Massachusetts Educators Abandon MCAS in Favor of Common Core Standards

BOSTON - Late in July, the Massachusetts Department of Education made the choice to adopt the Federal Common Core Standards. This followed an announcement in May that Massachusetts would be abandoning the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) to move to a regionalized testing system. The announcement in May left those who were interested with maintaining Massachusetts high education standards concerned. The announcement in July left many with questions and few answers.

Both parties have long supported the MCAS as a means of evaluating the school districts in the state using a common test based on standards set by a panel created by the Massachusetts Board of Education. The state has data that tracks both districts and individual schools to show progress over time. The end of MCAS means abandoning this data. It will take a few years to establish base line data for the test and then to decide on established requirements for districts. This is valuable time lost. It is especially frustrating when an effective system was already in place that evaluated students and let the state see progress over a long time.

Another loss to the state is the education standards. The state has worked hard to create a challenging program and then hold students and schools accountable to those standards. Schools have risen to the challenge. An example of this progress is the state's vocational technical schools. Some vocational technical schools sought exemptions at the beginning of the MCAS program. The state held firm and insisted they meet the standards. In looking at our local vocational technical high school and our traditional high school, the failure rates are comparable and the alternate school is showing improvements in advanced rates. Without insisting on higher standards, those students would not have received as challenging an education.

One of the goals of the National Core Standards is to create an equal playing field. For some states this will accomplish what Massachusetts has already done, increase their education standards. This will force them to do the work completed across the state in Massachusetts to bring districts up to meet the challenges presented by the tougher standards. However, Massachusetts faces a different problem. Massachusetts needs to decrease their standards to participate in the National Core Standards. This change will deny students the better education received by those who came before them.

Massachusetts does get some short-term gains for surrendering all the achievements they made. They are now eligible for Race to the Top. Without making these sacrifices, they could not participate. The federal government continues to work through guidelines for participation in various education stimulus programs. Adopting the core standards is one issue that may or may not be an issue for future funding. Having adopted the core standards, it is one less issue to be concerned with later.

"Common Core Standards Initiative" Massachusetts Department of Education

"Marlborough 2009 MCAS Scores" Massachusetts Department of Education

"MCAS Information" Assbet Valley Technical High School