MCAS malaise

Sure, improvements should be made. But critics are wrong to disparage the need for standards and accountability.

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System -- better known as the MCAS -- has been the object of unprecedented fear and anxiety. Some students have boycotted the tests. Other MCAS opponents, including some teachers, parents, and school officials, have raised concerns that an entire generation of students, unable to pass, will be consigned to a life of failure.

It's time to get a grip in order to understand what the MCAS is and how to make the best use of it.

Mandated by the state's Education Reform Act of 1993, the MCAS tests fourth, eighth, and 10th graders in three subject areas: English language arts; mathematics; and science and technology. Eighth and 10th graders are also tested on their knowledge of history and social science.

The stakes are unquestionably high. Members of the Class of 2003 will have to pass the 10th-grade test as a requirement for graduation. Scores to date, especially in urban areas, have been dismal, which has caused some well-intentioned observers to call for the MCAS to be abolished, lest tens of thousands of young men and women be pushed into a competitive economy without the benefit of a high-school diploma.

These concerns are not groundless, but they are misdirected. The MCAS is, by most accounts, a well-designed, well-thought-out test that covers a broad range of knowledge and requires critical and creative thinking. Some complain that the MCAS forces school systems to "teach to the test," as though faceless state bureaucrats were forcing local schools to abandon superior teaching in favor of mediocrity. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that the MCAS is exactly the sort of intellectually demanding test that ought to be taught to.

Of far more vital importance, though, is precisely whom the MCAS is aimed at evaluating. Yes, it is students who must actually take the tests. But it is teachers, principals, superintendents, and school-committee members who must answer for the results. Not surprisingly, some of them don't like this push for standards and accountability. But it is absolutely essential that they demonstrate how effectively they've spent $7 billion in education-reform money.

The anti-MCAS pressure is further evidence, too, of how easy it is to give up on urban kids. Fortunately, Boston school superintendent Thomas Payzant -- who faces an especially daunting task, given that more than half of Boston's 10th graders failed the English and math components last year -- is treating the MCAS as what it was intended to be: a tool to improve public education.

Of course, every tool can be refined. As it is presently constituted, the MCAS is a blunt instrument. This past Monday, educational consultant Kevin Clancy wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe in which he demonstrated that a school system's MCAS scores can largely be predicted by looking at socioeconomic factors such as the percentage of families receiving welfare, the percentage of one-parent households, and the percentage of families living in poverty. By carefully adjusting for these factors, Clancy argued, state officials can determine which school systems are doing a better-than-expected job and which ones are falling short. For instance, he noted that Marblehead -- whose raw MCAS scores are much better than Chelsea's -- is actually underperforming, whereas the Chelsea school system, which has been managed by Boston University for the past decade, is doing better than might be expected given that city's plethora of urban ills.

The MCAS is a crucial component of education reform, as important as smaller class sizes and up-to-date textbooks and technology. Those who seek to reform it should be taken seriously. But those who seek to end the program before it can really begin are doing no one any favors. Critics who raise the specter of mass failure are suggesting, in effect, that it is better to graduate uneducated students. That's ridiculous, and it shows why we can't lose sight of the goal: a system of public education that prepares kids for college, for work, and for life.

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