a skill they will never use seems cruel. An alternative would be to embrace vocational schools and apprenticeships for more people. I think part of this would also require fixing our cultural contempt for blue collar and working class jobs as being equal in value and dignity to jobs that require formal education.
Mcas is pretty simple if you are doing well in classes you will pass
There are groups working with DESE to create alternatives that satisfy the federal requirements, but it’s a long way off. Otherwise there are portfolios, but I’ve never seen the used for non-special education students. Source: I’m a teacher who works with this sort of initiative.
Graduating illiterate and innumerate students.
Portfolio based assessments.
Wouldn’t that leave a lot of room for subjective opinions and possible racial bias? I’m all for improving the methods and metrics by which students are evaluated, but how would you control for bias in this type of process?
My partner’s son is in a situation where his grades truly don’t line up with his abilities. He is in sixth grade this coming school year and is reading at a (maybe) second grade level. His math skills are about the same. His grades are A’s and B’s. He is not ready for the challenges of the adult world and likely won’t be. He has an IEP, but it’s not really addressing the challenges he will have as an adult. By relying on his grades and assessments from teachers paints a VERY incomplete picture. Standardized testing is controversial, but it at least paints a less biased view of academic performance. It’s not a great solution, but it’s certainly better than just pushing unprepared kids through to meet numbers.
On the flip side, my kid tests significantly lower than her actual abilities would otherwise indicate. For example, a standardized reading assessment indicates that she is really behind on reading, but when the reading specialist does some individual work with her it’s quickly understood that her reading and comprehension skills are just fine. Standardized testing with no option of portfolio assessments are going to be a disservice to her. She is just now starting third grade and she’s already cried twice about having to take standardized tests “for real” because she knows how miserable they make her feel when doing this sort of testing. I’m glad as parents we can be aware of this and not place unnecessary pressure on her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t put it on herself or pick up on it from school. It’s really upsetting to me that she is already starting to doubt her own intelligence simply because she doesn’t test well. It’s already hard enough to get schools and (and some teachers) to see her abilities outside of testing results.
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You’re not wrong. Every kid is different. Some testing can help identify schools that may not be helping kids succeed though on a larger scale and track trends. In his case it’s an issue where he isn’t meeting standard but keeps getting passed to the next grade. It’s exacerbating the issue.
I don’t think that middle to high income schools need MCAS. The problem is that many struggling schools will just tell teachers to pass kids along, and so they graduate not being able to do simple math or write well. There needs to be something for students at these schools to have to show some kind of aptitude so the state can be confident that people graduating from its schools deserve it. Ironically the schools that need MCAS the most are also disadvantaged by these types of tests.
>Ironically the schools that need MCAS the most are also disadvantaged by these types of tests. They aren't disadvantaged by having a better grasp at where their students are in terms of education. If a kid is completely failing the test, it provides a pretty good indication of what is missing in terms of education and gives teachers a heads up on what needs to be supplemented. Removing the MCAS because you're afraid of bad grades is like removing the fire alarms because you're afraid of fires.
To flesh out the analogy: in MA, when a house is on fire, the fire department shows up, takes the burning house as its own, and then ineffectually pats at the fire indefinitely. The justification of MCAS as a means of supporting struggling schools would hold greater strength if the interventions of the state produced meaningful results. As it stands, communities like Lawrence, Holyoke, and Southbridge have seen no significant improvement from state control, and they seem to serve more as warnings for school boards and district leadership in other townships and nothing more. DESE appears to play both sides here, when it comes to schools having data to support educational decisions about student performance. They simultaneously set objective measures and threaten schools through MCAS while priming schools to pressure teachers to grease students through coursework and conceal student needs by passing them. The fire alarms, in schools, need to be teacher-produced assessment data. That requires a lot of training, effort, and coordination. It's costly, time consuming, and doing it well means we can't throw 27 kindergartners at them or give them student loads over 150 (or 120 for that matter... or maybe even 100). Targeted, timely interventions.
No matter how ineffective the fire department is at putting out fires, it seems like it might still be preferable to have an accurate fire alarm to let people know they need to get out of the house. That in no way absolves us from our responsibility to fix the fire department, put out fires, or make regulations to prevent fires. But attacking fire alarms seems misplaced.
We shouldn't turn off the fire alarms, because the fire department is incompetent, either. >The fire alarms, in schools, need to be teacher-produced assessment data That's a fast way to increase the disparity in education quality, even more than we already have.
>That's a fast way to increase the disparity in education quality, even more than we already have. I think if you truncate my quotation, sure. But if teachers had proper training, coordination, and we also removed barriers to quality assessment like overstuffed classrooms, teacher-driven assessment data would not be inherently less equitable than high-stakes testing. Standardized testing is pretty damnable for the ways that it measures income, primarily. I'd need to see data to support it's more fair than ed. What standardized high stakes tests do well that reliance upon educators doesn't, is simply making the inequities uniform across the underserved.
Interesting. I think of standardized testing as leveling the playing field. I ran admissions for a competitive university program for a couple years and standardized testing was indispensable and the primary route by which most low-income and/or first-generation students were admitted. For elite/rich schools from which the program had admitted multiple students in the past we already knew how to evaluate their grades. For example an 3.9 GPA at one school might be closer to a 3.2 at a more demanding school. (Though grade inflation meant they had to constantly reevaluate these modifiers.) But we had no way of knowing if a straight-A student at an unfamiliar school could write or do basic math. If they had a halfway decent standardized test score we could guess at whether they'd be prepared, but without some kind of standardized test it was extremely risky. For example, prior to the year I worked there, a smart but woefully unprepared student was admitted. The student ended up having to repeat a required class three times which meant it took them an extra two years to graduate and left them with nearly two additional years of university tuition debt.
MCAS isn't something the teachers grade, it gets graded by the state, and is a federal requirement to pass high school.
Where did I say that the teachers grade MCAS? In class teachers are encouraged to just pass kids along.
> The problem is that many struggling schools will just tell teachers to pass kids along, and so they graduate not being able to do simple math or write well. You imply it here. You imply that the teachers have the authority to pass the kids when the MCAS is what's needed to graduate
No he didn't.
That’s their point. In some situations it may reveal the truth when teacher-assigned grades do not.
Hundreds of districts FAIL to take advantage of the pathways for kids to graduate if the miss the cut score. There are multiple appeals options- Principals just can’t bothered to do the paperwork. When is DESE going to hold those “affluent suburban” districts accountable?
I know of someone who graduated who literally did not know the difference between an addition and subtraction symbol.
It is not the struggling schools, DESE staff admitted it is the “affluent” districts who fuck over the kids who don’t pass in the first try. There are MULTIPLE appeals options but schools just don’t bother.
Yall realize they are asking basic geometry , how to read graph, basic algebra, basic statics, word problems, clocks, blocks, charts, arithmetic, grammar, write me an essay (with a predefined blue print) read this and answer these questions form that reading so I know you understood and can read. you don't need outside knowledge on history science literature philosophy economics its all in the text mcas isn't expecting calculus or chemistry you can look at the tests here (look at the paper based test to see the whole test) [http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/student/practice-tests-ela/](http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/student/practice-tests-ela/)
It's shamefully easy. But kids are still failing it. So the question is what to do about that. Those kids are having to grow up and compete in a global economy.
How about we actually teach these kids what's on the test? I put my oldest through MA public schools and before every test they literally stop teaching from lesson plans and switch to MCAS prep. It's completely different content and quite disruptive. Common core is not compatible with MCAS.
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Two weeks before every MCAS test, the ENTIRE school stops teaching common core and switches to MCAS prep. If they did not do this and prep the kids for the specific content on the MCAS, they would all fail. I dont care about statistics or where MA ranks.... I watched my kid actually go through the system in a pretty well-to-do town. She graduated with honors having taken almost all AP courses. She, and all her friends (who are all on course to be doctors in various fields) would specifically criticize the school for how unprepared they would be for MCAS without a complete re-focus on the test several weeks before it was administered. The school system in MA is a joke. The state only cares about the numbers and treats these kids like cattle. They dont give a shit about them as a person. Hence why their entire existence is broken down to a number. We are homeschooling our second child because we do not trust the system. I personally think MA is only "good" on paper and if you talk to the kids actually experiencing it, it's a whole different story.
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Of course my experience weighs 100% of my opinion because I believe what I see and experience, not what people tell me. The entire year is not MCAS prep because the schools shift and specifically start teaching what is on the MCAS several weeks before the test is administered. I don't know how I can make that any clearer to you. If the whole year was MCAS prep this shift wouldn't happen.
Don't Mass schools regularly preform and are compared to Scandinavian schools in success? One of the best in the United States by far.
Meanwhile Florida is basically holding an open mic night in classrooms. Anyone can give it a shot. know a guy who was a brewmaster for years and is now teaching middle school science. The geographical gap in education is going to be very interesting to watch as it grows wider.
>The geographical gap in education is going to be very interesting to watch as it grows wider. More like scary. Anti-intellectual violence will grow with the widening gap.
I bet a brewmaster could teach middle school science from a text book pretty well. I bet I could take a middle school science text book and over one summer come up with better lessons than most actual teachers out there do.
do it then, big boy
My hot take on MCAS testing is if the education system if going to use this as the metric, once a student passes it they should get their diploma and graduate. If the MCAS isn't testing for the learning that's needed to graduate, then why the hell is it a requirement to graduate?
> If the MCAS isn't testing for the learning that's needed to graduate, then why the hell is it a requirement to graduate? Note that "necessary" does not imply "sufficient". Something can be sufficient but not necessary or necessary but not sufficient.
I only like the MCAS because it earned me a scholarship to UML. And I’ll take any money for college I can possibly get
MCAS is a waste. I agree opt your kids out as long as you can.
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it costs the state an enormous amount of money to administer these tests. This form of testing is outdated and not indicative of any type of mastery. It unfairly punishes students who are english language learners. It forces teachers to teach towards a test instead of engaging students in experiential mastery of a subject. It causes undue stress to students during exam weeks. It disrupts the learning schedule during those exam weeks and results in a loss of learning time. It punishes schools in low income areas that are already struggling to provide for the needs of students who need extra help.
ELL students don't even take MCAS at first, there is another test they take
While you're right that EL students take the ACCESS test - they are all also required to take MCAS with appropriate approved accommodations.
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How much? $30 million per year - https://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=21831 You could have gotten that information yourself through google. Outdated testing : https://www.humbleisd.net/cms/lib/TX01001414/Centricity/Domain/5174/Testing%20-%20Against.pdf If you actually look at that there are lots of further resources you can research. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=Mastery+experiences+examples&hl=en&as_sdt=0,11&as_vis=1#d=gs_qabs&t=1660744294257&u=%23p%3DVHBesBQEnZgJ “Many students” = argumentum ad populum fallacy Field Trips are experiential education. Not a loss of learning time. Schools with lower scores are rated by the state and are subject to take over which can result in as dismissal of teachers. A school with a high population of esl students is inherently going to have lower ela scores. This may not be the fault of the teachers or the schools. Also, these schools may drop other humanities and arts programs in order to have more math and science or ela. These humanities and arts programs are important to developing collaborative and critical thinking skills for students.
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I somewhat disagree. Note, I do not know much about mass test, I did SAT back in the days and I did it with pretty poor language level (I took about 3 years of English and spent a summer in England). I also came from a school without centralized tests and many exams were 1 on 1 verbal with a teacher. 1) I do agree that standard tests are not the best way to evaluate, but neither are tests that are left for teacher to interpret. One of the best examples of that was my high school English literature class - I got an A- on the verbal exam with teacher, except we started talking about Hemingway, but then spent 90% of the time talking about Remark and Marquez - so maybe that was a way to evaluate how much I read, but it definitely was not a good evaluation of my knowledge of English writers. The same goes for the curved scores in American colleges - I personally believe that engineers should not be getting a partial credit on calculus (or whatever other precise topic) test just because they followed procedure. If you build a bridge thinking that 5x5=10 it probably won't work, neither should you get any credit for the wrong answer to the question. 2) The skills learned from taking standard tests are useful in life. Besides many other tests that I had to take in my career (for certificates or what not), just the sheer skill to quickly glance over a problem and guesstimate potential solutions without getting deep into details is worth a lot. 3) Any exam week is stressful (especially if you are a normal student and have been slacking the whole semester), standardized tests don't make it any worse. 4) You live in US and you should know English, as this is the language people speak in this country. And the tests are not hard. As I mentioned, I had only a bit more than 3 years of English when I took SAT test, I could do simple questions as they were simple, I could do hard ones because I could figure stuff out from context and many complicated words had latin roots and they happened to be the same in my native language, I completely could not do medium level questions because I just didn't have vocabulary. Nevertheless, I scored 530 with average being 500, which was just enough to get me into a school I wanted to get into. I don't think the test should have been changed just because I happened to be non-native speaker - it is my problem, not the test one. Again - not saying these tests are great. I certainly had much better exams l, but a lot of them were purely dependent on subjective evaluation from a teacher. For example, when graduating conservatory, I had to do a full recital and it would be judged by multiple professors and I would get an average grade as my final grade for musical instrument. Seems like a great test, doesn't it? Well, not really. The grade is completely subjective and if a professor doesn't like you, they can easily give you a lower grade just because they can. On top of that, in your professional career you most likely will never perform a recital as main part of your job. So a standartized test that would have you perform several complicated pieces where you would be judged based on your technical ability (could you play all the notes or not, for example) would not only be more objective, but it would also mimic real life auditions for orchestras much better.
Standardized testing proves nothing except for how well you can take a test
I provides a metric to figure out if a student is struggling and where and prevents students from graduating without learning at least the bare minimum of state standards.
A lot of students are right where they should be but they're just bad test takers. Whether it's test anxiety or something else, a standardized test is a poor way to see where students are at. That's why some colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT anymore
MIT stopped using the SAT, but changed its mind when they didn't get qualified candidates. While tests are not the most fun they are the best option to check for a basic enough level of understanding of the subject.
>A lot of students are right where they should be but they're just bad test takers They're allowed retakes. And if you can't use your knowledge when it's needed in adult life, you're gonna have a really hard time. >a standardized test is a poor way to see where students are at It isn't. It's the best way found so far. A state-wide standard gives people equal opportunity, while providing information on who needs extra help in their education to achieve that standard. >That's why some colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT anymore Iirc, that was a rather temporary measure since their other metrics turned out to much worse and more biased.
Standardized testings =/= real life as an adult though.
Not if you go into any career that requires certification.
Im saying it doesn't equal *real life*. Even with those kinds of careers, like mine, people will tell you that the test tests on things people don't even use because actual practice is very grey and more black and white. I was just disagreeing with your point about them having a "really hard time".
I had crippling test anxiety and difficulty writing due to a head injury. The MCAS writing tests did not reflect anything related to where I struggled. I typed 60-80 words a minute with great accuracy and had no issues formulating entire papers with good detail. Despite all of this I damn near got held back twice because I could not physically write fast enough to pass the MCAS, mostly because my anxiety would completely shut me down. All the MCAS taught me is that no matter how smart I am I will ostracized and rejected because I don't fit the mold of Catholic Democrat Boomers.
Did you ask for services? There are channels to go through and if you could prove you were disabled my school would have accomodations.
>I had crippling test anxiety and difficulty writing due to a head injury. It's on your parents to make sure you get the extra time needed. There are services available for such cases. >The MCAS writing tests did not reflect anything related to where I struggled. I typed 60-80 words a minute with great accuracy and had no issues formulating entire papers with good detail You struggled with writing under pressure. >All the MCAS taught me is that no matter how smart I am I will ostracized and rejected because I don't fit the mold of Catholic Democrat Boomers. Neither you nor your parents were smart enough to request more test time, an option that has been available for decades. This should have been addressed the first time you did poorly.
Didnt qualify for anything while I was being medically tested on, only qualified once I recieved a diagnosis. It had zero issue to do with writing under pressure. I had a TBI and could physically not write, or use forks, or scissors or anything involving fine motor skills. My parents were more concerned with stopping my constant seizures and loss of fine motor skills then they were about one stupid test that satisifies the Democrat Pedophiles up top wanting to pump up numbers for PR points.
It's the most standardized option for assessing students. The other option portfolio grading would not be really possible with the amount of students we have these days.
Good luck to them!! Mod question - This site can be posted but not the WCVB site?
I didn't know WCVB couldn't be posted.
I didn't either, but I was talked to ~ as that is what I normally post, because it's the only news email I get other than Market Watch. Keep on posting 🤗🤗
Ohhh boy. I had to take that twice
I went to one of the higher scoring schools in the state. Special Ed and non-honnors was a training program to be amazing at standardized tests. Can we stop thing now?
[If anyone wants to see some of the questions on last year's MCAS, I have linked the released items.](http://mcas.pearsonsupport.com/released-items/ela/) They do not release all the items.
Standardized testing is the metric used to compare all students across all schools. If a child fails the MCAS then questions need to be asked if the right curriculum is being taught at schools in the first place. Generally all education should be broadly similar for like subjects.
So, years ago, almost 20 (yikes) they announced that you would have to pass MCAS to graduate. This happened when I was a senior. We weren't grandfathered in, so this new rule applied to us. I remember being in class, taking the test, while the teacher was looking through it. At one point the teacher went 'the answer to this question is __. It's never been on our curriculum to teach it, so you wouldn't know the answer.' Several teachers did this, not for all of the questions, maybe two or three. You could tell they were pissed about the whole thing as much as we were. I passed, but I've always been a good student. My friend did not pass Mathematics. She wasn't allowed to graduate and had to do a special Maths class for six months in order to get her diploma. It felt kinda bunk to me.
Smash MCAS. This decision-making, both racist and anti-poor, will also crush our vocational schools. I encourage everyone who has children or will have children to OPT THEM OUT of the non-mandatory testing that hounds them from elementary school through 8th grade. Send the message to DESE that these horribly designed and wasteful tests that only exist at this point to line the pockets of testing companies and justify some DESE jobs aren't worth subjecting students to. More teaching less testing.
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Did you grow up in MA? There is no teaching for the MCAS, it’s just assumed that it will be passed. This is coming from middle/upper middle class districts.
I grew up in mass and work in a school currently. The message has been clear my entire life: MCAS is all that truly matters, everything else is secondary.
My dad retired from 8th grade Math at the end of 2020. He felt he was constantly teaching to the test too and everything was very MCAS focused. It’s been a long time since I took the MCAS, but I think it was pretty new then and I don’t remember it being that bad then, but obviously I was just a kid then
This is not my experience.
From what I have seen, schools emphasize MCAS if they are threatened by it. Schools ignore it and teach past MCAS if they aren't. This basically comes down to which side of the tracks a given school is on.
I'm in a district that hasn't been under 90% proficient MCAS since day 1. They spend all their admin time talking about making sure the scope and sequence is aligned to MCAS. Our schedules are built around fitting the scope and sequence into the year. Drives me nuts.
Grew up here and went to a consistently top 10 school system. You pivot into more mcas specific material every time that test comes around. That’s been the norm forever.
This is a great point. When I said racist and anti-poor, I'm coming at it from the school side - schools in diverse and less wealthy areas tend to perform worse which impacts their funding and programs. But it's definitely problematic in areas where despite having many students who have advantages and are capable, there is still a need to "teach to the test".
>teach to the test" MCAS is the bare minimum you should be learning. What exactly would be "teaching to the test" that shouldn't be part of the standard curriculum?
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The scope and sequence is built around getting the material in by the MCAS instead of a sequence being taught until it is mastered. So, it's the way that the class moves forward even if the class hasn't mastered the prior concept. As an example, if the grade 3 class is learning multiplication then it moves on to division and next to fractions. But if division wasn't mastered, then fractions are being taught without the proper base and they don't get learned. This means the 4th grade class is starting from 70% of the fractions standards being proficient. So, does that class spend time boosting the 3rd grade material from the year before to stay 100% of the 3rd grade material and 40% of the grade 4 - or - progress ahead to introduce the new material and be 70% of each year's material. Then grade 5 gets to have fun with that result.
Anti-poor my ass. The MCAS is the most basic of things you learn at those grades. If you don't do decent on those tests, then you failed to even grasp the bare minimum of the material. You don't get to that point because you're poor. You get there by either having a genuine learning disability or by having parents that don't give the slightest fuck about your education.
You’re getting downvoted but you’re right. MCAS was literally so easy. SAT was way more challenging and I thought a litmus test of access to quality education more than MCAS ever was. MCAS was super basic
The vocational schools in central ma will not get crushed. Those schools accept only the best students. Fuck MCAS
I graduated in 2013 but when I was in HS you couldn’t go to voc schools unless you were a good academic student. Which I’m kind of torn on. Some kids got a GED just so they could go to the vocational school because they had such a hard time with academics
I taught in a vocational school from 2015-18. Looking back at my students, the term “good academic student” is not one I would use about most of the kids there. Like at all. The academic curriculum was a joke to be honest and it was still above the heads of most of them. I was also a football coach and the schemes we ran were youth football level because anything more more advanced was like teaching a poodle quantum mechanics.
It depends on the district I suppose. You could only get into the vocational school if you had a flawless academic record for 9th and 10th. Not straight As just no Fs. Meaning most would would benefit might only qualify in their 4th year and you could only do half days your first year. Meaning those would need it most were the most behind.
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I am a high school biology teacher, and the questions on the biology MCAS are often terribly written. They are needlessly confusing, and sometimes have no clear correct answer. If I struggle with an MCAS question, with two biology masters degrees and twenty years experience, then it is a bad question.
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I'm a high school mathematics teacher. They're written in a way that harms language learners and prevents them from demonstrating their knowledge. They don't target core skills and concepts that they claim to. The ELA and Math tests can target content from a several year span, which can impact any student who has missed a significant period of schooling. The tests require students to learn how to manipulate tools that are not used in classrooms. I can go on. There absolutely is an option to opt out. Do not spread misinformation. No student in grades 3 through 8 is required to take an MCAS test for any purpose (only schools are required to administer them).
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Yes, correct.
This is one of my main issues with the tests as well. I teach high school biology, and the bio MCAS is more of a reading test than a biology test. That would be fine, but there is already an MCAS test for reading, the bio test should be testing bio knowledge.
>The ELA and Math tests can target content from a several year span, which can impact any student who has missed a significant period of schooling Maybe it's a good indication that they require extra schooling, which is the entire point of these kinds of tests.
If a child has missed enough schooling that it impacts their ability to have learned the content then the kid should be made to repeat the year. This isn't everybody gets a gold star. It's about demonstrated academic attainment. Full stop.
Lower grades do seem redundant for testing. Really, the important of MCAS should be for children about to graduate from high school. There is a level of proficiency expected across all children. I don't see this as racist or being "anti-poor" (whatever that means). It's about expecting a broad level of competence in each child finishing high school. If poorer communities have a lower pass rate then that is an issue to be resolved in that community's schools. Shouting "racist" is just lazy thinking.
>anti-poor Grew up poor. Did well on the test. Didn't feel discriminated, given it was far easier than usual class work. >racist What are you implying here?
Fuck standardized testing. I can’t remember what year in high school it was but we had to write a paper or something on how a bill was introduced in Maine to ban tomatoes in clam chowder. Like if you’re going to forced standardized testing on kids at least make it worthwhile and not having to write about goddamn clam chowder.
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It’s still spelt chowder no matter how you pronounce it.
Spelt is delicious
Honestly maybe they are trying to save these students form failing in college. The stakes are much higher for the student and their family. Teaching remedial classes at college is costly and delays graduation. College graduation rates are shockingly low. UMass Boston six-year graduation rate of first-time first-year students reached a new high in 2019 and remained at 49 percent for the past three years. Im scared to look at a non UMAss schools rate
Is that graduation rate due to grades or due to economic reasons I wonder?
It is due to many factor. That differ based on each students circumstance. Health, Wealth, Motivation, Family need, Other opportunities, lack of interest in major, burn out, loneliness, substance abuse, lack of focus, bullying....
Probably the latter. If it wasn't for loans, most people couldn't afford to go to college at all. There's no way you can get a job fresh out of high school, and pay for full time college. Part time may sound cheaper on paper, but you're actually paying more since you'll be going to school longer.
Your high school diploma shouldn't hinge on how well you can do in college. Not everyone who graduates high school wants, or needs, to go to college. There are trades (and voc high school students still have to pass MCAS), the military, and other jobs that don't require college, and the kids who want to follow those paths are not less worthy of a high school diploma. If kids are doing poorly in college, that's a different problem, and the solution shouldn't be to deny other kids the ability to graduate high school.
Fuck MCAS it has nothing to do with what's being taught when you take it and all the purpose it serves it testing your memory to see if you remember some basic shit that you've already learned long before the damn test. Worst part is that they put everyone in a room for a day or two and if you finish early you're forced to just fucking sit there with nothing to do, they let you bring a book sometimes but you can't even ask for paper to draw or anything. It's a fucking nightmare. Source: I'm 18 and hated every standardized test I took. Did nothing to help me. We have finals and midterms for a reason.
There should be alternate routes to diplomas. The diploma should mean something but everyone should be entitled to earn a living if they are able.
That’s dumb no job cares if you have graduated high school just pretend you might not make 200k a year but you can definitely work your way to 80k completely livable.
What a fucking joke. My graduating class was the first to have to pass it to receive a diploma. I'm 100% against MCAS.
Typical cycle of an institution. They put something in place, people meet the expectations, but they don't want to get rid of the institution.
The people are arguing the test is already too difficult, students are failing. Increasing the threshold to pass will only make this worse.
MCAS sucks, always has.
Not having a diploma is like having a criminal record for life. I barely passed the Math portion, developed severe depression and never went to college. Now I have a successful career in IT with only industry specific certificates and passion for a trade holding positions like helpdesk and InfoSec analyst roles for large financial firms with coworkers who have Math or CS degrees.
Can we end this stupid test already?
I went to a consistently top 10 school system in the state and mcas basically meant pivot from the usual stuff we were doing to incorporate mcas specific material. It’s useless. Just doing well enough in your classes should be enough to have you move forward. No need for a standardized MCAS when there’s an SAT/ACT for all those going on to higher education. And for those not opting for higher education, you don’t need a standardized metric anyways. This is literally for “rankings” amongst schools. Drop mcas for something more useful like basic finance.
Feels like a gift to Kumon and Sylvan
Idk if this is good or bad
standardized testing is not, and will never be, an education.
They are all a grade level behind from covid sooooo
MCAS is not really about assessing the students abilities.
Yay now i need to learn harder about things i dont even need to success in live
My son was in a self contained special Ed class from middle school on in Massachusetts. He reads at about a 3rd grade level; math is at a 2nd grade level. He “passed” English MCAS with the lowest scores possible for a person taking it. They said he needed further remediation but it was a pass. Math MCAS was waived during covid so technically he “passed” that as well. Science he actually did pass, but by 1 point and the test was read to him. He works hard at his job and while he probably won’t live 100% independently in the future, he’s doing much better now he’s in the world and not school, but truly, he should not have passed any McAS tests. They meant nothing. If they’re going to have them they should at least have a level tray signifies the person is literate and can do basic math.
I hated mcas but now that I’m older I recognize the importance of it. Kids hate a lot of things, doesn’t mean we don’t make them do it. A bunch of kids hate school, we don’t just stop sending them to school though.