"This is like choosing people as healthy or unhealthy based on blood pressure," he said.
Some educational advocates are fuming that schools will be evaluated on a test as new as the MCAS (it was first given in 1998), but Cellucci is happy to take them on.
Though certainly trying to forward his education agenda, the governor has made the issue too personal for teachers, directing his fire at the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA).
He has said his job is to not to befriend teachers, a sentiment shared by Massachusetts Speaker of the House Thomas M. Finneran (D-Mattapan).
"It's not unfair to insist that there be a validation of competence," Finneran said. "[The MTA] is ever concerned with keeping the status quo."
Trying to shake up the status quo, Cellucci has also been working on having veteran teachers pass a test like that which novice teachers must take.
And though Finneran infamously labeled the 59 percent of the prospective teachers who failed the first teacher tests in April of 1998 "idiots," he is not a big advocate of extending testing to seasoned veterans.
"I'd like to think that we would find a way of measuring proficiency without a pencil and paper test," Finneran said.
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