A student's graduation from high school should never be contingent on one standardized test. While MCAS will help districts measure the relative success of their curricula in certain areas, it will also inflict too much punishment on too many students. High standards are important to improving student performance, but if they are coupled with a punitive test, Massachusetts education will suffer rather than benefit.

Better Schools, Not Lower Standards

The staff worries that students will have trouble finding jobs without high school diplomas. We agree, but we also believe students will have trouble finding jobs if they cannot read, write and perform basic math.

The MCAS standards demand that high school seniors pass a relatively basic math and English test geared toward tenth graders. Questions ask students to identify the main clause in a sentence, identify the rate of increase if the minimum wage goes from $5.25 per hour to $5.75 per hour and demonstrate similar basic skills. The staff shortchanges high schoolers when it suggests this is an unreasonably high standard of material to expect them to know. And the staff would do the students no favors by sending them out into the world without these basic math and English skills.

While the staff is right to worry that too many students will fail these tests if nothing is done, the right thing to do is not to abolish the test as a graduation requirement--it is to give students the skills they need to pass the tests and succeed outside of high school. Similarly, if minority students and students from urban districts fare poorly on the test, this indicates a need to devote more educational resources to those districts, not a need to exempt those districts from standards altogether.

Instead of giving diplomas to poorly qualified students, schools should use the test to target remedial instruction and keep students in school until they've really earned their degrees.

--Vasant M. Kamath '02, Rachel P. Kovner '01 and Scott A. Resnick '01