Yes, it's that time of year

And in a column that I'm sure many parents will find themselves in, I offer this from the Mansfield News (which they've taken down online, so I'm putting it here in full):

"Oh no," my seventh-grader groaned Monday morning, recalling his schedule
for the upcoming day. "We have MCAS today . again."

By the time you read this, the seventh-graders will have had 10 hours of
MCAS (which stands for Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System)
testing, in writing and reading, over the course of seven school days. The
math MCAS tests come up in May. And believe it or not, seventh grade is
somewhat of an "off year" when it came to MCAS testing.

Sometimes a seemingly good idea can mushroom and expand until its original
intent is lost in its own enormity. It looks like this is the case with the
MCAS.

A product of the state's Education Reform Act of 1993, MCAS testing started
out as a good idea - a test of the school districts, not the students. The
original intent was to assess Massachusetts's public school districts to
make sure they were meeting certain baseline standards. In order to measure
their success, it was decided to test students in three key grades: fourth
grade, eighth grade, and 10th grade, in the two fundamental subjects:
English and mathematics. The Department of Education believed that certain
benchmarks should have been met in those two subjects by those levels. If a
district's results indicated that its students weren't performing as well as
their peers statewide, that district could then evaluate what wasn't working
and pinpoint areas to improve.

Since that time, however, the MCAS has somehow fed on its own success and
has expanded into a bit of a fire-breathing dragon, terrorizing students and
school staff alike.

English and math MCAS tests were implemented in other grades beyond the
three baseline grades. In addition, more tests were added in science and
social studies, the implementation of which has forced school districts
across the state to substantially modify their curricula to make sure that
certain areas are covered before the students in those grades take the MCAS.
Those curricular changes cost money and time. Is it really necessary, for
example, for every child to know the names of all the various rocks and
minerals in fifth grade rather than in sixth? The MCAS schedule takes much
autonomy out of school districts' own planning.

Then, enter the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, a
directive, with no funding attached, that demands the progress of all public
school students be measured annually for math and reading in grades 3, 4, 5,
6, 7 and 8 and at least once in high school. Some states had to scramble to
put together a reporting system, but Massachusetts already had the MCAS in
place.

So much for toning it down.

Thanks to NCLB, kids across the country are now grinding away at
standardized tests so their states can report "progress" - a subjective
concept that surely cannot be determined by standardized test results alone.

And is it really necessary to test in all of those grades every single year?
Yes, the school districts get some nice statistical information, but they
also lose a lot of instruction time preparing for and administering all
these tests.

More importantly, the tests have inevitably become about the kids, not their
school districts. Human beings can't and shouldn't be reduced to a grade on
a set of standardized tests. Each individual child is an amalgamation of
many talents.

Standardized testing can't show artistic gifts, musical aptitude, athletic
prowess, or oratory talent.

Moreover, many children are audio learners and have a hard time - not a hard
enough time to merit special education services, but a difficult time
nonetheless - with lengthy written tests. Are the MCAS, or any standardized
tests, an accurate measure of those children's abilities?

When asked for two adjectives to describe the MCAS, my seventh-grader, who
is lucky enough to perform well on standardized tests, immediately offered
up these two: "tedious and boring." His words, not mine. As they say, "out
of the mouths of babes." And I think his is one of the more positive
reviews.

Lots of kids experience fear and anxiety before the MCAS tests. A family
friend of ours, an elementary-school age child, was scared out of his wits
to go to school last year on the scheduled day of the MCAS. I'm sure that's
a scenario that's duplicated across the state. It's regrettable that stress
on a child is a byproduct of the MCAS, but it is, of course, inevitable.

If we want to test the school districts, let's try to do that without
terrorizing the children and making them dread going to school.

Calling on the state and federal governments to shorten and tighten up these
tests, and de-emphasize their importance, would be a good start.

Deborah Knight Snyder is a longtime correspondent for the Mansfield News,
Norton Mirror and Easton Journal. She can be reached at mansfield@cnc.com.