The Human Face of the High-Stakes Testing Story

Schools like the Boston Arts Academy are desperately trying to keep the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System from destroying their very fabric, Ms. Nathan says. She intends to make it through the MCAS mania by continuing to fight for a rich and rigorous arts and academic curriculum, taught by highly qualified and committed teachers in an atmosphere of respect and high expectations.

By Linda Nathan

THE NEWS stories, editorials, and academic debates about high-stakes tests deal mostly in ideologies, generalizations, and statistics. What's easily lost in the palaver is the reality of school for the people who have the most to gain or lose -- the students.

In Massachusetts, the reality that faces students now includes the imminent threat that they will not receive a high school diploma unless they pass the 10th-grade exams in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). The numbers are grim, even with this year's much-heralded improvement in scores: close to half of the students in urban high schools are still failing the test; among black and Latino students, the failure rate is between 60% and 70%. But who are these students, really? What do they know and not know? What are their strengths and weaknesses, and what are their possible futures?

I know some of these young people very well. They are students at my school, the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a three-year-old public high school of visual and performing arts. They are products of the Boston Public Schools. They are typical, yet each one is unique. And their stories shed a different light on high-stakes testing. Let me introduce you to two of them.

Tony's Story

Tony first caught my attention by standing over me in the school cafeteria one day as I ate lunch with some students and teachers. He glared at me, put his hands on his hips, and stomped his foot a little. I turned to him. "This school isn't teaching real science, Ms. Nathan," he said. "You need to do something about it."

The other students looked up from their tater tots and turkey nuggets, glancing back and forth from me to Tony. The teachers stopped eating too. This was during the fall of the Boston Arts Academy's first year. We'd been open for all of two months, and no one had challenged me in quite this way before.

I was acutely aware that my response would have long-lasting significance. "What is it you object to, Tony?" I asked, trying to stay calm.

"First of all," he said, "there are no textbooks. The teachers give us these readings -- novels and stuff. What is that? And I'm in a class with freshmen and sophomores. I've already done my freshman year. I don't get why I'm in a class with freshmen. Don't I know more science than them? Anyway, we're just not doing science. I mean, how is building an energy-efficient house science? And then there's this humanities stuff. What is that? Where's English? Where's history? My friends at Central High aren't studying China like we are. And the math. Come on, Ms. Nathan. Where are the problems? It's all reading! I used to be an honor-roll student and get 90s or 100s on all the tests. I haven't even had a test here!"

Tony paused for breath, and I took a deep one, too. "Wow, you have a lot of issues," I said, with a voice as steady as I could muster. I asked Tony to sit with me. Then I asked him a little about the classes at his previous high school. He described them pretty much the way I thought he would.

Each week the teacher would assign a new chapter from the textbook, and the students would answer the questions at the end. The technique was the same for all subjects. Tony had never experienced what might be called active, hands-on, or open-ended learning. He had certainly never had to read primary-source documents as he was now doing in his humanities class (English and history) at the Arts Academy. He had probably never heard anything about ancient China before. And the notion of learning physics through building an energy-efficient house was also alien to him.

The Interactive Math Program we were using was a shock to most students, not just Tony. They were used to doing 20 rote problems in math, getting a check mark or an X on each one, and moving on. Tony was confounded by having to write a detailed explanation of each "problem of the week" or developing a math portfolio.

Most classes at the Boston Arts Academy use, in addition to traditional tests and quizzes, some form of authentic assessment. What do I mean by "authentic"? I mean judging students on their ability to perform complex tasks. For example, in a math, science, or world language class, students might be asked to research a topic and then present it to an audience of students, teachers, and community members. A student would then be evaluated not only on her knowledge and understanding of the material, but also on her ability to make connections to other situations, to describe the perspective of the original author, and to analyze and articulate her own perspective.

In such exhibitions of mastery, students are often asked to make suppositions and to explain why the topic has relevance; most important, they are expected to use evidence persuasively. This authentic assessment process is not unlike the coaching doctoral students get in writing their dissertations. It represents a different way of awarding a high school diploma. None of this was familiar terrain for Tony.

I acknowledged Tony's frustration and advised him to give BAA a chance. I told him to ask for help when he was confused and to work hard. "You can always come see me if you get really frustrated," I said. "I know you'll be on the honor roll again."

Then we talked a bit about his theater project, an adaptation of cartoonist Art Spiegelman's Maus. Tony was playing the father. Before turning to ancient China, Tony's class had studied World War II and the Nazi murder of two-thirds of European Jewry and other groups. I wondered how he had responded to the challenge of adapting a book-length comic about the Holocaust for the stage. "Oh, that was cool," he said breezily.

Later I sat in on a rehearsal of Maus. Tony's performance was captivating. He understood just how to portray both the pain and the anger of Vladek Spiegelman. He even added a touch of comic timing to the role, which I wouldn't have imagined would work. But Tony convinced me that he had made the right choices for the character.

Throughout that first year and the next, Tony would find me in the cafeteria or in my office, stomp his foot, and complain about some aspect of the curriculum or some teacher who "wasn't fair." After one of these outbursts, I reminded him that he'd just gotten honorable mention (all A's and B's and just one C), and I said that I still thought he could make the honor roll. I asked if he might be expending more energy avoiding certain tasks than actually doing them. "Well, Ms. Garcia is unfair," he repeated. Then he walked away.

Tony's experience is not unlike that of other students at BAA. He went to public elementary and middle schools in Boston, dreamed of becoming an actor, auditioned for our theater program, and got in. He took regular academic classes -- science, math, writing/advisory, humanities, Spanish. In addition, he took approximately 12 hours a week of theater classes, including acting, directing, playwriting, technical theater (including set design, costume and makeup design, and lighting design), theater history, movement, voice, and musical theater.

In spite of his outbursts, Tony missed the honor roll at BAA for only one term. Before graduating, he wrote the following in his self-assessment:

I had a difficult time fitting in with the curriculum and the environment around me. . . . I felt as if I was in a foreign land and I had never before experienced the feeling of being lost. In addition, I felt as if I was the only individual who had not a clue to what was being taught in class. . . . I wanted to leave the school! During this time, I met often with the headmaster, Ms. Nathan. She repeatedly told me that I would be faced with the challenge of having new environments in life, where I would be introduced to new things. I hate to say it, but she was right!

As Tony approached graduation, he worried about college entrance exams. He had never done well on standardized tests. Even after taking a Princeton Review prep course, his combined verbal and math SAT score was below 800. Nevertheless, Tony was accepted to the BFA program of a prestigious four-year liberal arts college, with a generous financial aid package.

I was not surprised by Tony's low SAT scores. Over my 20 years as an educator, I have seen dozens of young men and women with very low test scores attend college and do well there. It is a widely held but patently false assumption that smart students always do well on standardized tests. The SAT is not a good indicator of intelligence or even of success in college beyond the first year.

What would have happened to Tony if he were just two years younger and a member of the first class required to pass the MCAS? Given his testing record, it seems certain that he would have been denied a high school diploma. Yet he writes well and is articulate, passionate, and extremely bright.

Watching Tony play Septimus Hodge in BAA's production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia was a riveting experience. He clearly understood not only the subtleties of the character he was playing but also the complexities of the entire play, which poses difficult questions about historical truth, human passion, and physics. Arcadia is one of the most demanding plays I have ever seen, and it is rarely done by high school students. Tony took on his role with tremendous vigor.

In our newly emerging high-stakes world, Tony would have had to take test-prep classes and forgo Spanish, or science, or theater. He would have had to forfeit many other rigorous academic and artistic challenges in order to play the MCAS game.

Marinela's Story

Marinela, two years younger than Tony, is another gifted student at the Boston Arts Academy. She wants to go to college. She wants to use her bilingual skills and has been pestering me to offer a course in reading, writing, and grammar skills for Spanish speakers. Although Marinela is not an outstanding actress, she is dedicated, hard working, a great ensemble member, and always positive about her work and the work of her colleagues. She has been on the honor roll since she arrived at BAA. Marinela does her homework on time, she stays after school to work with teachers when she doesn't understand a subject, and she has worked hard on her writing. She needs lots of coaching, especially with grammar and paragraph structure. She never gets a good grade until she has done three or four drafts of an assignment. She has begun to ask peers to help her review drafts so that she doesn't have to rely so much on her teachers. Her writing has improved greatly in the last two years.

Marinela's MCAS scores in writing are very low. Nevertheless, Marinela can write. She simply doesn't write well without lots of time and supervision. The MCAS allows for one draft and then a rewrite, but without any consultation. For some students, this is sufficient; for Marinela, it is not.

It doesn't bother me that Marinela needs help with her writing. It does bother me, though, that she might be denied a diploma because of one test. She understands the fundamentals of writing, but, as a bilingual student, she needs more time, assistance, and structure to work on her skills. Given the developmental nature of learning, Marinela needs to be encouraged to keep working on her weaknesses and developing her strengths.

In the high-stakes environment the state has created, Marinela will now be forced to make choices that are detrimental to her growth. She will need MCAS prep courses in order to pass the test. Thus she won't have time to take Spanish for Native Speakers, the very course she has lobbied for since coming to BAA. She may even have to leave the school, where she focuses on theater, and go to a regular school that places a much greater emphasis on MCAS preparation.

The state seems determined to label Marinela a failure because of one test and to cut off her chance to grow in other areas. What message does this treatment send her? It is that being bilingual is a liability and that needing more time or help to learn well is a mark of failure.

What do our educational leaders have to say about students like Tony and Marinela? "There will be some casualties," says the state commissioner of education in defending the MCAS graduation requirement. In such a get-tough climate, there is no room for students to work through "blockages" or bad attitudes. There is no room for schools to develop alternative assessments. There will be some casualties. Why must education be a war?

Tony and Marinela represent only two of the many students whose lives will be dramatically altered in the brave new world of high-stakes testing. Schools like ours will be forced to make decisions that we know are educationally unsound just to get students through these tests. Arts courses will be canceled. Some academic courses will be replaced by test-prep courses because the day is only so long. And to what end? The students may pass these tests. But will they love science? Will they enter the job market with highly coveted bilingual skills? Will they pursue careers or college degrees in the arts? Or will their natural curiosity and love of learning be squashed?

The Unmet Promise of Education Reform

Few educators imagined that the MCAS would become the sole method for assessing and validating student achievement. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 promised improved schools that would fully develop the talents and skills of every child in the commonwealth. This legislation was a response to serious inequities in funding and performance in school districts across the state. The sponsors of the act promised the public "accountability" and clear benchmarks for student achievement. No longer would students be passed through school systems without acquiring basic academic skills.

No one could disagree with such goals. Moreover, the legislation promised principals more direct control of their schools, and parents were to have more involvement in school councils. Finally, the new law talked about the importance of multiple measures for assessing student learning. Many of us thought that our hard-won knowledge about authentic ways of assessing student achievement would finally be recognized by policy makers. We were wrong.

In some ways, it is easy to see why the MCAS quickly became the only game in town. It promised the carrot and stick that politicians, school administrators, and even some teachers wished for. A high-stakes test would force students (and their parents) to take education seriously. The test results, when made public, would make it very easy to rank individual schools and districts and so expose the slackers. And, of course, some real estate agents would be pleased. Furthermore, each child (and family) would receive individual scores that revealed the student's weaknesses, thus providing an opportunity for teachers to address them. A high-stakes test would also require a clear statewide curriculum, so that students in inner-city Boston and in its wealthy suburbs would be taught the same material (and then given the same test). Thus, the argument goes, the inequities in students' opportunity to learn would finally be eradicated. Besides creating the promised curriculum and new tests, the state promised a significant infusion of money for low-performing and poor districts to "level the playing field."

Finally, a high-stakes test would allow for intervention, presumably by the state, when a school produced persistently low test scores. If a school is given the appropriate resources, isn't it reasonable to assume that students should learn the required material? And isn't it also reasonable to think that taxpayers have the right to expect results from those students and teachers and to intervene when results aren't forthcoming?

But this way of thinking about teaching and learning, for all its superficial logic, is fundamentally flawed. First, research shows that high-stakes tests discourage and demoralize at least as many students and teachers as they motivate to work harder. The notion that threats of punishment (e.g., withholding a diploma) will create a positive learning environment and radically transform our most beleaguered educational institutions is not only discredited by research but is also grotesquely wrong-headed and cruel. High-stakes environments push dropout rates up, particularly for the most vulnerable students. The state's current policy will hurt most grievously the very students who are supposed to benefit most from it.

Even if we believed, as the testing proponents argue, that high-stakes tests will create conditions that force schools to change for the better, the withholding of diplomas is a flawed strategy. A one-size-fits-all test that determines every student's future takes the most important decisions about teaching and learning away from those closest to students: their teachers and families. That students like Tony or Marinela might actually do well in high school and perform adequately in reading, writing, math, and science but still get low scores on standardized tests is inconceivable to the high-stakes enthusiasts. Common sense and common experience prove that their idea of school reform is a fantasy -- a war game in which young people are the expendable pawns.

The Paradox of the Latest MCAS Results

The MCAS results for the class of 2003 at the Boston Arts Academy have just been reported, and I am faced with a paradox. Our students did well. Like many other schools across the state, we had a dramatic reduction in the number of failing students. Colleagues are congratulating me. "Good for you, Linda," they say. "You put your personal opinions about the test aside and got your students to take it seriously."

It is true that we got our students to take the test seriously. Our theater students presented dramatic scenes about how to relieve test-prep stress; I spoke with students and parents about how we would be able to change the state's policy more easily from a position of strength (that is, passing) than from a position of weakness (that is, failing); and I continued to use scarce resources to bolster the students' math and literacy skills. We hired an extra math teacher rather than an administrative manager or a music teacher. Our music department badly needs another full-time teacher, but we cannot justify hiring one while our students' math scores (and skills) are still so far behind those of their suburban peers. (Sadly, our students' music skills are also falling behind, but the state tells us that there is no contest between math and music: math must win.)

Our students did better on this year's MCAS for a number of reasons. First, we hired the Princeton Review to give them an MCAS prep course. The irony here is that the MCAS is touted by the policy makers as a test that cannot be studied for. It is supposed to measure students' accumulated mastery of 11 years of rigorous curricula from kindergarten through grade 10. That's why the policy makers say it's fair that the test carry high stakes.

Nevertheless, coaching helped our students pass the test. I am not sure that coaching helped them grapple with ideas, but I do think it made them much more comfortable with testing procedures and with what to expect on this particular test. Through coaching, our students learned how to sniff out good and bad answers to multiple-choice questions; they learned to skip down and read the questions before reading the literary passage or problem that preceded them; they learned about educated guessing.

Another reason that our students fared better this year is that the MCAS cut score was lowered. Last year, test-takers had to get 23 correct answers on the math test to pass; this year they needed only 20. The testing companies call this "scaled scoring." Whatever one calls it, it helped our students: 67% of them passed both the English and math tests. The district average was 40%; the state average was 68%. Only 18% of our students failed both tests. The district average was 43%; the state average, 19%.

Here's my dilemma, then. I can't help feeling good that our curriculum and test-prep strategies worked. But does teaching students how to take these tests merit such an enormous allocation of time and resources? Does knowing how to take a test make a student a better reader? Does it make him appreciate literature in a deeper way? Does it make her want to travel into the world of fiction or nonfiction or history? Do test-taking skills help sustain energy, organization, interest, and hard work for long-term projects?

Maybe I'm just a hard case. I was asked to leave the only prep course I ever took (for the Graduate Record Examination) because I challenged too many of the questions in the analogy section. I never scored particularly well on any standardized test, but I have been successful in school and professionally. I'm stubborn -- like Tony and Marinela. And so I must ask again, What do these tests really measure?

The improvements in our students' MCAS scores this year reflect what we already know about the history of testing. As schools get to know a particular test, scores on that test go up year by year. Eventually that test is either abandoned for a "better" one or "recalibrated." There is no research that I'm aware of that shows sustained academic improvement driven by high-stakes testing.

I suspect that the tests students took this year were considerably less difficult than last year's. Certainly, the cut score -- or passing bar -- was lowered, and the tests may also have been revised to make them easier. The size of the improvement in scores in just one year has made testing experts very skeptical. If the MCAS were really forcing poor schools to do a better job, as the state would have us believe, then the gap between poor and minority students and white students would have shrunk. But it did not.

There Is an Alternative

In my ideal world, MCAS would be a minimum-competency test in English language arts and mathematics, and schools and districts would be able to develop their own accountability systems for other courses. At the Boston Arts Academy, our Humanities 3 benchmark is much higher than the MCAS standard, and we are in the first stages of developing numeracy benchmarks. Both the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education (CARE) have put forward proposals that could be workable alternatives to MCAS-izing education. They call for limited tests in numeracy and literacy, with local assessments in other academic and arts areas, together with reviews of school quality based on the work of the British inspectorate system, the experience of the Boston pilot schools, and the school reviews that the state does for charter schools. It is imperative that the public be given an opportunity to review these alternative proposals.

It is tempting to simply congratulate ourselves on getting so many students over the MCAS hurdle. But let us think about what passing the test really means. A student can pass the MCAS and still have lousy math skills. Has the MCAS helped us deepen our understanding of what numeracy really means or how to help students acquire it? Will it bring teachers together to look at student work and help us ask hard questions about what constitutes good work? Will it provide the sustained professional development that teachers so desperately need and want? Will it support a commitment to literacy and numeracy coordinators and programs in all schools; high-quality instructional materials; and functioning, fully staffed libraries, arts, and sports programs?

Will the MCAS encourage our most intelligent and gifted college students to enter the teaching profession? Will it help the state figure out a way to staff summer schools so that students who need the extra time can be in rigorous programs with highly qualified teachers?

I fear MCAS will do none of these things. I fear that money will be spent on test-prep workbooks and Princeton Review-type courses, but not on lowering class size, providing professional development, or helping students learn the skills necessary to complete complex, long-term projects.

We have learned that we can get our students to pass this test through intensive coaching, double math classes, and a massive effort at emotional support (food, drinks, reminding students to relax and focus). All of this has paid off in the short term. In the long term, however, the test will change, and the positive results will last only a few years. Then the cycle will begin again.

Meanwhile, schools like the Boston Arts Academy are desperately trying to keep the MCAS from destroying their very fabric. I want Marinela and the many students like her to have the advantages and opportunities that helped Tony succeed so memorably. I don't want to create MCAS classes, steal time from arts instruction, and make good teachers abandon what they do best: develop innovative curricula and teach to a wide range of learners.

Why is it that the politicians who created the MCAS for public schools mostly send their own children to private schools, which rarely if ever use standardized tests to make important decisions about students? I want what the best private schools in the country have: small classes and assessment of students' actual achievements -- their writing, their oral presentations, their science projects, their ways of attacking real-world problems, their artwork, their music, their ability to work with others.

Of our first graduating class of 52 seniors, 46 are now in two-year or four-year colleges, four are in career training programs, and two are still undecided. It baffles me that the philosophy, structure, and curriculum that undergird the Boston Arts Academy and that have created the conditions for this success are so rarely considered as serious solutions in the education reform debates. The current dialogue focuses solely on one-size-fits-all "accountability," measured by standardized tests, rather than on the success stories right in our midst.

What are we to do? For me, there is only one choice. I will continue to fight for a rich and rigorous arts and academic curriculum, taught by highly qualified and committed teachers in an atmosphere of respect and high expectations. If we can keep our eyes on these goals -- and not on test scores alone -- we can make it through this MCAS mania without destroying our students and our schools.

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Last updated 11 April 2002
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