Word: mcas
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...curriculum and pedagogy with these so-called standards, tests students to see if they meet the standards, and holds students, teachers, and schools accountable for test results. The logic is clear, but the premise is false. The standards-based movement, including our local version, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), is based on the faulty assumption that standardized instruction and standardized tests breed high intellectual standards and that the “standards” established will truly break the cycle of inequality...
Many of us who oppose MCAS and the larger reform strategy do so because it does not, in fact, set high intellectual standards for students. The reform strategy, with its reliance on high-stakes tests, requires teachers and students to memorize vast amounts of information for the sole purpose of answering questions correctly on the test. Because of the stakes, classrooms become training grounds for taking tests. Of course test scores rise, but does this mean better education? No. There is little time left in the school day for worthwhile learning. Far from its touted purpose, the current reform strategy...
...MCAS has drastically affected both teaching and curriculum. Teaching now focuses on superficial breadth at the expense of substantive depth. Curriculum now consists of training with the goal of raising scores on the tests...
...University Park Campus School, a small, inner city public school in Worcester, 100 percenr of their completely low income and mostly minority student body has passed the 10th grade MCAS in both subjects for two years running...
Standards, MCAS and accountability are here to stay. Standards based reform and the assessments and stakes that animate it are a conspiracy against the pervasive, soft discrimination of low expectations. Rather than expending our energies debating MCAS, we should be waging war, replete with educational improvement strategies, against those low expectations...