School leaders say MCAS change adds to pandemic stress

Date: 9/8/2022

WESTFIELD – The state is raising the minimum MCAS score needed for students to pass beginning in 2024, and some school officials are concerned that the change will only make life harder for students still recovering from the challenges of pandemic-era education.

Beginning with the class of 2026, this year’s high school freshmen, students will be required to earn a scaled score of 486 on the English and math MCAS exams, or a 470 plus the completion of an educational proficiency plan. The current threshold for English is 472, or 455 with a proficiency plan, while the math exam already requires a 486, or 469 with a plan. The state mandates that passing these tests, which are administered in 10th grade with an opportunity to be retaken in subsequent years, is required to earn a high school diploma.

Local superintendents have signaled their disapproval of changing the test score requirements so soon after the disruption of the COVID-19 state of emergency.

“I think it only demonstrates that members of the hierarchy of K-12 education in Massachusetts are not considering what our students have been through the last two years,” said Westfield School Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski. “Before we focus on raising test scores, we have to focus on students’ mental health so they can be school-ready.”

Czaporowski said that there has almost certainly been a negative impact from the coronavirus pandemic on education, and while districts everywhere are working to mitigate those impacts, they cannot fix it overnight.

“No magic wand is going to make them all better,” said Czaporowski.

For Westfield and many communities in Hampden County, there has been a recent influx in refugees, many from Ukraine, settling into the community and attending local schools. Czaporowski said 62 refugees came to Westfield’s schools in the spring, most of whom had just faced extreme trauma and probably are not going to be as invested in the MCAS exam, and may struggle with the English language to begin with.

Gateway School Superintendent Kristen Smidy said that it was telling that many members of the state Legislature voiced their opposition to the plan to raise the passing score. As the plan was only announced last month and will not go into effect until 2024, Smidy said there are still unknowns.

“Are they going to change the scaling? Will there be different content?” said Smidy.

Gateway has underperformed in the MCAS exam in the past, Smidy said, so this will impact many students within the district, which includes Blandford, Chester, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery and Russell. Recent MCAS data is spotty, however, due to disruption from the coronavirus pandemic, the test not counting towards graduation for a year, and last year’s results still pending. Smidy said it is unclear where Gateway students are in comparison to the rest of the state.

“I am anxious to see the data this year. We have done a lot of work on instructional practices, so we would expect to see some growth,” said Smidy.

Jennifer Willard, the superintendent of the Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District, said she wanted to see more information about this year’s MCAS exams before developing an opinion about the score changes.

Both Smidy and Czaporowski shared similar views on the MCAS exams in general. They each said they believed that the test is valuable as a way to gauge where each district is compared to other districts in the state, and show where improvement is needed, but that it should not be a requirement for high school graduation.

“I think for some of our students who don’t test well and get nervous about such a high-stakes test, it is a disservice to them,” said Czaporowski