AFT Massachusetts President Jessica Tang's statement in response to the release of 2023-2024 MCAS scores by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education:
“It’s concerning that the state continues to use an accountability system that is obviously not working - one that is punitive toward the students with the highest levels of need, one that only exacerbates the achievement gaps we’re seeing between students in our cities and their peers in wealthier suburbs.
“Teachers throughout the Commonwealth will tell you that the scores released today are not a surprise. Continuing down this road, especially post-pandemic, will return us to a time when one’s ability to get a quality, public education was wholly reliant on their zip code.
“These are arbitrary rankings of our schools during the first full school year after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc on our communities and further widened opportunity and achievement gaps across the state. Our students, especially our English language learners and those with special needs, continue to struggle to recover from the devastating impacts the pandemic had on their education and their communities.
“Unfortunately, under the current punitive and narrow test-based system, the schools that are in the most need of resources and are teaching the students with the highest levels of need stand to lose the most in the wake of these test results. Instead of using these scores to highlight what schools need, they are used to allow unproven top-down interventions and privately-run charter schools that strip away additional funding at a time when school budgets are already facing cuts.”