Introduction
No one likes the MCAS. It’s a waste of time. I’m the sort of person who gets involved in stuff, and when I found out that Representative Hawkins had authored a bill to remove the MCAS graduation requirement (and, also, prevent the state from taking control of schools who ‘fail’ this standardized test), I reached out to find out how I can help.
The best thing any member of the public can to do influence state legislation is go to the public hearings, so that’s how I spent my Wednesday night. I also got a great picture with my friend Lily Major, on the Grand Stairway. Lily, age 12, is one of the bravest people I know. She absolutely stole the show, with an amazing story of being denied entrance to an advanced math program despite being a straight A math student, because she happens to not do well on high-stress standardized test.
I also submitted written testimony:
Written Testimony on H. 495 (THRIVE ACT)
Like most people, I went most of my life without thinking about learning styles, or how to teach things to different people. This despite growing up with an English teacher as my Dad! Likewise, because I always tested well and excelled at standardized testing, I never thought about how some people might not.
That changed when I started coaching football. I didn’t realize, when I signed up, that coaching is essentially an unpaid 20 hour per week teaching job. I will never forget the moment that I saw, as clear as day, that every kid learns differently. It came when I was circulating copies of a play to my 6th grade football team. I had it all drawn out and was pretty proud of the diagram, with each player and each hole numbered. It went like this, “ok kids as the diagram shows, this is 34 power, which means the 3 back runs through the 4 hole and because it’s called ‘power,’ the left guard pulls through that hole and leads. So there you go, now huddle up and run the play.” I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
Chaos ensues. One or two kids got it, some had no idea, and many ran the wrong way.
After talking to one of the guards, I was puzzled why he didn’t understand. I showed him the diagram again. This kid – one who has an exceptional football IQ – said “Coach, I really don’t learn from pictures like that, can you show me on the field?” It took about 15 seconds – look kid, that’s the 4 hole, this is the 3 back, you are the guard. He immediately got it, and I was instantly humbled. It was an effective demonstration that not all kids learn the same way. My cherished diagrams, I realized, worked for about 20% of the team – this for a sport where 100% of the players need to be on the same page! I walked away realizing that part of the job of a coach is to figure out how to reach each individual player.
The same thing is true for education today. And, I think, this is something that the Attleboro schools do a good job at. Between the different tracks at the High School, and with the variety of CTE programs, each student will, ideally, end up doing something that they have an opportunity to be great at.
Unfortunately, regardless of how well the school system achieves that goal, we are still hamstrung by the state mandate to teach down to the details of the MCAS test. No one likes it. Parents hate it. Students hate it. Teachers hate it. Every year it’s a massive disruption. And it doesn’t recognize that not all kids learn the same, and not all kids are able to demonstrate that learning in the same way. Just because a student can’t memorize Ohm’s law, doesn’t mean they can’t calculate the voltage of a circuit. Just because a kid can read a paragraph and understand it, doesn’t mean they can read a section of a Jane Austin book and write a paragraph analyzing the tone. Asking every kid to demonstrate a year’s worth of learning during a three hour block, hunched over a beat up chromebook, stressed out and sweating, strikes me as not only deeply unfair, but ineffective.
Here’s another football analogy. One of the things that makes youth football so good for kids is that it needs players from the entire spectrum of shapes and sizes. We need big strong slow kids; we need smart tough kids; we need fast athletic kids. We need kids with natural leadership skills and kids who excel with a defined job and a role they understand. Imagine if football were run like the schools and we tried to assess all players the same way! Kids who will make great offensive linemen wouldn’t be allowed to play because they didn’t meet the state defined rubric for a 40 yard dash. The smaller kid who’s smart, tough and speedy and will make an outstanding safety might not meet the rubric for deadlift. Fortunately, football is played with an understanding that it’s a team sport. It doesn’t matter who scores the touchdown: the team scores the touchdown.
Our current assessment methodology treats kids as empty vessels. Fill them full of facts, and once a year, shake them to see how many facts they’ve accumulated. If they don’t have enough facts, make them repeat. It’s not only unfair – it doesn’t work. The mission of public education is not to produce an army of people who have memorized Ohm’s Law. It’s to produce people who possess the skills needed to earn a living or to pursue higher education, who understand how to collaborate to solve problems, and – most importantly – who possess the critical thinking skills required to be effective participants in our democracy. Standardized tests do not assess the school’s or students’ success in any of those areas.
What can? How can we assess those things? I believe that the future lies with the sort of alternative assessment being championed by, among others, the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA). Attleboro residents should be proud that we are a member of this small consortium that’s working to build practical, project and skills-based assessments. For example, rather than memorizing formulas and tricks that can be applied to specific math problems, one sample task calls for students to take on the role of engineers charged with replacing the Sagamore bridge. In the course of that, students will learn how to generate the equations necessary to prove that the bridge is capable of handling the load put on it, design the bridge, and present their design. Each task is designed to demonstrate competency in specific areas that are part of the state curriculum. We aren’t talking about giving diplomas for basket-weaving; this is real work. This massive change would free up teachers to give kids inspiring projects that demonstrate their understanding in a much more fair way, and allow for classes to flow more naturally from “learn how to solve these specific problems that are on the MCAS test” to “teach the skills needed to perform general tasks that will demonstrate their mastery of the curriculum.”
These are hard things to do. And we can’t do them overnight. But they are going to get done, and while we’re doing them, let’s pass the THRIVE act and end this barbaric practice of holding kids’ feet to the fire because they had a bad day in 10th grade and flunked a standardized test. We owe our kids no less.
