MassInsight Education
October 2003
MassInsight Education is the source of this revealing survey of Bay State high-school students who failed the state's MCAS exams at least once. The goal was to determine, from the young people's perspective, what difference MCAS was making in their lives and what uses (if any) they are making of various forms of academic support to boost their prospects for passing this crucial test. The findings depict a half-full, half-empty situation. On the upside, 82 percent "of students who did not pass MCAS on the first try now report having participated in opportunities for extra help. . . . [Forty-seven] percent say they are increasing their level of effort in their schoolwork. . . . Nearly two-thirds . . . cite participation in extra-help programs as either a big or small reason for their success in passing the retest." On the downside: almost 9 in ten students who failed MCAS the first time around had a high-school GPA of "C" or better-and 71 percent of them plan to go to college. In other words, a chasm yawns between the reality of their performance as gauged by the state exit exam and their impression of performance as refracted by school results and life plans. Are they living in a fool's paradise? Writing about this study at Washingtonpost.com, veteran education journalist Jay Mathews described the failing students as "confused" over "what got them into this fix. The researchers interviewed about 600 of them and the vast majority said something like: how could I flunk this test when I was passing my English and math classes?" As Mathews observes, "teachers . . . have no business giving students the impression that they are going to graduate from high school. They award these phony passing grades, at least in part, because they didn't want to deal with angry kids, angry parents, and angry principals." You can find the MassInsight report at http://www.massinsight.org/pdf/SeizingtheDayReport.pdf, and Mathews's excellent column about it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25571-2003Nov11.html.
