Before I get into this, I want to be clear- I am not a teacher who has been opposing MCAS my entire career, or even at all. I don’t lament over what a burden it is or feel overwhelmingly stifled by it’s existence and any perceived limitations it places on my teaching. My students have always done (extremely) well on MCAS testing and I have always found joy in preparing them for an exam, seeing how powerful they feel dominating it, and seeing more students than I can count exceed their own expectations, earn scholarships, and even break records in my district each year. So, just to be clear, I am not typically an MCAS hater.
That being said, it is unconstitutional, racist, classist, and generally discriminatory against students who belong to a wide range of marginalized groups.
I guess that’s partially why I love teaching students how to destroy it, because that’s all that seems to be in my, and their, power, as actually changing it seems too far out of reach.
So I was surprised, to say the least, to see that on pretty much every news source I could find, an article either about how one of the essays will not be scored, as it was found to be racist and traumatizing, or about how N.A.A.C.P. and countless teaching and educational organizations are demanding that the entire test be invalidated. I found this surprising because I truly never expected the MCAS to be held accountable or even publicly called out for all of it’s dangerously discriminatory crimes.
I was also surprised because the first time I heard about this shockingly racist question was on the news. I didn’t see it myself while I proctored my students responding to it. I didn’t hear any student or teacher talking about it. And now, that is terrifying.
In short, part of the exam included a brief passage from Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad, and the essay required students to write a journal entry from the perspective of the character Ethel, a white woman who is openly racist and derogatory towards the character Cora, a black woman who is a slave seeking freedom.
Feedback from the courageous students, teachers, and administrators who broke the cardinal rule of not discussing the exam shows that many students, white as well as students of color, were deeply disturbed and even traumatized by having to channel their creative writing skills into an offensive and racist narrative for an exam that determines whether or not they earn a diploma (and, best case scenario, college scholarships).
Whitehead himself, who did not consent to his writing being used in this context, expressed outrage that students were put in such a position that threatened invalidation of their exam if they dared to discuss it.
Also..this is the first year that the 10th Grade ELA MCAS was on the computer. This theoretically brings a lot of advantages- copy and paste, quicker scoring, catching up to the rest of the world in terms of technology. Unfortunately, it also favors students who have had the privilege of consistent access to computers throughout their lives and can type and navigate a computer with ease (there are not standardized tests for typing or computer skills, so- and as far as I know- my district eliminated such classes years ago).
Another perceived advantage, that now is beyond disturbing, is that students who require the accommodation of having the exam read aloud to them, are now able to have the test read to them by the computer through headphones. As a teacher with a Special Education background, this was exciting to me. Not only does it foster independence for students, it allows students to be more mainstreamed in testing rooms. These are Inclusion Wins.
However- this also means that any educators who would have otherwise been exposed to the test and noticed the shockingly inappropriate task….weren’t.
Which means that, if all goes according to plan, no adults in the building would have any idea what their students were enduring, and the students, threatened with the reality that their exams could be immediately invalidated and future diploma preemptively revoked, knew better than to try to voice their concerns to their teachers.
Besides, as my student so eloquently explained today after learning the news, “I did think it was racist, but I know the world can be cruel and all and just figured this was another one of those times.”
Too many of the students taking this test are so desensitized to systemic racism that it doesn’t even occur to them to complain about it.
Let that sink in.
My classes sat in a Community Circle today to read the articles and discuss our thoughts and feelings about it. We passed around the Conch shell, our talking piece, and suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Students often complain about the process of test taking while they are taking the test. The days are long, it’s boring, silent, exhausting, sitting in uncomfortable desks and chair from 8 am until 2:45, some without so much as a stretch break. They complain all the time, rightfully so, and psyching them back up and encouraging them and throwing peppermints and granola bars and thumbs up! signs at them in response is so second nature that I didn’t process the gravity of this memory until we were knee-deep in an emotional and thoughtful debrief about the question.
The day of this test question, one of my students repeatedly told me that she was refusing to answer one of the open response questions. A student who stands out among her peers for being hard-working, academically driven. I had never seen her refuse to do work, especially something so high stakes. I attributed it to exhaustion, and encouraged her.
She refused, and I patted her on the shoulder and told her I was confident in her and that she needs to be confident in herself.
She refused, and I told her to take a walk, to drink some water.
She refused, and I told her to put her head down for a couple minutes and meditate, like we practiced in class.
She refused, and I told her that this test was important, and if she just accepted that this was one of those times where we have to do things we don’t enjoy because they are important, it would all be over soon and she would never have to take another ELA MCAS for the rest of her life.
She refused, and I didn’t stop to ask her, really ask her, why.
I wish I did.
This memory hit me with a wave of nausea like a tsunami.
I am their teacher, and I was complicit in their forced silence.
…in invalidating their instincts.
…in promoting racism.
I reinforced systemic oppression when I should have been an ally and an upstander.
Because I trusted that this exam would be no more racist than previous ones, which meant that it’s run-of-the-mill, ignorant errors in judgment would be easily spotted and navigated and decimated, thanks to our pre-test pep talks, and then added to the growing list of micro-aggressions we see everywhere in education in this country.
I was wrong, and I felt sick.
This student sat to my right in our circle. When the Conch reached me, I asked her if she remembered how many times she expressed that she didn’t want to answer the question, and how many times I had encouraged her to answer it anyway.
She nodded, and I thought I might cry.
“I should have asked you why you didn’t want to. I should have. I wish I did. I’m really sorry.”
She smiled and let me know that it was okay. But it isn’t.
“I wish I did. I’m sorry.”
At this point, several students spoke at once, breaking the rules of the Conch talking piece. Because maybe, if nothing else, this experience has shown them the importance of
speaking when they know they have something important to say, even (and especially) when there are clear rules threatening them not to.
They assured me that I didn’t have to feel bad, that I was only doing what I thought I was supposed to do, knowing not to ask specifics because I could possibly lose my teaching license if I did.
That I was doing the same thing they were- not talking about the test.
We were all following the rules for fear of punishment, and that’s why none of us had woken up to the fact that something really, really wrong was happening.
I momentarily felt guilty in that moment that my students were comforting me, when I intended to be comforting them, but realized that this is one of infinite moments where my students demonstrate the empathy and compassion that I all too often find lacking in the adults who criticize them, and remembered the hope they give me for the future.
Our conversation continued, with other examples and personal stories about how we have observed the MCAS test to be racially and culturally insensitive, as well as sexist, classist, and ableist.
The truth is, the MCAS has *always* been unconstitutional. It began, probably, with Question #2 on the ballots in 2002, the year I graduated high school and the last year that students didn’t need to pass MCAS to graduate with a diploma.
Question #2 was also known as The Massachusetts English Language Education in Public Schools Initiative. It passed, which meant that all students in Massachusetts were required to be “taught English by being taught all subjects in English and being placed in English language classrooms.“* This includes students who have just moved to the country, who have few to no skills in English, and means that, for example, a student who moves here from Germany**, speaking only German, is required to demonstrate proficiency in comprehending Biology completely in English, and has the same requirements as their peer, who was born in this country and has grown up with English as their first language.
It also meant that the English Language Arts MCAS, a test alleging to solely assess skills in reading and writing, would be in English, without exception.
Which means, regardless of how skilled a student is in reading and writing in German, or Italian, or Spanish, or Creole, or Swahili, that a student would be told that they do not, in fact, have developmentally appropriate reading and/or writing skills because they do not currently demonstrate the same mastery of a second language compared to their peers in their first language.
And because, according to our Constitution, the United States of America intentionally does not declare a national language, refusing a student a diploma for their progress in learning the English language is absolutely, unequivocally, 100% unconstitutional.
And within that, it is also xenophonic, and then racist, and classist.
And until now, that understanding has felt too far away for people to care about enough to actually change.
But then, I used to think the same thing about collecting plastic grocery bags, laughing at homophobic humor in mainstream sitcoms, and overlooking men in power who ignore social cues while invading the personal space of others.
In short: Time’s Up. For everyone who is abusing power and harming anyone with a limited voice.
And today, Time’s Up for racially and culturally insensitive high-stakes tests. You were able to slide under the radar, for the most part, for a long time. But the day you required students of color to identify with and adopt the perspective of a disgustingly racist white person sabotaging the freedom of slaves in order to graduate from high school was the day you blew your own cover. It’s all coming out now.
We ALL deserve better than this. Time’s Up, and this is our catalyst to fight back.
What a time to be alive.
*https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_English_in_Public_Schools_Initiative,_Question_2_(2002)
**I used Germany as a first example, because I have found that, for *some* reason, society tends to be far more understanding to immigrants who are English Language Learners when they are come from predominantly white countries. It’s not right. It’s just true.
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