From:
Education Week
American Education’s Newspaper of Record
November 6, 2002
Letters
Race and Class:
‘Misrepresenting the Facts’
On MCAS Pass Rates?
To the Editor:
In your Oct. 23, 2002, article titled “Most Students
Failing MCAS Are White, Mass. Says,” the director of communications
of the Massachusetts Department of Education is quoted as saying, “What
these tables show is that the majority of students who have not yet passed
both tests are white.”
That is beside the point in a state that is overwhelmingly
white. The real story of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System,
or MCAS—Massachusetts’ high-stakes test—lies in a deeper analysis
by race and class. Using the department of education’s own data,
Hispanic students are four times as likely, and black students are three
times as likely, to fail the MCAS as are white students. Low-income students
are three times as likely to fail the MCAS as are their more affluent
peers.
At the same time, the MCAS has resulted in a decrease
in the state’s graduation rate, an increase of middle school and
9th grade dropouts, and an increase of almost 100 percent in students
unaccounted for in the 2003 graduating cohort of students—students who
were most likely held back, the strongest predictor of dropping out of
school. In each case, the percentages of students are disproportionately
black, Hispanic, and low-income. Only 66 percent of the entering 9th grade
class of 2003 are on track to graduate this coming spring.
If anything, these data demonstrate that the MCAS is widening
the achievement gap by race and income rather than lessening it.
Dan French
Executive Director
Center for Collaborative Education
Boston, Mass.
To the Editor:
Heidi B. Perlman, the director of communications for the
Massachusetts Department of Education, would certainly not answer questions
of ratio and proportion correctly on the 10th grade MCAS test required
for graduation in Massachusetts.
Our state officials should be ashamed of themselves for
misrepresenting data that most high school statistics students would correctly
analyze as indicating that minority students are not passing the MCAS
in proportion with nonminority students.
While 55 percent of the students failing the test last
year were white, overall 80 percent of students in the test-taking group
were white. That means that almost half (45 percent) of the failing students
were from minority groups making up only 20 percent of the population
taking the test.
Either our state officials really do not understand basic
math, or they severely underestimate the public’s ability to understand
the facts or interest in doing so.
Throughout the state, educators are being challenged to
make informed instructional decisions based on student data. There is
no room for misrepresenting the facts.
Maryellen Brunyak
Shrewsbury, Mass.
© 2002 Editorial Projects in Education
 Vol. 22, number 10, page 39,40
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