Attleboro lawmaker urges state not to raise MCAS stakes

Hawkins and a bipartisan group of 96 other lawmakers are urging state education officials to reconsider their plan.

“Raising the passing score forces even more teaching to the test,” said in a statement. “And it penalizes the very students who have had the hardest challenges during the pandemic.”

The board of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, known as DESE, is planning to take up the proposed change at its June 28 meeting. Adopting it would mean students graduating from high school from 2026 through 2029 would have to score higher that previous classes on standardized math, English and science tests. “I don’t know why they did that,” Hawkins told The Sun Chronicle.

A former math teacher, Hawkins said he’s not against standardized testing, but he’s long argued that multiple choice tests like the MCAS are a poor way of measuring student performance.

State education officials had waived the requirement that students pass the test to graduate for the class of 2022.

According to numbers the state released in December, MCAS scores were down over the past two years, a drop blamed on the disruptions in learning caused by the pandemic.

Hawkins argues that the high stakes testing tends to affect low-income school districts the most.

“To double down to raise the passing score does not help,” he said. “What they need are improved programs to help the people who need it.”

The letter from the lawmakers, initiated by Hawkins along with state Sens. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and Pat Jehlen, D-Somerville, says, in part, “Raising MCAS passing scores is likely to intensify, not reverse, negative consequences of 24 years of the high-stakes MCAS.

“The negative consequences would be the most onerous for groups of students who already suffer and were disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially English learners and students with disabilities as well as Black and Latinx students. It is worth noting that these are the very students the MCAS purports to help.”

The letter is signed by about half the members of the Legislature, including Rep. Adam Scanlon, D-North Attleboro and Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Foxboro.

Hawkins has proposed legislation that would give schools the opportunity to:

• Create different pathways for students to demonstrate they’ve mastered subjects.
• Provide alternative methods to evaluate special needs students.
• Include parent, student and teacher views in the evaluation process.
• And create a grant program to support local districts doing their own planning.

The grant program would be administered by the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment. Attleboro is a charter member of that group.

Hawkins’ bill did not come up for a vote this legislative session, but he said, “we made a few converts.”

He said he’ll reintroduce the legislation next year.