Testimony to Mass. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, August 15, 2022

In opposition to raising the passing score for MCAS

Raising the passing score for English MCAS will harm children who are English Learners.  This is the fastest growing group of students in our schools: and is now over 100,000 or 11% of all students. https://languageopportunity.org/supporters/english-language-learners-in-massachusetts/

These students will be the most affected by raising the English passing score because they don’t yet read and write English fluently.    They can have bright futures as important members of our community and contributors to our economy if they can just get a high school diploma.

In the pre-pandemic class of 2020, only about half of English learners passed both the MCAS English and math tests as sophomores.  Raising the English passing score will cause more of them to fail. https://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/The-MCAS-Abyss-3-29-22b.pdf

What happens to students who don’t pass in 10th grade?  They’re more likely to drop out, as 2010 research by Prof. Papay and others confirmed.  Indeed, ELs are almost four times more likely to drop out than the average.  (5.8% vs. 1.5%). https://www.nber.org/papers/w14186

Many of these students who fail MCAS, though, persist and stay in school.  6.2% of them are “non-graduate completers.”   ELs are five times more likely to be “NGCs.”   Hundreds of children a year who keep working despite all the barriers they face, but don’t receive a diploma.

And what happens to young people who don’t graduate from high school?  

Without a diploma, or a GED which is also especially difficult for English Learners, young people can’t get into higher education, including community college.  They can’t get into most apprenticeship programs.  Even a GED probably won’t get them into the military.  These are all opportunities for upward mobility and long-term economic success.  They are all unavailable to students who don’t graduate.

For those students who persist and stay in school, raising the score will not help them learn English faster. They will just spend more time on test prep and strategies for getting around MCAS – not the kind of communications skills they need; not internships or career exploration; and not the kind of applied skills business leaders say they need. http://www.mbae.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Employer-Poll-MassINC-Polling-Group.pdf

English Learners have overcome incredible, often life-threatening, obstacles to get here.  They continue to face daunting obstacles just to get to school.  Please don’t raise this barrier to their success.

Note: Commissioner Matt Hills said the number of students failing under the new standards would be “de minimis” but no one said how many that would be. The next day Commissioner Martin West said that they expect 3300 additional students to fail the MCAS under the new standards.