MCAS: The debate over Question 2, an effort to drop the high school 'exit exam'
MCAS: The debate over Question 2, an effort to drop the high school 'exit exam'
Massachusetts public school students must pass standardized tests in order to graduate high school. Question 2 in the 2024 election asks voters to end or keep that requirement.
For those unaware, a "Yes" vote eliminates the MCAS requirement, a "No" vote keeps it.
Hoping it passes, I'd be glad to see it gone. I had a lot of amazing teachers when I was a student and most of them listed their #1 grievance as having to teach to this test.
I am very curious how MA is going to deal with the disparity between school districts if this passes.
I know No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds get a lot of flack for requiring teachers to teach the test, which hamstrings good teachers, and that's a problem. But the problem they were trying to solve was that schools that are ill equipped to deal with ELL, disabled, or impoverished students have a history of giving those students a diploma with no education.
The tests were to give insight into when and where that was happening, and to hold anyone accountable (infamously, no child left behind would remove funding from underfunded districts for failing their students, which... Yeah, but ESSA fixed a lot of that). This prop looks like it glosses over what it's going to do about those protections, and that makes me uncomfortable with this.
I've never taken the MCAS, I moved here from another state so I'm interested to see what y'all locals think about it. Based on my experience from other states I think they should remove the graduation requirement but still give the test to see where schools fall and see which ones need more support.
I am a current resident of MA , but moved here as an adult, so I don't have firsthand experience with these tests. However, I moved to several different states through school and took something like the MCAS in those states. The reality is that even if Question 2 were to pass, the state would likely want to keep MCAS (just without the graduation requirement) or replace MCAS with some other standardized test as a way to assess school district performance. Which should be a good thing since it is how the state can identify school districts that are underperforming and providing them the help they need.
I am sympathetic to the Teachers' views that they feel like they are being asked to teach to the test. However, in those other states I went to school in, those teachers still spent time teaching to the test because the school district was exerting pressure to improve their performance on those tests. So, the pressure to teach to the test is unlikely to go away, but will simply be applied from somewhere else. I don't think Question 2 is the freedom from standardized testing requirements that the Teacher's Union is portraying here.
I would be more supportive of additional ways to alternatively meet the requirement, especially for those students that might struggle with a language barrier.
As someone not from Massachusetts, reading this article was a rollercoaster for me. Right off the bat, the teachers' union supports the measure, so that put me in the camp of thinking the exam was probably bullshit. And of course that it could still be administered to understand where certain districts are excelling or falling behind. And I already have a distrust of standardized tests, thinking that they're often wildly overemphasized and often a measure of specifically how good a student is at taking a test. So making the MCAS a requirement to even get a diploma seemed probably unreasonable.
Then the article showed a question from the exam – a completely trivial problem from geometry. This combined with the figure that 90% initially pass and 96% pass accounting for repeated attempts made me decide to look into sample problems, and honestly, these are the kinds of things I would expect a basic functioning adult with a diploma from a US high school to know.
The math problems are trivial. For example, paraphrasing one question: "A person has $150. They babysit for $10/hour and do not spend the money they earn. If they babysit for 12 hours, how much money will they have in total?" And this is listed as a tenth-grade math problem because it's technically algebra (m = 10h + 150; plug in hours) but is easily intuited outside of that algebraic framework (you do not even have to write algebra to get a perfect score). The English questions were all focused around basic media literacy, both in being able to interpret and explain pieces of writing as well as how to write to persuade (showing some ability to think critically about something you support, a skill US adults are starving for). And the English questions were far and away the most complex because of their free-form nature. The science questions were piss-easy, asking again basic questions like being able to read an extremely simplistic chart with numbers or being able to identify at a rudimentary level what role extremely well-known organ systems in the human body do ("you have a digestive system which breaks down food for nutrients and a circulatory system that moves those nutrients around your body" earns you perfect marks).
I'm a bad test taker; I have ADHD and horrible test anxiety. I've had 50-minute exams where the first 5 minutes is just getting a panic attack under control. If someone can't even upon repeat assessments pass this exam, they don't deserve a high school diploma in the US. That doesn't mean they're bad; it just means that they aren't educated to the standard a HSD should represent. I went into this article saying I'd just go with whatever the teachers say, but I genuinely think the teachers' union is categorically wrong here; if this is how low the bar is, then I don't trust the all of state's schools to individually provide a robust enough education that it makes a high school diploma actually worth something.
So, just to clarify, you trust your assessment of this test based on a cursory assessment of some sample questions over the consensus of the teacher's union for the state.
...bold
Quick question, what are your qualifications? Why should anyone trust your cursory assessment over those who actually do the job of teaching these students and this test?
Also, I love the "I'm bad at taking tests and would have no problem taking this test, so any argument about this impacting bad test-takers can be ignored." It's simultaneously self-deprecating, a useless anecdote, and completely wrong. Just because you wouldn't struggle to complete this test doesn't make it any less an assessment of how good you are at taking tests vs an actual assessment of what you know. Tests always test, first, your competency at test-taking and, second, your surface level knowledge of a subject. Especially multiple choice tests, like standardized tests.
No, sorry, if this webpage of questions from 2021 is at all a representative sample, then somebody deserving of a high school diploma should be able to answer them, let alone with time to study and retake the assessment as needed. Without appealing to authority absent an actual argument for a second, name literally one sample question you think a functioning member of an educated society shouldn't be able to perform. Even without studying, these are just basic skills an adult should have, and with studying, this should be easily passable. It demonstrates the most basic levels of competency in the fields of reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Those fields aren't the end-all for a well-rounded education, but they're an enormous part of what makes somebody educated enough to find employment, to go on to higher education, or even just do basic things in their daily lives.
As noted in the article, if for some reason you're some extreme exception where you just can't pass the test but do know the material, you can submit e.g. your GPA or your work as proof that you should be exempted. It is "bold" because these questions are easy as fuck, and getting rid of this test further erodes the value of a high school diploma. The average American compared to the rest of the developed world is laughably uneducated, and this will just leave it to under-equipped districts to pass kids through with little actual oversight.
Again, I went into this biased heavily toward the teachers, and this still seems ridiculous. My guess is that Question 2 will succeed by a wide margin because "more tests" is never a popular position, but I suspect that will be to the detriment of kids in underprivileged schools because Massachusetts clearly isn't going into this with any sort of alternative plan.
Yes on 2!
I know this is about school tests, but I see MCAS and think of something else
There are many complaints about the test and it seems that there should be an improved test, rather than the same test with zero stakes. The test is used to evaluate all schools and extra funding is allocated is based on the results. I don't believe students will take it seriously if it doesn't mean anything.
Also, I don't really understand why teachers feel the need to teach to the test. The skills tested should already be reflected in the curriculum. If the test does not reflect the curriculum then this needs to be rectified one way or another. Removing the graduation requirement doesn't help make the test better.
I understand where people are coming from when it comes to ESL students and learning disabilities. It might make sense for the test to be given in multiple languages, or for kids on an IEP to have extra time. However, in the end, we should be preparing kids well enough to not need extra help. These sorts of programs do not exist in most work places and are rare in colleges. We are failing the students if we are not educating them and the MCAS is one of the few tools we have to ensure high education standards, and that a diploma in Massachusetts actually means something.