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Critics Urge State to Halt Plans for Science Test Requirement

Posted on: Thursday, 26 May 2005, 15:00 CDT

May 26--Scientists, teachers, and a group of lawmakers are urging the state Board of Education to shelve or delay a plan to require the class of 2010 to pass standardized science tests to graduate.

A group, which calls itself Massachusetts Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education, today plans to announce its opposition, arguing that standardized tests will detract from the hands-on experiments that are crucial to science instruction.

The group is a mix of university scientists, teachers, and others who oppose standardized tests. Separately, 27 lawmakers plan to send a letter to the state urging a delay of the science test requirement for fear that students do not have time to prepare.

Science was always intended to be a graduation requirement, along with foreign languages and history, as a part of the 1993 Education Reform Act. But the state Board of Education has not set a date for science testing. Pressured by Governor Mitt Romney to act, the board plans to vote next month to make passing a science test a graduation requirement, beginning with the class of 2010.

The group of scientists and teachers want the state to halt the plan and focus resources on lab instruction instead of test preparation.

"If you're in Cape Cod, how do you teach about the aquasystem? You go to the seashore. That can't be on a standardized test that's written in some other state and scored by computer," said Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a critic of standardized tests. "So what happens is, you drop the field trip, you drop the real experiments, and you simply take the previous year's test and start drilling kids for the test."

But Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said the critics were merely repeating the same fears long voiced by MCAS opponents.

"They put a science spin on it, but the same nervous Nellies that didn't like MCAS in the first place are back at it again," he said.

"We had the same problem with English and math. The sky was going to fall, the dropout rate was going to go up, all these kids were going to be denied their diplomas," Driscoll said.

"The fact of the matter is, we go at this very logically. What we ask these kids to know and to do will be minimal, as it is in English and math."

Students have shown dramatic improvement since the annual MCAS tests were launched in 1998, alleviating some fears about the test while increasing some concerns that schools have been focusing their instruction on passing MCAS. Ninety-five percent of the class of 2003 passed the test and 96 percent of the class of 2004 succeeded.

Last year's results showed that four out of five sophomores passed the MCAS on their first try -- an increase from 75 percent in 2003 and 68 percent in 2001.

Fifth and eighth-graders now take science tests. In January, Governor Mitt Romney pushed the Board of Education to begin requiring the tests, saying high school students should pass one of four exams in biology, chemistry, physics, or technology/engineering before they graduate. This week, students are taking pilot tests in each of those subjects, but since the tests are still being honed, the students will not get the results, said education department spokeswoman Heidi Perlman.

The board has asked for public comment on making the science test a graduation requirement; depending upon the feedback, he expected the board would make it effective for the class of 2010. Students would begin taking the tests a few years before scores would count.

The state's schedule for the test would change if the passing rates are too low in 2006 and 2007, before scores would count, Driscoll said.

"If there's anything that concerns us, then I would recommend that we delay it," he said.

Representative Alice Hanlon Peisch, a Wellesley Democrat who wrote a letter expressing some lawmakers' concerns, said she believes students currently are not prepared well enough to succeed.

"I'm not necessarily averse to it sometime in the future," said Peisch, a former member of the Wellesley School Committee.

Joseph O'Sullivan, president of Brockton Education Association, who signed onto the science educators' letter, said schools don't get enough funding to meet the new requirements.

He also said that new immigrants are at a disadvantage in the high-stakes test.

"How would you like to go to Japan and take a test in Japanese that determines what you do for the rest of your life?" he asked.

As a science teacher for 19 years, O'Sullivan based more than half of students' grades on their lab reports because he wanted to be sure they could apply what they learned to experiments. He said a standardized test is an inadequate measure and that students who fail will unfairly be penalized for life.

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Source: The Boston Globe

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