Thread by @TracyNovick

A series of what will probably be unpopular statements about yesterday's #MAEdu Board vote on the MCAS, but gosh, I hate seeing bad info circulating:

1. This was supposed to happen years ago. The change in competency determination is tied to the new MCAS. What has been used for literally YEARS now was an interim step as we switched from one to the other. It was delayed by the pandemic.

2. The creation and maintenance of a "competency determination" based on the tenth grade evaluation is a power of the Board per MGL Ch. 69, sec. 1 (d).

malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLa…

3. That has, ever since ed reform, been a score on the MCAS. Could it be something else? Yes, but that would require significant political will.

4. Something isn't "undemocratic" because there were more public comments on the other side.

(Please believe a local school committee member when I tell you that you really don't want decisions made this way.)

5. Yes, half or so of the state legislature signed something saying it shouldn't be changed, but as has been noted here and elsewhere, they have authorities themselves that have not been used. Why? Beacon Hill doesn't actually want to change this.

5 a. ...not just Governor Baker. This one easily cuts across party lines.

6. There has been what I regard as a maddening refusal to engage with the research the Board is actually considering in making the decision. @bostonjonas discusses it a bit here: commonwealthmagazine.org/education/stat…

We've got 20 years of data here, and DESE is using it.

7. That research CONTROLS FOR some of the common ("oh it just measures) arguments that were made again yesterday.

If in fact we care about kids and their long term well-being, we do owe them real engagement in stuff we know. That includes this research.

8. Peeps, I say this with love; "Only X states are doing this" is never going to win you a political argument in Massachusetts. Doing things our own way is written into the founding documents.

9. Many of the arguments that are continually used are things that are under the control of districts, schools, classrooms. (Take it from someone whose maternity leave came just as the principal decided he needed weekly drills on multiple choice tests.)

We could...not?

10. Finally, #MAEdu is way too small an ecosystem for the amount of talking past each other than happens. Yes, there's a lot of allergy to listening on the Board and in 75 Pleasant Street, but when there HAVE BEEN shifts, there's also been a refusal to see or credit them.