Massachusetts Voters: Demand That the State Stop Punishing Kids Based on Test Scores
It's inhumane and illogical to make high school diplomas contingent on the MCAS. A 2024 ballot initiative will give you the chance to help end this cruel policy.
Do you love Massachusetts kids, schools, and communities? If so, I urge you to sign the petition for a 2024 ballot initiative allowing us to vote to remove our statewide test (the MCAS) as a graduation requirement. Here are some reasons why:
We’re one of only eight states that still use their standardized assessments as high school exit exams. Here, students can attend school each day, engage deeply with the curriculum, and earn exemplary grades; but if they fall short on a single measure–the MCAS–they will not graduate. This policy runs counter to the consensus of our nation's leading education policy experts, who recognize that we’re not helping young people by holding their hard-earned diplomas hostage to test scores.
There are many reasons why some kids don’t, or can’t, pass the MCAS: language barriers, exceptional social/emotional and learning needs, or simply a bad day. Poverty is associated with a variety of conditions (malnutrition, sleep deprivation, crowded or unstable housing, chronically overheated environments) that are known to lower test scores. Marginalized minorities and people with disabilities are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to standardized tests–which, after all, were first developed by eugenicists looking to organize humans into racist taxonomies based on perceived ability.
Plenty of students with valuable gifts to offer society are ill-suited to the MCAS, which requires them to sit still and respond to decontextualized academic material for hours on end. Why should the Commonwealth limit these young people’s life trajectories (and earning power) by locking them out of higher education and many careers?
Of course, most parents want to be certain that schools are rigorously evaluating their children’s learning. They can rest assured: Per federal law (ESSA) our kids will continue taking statewide tests, as well as a high-quality national assessment that allows for state-by-state comparison. This ballot measure simply gives us a chance to decouple the MCAS from one of its most pernicious high stakes.
When we sort students into “proficient” and “failing” categories based on one profoundly flawed metric, we’re not solving the opportunity gaps that show up in public education; we’re widening them. It’s time for Massachusetts to stop placing arbitrary roadblocks in the way of its young people.
Further Reading:
Here’s a Jacobin piece that tells the story of an extraordinary student I worked with in Springfield, who had his valedictorian status stripped from him because his inability to take the MCAS made him diploma-ineligible. The piece discusses a research methodology concept known as Campbell’s Law, which explains why attaching high stakes (punishments) to a quantitative measure like the MCAS inevitably distorts that measure, corrupting the processes it’s intended to monitor.
The Thrive Act is currently in committee at the Massachusetts State House. This bill would also end the practice of making diplomas contingent on MCAS scores–and enact a number of important changes to allow struggling school communities to hold the state accountable for providing them with needed resources. By signing the MCAS ballot initiative, you’ll send a message to our legislature that disadvantaged schools and students need to be nurtured, not punished. This will encourage them to bring the Thrive Act to a floor vote.
Here’s a Jacobin piece contextualizing the “learning loss” discourse and explaining why our obsession with high-stakes assessment is draining the joy from K-12 classrooms.
Under neoliberal school reform’s test-and-punish regime, the emphasis on skills measurement has supplanted concerns about curricular content. Here’s a Jacobin piece exploring how that dynamic plays into the Right’s anti-democratic push for so-called classical education.
Finally, here’s a piece I wrote tracing the origins of neoliberal education reform’s punitive accountability model back to a dangerous belief that took hold between the New Deal and the civil rights movement: that schooling’s primary aim should not be to elevate minds or train citizens for democracy, but rather to sort students by ability and fit them into an exploitative job market.
“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” What students perceive as success is taken away because they may have an issue with test-taking. This seems so unfair. This adds to the stress of students. Many never continue their dreams of adding to society and are doomed to fail. Why not give them opportunities to succeed?
I hope for the sake of our future, we give every child a fair chance to grow and live their dreams.
Bibi