MCAS is everywhere.
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is a battery of exams in language arts, social studies, math and science administered to fourth, eighth and tenth graders. Students are scored in each area as being advanced, proficient, needing improvement or failing.
Over the next two weeks, fourth graders will take seven separate exams and eighth and tenth graders will take 12 exams, each about an hour long.
Opponents of the test will rally Monday at the State House to present legislators with an anti-MCAS petition and protest the length and format of the exam, which they say narrows curriculum and turns schooling into an massive MCAS test-prep exercise.
Even Kaplan, the company that offers books and courses in preparing for standardized tests like the SAT, is getting in on the act; their Parent's Guide to the MCAS 4th Grade Tests sells for $5.95.
Words from both sides suggest two areas of underlying agreement among the discord: achievement tests are worthwhile, but MCAS is an imperfect instrument.
A Test Which Tries Too Hard?
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