Some Thoughts about MCAS and NCLB

This past week, there was an interesting discussion at the Southborough School Committee meeting about the MCAS scores from this past spring, including the fact that we are no longer able to use these scores effectively to analyze our students’ performance because the state is no longer releasing most of the test questions, thus making the tests much less useful for school improvement efforts. There are many other things about these scores as well, though, that I’m not sure everyone realizes, and I want to mention some of the things that I see, for others to think about and respond to. For the most part, educators’ voices have not often been heard in the conversation about standardized testing – the groups discussing, initiating, and designing the testing systems have included very few K-12 educators, and comments from educators are sometimes dismissed by the media as defensive and self-serving, so some of the questions and criticisms of the tests are not well known. To me, there are many aspects of both MCAS and NCLB (the federal law, titled “No Child Left Behind”) that are a bit like the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and I have kept waiting for the media to dig behind the press releases and official statements to understand the real effects of these programs. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet, so I thought that I would share some things that I wonder about as I look at education policy these days.