Testing, testing - Educators ponder MCAS issues
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
September 26, 2003
Editorial
The release of district MCAS results this week kicked up the usual controversy over the testing system. It also produced a few new proposals and viewpoints worth considering. Among them:
S. Paul Reville, executive director of MassINC’s Center for Education and Research Policy, and educators across the state are developing a plan to allow school districts to track a pupil’s progress over a year or more. That would provide a more accurate picture of a school’s effectiveness than is possible using the performance "snapshot" the MCAS tests provide.
That would address the legitimate concern that urban districts with high student mobility are unfairly held responsible for the performance of pupils who may have just entered their system.
This "value-added" concept warrants consideration. However, high-stakes testing kicked in just this year. With many schools still trying to refine test preparation and remedial programs, major changes in the assessment system would be disruptive, and premature at best.
A Thomas B. Fordham Institute study rating Massachusetts’ American history standards one of the best in the nation should ease controversy over the statewide history frameworks adopted last year.
The curriculum, championed by state Board of Education members, including Roberta R. Schaefer of Worcester, replaces "world history" with U.S. history as the high school graduation requirement and properly focuses on the need for pupils to understand the United States’ founding principles.
Critics of the approach have said that gives short shrift to historical concepts. Even the Fordham study singled out as shortcomings such things as the elimination of narrative histories to help bring the past alive for elementary pupils, and the lack of material on the development of slavery at the same time the revolutionary idea of liberty was taking hold.
The points are well-taken. However, the purpose of the frameworks is to prescribe information all students should learn, not to proscribe consideration of broad historical concepts or use of enrichment materials.
The Fordham study is a vindication for state educators who battled to ensure the history frameworks would be rigorous, focused and fact-based.
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