Mass. Teachers Association says MCAS tests rob students of ‘authentic’ learning
By Dallas Gagnon 3 May 2024
The Massachusetts Teacher’s Association (MTA) is continuing to fight for the removal of MCAS as a high school graduation requirement.
Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, or MCAS, are standardized tests used to help “teachers, parents and students know where students are excelling and where they need help,” according to the Department of Early and Secondary Education.
The MTA cited its support of the November 2024, general election ballot question to remove MCAS as a requirement, arguing it robs students and educators of “authentic learning opportunities due to the amount of time given over to a high-stakes exercise.”
The joint House and Senate committee meeting, also held on Wednesday, resulted in all but one committee member, Senator Jason M. Lewis, co-chair of the Education Committee, taking a stance against removing MCAS as a high school graduation requirement.
While supporters of removing MCAS as a graduation requirement argued standardized tests “do not capture the performance of students as well as more individualized tests,” lawmakers on the panel were not convinced.
Lawmakers argue “simply eliminating the uniform graduation requirement, which will allow students to graduate who do not meet basic standards, with no standardized and consistent benchmark in place to ensure those standards are met, will not improve student outcomes and runs the risk of exacerbating inconsistencies and inequities in instruction and learning across districts,” according to State House News.
John Schneider, chair of the Committee To Preserve Educational Standards For K-12 Students, claims eliminating MCAS as a requirement would undermine children’s future success by allowing “each of the state’s 300-plus school districts to devise their own graduation standards,” State House News reported.
The MTA argues Massachusetts schools “succeed because of our high standards ... not because of MCAS exams,” and while “there is no disagreement that having academic standards is important,” MTA believes “MCAS itself is not a standard.”
Rather, “it is a test that measures some of our academic standards.”
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The MTA believe removing MCAS as a requirement removes the “negative aspects of having the standardized test used as a graduation requirement, while keeping the MCAS exams as diagnostic tools.”
Educators have begun the second phase of collecting signatures needed to place the MCAS question on the ballot.
