A Test of Wills

Marcella   I think of MCAS as a classist, racist test. It is unfair, and it contributes to leaving behind the very students it claims it wants to help. It doesn't take a genius to see that children from affluent communities and with educated parents do very well on the test. And who doesn't do well? Special-education kids. Trade-school kids. Minorities and underprivileged kids.

Marina   If you look at the actual test questions, they are not in themselves racist or classist. The test is not constructed poorly. It is very important to have standardized tests such as MCAS to ensure that all kids, no matter what their background, are striving to achieve the same level.

Marcella   Many children are disadvantaged from the moment they are born. The idea that these children are to be given the same kind of test as kids who have come to school already so much more advanced is bogus.

Marina   You're saying, well, kids come to school from different levels so they should be given different standards so we can say they've made enough progress. And you think that's OK? Isn't that just kind of an excuse for a teacher to say, well, this kid's parents can't read, so I have to set a lower standard? I agree that children come to school with different levels and learn at different rates. But when you graduate high school, you have to have a certain base level of skills, a base standard that everyone should have reached.

Marcella   You cannot judge a kid based on only one test. Trade-school kids, for example, have a lot of wonderful skills. But they are not the same skills required for taking the MCAS test. Why do we leave them behind? Why do we tell them they're a failure? The assessment of children should be multifaceted. We know that resources are not as good in schools with underprivileged children. Money being diverted to MCAS should go to those schools.

Marina   And I say that you can go to any school, and they say they need more money. To identify which schools are underperforming and need the extra resources, you have to have an accurate measure of which students are actually learning below standards. And for that, you need to have a standardized test. Some of the policy around MCAS, such as the graduation requirement, may be wrong, but it is a fair goal to ask a student to be proficient on a basic test.

Marcella   I don't think so. We have always known which kids are at risk.

Marina   Who is the "we" who have always known? Maybe the teachers know, but not the policymakers, not the business leaders, not the people who are making the decisions about school funding and MCAS. You need to be able to present stakeholders with objective data, and that's the purpose of MCAS.

Marcella   But in the process, MCAS takes an awful lot of time from teaching. We spend hours and hours and hours — teachers and students — on MCAS. MCAS scores may improve because of that extra time, but are these kids more educated than before? I don't think so.

Marina   It comes down to the question of where are these kids going to be when they are adults. Eventually, they are going to go into a world where people do speak and write at a college level, not a ninth-grade level.

Marcella   I'm saying that a lot of kids have skills that MCAS does not test. And we consider those kids as failures because they don't pass MCAS? Can trade-school kids and underprivileged kids and other kids [who fail MCAS] read and write? Of course they can.

Marina   Then why are they failing the MCAS?

Marcella   Because the exam is worded in a way that loses a lot of kids and is designed in a way that is very difficult for a lot of kids to process. It's unfair to expect the same from kids who have been read to since they were born and children who have never seen a book, never been in a library. Marina was 6 months old, and I found her with a huge book in her infant seat. My husband said he wanted her to get a feel for what a book is. Children should have to pass MCAS only after all have had the same chances as my children and the governor's.

This is an edited transcript.