It’s Time to Stop ‘Teaching the MCAS Test’

Voters will have the opportunity to make Massachusetts’ education system more equitable for all students. By voting YES on Question 2, we can eliminate the limited curricula created by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement.

The English Language Arts portion of the MCAS primarily tests reading comprehension of short passages, usually the length of an article you would find in a magazine. Visit the DESE website to view sample questions. It will be difficult to find grammar questions. In any case, grammar is mentioned in the instructions for the short written statement. I say short because it is a maximum of two handwritten pages (on the paper version of the exam). Two written pages hardly qualify as deep thinking, especially when some students write so much larger than others.

In my thirty years of teaching, I have witnessed the slow death of the novel. Forgive me for sounding old, but “back in the day” we read ten novels a year at Boston Latin Academy. We read one novel per semester, which we called “inside reading,” meaning the teacher walked us through Shakespeare’s novel or play. We also had “outdoor reading,” a novel or play that we read ourselves, such as “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck or “A Raisin In the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, and then we were quizzed on our reading. Rose Horowitch recently had an article in The Atlantic in which she writes that elite students have difficulty reading novels. “To have read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.”

Novels are not on the MCAS, so schools do not emphasize them. Don’t let anyone fool you, schools certainly do ‘teach to the test’ as schools and districts are judged based on the MCAS results. From my perspective, students today are less prepared for college as a result of relying on the MCAS for their knowledge of English language arts.

This is what I mean: I teach Latin. Before the MCAS, I could assume that my students knew English grammar. Today I know they don’t.

Latin nouns have five capital letters (seven for you scholars). When I ask my students today, “What is the dative used for?” I get the standard answer: “It is used for the indirect object.” However, when I follow up with “And what is an indirect object?”; the usual answer is, “I don’t know.” The students don’t know because schools have generally stopped teaching grammar.

Oh, someone in central administration might say that grammar is “interwoven” or “taught in mini-lessons.” What that means is that grammar is not emphasized.

And readers: “Why is there no emphasis on English grammar?”

Because the MCAS does not emphasize grammar.

For those who argue that there needs to be some kind of system in place to ensure that high school diplomas mean something, rest assured, I hear you. Let’s make ALL degrees mean something, okay?

I propose that all schools in Massachusetts be required to administer the MCAS. All schools – public, charter, private and parochial – must follow Massachusetts building and fire codes, so why not education codes? As it stands now, students enrolled in private schools are essentially buying their way out of the MCAS. A yes vote on question 2 eliminates this restart.

Furthermore, the C in MCAS nominally stands for comprehensive. How all-encompassing can this test be if it leaves out so much of what makes a child a good student? Where is the benchmark for tenacity, kindness or creativity? Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences says that we humans have eight different ways of manifesting our intelligence. Eight.

The MCAS does not come close to fully encompassing a student’s knowledge or abilities. It’s like judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

Seven years ago I mischievously proposed in this newspaper to expand the MCAS to include the command of a foreign language. The idea was to have monolingual suburban students master a foreign language within a few years, just as many suburban immigrant students need to master English. On a serious note, being multilingual is a better career skill than scoring proficient on the MCAS. Once again, the MCAS narrows the curriculum.

The same narrowing takes place in the sciences. Sung-Joon Pai, a former teacher at Fenway High School and Boston Arts Academy, laments the lack of creativity in schools today. At both of his former schools, the science classes themselves were blended and/or integrated with the arts, so that students studied topics from all angles.

As he noted in a Facebook post: “(That) was educational! Then came the science MCAS and we were forced to break down our courses into the traditional subjects and ensure that our students were prepared for the topics selected by the test makers.”

Please vote yes to question 2 so that schools no longer have to focus on one measure of success.

Michael Maguire teaches Latin at the Boston Latin Academy and serves on the board of directors of the Boston Teachers Union. The ideas expressed here are his own.