Parent's Call to Resist the MCAS;
Committee of a 100 Massachusetts Parents
The education of our children is essential to their personal development, to their contribution to their community, and to the future of our society. The MCAS testing imposed by the nine member State Board of Education undermines rather than improves our childrenšs education, and harms their development. These biased and deeply flawed tests increase the existing inequities in our schools. They have been forced on our students and schools without the consent of our teachers or
elected school committees.
We refuse to subject our children to the damage from the MCAS tests. We refuse to accept the belittlement of our children and our childrenšs education by arbitrary and fallacious test scores. We call upon parents across the Commonwealth to refuse to allow their children to take these tests, and to insist that their schools provide an alternative educational environment during the testing period. We call upon our elected school committees and legislators to set aside the MCAS and to support quality education, not standardization.
This year we are a committee of 100.
Next year we will be a 1000.
The year after 10,000.
We will ensure that the education - not the regimentation - of our children, is the central role of our school systems.As a parent in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I endorse the above Call to Resist.
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Background to the call to resist:
Parents of students at the Mission Hill school in the Roxbury section of Boston and the parents of students at the middle school in Scarsdale New York have set the stage for a broader call to parents of public school students to resist their state's high stake tests.
Individual families from many different Massachusetts communities (Cambridge, Boston, Rehoboth, Brookline, Chicopee, Falmouth, Amherst, etc) boycotted the April administration of MCAS tests (the new Grade 3 Reading test and writing section of the English Language Arts tests for grades 4,7,8 and 10). Some Swampscott parents asked this week why MassCARE parents were not calling for a statewide boycott. The proposal to withhold diplomas on the basis of poor MCAS test results is a profound violation of student rights. Caring parents should not legitimate MCAS by accepting it. Parents have a right to withhold consent for their children to participate in this harmful educational experiment.
As long as students are quietly taking their tests, the Legislature is not going to act on the pending bills to change the punitive use of MCAS testing by state and local officials.
-- Tens of thousands of students are being put at risk by the misuse of MCAS:-- Students are being labeled as educational failures at age 8;
-- Some school districts are denying promotion to the next grade to low scoring students simply on the basis of test results;
-- Some districts are tracking students into remedial classes with low expectations or
enrichment programs with high expectations based on the results of
standardized testing;-- State officials are threatening to deny high school diplomas and admission to 2 or 4 year state colleges to students who score poorly on MCAS even if they have achieved passing grades in required courses.
Just as the Freedom riders resisted illegitimate segregation laws, so the time has come for parents to resist an illegitimate and damaging education policy. We are launching a 10 day mini-campaign culminating in Committee of 100 Massachusetts Parents calling for parents across the state to keep their children from being tested (boycott, but call to parents, not students directly). The Call is shown above.
Students in 8th grade or lower in most school districts are not at risk if parents send them to school with a written request informing the school officials not to administer MCAS to the child. Students in this year's 10 grade must pass two MCAS tests (English Language Arts and Math MCAS tests) to graduate on or after 2003. For these students, the consequences will depend on whether the legislature or Board of Education changes state policy before 2003, or local School Committees challenge the policy.
