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Letter: Patrick plan upholds MCAS standard


Published: July 30, 2008

To the editor:

In the third part of his series on Gov. Deval Patrick's education-reform proposal ("Governor's school plan comes up short," Wednesday, July 23), columnist Robert Kelly asserts on the basis of no evidence that Patrick proposes somehow to water down the MCAS requirement for graduation from high school.

Kelly writes: "The governor's support of testing is cleverly destructive. He supports MCAS by adding to it 'complementary measures' of growth. This test-plus approach will lessen the current power of the test."

On what basis does Kelly make this assertion? Certainly not on the basis of the governor's report, from which he quotes. According to the report, Patrick would "Maintain the current MCAS graduation requirement and strengthen the system by adding complementary measures of student growth and 21st century skills. This could include a culminating, multidisciplinary senior project on a student-selected topic of interest."

How could such a proposal "lessen the current power of the test," as Kelly argues? What secret information does Kelly possess that has been denied to the rest of us?

Additional evidence that Patrick would not weaken the MCAS requirement comes in the form of a June 23 statement from FairTest, a Cambridge-based national organization that opposes high-stakes testing. Kelly might be interested to know that FairTest is unhappy with Patrick's proposal because the governor quite specifically has embraced MCAS as a graduation requirement.

According to the FairTest statement, several members of the Readiness Project team that Patrick put together were "expressing disappointment with the Governor's position to retain the current MCAS assessment system." FairTest also accused Patrick of having "ignored the advice of the grass roots team they assembled" in deciding to retain MCAS in its current form.

Kelly can't claim that Patrick wants to weaken the MCAS requirement just because he feels like it. Such assertions must be grounded in facts and evidence.

DAN KENNEDY

Danvers