Varied Tests Should Replace MCAS Requirement

By Augustus J. Itzo Pesce, Director of Special Education and Associate Professor of Education at American International College.

Mandatory testing of students has caused a stir of responses, both pro and con, and the issue has consequently become the driving force behind the school reform movement. Despite flaws within the procedure, the tests allow teachers and principals to assess student progress and make swift remediation when needed. What is it that has caused some professional educators and parents to lash out against mandatory testing of our children?

The complaints are that state-mandated testing consumes too much time, dampens local control over a school system and causes undue stress for students. I believe there are common sense solutions to these issues. To find more time, make the school day or school year longer, and let teachers get paid for it (although I am well aware that good teachers already put in 40 hours a week). Also, testing done on a voluntary elective basis could be cut out.

As far as local control, it is alive and well in America. However, most school systems I know are already subject to state and federal controls. Every state has a department of education with a set of laws, rules and regulations tied into funding of local school districts. Being subject to state and federal regulations does not automatically mean loss of local control. I believe loss of local control, or even more loss of local control, is too large a "rap" to hang on mandatory testing.

Mainly, educators and parents are concerned about “high stakes” testing, such as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), which has created “undue stress” on students. So what makes the MCAS test high stakes?

Starting with the class of 2003, if an individual student does not pass the MCAS test, then he or she does not receive a high school diploma. It’s no wonder that so many teachers and parents are against mandatory testing. Many of them believe that mandatory testing and high stakes testing are one and the same. This, however, is not the case. Indeed we need a test that does not have high stakes. After all, our curriculum frameworks, the state-developed standard curriculum, recommend multiple assessments, and no one-size-fits-all, high-stakes test can be considered a multiple assessment.

Assessing a student’s progress can be done most effectively when mandated tests include a multiple assessment approach. The test should be in various forms to consider such factors as students with special needs, or students in a comprehensive school, a magnet or specialty school, a charter school, a technical-vocational-training school and the like. Such appropriate tests should have a proven record of validity and reliability before they are put into general use. In other words, we must be able to trust the test to measure what it purports to measure.

I am calling for all forms of mandated tests to have basic, fair and honest standards, meaning standards that are not so low that everyone will pass, but acceptable minimums that we desire for all of our students. Then there would be no “teaching” to the test” required. Any good curriculum automatically would include at least these acceptable minimum standards. It is very possible, and one should expect, that not all of our children will pass. Some, hopefully a small percentage, will not.

Finally, couple the mandated testing results with actual student performance as indicated on the student’s report card. And then, and only then, promote or issue a high school diploma that deserves and earns the respect of the public and the professionals in the field of education. n