Why MCAS matters, and why it won't be going away any time soon

If you work in any industry that's all metrics, all the time (and by that we don't mean kilograms, hectares and millimeters), you understand that in certain times of the week, month, or year, you must be reaching some kind of benchmark, line of reference, or company standard. Numbers are the lifeblood of your business, and the entire business is to sustain or exceed the standards and expectations of your business - and to keep a steady eye on the competition.

A great example of this are those who work on commission. Your company sets targets on what you must sell. If you sell a lot of things, you make much more commission on top of your base salary, take home a huge paycheck, and have opportunities for promotion. If you sell very little or nothing, your bosses will demand to know why, offer you help to get more commission, and if you're still not making their targets, you no longer have a job. Nothing spells humiliation like security guards escorting you out the door, final paltry paycheck and unemployment information in one hand and your box of belongings in another.

It's no different in the school system. If students learn and succeed, getting straight A's (and some with B's) and actually going beyond what they learn in school, they will get praise and four year scholarships. If the students don't care, getting F's and getting held back in certain classes, or getting held back entire grades, they will find themselves without skills, relegating them to permanent entry-level job status or intermittent unemployment...and by then, they'll have regretted not getting even C's in their classes.

Hence, the MCAS: a test for students to measure what they're learning, how their learning, and what teachers and administrators can do to maintain their good status, and how to improve the bad status. We're not endorsing or damning the MCAS here - but we have some notions and understanding why (a) certain classes of people resent it, (b) why certain cities want it abolished, and (c) why MCAS won't be abolished any time soon.

First, Jon Keller gives an overview of the MCAS and its genesis: without accountability (which is the mother of benchmarks and standards), the quality of students' educations were as flimsy as tissue paper. Students got their diplomas, and when they began in their college work, even the straight "A" students struggled mightily to get a "D" or even a gentleman's "C". Those who didn't go to college went into the workforce, found jobs without a college degree lacking, and end up in menial, low-paying, dead-end jobs - or went unemployed for a long spell. The teachers who weren't wowing their students with self-indulgent, happy-pill pep-talks were regaling students with tall tales and guilt trips about American history and culture, and how to foment a neat little armed revolution. The remaining teachers were so deep into tenure they couldn't be fired, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they were, because the teacher's unions
had the administration by nose. The MCAS, in this instance, was the great leveler: take away all the cute little quirks that damaged the students education, and make them strive for excellence.

The richer school districts have students who are already striving for excellence: they're succeeding like crazy, and have excellent teachers who encourage their students to aim high but reach higher. The dark side - the richer districts are quite the snobs, as they would rather not compete or be lumped with students in poorer school districts, and the MCAS forces these students - who will do outstanding even outside the MCAS test - to be brought down from their lofty perches that none of the poorer school districts can ever hope to reach, crashing to Earth. This time, all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts must now prove that their students are competent and knowledgeable, and the richer school districts can't charm, protest, or buy their way out of it.

This leads us to why certain cities and towns want the MCAS abolished, and why these towns don't want anything to do with standardized testing. The teachers in the richer cities and towns must set aside their pet curricula to help students pass the MCAS test. This means for several weeks, students must learn the three Rs - boring subjects that don't involve indoctrination, conspiracy theories, Paul Bunyan-like retellings of American history, bashing politicians, soldiers and others like overeager gossip columnists, praising stifling ideologies and brutal leaders, or silenced people or discussions on how cowardice and submission to your enemy is more noble than fighting back. One anti-testing person from Brookline wrote several letters to the editor of the Boston Herald, demanding that Governor-elect Deval Patrick get rid of that pesky MCAS test once and for all. Governor Patrick liked the idea, and said, "hey, why be part of my Cabinet and we can get rid of it together?"

We hate to break her bubble, or dry the ink out of her pen, but eliminating testing or standards, either in the schools or in the workplace, is a sign of weakness and fear - and no flotilla of weasel words ("onerous, demoralizing, racist, damaging to students' self-esteem", as Jon Keller puts it) will hide that fact. Not making students and teachers accountable, letting them absorb whatever fairy tales the teachers can stitch together, and letting the administrators pocket the cash for junkets instead of textbooks and computers, has already proven to be a disaster. We recommend the movies Lean on Me and Stand and Deliver as examples - the former for what happens when standards are eliminated, and how a principal must bring order out of chaos, and the latter for what happens when a dedicated teacher discards traditional methods and makes students from the barrios of Los Angeles succeed in a kind of high stakes examination.