Debating Assessment in Massachusetts A Panel Discussion on Testing, Standards, and the State of Education in Massachusetts with WBZ Radio's David Brudnoy Harvard Graduate School of Education October 1, 2000

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Earlier this year, a panel of politicians, policy makers, and educators representing the array of opinions on the state of assessment and standards in Massachusetts, in particular with regard to the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), visited the Askwith Education Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This is a transcript of an excerpt from the panel's discussion—broadcast on WBZ Radio with host David Brudnoy:

From top to bottom: David Brudnoy; Gary Orfield; Paul Reville

David Brudnoy: We continue our look at education, a variety of facets. We looked, in the first hour, at the testing, particularly the MCAS, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. And in the second hour, we looked particularly at trying to get and keep the best teachers we possibly can. During this hour, we're going to open it to a variety of avenues. Here, Jim Peyser, the Chairman of the State Board of Education will join us for a while tonight, as will Gary Orfield, Co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the Harvard Graduate School, and Paul Reville, the Chairman of the Massachusetts Reform Review Commission. Folks, thank you very much for being with us. Paul and Gary, let's start with you and get some comments on any aspect of education that you'd like to put forward to our listeners here on WBZ. And by the way, callers, of course, are always welcome at 254-1030. Let's start with Paul Reville.

Paul Reville: Well, David, I think we're at a particularly important moment in the history and development of education reform in this state. And as anxiety levels skyrocket over the upcoming MCAS tests and the high stakes associated with them, we have an opportunity to both look back and look forward, to take stock of our standards assessment and accountability system, to take stock of the investment we've made in education reform in this state, and to begin to approach thoughtfully this business of visiting consequences upon both students and adults in the system. And I think that will give rise to, I hope, some thoughtful mid-course corrections that don't involved abandoning standards. But at the same time, involve, as any large organization would, making strategic adjustments to a long term plan in a complex organization.

David Brudnoy: Thank you very much, as an opening statement. Gary Orfield now joins us. Gary, please, what would you like to say to our listeners here on WBZ?

Gary Orfield: What I'd like to say is that the debate that goes on in Massachusetts is kind of in a vacuum of the national experience. We've been going through this debate over standards tests and consequences now, since the early 1970's. And it really started out in the South, and that agenda was generated across the country during the Reagan administration. It's been dominating our politics of education for a couple of decades. It really hasn't worked very well. We made a lot more progress prior to this set of standards.

We are now in a situation where we have adopted a whole series of fads here in Massachusetts. Basically the conservative agenda of the 1980's came here late, and people don't realize what's actually happened other places. This agenda has not produced the kinds of results that it's claimed to produce here. It does not produce dramatic changes in educational outcomes. And unfortunately, it has some very negative side consequences, particularly when tests are done incorrectly and the cut points are set at the wrong level, which they have been here. There's a serious likelihood of making really disadvantaged children's lives even worse and raising the drop out rate, as happened quite dramatically in Texas, for example, after the high stakes were attached to the test.

It seems to me, the issues that we're not talking about are the other kinds of issues. How do we actually produce better outcomes in our schools? What do our teachers need? What kinds of curriculum actually work better? We're talking about fields that aren't producing as richly as we'd like to, and we're talking about changing them by measuring the height of the plants, rather than by cultivating and nourishing the plants. We have to think about a broader agenda, and we have to think about what research actually shows really does make a difference for children. And this agenda is not it.

David Brudnoy: Well, I guess, Jim Peyser, the remarks from Gary Orfield are all headed in your direction. We had the horticultural metaphor, and perhaps we'd want to pick up on that one and nurture our plants in a more profound way. I guess he's saying that the conservative agenda is now ours here, and we're behind the times. Defend what you're doing, Jim Peyser, Chairman of the State Board of Ed, please.

Jim Peyser: Well, I almost don't even know where to begin. I guess maybe just in the interest of brevity to pick up on the last point that you mentioned, this notion this is a conservative agenda. You know, Mark Roosevelt and Tom Birmingham are the sort of co-fathers, I suppose, of the legislation that put education reform in place here in Massachusetts. I would not embrace them as part of the conservative side of the political spectrum. I think this actually is a very broad base bipartisan movement not only on the standard side, but on other aspects of education reform. I don't think it reflects a kind of a left/right divide, as may be present in some other issues. The notion that measurement is somehow not only not supportive of change and improvement, but is contrary to it is, I think, nonsensical. And is, again—

Gary Orfield: That's not what I said.

Jim Peyser: Okay.

Gary Orfield: I said inappropriate.

Jim Peyser: Let me finish, Gary, and then you can go. That measurement and assessment is a critical part of change and improvement, especially in education where the material that you're dealing with, which is human lives and human intelligence, is so complex. We need a lot of measures. We need a lot of ways to assess student change and student performance. And I think, actually, what we're doing here is way ahead of the curve.

David Brudnoy: Gary?

Gary Orfield: Assessment is essential to any good education, but assessment should trigger appropriate interventions and it should be related to what students are actually taught and what they've had an opportunity to learn, a fair opportunity to learn. And it should be directed towards the improving practice, rather than punishing people at the end. So when you assess at the end of a school year, and you wait until after the election to release the results, and they come back a year and a half after you should have been doing the adjustments, that's not good assessment. You should have continuous assessment, and it should be tied to appropriate educational interventions when students begin to fall behind, rather than to punish them afterwards in retrospect. I think that we need to sort out the idea of measurement from the idea of inappropriate, after the fact punishment, which is what these kinds of things tend to do.

David Brudnoy: Let me go to some call—

Jim Peyser: Let me just quickly say one thing. I mean, there's no such notion of punishment.

David Brudnoy: No bureaucrat has ever quit.

Jim Peyser: It implies that the denying your credential, or put a different way, that a high school diploma is essentially an entitlement. It's an empty credential and it's not connected directly to effort and to achievement. And what we've been doing for generations is sending children out, especially poor kids, sending them out into the world and patting them on the head and saying, "You have achieved enough to be successful in this world," and we've been lying to them about that. And that's not compassion. That's paternalism, and it's wrong.

David Brudnoy: Thank you. Let's take a call, if we might. We want to have you go back and forth here, but also our listeners here on WBZ, and also people here at the Harvard Grad School of Education. Millicent in Sharon, good evening. You're on WBZ with Gary Orfield, Paul Reville, and with Jim Peyser. Go ahead, Millicent.

Millicent: Hi.

David Brudnoy: Hi.

Millicent: As a teacher of 38 years, 36 in Boston, I'd like to know what's being done to seriously educate parents about what has to be their part and being able to instruct parents through forums, workshops about mandatory requirements, about how they ought to be nurturing learning behaviors in children whom teachers want to teach, they'll stay to teach regardless of the money, in most cases? And I'm not speaking so much about the standards. I'm speaking about how do we get parents to understand that we need children on large scales who have the learning behaviors that will encourage teachers to come to the profession and stay.

David Brudnoy: Paul? Why don't we ask Paul Reville to take that one, as Chairman of the Mass Reform Review Commission, please?

Paul Reville: A simple answer to the question is not enough. Not enough is being done to involve parents. We have study after research study that's showing how crucial it is to have parents engaged in their children's education at all levels, K through 12 and preschool, of course. And the evidence that's come across my desk, at any rate, in terms of current practice in Massachusetts schools is there is not what anyone would describe as a very vigorous outreach effort going on to include parents. There are exceptions. For example, the Boston Plan for Excellence in Boston has made a good effort to reach out to parents in a variety of ways to get them understanding of standards and the kind of work that's required. But at the same time, a great deal more needs to be done. We know parent involvement is associated with student learning and achievement.

David Brudnoy: Thank you, and thank you, ma'am, for the call. We have a lady here in the Graduate School of Education. Please, ma'am.

Audience member: Thanks. I think the MCAS is a pretty comprehensive tool, and it's a diagnostic tool, which is something that I think gets lost in this conversation sometimes. There's a reason students take it in the 4th, the 8th, and the 10th grade, so that we can catch students early on, identify their problems, and try and help them so that as Chair Peyser said, they graduate with the skills they need to do well in the world. Talking to some teachers, I'm seeing it have an impact. Students are writing across the curriculum. They're learning math in context. What is the state, if anything, doing to help capture the best of those programs that really use MCAS as it's intended as a diagnostic tool to help make sure kids have the skills they need so that those programs can be replicated across the board and we can achieve some level of success?

David Brudnoy: Excellent point. Jim, what do you say?

Jim Peyser: Well the short answer is we're not doing enough, but we're making a start. There are, first of all, there are workshops, and there are seminars, and there are an increasing number of forums in which teachers are sharing experiences and practices. The department is developing, through its website, a space which would allow teachers to share across the entire state the kinds of practices that they're using in order to apply a standards based education model in their schools. And we're beginning to launch, as part of our school and district evaluation process, a system that will be gathering data and information about what schools are doing successfully and unsuccessfully in implementing education reform, and that's going to, I think, have a very broad effect on our understanding of what works and what doesn't in schools.

David Brudnoy: Thank you very much. Paul, please.

Paul Reville: I think there's a role for the media in this. First of all, the media can play a constructive role in spotlighting those areas of achievement both with schools, school systems, and with individuals as well. Secondly, I want to mention that the Education Reform Review Commission has recently commissioned a study to look at the flow of the diagnostic data from the Department of Education, to superintendents, to principals, and down to teachers to try and get a reading from the standpoint of research on how that information is filtering down, how it's being used by teachers in a diagnostic way, and how, if at all, it's changing teachers' practice because that is one of the principal purposes of this assessment. And even though Gary emphasizes the judgment aspect of this, there is really serious use being made of this test for diagnostic reasons, even after the fact. I was in a high school yesterday talking to a teacher about the use of MCAS results for changing his practice, and it was quite dramatic what he had changed as a result of the returns he hass gotten off his students' performance.

David Brudnoy: Thank you all. We'll take more calls and also comments here at the Graduate School of Education. The time is 9: 20. Our phone number, 254-1030. This is WBZ-News Radio 1030.

David Brudnoy: WBZ time is exactly 9: 22. We're talking with Paul Reville, Chairman of the Massachusetts Reform Review Commission; Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project at the Harvard Graduate School; and James Peyser, the Chairman of the State Board of Education. Folks, let me ask a question. I've been fairly quiet here, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, and that is can we not find another way to get teachers than through the certification process? One of the people here asked me to bring this up, and I've been thinking of this for a long time. If tomorrow or on January 21st, Bill Clinton arrived in Massachusetts and said, "I'd be willing to teach a civics course," could he do such in a public school without going through the school of education, and the blackboard erasing 101, and so on?

Jim Peyser: Absolutely not.

David Brudnoy: Absolutely not? All right.

Jim Peyser: Now, name someone else. Maybe we can —

David Brudnoy: Okay. Bill Weld, could he?

Jim Peyser: Oh, yes.

David Brudnoy: Could he talk about amber-colored liquors? Well, in other words, can we get people who are not trained in the ordinary manner so that people who are not thus credentialed would, in fact, be useful outside the private sector and the parochial sector? They will take all sorts of folks. I could become a teacher tomorrow in a parochial school or private school. I couldn't be a teacher tomorrow in a public school, simply because I don't have the proper credentials. What's wrong with the new forum of making people available to us as teachers?

Jim Peyser: Well, I think we can, and we are. The board actually, the Board of Education is in the process of reviewing the certification regulations. And one of the things that will be reformed is opening the system up, opening the certification paths up to people who come through other paths than simply through schools of education, this august institution aside, of course. But I think it is critically important, especially as we face teacher shortages, in particular in areas like math and science, that we open it up to a broader array of young people and mid-career people who have a strong professional and academic credentials, but who haven't gone through the traditional education school process.

David Brudnoy: Thanks, Jim. Let's get a comment also from Paul and from Gary, please.

Paul Reville: David, it delights me to hear you shoveling for your friend, Bill Clinton. But having gotten over that—

David Brudnoy: That's one of the great ironies of the afternoon. Thanks very much.

Paul Reville: Yeah. I think if we call it a standards movement, we've got to have standards as they apply also to teachers coming into the profession. Now this doesn't mean we have to prescribe the exact background they have to have in terms of coming in, but it does mean that we have an obligation as a state, if we're going to be in the business of licensing teachers to go into classrooms, to get assurance that they have some requisite level of knowledge and skill. And I mean both.

We have this warfare that goes on all the time in ideological circles within the education between what I call the pricklies on the one hand, and the gooies on the other hand. In this debate, the pricklies say, "All you need is knowledge, and you can be a great teacher." Well, any of us who have attended universities know that's not true. We all have had professors who were tremendously knowledgeable, but not particularly skillful in terms of teaching. On the other hand, we've probably all suffered under teachers who were skillful in terms of communication, but didn't have much of anything to communicate. So I think in terms of putting together standards for the teaching profession, we need sort of a common core of teaching and a set of frameworks that we apply to teaching, and then let people in from a variety of backgrounds, and let them prove that they can accomplish what's required in the classroom.

David Brudnoy: Paul, thank you. Gary, some thoughts, please.

Gary Orfield: This is something that I actually didn't agree with my colleagues here about. I think that we should have some flexibility and I think that we should encourage people who have very good subject matter knowledge to come into teaching. On the other hand, teaching is not something that's easy. It's a very hard job, particularly when we're talking about the kinds of schools that we want to improve.

And there are a lot of skills that are relevant to teaching, as well as knowing the subject, and I think that we have look for both of those things. But many states have laws that permit people to come in without credentials. The experience of people who have come in without the credentials has been very mixed, and most of those policies pick up credentials over a time after they come in to their profit. So I think that we should keep open some alternative entry points, but we should realize that students learn a lot in a good education program, as well. Both of these things are extremely important to effective teaching.

David Brudnoy: Thank you all. Let's go to the lady here in the auditorium. Ma'am?

Jim Peyser: Well, I guess that's addressed to me, unless, Gary, you'd like to answer that question. (laughter)

David Brudnoy: We have time for all. Go ahead, please.

Jim Peyser: I mean, I think it's a fair criticism that there has been a revision process under way with respect to essentially all the frameworks. With respect to math though, in particular, which is, I think, is particularly pertinent to the question you asked, I think there's been a misunderstanding about what the status quo has been. The status quo has been: we've had a framework that has been quite general in its language, which has been supplemented by something called a bridge document and other documents created formally and informally at local and state levels A) to inform teachers about what is expected of them and what their students are expected to learn, and B) to inform the people who are developing the test items on the MCAS because the original framework wasn't sufficiently detailed or specific to give them the information they needed.

Another thing related to that is that the grade spans under the original framework were quite broad. And again, therefore, in terms of providing some guidance to teachers about what was expected and what would be assessed, were not very useful. And so, there's been an attempt to create narrower grade spans two or three years. So, that's been the most of what's been going on. There has been, without question, a certain push and pull over the extent to which content knowledge and basic skills ought to be a component of and a foundation of a math education. And I think, actually, there's been a lot of debate on this, which has been more akin to figuring out how many angels are dancing around the head of a pin than what's actually going on in classrooms. But I do think we are reaching the end of this process. We're also reaching the end of it with respect to science and with respect to history. And it's my hope and intention that once we finish this revision process, those documents are going to be largely stable for a long time to come.

David Brudnoy: Gary?

Gary Orfield: Well, what I say about this is this is a symptom of why we shouldn't attach such high stakes to these things. We don't know what we're doing very well, and we're changing it all the time. And it's very related to politics. In California, a whole sophisticated, advanced math framework was developed, and then it was abandoned under a right-wing attack and simplistic, pre-computer math was put back in place. And a whole half of a decade of intense work of the teachers, and educators, and mathematicians, and the state was just flushed down the toilet. We have 49 different sets of standards in this country. Most of them aren't valid. They're not stable. They have got elements of politics in them. They don't have anything like the knowledge base that our national standardized tests have, and we're making extremely consequential decisions on the basis of these measures that aren't very well articulated and aren't even very stable. And I think we should, first of all, figure out what are goals are, and then train our teachers, and develop curriculum materials, and equalize opportunity, and then think about how to do the assessment part, rather than rushing into this in a half-baked way, changing it all the time, and then deciding people's lives on the basis of this moving target.

David Brudnoy: Thank you, Gary. Paul Reville, please. (applause)

Paul Reville: I think I sit between my two colleagues on this issue. I think that, first of all, we need standards. We desperately need standards. The world we had prior to standards-based reform was sort of a standards anarchy in which every school or school system decided to do what it wanted. What standards we had were vague, and there was zero accountability as a result. So some kids were served well, and others were served very poorly. On the other hand, I agree with the critics of standards-based reform who have said one of the problems that we have not just in Massachusetts, though it's richly illustrated in Massachusetts, but elsewhere is standards that have gotten too large, too inclusive, so sclerotic in terms of the sheer volume that they've become a curriculum, not a set of standards. The standard for standards was supposed to be that they were spare and economical, there were relatively few.

And a second problem, and not picking on Jim and his colleagues because when I was on the board, we promulgated a different set of frameworks, is the idea that irrespective of your ideology, we have had standards that are subject to frequent change based on the ideology of those who happen to be in power at a particular time. And that change was really not contemplated in terms of the theory of standards based reform. The notion was you'd have to have some stability over time in order for teachers to develop curriculum, do develop a pedagogy that aligned with the standards. And if you keep moving it, if it keeps being fluid because of changes, regardless of your ideological perspective, you will undermine the whole movement.

David Brudnoy: Thank you very much. Let's take a call on WBZ. Peter in Lancaster. Good evening, Peter. You're on WBZ.

Peter: Thank you. Sorry, but I think I do want to possibly beat up on Mr. Peyser and his colleagues. I once heard a comment from—

David Brudnoy: That's what you get for staying along, Jim. Go ahead, Peter.

Jim Peyser: Well, I'm sure the caller and I don't completely agree on this subject. However, I think the general point that he raises about the history and social science framework is not completely off base, meaning I think the framework is overly broad and I do think that there, in terms of the assessment, that we have not created an assessment or designed an assessment system that properly puts a focus on understanding and depth of knowledge at the center of history and social science instruction.

Having said that, I think there are many history and social science frameworks that have been developed, earlier drafts even of our own framework, which lacked the requisite content to constitute a serious history framework. But I think we do have a ways to go in order to bring the history framework, in particular in the assessments strategy, into line with good and reasonable practice. That's why it's not part of the graduation requirement that we have established for the class of 2003.

David Brudnoy: Thank you, sir, and thank you, Peter. We have a gentlemen here in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, please.

Audience member: Hello. I am worried that some communities will face large numbers of 10th graders who will fail the MCAS exam and may, therefore, face either as, I believe Mr. Orfield said, larger numbers of drop outs, or an increase in over-population in schools. And I'm wondering what measure the state is considering to address these two possibilities?

Jim Peyser: Well, there are a number of things. I mean, I think these are reasonable concerns. The first thing is that we need to make students, teachers, parents, everyone understand that by linking a high school diploma to effort and achievement that we're also saying that not everybody is going to make it in 12 years and that that's not sort of a black mark on their ... (inaudible), but actually that education is a continuing experience. And therefore, we need to make sure that we're providing continuing opportunities for young people who want to continue their education and get their diploma to pursue that. That means that there are some things we're going to need to do in school districts, there are going to be some things that we can do in community colleges, but it also means we have to look to some more untraditional sources, business, and worksite learning, community based organizations, and learning plans, and learning programs that can be done there.

One other thing though, I'd say, is that there's this general perception that the establishment of standards leads to high drop outs, and there's certainly some data to indicate that drop-out rates do increase when standards are imposed. But I would suggest that drop-out rates, which are already extremely high in the absence of standards, are in part that high because young people understand that when little is expected of them and there are no consequences for their lack of effort, that school doesn't matter much anyway. And these may not be A students, but they're not fools either, and I think that's one of the reasons why we see drop-out rates as high as they are.

David Brudnoy: Thanks, Jim. Some comments from the other panelists here, and then we'll break.

Gary Orfield: This is a typical example of the kind of theology of this doctrine. We actually have a lot of data about what happens. The National Academy of Science came out with a report saying drop outs go up when we put in these tests. In Texas, which is the most famous example of high-stakes tests, the drop outs for Blacks and Latino children, who are the majority of all the children in the state of Texas, went up from around 40 percent to over 50 percent, according to a study at the Testing Center at Boston College. There is over half of the majority populations of the state of Texas aren't graduating from high school.

Now, some people say it doesn't matter if you don't graduate if we have a higher standard. But holding kids back and having them repeat grades, we've been studying this for 40 years, it does not increase achievement levels, it's extremely costly, it produces very, very strong social upheaval in schools when you have a lot of kids that are over age, and it's the number one predictor of drop outs. We should be using diagnostic tests that give us the information early to intervene, to teach these young people, not to flunk them, and not to deny them diplomas. Diplomas are extremely important to young people's lives.

Henry Levin at Columbia University just completed a study that shows that completing an extra year of school is worth four times as much in terms of income as getting one grade level higher on a national standardized test. If we flunk people and deny them diplomas and we don't even get that increase in the national standardized test, we're really making them economically unviable as adults, and we're effecting their communities in devastating ways, and it'll predictably hurt poor kids and minority kids the most. And I think that this is not a theory. This is an actual, fairly well established fact, and it's an extremely serious risk. And people are acting as if we don't have this kind of information, and we do.

David Brudnoy: Gary, thank you. Let's get a comment from Paul Reville, please.

Paul Reville: I think we need to be careful at applying the lessons learned from large scale standardized testing in the absence of clear standards and high standards to today's situation in Massachusetts and some of the other states where a very concerted effort to build clear standards and frameworks that go along with them and provide support to teachers to help students achieve those standards. These are sort of different situations now, and the jury is still out. We don't know, and we've had some problems in terms of what we're doing in terms of implementation here.

But I think there is reason to be hopeful. We have seen situations where the presence of high standards and a concerted focus on teaching has resulted in student gains in learning. And I think what we need to concentrate on now, I buy Gary's argument about the diploma. This is meaningful. In the state of Maryland, parents of inner-city children came forward and said, "Whether you think that a high school diploma is meaningless or not is not important to us. It does have meaning to our children in terms of getting into employment." I think what we need to concentrate on in education is how do we create that meaningful opportunity to learn? How do we change teaching so that we get the higher results that we're looking for right now, and the standards are designed to focus the attention of the system on that challenge.

David Brudnoy: Thank you all. We'll have to take a break. Our number is 254-1030. This is WBZ. It's 9: 38. We'll be back right after this on WBZ-News Radio 1030.

David Brudnoy: WBZ time is exactly 9: 41. We are joined on this panel by the Speaker of the House, who couldn't resist. And actually, he was kind enough to stay with us, Tom Finneran, who is filling in now for Jim Peyser who had to go. And also, we're joined here by Paul Reville and by Gary Orfield. I'm David Brudnoy. Sir, over here, if you'd be kind enough to put your question or your comment to the panel.

Fred Birkett: Sure. Thank you. My name is Fred Birkett. I'm the director of the Benjamin Banneker Charter School here in Cambridge. And I say that for a reason because I don't know how much you know about the charter school. It's a predominantly African American and Caribbean school, a black school, 99 percent. And last year, we did very poorly on the MCAS. And we had decided there were two ways we could look at it. We could just hang our heads, get angry, blame the system, or we could say to our students and parents, "You know what? We're going to make this thing work. We're going to turn this thing around, figure out what we're doing in instruction, and figure out what we're doing in the classroom, figure out what the parents can do, and turn this thing around."

And one of the points or the questions I want to ask and points I want to make is this. There's always an assumption that the reason why we should abandon standardized tests and assessments is because poor, minority students are not doing well. And what appears to be happening here in this state, and it happens in other states as well, is that, as one woman put it, we keep moving the target. And what we've decided at Banneker is, well, if the target is MCAS, then we're going to go for it and we're going to do everything we can do to make it happen. Now we're not teaching to the test and we're not trying to just focus on that, but we've decided to allow that test to help us focus on instruction in learning.

And then, so the question that I have is what is the state doing to help schools do better? If this is what the assessment and standard is going to be, what is the state going to do to come in and help schools do better? Now, we did some things ourselves in the school. We got together as teachers and staff and decided what we needed to do. We made the changes, and we're more than hopeful, and we are pretty positive about the changes that we're going to have next year. But I think that there needs to be, if you're going to have assessments, there has to be more support put into the system to make sure that the schools do well, i.e., students do well so that, in fact, it gives more validity to the test and to the assessment.

David Brudnoy: Fred, thank you. A very good point. Let's start with Speaker Finneran, then move around the table here.

Thomas Finneran: I'm going to try to respond very quickly in three parts. First, I'd commend you on the attitude. You can gripe, you can complain, you can whine your way through life about anything, but I'd commend you on the attitude. You should bring a can-do attitude to this because it can be done. The test is not impossible. It's rigorous, but it's not unreasonable. Second, I would praise you to the skies for your determination to get the parents involved. Good education will never occur unless there are parents that are involved or can be encouraged to at least encourage their children. And so, you've hit the ball twice squarely.

Where the state, I think, is making a good-faith attempt to hit the ball as squarely is in the MCAS remediation funds that we have begun to provide. Two years ago, and in the House budget, which just passed, we did a very unusual thing. We made an additional two-year forward commitment with additional resources. That's for weekend programs, summer programs, after school programs, and the like because there is no question about it, particularly in urban systems, there have to be additional focus provided so that everybody can get over the bar not with a lift, but with the adequate foundation having been prepared.

David Brudnoy: Thanks very much, Tom. Let's go to Gary Orfield, please.

Gary Orfield: I think it's very important to focus on standards, and it's a good thing that you're doing, to move ahead on making progress. What I'm worried about arises from the history of what happens in these cases. Everybody makes the same speech that you made, basically, in the first and second year, and then comes the time when you actually see what happens. Some schools figure out how to get over this bar, but most of the schools don't that have kids who are from poorly educated backgrounds.

And what happened, for example, in Florida, which was the first state to adopt high-stakes testing, back in the late 1970's, there was a federal court case that showed 1/4 of the black kids in that state weren't going to get high school diplomas after they had finished all their classes. In response to that case, the federal court ordered protections, and warnings, and remediation, and so forth. And now, 20 years later, Florida has the third highest drop out rate in the United States, a very poor completion rate.

These things don't automatically cure themselves, in spite of people's wills, and they do have a very systematic affect in the long run, in most cases, and it's something we really need to worry about. So we should try to figure out how to have the standards and make the progress and reward people who make progress without attaching a consequence that the National Academy of Sciences and all the testing organizations say we should never do, which is to judge a child's life completely on the basis of one test, often on the basis of one or two items on one particular day. In other words, I have no objection to having this test be one of the diagnostic tools. But to use that as the exclusive thing that judges whether a child receives a diploma and can go onto higher education, under the kinds of circumstances we have and the reality in our society, is a mistake and it goes against the ethics of the testing profession, it goes against the recommendations of the Educational Testing Service, it goes against the recommendations of almost everybody who's serious in this business, including the people who run, now, the Executive Director of ACHIEVE, which is one of the organizations that advocates standards. He's now saying, Bob Schwartz is saying we shouldn't judge solely on one item. And that's what Massachusetts is preparing to do. The consequences of that are going to be really negative, in spite of the best efforts of wonderful educators like yourself.

David Brudnoy: Thanks very much, Gary. (applause) Paul Reville, please.

Paul Reville: You know, the standards-based reform is, fundamentally, an equity strategy, and I think the testimony we just heard from the headmaster of the Banneker School is testimony to that. I wanted to say, "Bingo," when I heard what you were doing. It's all about expectations. And prior to having clear standards and a way of measure progress against those standards, we had no way of assuring that children in the inner-city, for example, were getting the kind of rich academic diet that we take for granted in some of our suburbs. So, we need standards. I am sympathetic with Gary's point about not overweighing the test with high stakes based on a single test for life-controlling kinds of decisions.

I would say in response to your question about the state that though, as the Speaker points out, we are doing the remediation and he modestly doesn't mention the seven years of funding that the state has engaged in in terms of giving districts and charter schools by extension of enough money to do their work. At the same time, I don't think we're doing enough by way of state planning and by way of professional development to really get in there and help with effective practice in schools. Because now that we've got the standards, and we've got the tests, and we've got an accountability system, it shifts over to being about teaching. If we keep teaching the way we've been teaching in the Commonwealth, we're going to keep getting the unevenly distributed results we've been getting. If we're willing to take the risks of changing practice and if we're willing to give our teachers some help in doing so, we have a chance of achieving the ambitious goals of standards based reform.

David Brudnoy: Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Fred. Let's take a call. Peter in Framingham, good evening. You're on WBZ.

David Brudnoy: Tom, let's start with you and right around the table. Thanks, Peter.

Thomas Finneran: I'll try. We've been at this all night long, and obviously there's immense frustration on all sides of the question. Grades 4, 8, and 10 where we administer those tests, they are as much a diagnostic tool in order to give the teaching professionals, as well as parents and other interested parties, an opportunity to really focus in and hone in on it. And for all the description, kind of excess rhetorical description that's talked about one single item, and this is a life-determining event. If in fact, as a 10th grader, I struggle through and fail to achieve a relatively low score now, at least in terms of the passing on the English and the math, I still have another two grades to go at which I assume I have a good professional, such as yourself, at my side or at the head of the classroom who can really begin to orient me in the direction that I need to face in order to succeed.

David Brudnoy: Gary Orfield.

Gary Orfield: Well this is, you have these same kinds of warnings in Cleveland, and in Texas, and other places, and students take these 12, 13, 14 times, and you still get the kinds of results that I'm talking about. Repeating this test doesn't necessarily mean passing it, and passing is systematically related to their family income, and how wealthy your community is, and many other things, and it tends to deepen inequalities in a community. Now, none of that's to say that, and this is not really a diagnostic test in a good way. If somebody gave you a diagnosis for cancer and reported back a year and a quarter later about what you should have done in the beginning of the previous school year to help treat that, it wouldn't be an effective diagnosis. A good diagnosis should be prompt, it should be specific, and it should link to resources for treatment. And that's the kind of assessment that we should try to figure out how to do. This is not it.

David Brudnoy: Paul?

Paul Reville: I guess I have to disagree on that. The way in which the results of the MCAS are being distributed to teachers lends itself to exactly the kind of diagnostic treatment that Gary is talking about. But to the caller's question, nobody's questioning the competency of educators here. In fact, no group had more involvement in developing standards, in developing the test, and in scoring the test than teachers. It's almost exclusively been done by teachers throughout, and appropriately so because that was the design of the reform, that the professionals would know best what the standards ought to be, what the questions ought to be, and how they ought to be scored. And incidentally, there is a local graduation requirement that precedes the MCAS requirement. So though it may be true that we're still, in all, putting too much weight on MCAS, at the same time, we're relying to a tremendous degree on the competence of local educators.

David Brudnoy: Thank you all. We have to take a little break here. The time is 9: 52. Our number, 254-1030. The area code is 617. I'm David Brudnoy. We'll be back with you right after this on WBZ-News Radio 1030.

David Brudnoy: WBZ time is 9: 55. I'm David Brudnoy. With me, Paul Reville, Gary Orfield, and Tom Finneran. Ma'am, please, your comment or question.

Evangeline Stefanakis: My name is Evangeline Stefanakis, and I'm here, a faculty member involved with bilingual and special education. My question here is to, it actually was to Mr. Peyser, but I will continue with it. The MCAS stands for comprehensive assessment system, not a single test. And in fact, from 1994 to 1997, Harvard Project Zero and the Department of Ed had a partnership to develop portfolio assessment in 13 schools with high proportions of children with bilingual and special needs. These were schools in urban centers where multiple formats of assessment would have been a preferred model. This, in 1997, as a result of political concerns, were shelved, yet it would be, in fact, a way to adequately have teachers, it was a professional development avenue of teachers looking at student work, looking across K to eight twice a month, gather the student work and assessing it for, it was designed around the curriculum frameworks. Could you comment on what efforts the state is making to consider portfolios, which, in fact, are measures that are highly recommended for students, especially in the area of ... (inaudible)?

David Brudnoy: Good point. We'll have to get very brief comments. Let's start with Tom.

Thomas Finneran: My sense is that the state has not totally excluded that, that we'll probably continue to move in that direction, but perhaps not at the pace that you would apparently prefer.

David Brudnoy: Thank you, Tom Finneran. Gary Orfield, please.

Gary Orfield: The largest minority group in Massachusetts now is Latino. It's growing extremely rapidly. It's projected to continue to grow. These tests did not adequately assess children who are being tested in their second language, and their skill in the first language is completely discounted. And we get underestimates of their achievement level in these tests, and that's one of many problems. And I think we need multiple measures for these children to give them a fair chance to go forward with their education.

David Brudnoy: Paul Reville?

Paul Reville: David, one of the things I'm afraid is, in our vigorous debate over education reform and over these tests, that we knock out the whole concept of standards-based reform as an equity strategy for students, and I think we've got to strive to find some middle ground. And I think the test, the high-stakes test is one area in which we could do that, and we would do well to look at the kind of portfolio based assessment as an augmentation to MCAS, that Van [Stefanakis] suggested. We've made an enormous investment as a commonwealth in changing and improving our schools and developing student learning, and I think we run the risk of knocking all that gain and forward motion down if we get caught in an internecine struggle over testing. So, I think we ought to be looking for positive solutions. We all agree on a lot of things like improving schools, equity for all students, things of that nature—

Thomas Finneran: Parental involvement.

Paul Reville: — and we've got to find a way to work together.

Gary Orfield: Amen.

Thomas Finneran: The most crucial element of all, parental involvement.

David Brudnoy: Ma'am, thank you for bringing up the topic. It's an important one. Let me thank our panelists during this hour. I won't mention all of them in the other hours. Paul Reville, Gary Orfield, and Tom Finneran, thank you all for being with us tonight. We appreciate it very much. (applause)...We want to thank them all, and all of you here in the Harvard Graduate School of Education Askwith Hall tonight for joining us and staying with us throughout the entire evening. I wish we had time to talk with more of you. We appreciate the time you're with us, and I hope you stay tuned when you go home, and listen to WBZ all the time, every day, as it says right over there. Thank you for being with us, and that's it. Good night. (applause)

For More Information
Information on Gary Orfield and Paul Reville can be found in the Faculty Profiles.

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