Volume CCXXXII, Number
21 May, 2002
Page 4
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Under the Golden Dome |
SCHOOLS FLUNK;
STUDENTS TO PAY
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By Cash Payment State House Bureau Chief For decades the urban schools of Massachusetts have been failing their students by trapping them into underfunded patronage charnel houses. Now the Commonwealth is going to teach those schools a lesson they'll never forget -- by punishing the students. It came as a surprise to no one that half the juniors still enrolled in the Boston Public Schools (why?) cannot pass the state's MCAS exam. The solution: deny them all high school diplomas, consigning them to a life of economic marginalization, crime, poverty and early death. Thanks, Argeo! Argeo Paul Cellucci's legacy to the Commonwealth is like herpes: it keeps flaring up and no one can find the cure. If the current budget meltdown, Big Dig disaster, Massport collapse, Teamster thuggery, etc., etc. were not enough to burnish the reputation of Hudson's answer to Nathan Detroit, his misbegotten MCAS scheme would be enough to earn him a place in the Commonwealth's pantheon of infamy, perhaps tucked between fellow Republicans Alvin "Let 'em Fry" Fuller and Bill "Ten for the Tonsils" Weld. No one would deny that many of the state's school districts have been disaster areas for decades, although we don't recall Happy Hour Bill getting too upset when the good critters of Wales, Mass. allowed elementary class sizes to top 70. It's probably also true that standardized statewide tests can provide some useful information about which school districts are getting the job done and which are ratholes. So the purpose of standardized tests is to reward or punish school districts, right? Wrong, or as Argeo might put it, Rong! Can't punish the local hacks who muster the nursing homes and graveyards to the polls each November -- that's a sucker bet. Why not punish those grubby, annoying non-voters, the students? Talk about a sure thing! The MCAS results are in and the results are as expected: lots of school districts are not in fact educating their students. Boston has a pass rate of 49%. Chelsea, under the stern guidance of the Iron Chancellor John Silber has done -- worse: 47%. Lawrence, reeling under a series of plundering superintendents, boasts a pass rate of 34%. Springfield's pass rate: 46%. It's not as simple as big city low, small town high. Everett scored a respectable 72%, while something called Northampton-Smith took a licking at 35%. What are they teaching those kids at Smith, anyway? You might think that the state would intervene more decisively in the affairs of low-achieving districts to give their kids the education they deserve. You might think that if you had just arrived from the planet Zontar, but in Massachusetts we like to punish the victims. Cardinal Law showed us how. Under MCAS, nothing happens to the hack administrators and mail-it-in teachers who fail their charges. The poor students, though, are denied a high school diploma. Now there are a few job in Massachusetts that don't require a high school education, like Teamsters Union chief, Bulger hit man or Governor. But most jobs do. What are these students to do? Don't ask Argeo: he's much too busy doing his DeNiro imitations for the Chamber of Commerce in Yellowknife. To add insult to futility, the Great and General Court, unable to balance the budget thanks to Argeo's "no problems" tax cut, has decided to remedy the problem of inequality in public education by cutting state school aid by a whopping $320 million, including a $30 million cut in -- aid to help students pass the MCAS.
| |  These men (and women) have gone on to successful careers without passing the MCAS. What are all those high school students whining about?   |
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HEY, A LONG TIME AGO, SOME OLD DUDES HUNG OUT AROUND HERE AND FOUNDED A NEW NATION. THAT'S HEAVY! . . . . Mr. Bush . . . told the crowd that his visit to the Adirondacks was inspirational in part because it was the playground of a favorite former president.
-- The Times, April 23, 2002 at A18. |