Clips/ News Article

Local Students and Community Resist the MCAS
By Richard Trombly | The Berkshire Beacon : March 2000

PITTSFIELD - The Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education (C.A.R.E.) held a Mid-Berkshire meeting at the Pittsfield Unitarian Church on February 29th.

Fifteen educators, parents, and concerned citizens met to plan strategies to further their opposition, of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in the local community.

"The Mid-Berkshire group will concentrate on Richmond, Dalton, and Pittsfield," said Debbie Byrd, parent and special education coordinator for Berkshire County CARE. "We will host house parties to educate and get the community involved and continue to provide educational materials and circulate pennons."

This meeting followed a February 28th meeting in the Holyoke Elks Lodge which was attended by over 100 people, including 35 students.

The speakers included Jonathan King, an MIT professor and Cambridge, Mass. parent and Will Greene, founder of the Student Coalition for Alternatives to the MCAS (SCAM) and Monument Mountain High School sophomore.

Fifteen of these students were from Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington and were members of the SCAM.

This student-run coalition has been raising awareness about the MCAS via the Internet, student groups, cooperation with CARE, and by circulating petitions.

Michael Marturana, a freshman at Monument Mountain, created the website www.scammcas.org. Adam Selzer, a Monument Mountain' ' sophomore, said that SCAM now has over 100 members from The Berkshires to Cape Cod, Selzer handles the email correspondence for SCAM.

'The Internet has been an invaluable tool," said Selzer, "We had over 900 hits on our website in the first two weeks."

Greene was introduced as the hero of Monument Mountain. He said that students require stimulating and thought provoking education. He pointed out that the MCAS is a "high-stakes test" and curriculum will be aimed at the test content.

"This is not interesting nor will it challenge us to discover a deeper understanding of the material," said Greene, "and they are cutting programs that aren't aimed at the test."

Greene cited educational research which indicated that standardized testing is a poor basis for high stakes like grade promotion or graduation.

He also quoted sources from Thoreau to Margaret Meade in calling for students and the community to resist the MCAS.

"We are the most affected by the test and we could be the most powerful means of resisting it," said Greene.

He said that the proponents of the test said that it would "level the playing field" between students of different ability levels.

"The MCAS was suppose to bridge the gap between the lower and higher achieving students," said Greene, "but in Texas similar testing led to an increased dropout rate, especially among minorities. Also, more funding will go to schools passing the test and funding will be cut from those which do poorly. This is a misguided approach."

Greene said that SCAM may organize a boycott to the test and suggested that students make a portfolio of their educational work or other responsible alternatives.

"A boycott is a powerful option but we don't want to lose sight of our immediate focus," said Selzer, "which is to postpone the approaching test date in April."

Callie Gray, a sophomore at Monument Mountain, said that with Tim Gray of the Housatonic River Initiative as her rather, she is well versed in activism.

"It's not that we want to boycott the MCAS, but that we are calling for a variety of assessment tools," said Gray, "Most of the SCAM members did well on the test but there is so much more to a student like art and music and so many other skills which the test does not evaluate. I test well but I know smarter students who failed."

The MCAS was a result of the Educational Reform Act of 1993. It was to provide greater funding to the schools of the Commonwealth, standardize curriculum and increase educational standards.

The MCAS was supposed to assess progress toward this goal and provide an equal and fair measure for all of the students.

King said that the test has done much the opposite and that is how he became involved with C.A.R.E.

"I was impressed by my children's science curriculum," said King, "but many of the best and most thought provoking curricula, like exploring the microscopic life in a local stream, disappeared. When I questioned why, the consistent answer was that it was not on the MCAS."

"The MCAS does not measure music art, or citizenship," said King, "It cannot measure the individual experience of learning."

King said that the Massachusetts Board of Education was not populated by educators and that many members are part of the Pioneer Institute, a think tank involved in privatizing governmental agencies.

"They support 'far-profit' schools," said King. "MCAS is a part of their plan to discredit public education."

"Private, religious, and for-profit schools are exempt from the MCAS. It's easy to design a test that 50 percent of the people will fail. And they can make a killing if the voucher program passes," said King.

King said that his 4th and 8th grade children would boycott the MCAS.

Other Berkshire County meetings included meetings in Sheffield and North Adams.

Alfie Kohn will be the guest speaker at the next meeting on March 20th at 7:00 pm in Fuller Auditorium at Springfield College.