As a result of several hundred calls and several thousand emails from educators, students and parents to legislators and Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley, a bill was passed on April 9 waiving MCAS test-administration requirements this spring. Governor Charlie Baker signed the bill into law the next day.
"When we fight, we win!" said MTA President Merrie Najimy. "Canceling MCAS this year is a big victory. We especially want to thank Senator Jason Lewis (D-Winchester) and Senate President Karen Spilka (D-Ashland), along with her leadership team, for taking seriously what our members had to say and shepherding this bill through to passage.
"The lives of our students, their families and our members have been turned upside down by the coronavirus," Najimy continued. "MCAS is already a hot-button issue for students and educators. To have the specter of MCAS hanging over their heads while struggling to adapt to such a dramatic shift in all of our lives just cranked up the heat. So we put out a call to action and successfully shut MCAS down for this year."
The new law also gives Riley the option of waiving the mandate that seniors in the Class of 2020 meet the MCAS-based competency determination in order to graduate.
"The commissioner should exercise that right and leave graduation decisions to local school districts," said Najimy. "Students’ futures should not be determined by a high-stakes test but instead by their performance in their classes in high school."
All 50 states have been given federal waivers allowing them to cancel test-administration requirements this spring, and at least 40 states have already done so. In addition, nearly all of the 11 states that still have test-based graduation requirements have waived those mandates for this year.
In Massachusetts, there was resistance to canceling the test-administration requirement outright in some quarters, including on the editorial page of The Boston Globe, which has a long history of defending high-stakes testing. The Globe criticized the MTA for calling for cancellation and said the decision should be left to Riley.
Almost all of the reader comments in response to the Globe editorial expressed outrage at the newspaper’s position, including one that read:
Actual students take these tests.
Actual children see the results of these tests.
Actual children have their self-esteem annihilated by scores.
Actual children are already stressed and worried about current events.
Actual children do not need to be further stressed by taking the MCAS.
The end.
"We have been fighting the MCAS testing regimen for a long time because it has narrowly defined the curriculum and has been weaponized against schools and districts, particularly in communities of color," Najimy said. "We must now seize on this moment that MCAS is paused, organize to end MCAS permanently, and realign our curriculum so that it is once again developmentally appropriate, as it was before we were shackled by MCAS."
