The MCAS Blog

September 13th at 9:30 AM. I will speaking about the MCAS and showing clips from the film, Children Left Behind, at Temple Beth Am in Framingham, MA.

October 16th: The film will be shown immediately before the Massachusetts School Psychologists Association Conference. Time and location: TBA

October 17th: The film will be shown immediately before and after Educating the Whole Child Conference at Bunker Hill Community College before and after Educating the Whole Child Conference at Bunker Hill Community College

Despite the research that shows it takes between 4-8 years for older students and 3-7 years for younger students toattain grade level proficiency in English as a second language, these students are sitting for subject matter exams in English in their first year in some districts. Even when they know the subject matter,eg. math, science, etc,. they can not demonstrate how much they know because of their language acquisition. Neither are accommodations monitored to ensure they are appropriate to the level of proficiency of the student nor if the accommodations are working. Together these conditions contribute to the under-representation of what these students know and can do.The high rate of drop out of Latino students merits further consideration. Let me know if I can help in any way to direct attention to these issues.

Theresa Austin