Board of Ed approves science MCAS appeals process

By James Vaznis, Globe Staff

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education today unanimously approved an appeals process for high school students who fail the MCAS science exam, which becomes a graduation requirement for the Class of 2010.

This process would be less stringent than the system set up for appealing the English and math exams, which became a graduation requirement in 2003. It would allow students who fail the exam just once to file an appeal with the state, based upon whether they passed a comparable science course in high school and have at least a 95 percent attendance rate.

For English and math, students need to take and fail the exam three times before they can file an appeal.

Since the English and math MCAS became a graduation requirement, about 300,000 students have earned their high school diploma. Of those, 2,800 were able to graduate because of MCAS appeals granted by the state.

Statewide MCAS results will be released next week. More than a quarter of high school students who took the science exam in 2007 failed, with many urban schools posting a failure rate of 50 percent or higher.

• Comment
• Permalink
• Email