1/ Some MA English educators are prepping juniors to take the Legacy MCAS in January. I’m doing it b/c it’s my job, but I also think it’s a ridiculous decision. A thread about everything wrong with this:

2/ I understand both the Legacy and NextGen MCAS formats fairly well. I was among the first students who had to pass the Legacy MCAS in order to graduate. I’ve also been a HS English T for 13 years.

3/ When I started teaching, my school used to run a mock Long Composition for all 9/10 students. I’ve read A LOT of long comps. I know the rubric inside out and backwards. I also used to do a lot of work with open response questions, too.

4/I stepped into the role of curriculum team leader right around the time DESE was shifting towards the NextGen MCAS. The NextGen MCAS meant a lot of changes for ELA 6-12.

5/The NextGen MCAS was aligned to our newer standards. It was computer-based. The NextGen ELA MCAS focused more on forming connections between thematically similar texts. Students looked 1-3 texts in a passage set, answering Qs and sometimes writing an essay connecting them.

6/These text-dependent essays replaced the Long Comp & ORQs, aligned to different types of writing: informative/explanatory, argumentative, narrative.

7/My department started to make shifts in the curriculum: more work on different types of writing, more nonfiction reading, more connections between passages. I’ve even served on some DESE panels, talking about the difficulty of the questions, alignment to standards, etc.

8/ Current juniors (class of 2022) have taken the NextGen test before as middle schoolers. They have some familiarity with the format.

9/ As for the actual NextGen Grade 10 ELA MCAS? It has only run once in 2019 (the one where an entire essay had to be dropped…). In March 2020, when the class of 2022 was supposed to take the second NextGen Grade 10 MCAS, COVID interrupted our lives.

10/ The Class of 2022 was granted a reprieve from taking MCAS as sophomores. But then we learned that these same students will still need to take MCAS. They have a choice of taking the Legacy MCAS in January or the NextGen MCAS in May.

11/A lot of juniors at my school take AP classes, and May is the big AP testing month, so adding on MCAS is either less than ideal or impossible. January is the only option for some. HS are also expected to test sophomores in May.

12/Many schools in MA are running remote or hybrid. Finding adequate space, the right number of proctors, etc. is a logistical mess. We have no idea what the rest of the year is going to look like. Having two entire grades test simultaneously is too much to plan for.

13/ So in January, a lot of juniors will be taking a computer-based version of an obsolete test that includes the Long Composition, which also provides its own logistical issues.

14/ /The Long Comp is a 2-draft essay w/a prompt like this: “Often in works of literature, a character is/does/encounters X. From a work of literature you have read in or out of school, select a character who is/does/encounters X."

15/ "In a well-developed composition, identify the character, describe how the character is/does/encounters X, and explain how X is important to the work as a whole.” X has referred to character qualities, types of characters, lessons characters learn, etc.

16/When I taught grade 10 during the Legacy MCAS years, we would read some thematically rich works of literature and review key parts of stories from English 9 & 10 so students would easily be able to think of a book to write about for the Long Comp.

17/The current juniors are at a disadvantage in taking the Legacy MCAS. First, they’ve been working on skills emphasized by the NextGen MCAS since middle school. They’ll probably do all right on multiple choice and writing open responses, but the Long Comp poses some problems.

18/ Remember that these students were in school for 2019-2020 up through March. Up until March, we all thought these students were taking NextGen MCAS 2020, so the focus was not so much on novels and full-length books, but on types of writing, making connections, etc.

19/In fact, whatever book/play current juniors finished in English class before March 2020 was the last work of literature they read in a stable school schedule. Students certainly have read works of literature since then (at least for this school year), but it’s not the same.

20/For the 2020-2021 school year, remote/hybrid learning has been challenging for everyone. As we’ve tried to find a new rhythm, some teachers have relied more on shorter works of literature (poems, short stories) because of how fragmented schedules are.

21/I’m teaching English 11 (American literature) which, if taught chronologically, focuses a lot on short stories, essays, and poems, in the beginning. I also teach AP Lang (grades 11 & 12) which focuses heavily on nonfiction analysis.

22/It took FOREVER to make it through a book-length work of literature w/my English 11 students this fall. We’re also reading a lot more on screens, which isn’t always helpful. Our focus is shorter, some of us are feeling eye strain, etc.

23/In January, when juniors sit down to take the Legacy MCAS, they will be far less prepared for the format than students who came before them, especially due to the Long Comp, which takes up one day out of the three needed for the ELA Legacy MCAS.

24/ /Of course, I am going to help jog my students’ memories before they sit down to take the Legacy MCAS so that they aren’t completely thrown off, but there are things I’d much rather being doing with my classes…

25//In MA, the school year has been trimmed to 170 days on learning out of necessity. In a regular school year, I see my classes every other day. In our current hybrid schedule, time is fragmented and strange. I want all the instructional time I can get.

26/Having juniors need 5 days for MCAS testing (3 days ELA, 2 days math) is a huge blow to an already challenging schedule. I'd rather have that time with my students than have them spend so much time on this test. Teachers are lamenting the loss of even more time.

27/I know there are many out there howling about how students are falling behind and we need to know what the damage is. Teachers get this. We see it. We're working on it, but it's hard to function when all aspects of education are unstable.

28/ We also know that administering an obsolete test to students in classes aligned to different standards during a pandemic on top of an already crazy school year bEcAuSe iT’s a GrAdUaTiOn ReQuIrEmEnT does not seem to make common sense.

29/ I've also seen a lot of frustration from educators with this bit of news: https://www.masslive.com/boston/2020/11/massachusetts-education-officials-considering-at-home-mcas-testing-in-the-spring-during-covid-pandemic.html

30/ Because it's my job, I’m going to make sure my students know what to expect and feel prepared. I’m going to make sure teachers of juniors in my department are ready and have a plan for their students as well. But I’m also going to point out how ridiculous this all is.