Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 6/26/2023
LUDLOW — Shannon Anderson and Michelle D’Amore from the Ludlow Education Association appeared before the School Committee at its June 13 meeing to discuss the Thrive Act.
The Thrive Act proposes the replacement of the MCAS graduation requirement with one that allows students’ districts to certify that they have satisfactorily completed coursework showing mastery skills, competencies and knowledge required by the state standards.
The LEA is an affiliate of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and has already chosen to endorse the Thrive Act.
Anderson and D’Amore added that their goal was also to get the School Committee to endorse the Thrive Act.
Anderson said, “We often agree that MCAS has some issues and it is about time that we start taking a look at that standardized test and support an act like the Thrive Act which causes us to go back and look for something that is more appropriate at assessing student learning.”
The MTA says that Massachusetts is only one of eight states in the country that ties its standardized test to graduation and “there is no correlation between having a standardized graduation exam requirement and academic achievement.”
Anderson added, “In summary the Thrive Act would deal with MCAS. Massachusetts has had MCAS in place for over two decades now and we are here to ask you to considering supporting the Thrive Act which would get rid of the punitive aspects of MCAS and put in place an assessment that is more effective at measuring weather or not students are meeting objectives at the state level and across the board.”
The MTA said the Thrive Act would also eliminate state receiverships and reinstating democratic control to communities and school committees.
“It would put the local control back in [the school committees’] hands to certify that students had met the requirements necessary rather than a standardized test. If you are unaware in the community, if districts do very poorly on MCAS, there is a threat comes in and takes over the district,” Anderson said.
The final thing the Thrive Act would do is establish a commission to create a new, whole-child system of assessing the respective school and building on important experiments in the state and nation.
The Thrive Act does not propose a new form of assessment, it states that it would get rid of the standardized piece and set up a commission that would create an assessment that would look at the whole child.
According to Anderson, adopting the Thrive Act and eliminating the MCAS would not only help the students but would also help save some money.
Anderson said, “I was surprised to learn that $150.8 million were spent administering MCAS last year. We are here taking about budgets and money that certainly funds that could be used to do things for our students that are in their best interest.”
Even if the School Committee endorses the Thrive Act, it would still have to be approved at the state level.
“We should be moving towards something that measure students’ motivation, intuition, creative, diligence, moral character, faith, common sense, resilience, wit, kindness and ingenuity. All of which MCAS is not currently doing. It demoralizes students that do not do well, it punished students that do not do well, and it does nothing to provide districts with information about how students are doing,” Anderson said.
D’Amore added that she will be emailing the School Committee with Ludlow High School students’ personal statements about MCAS and why they support they Thrive Act.
“Too often it is us adults who are debating things back and forth and the students’ voices are a really important piece,” Anderson added.
School Committee Chair Jeffery Laing said that the committee will look over all the information the LEA provided before deciding but will get back to them as soon as possible.