How MCAS Perpetuated a Flawed & Tone-deaf Education System
At Lexington High School, MCAS is a part of every sophomore’s experience. When March rolls around, English MCAS is another thing that just comes and goes. Despite the fact that this year’s test was on computers, the standardized test was expected to proceed normally. Sit down, get a lecture about how you have to turn off your phones, cheating is prohibited, all papers will be shredded and recycled, etc. The assistant principal came over the PA to announce the start of MCAS, and the weary students pressed start on the session.
The very first passage nearly every student had was about a runaway slave named Cora, who had to hide from the slave catchers in a house, where a woman, Ethel, called her derogatory names and continually verbally abused her. The story was similar to multiple other stories about slavery I had read before, and I did not know what to expect from the open response until I read the prompt. Write a journal entry from the perspective of Ethel. Not only were students required to write racist comments from the perspective of an old white woman, they were also forced to do this partly in order to get our high school diploma.
In a diverse community like LHS, the concept of countering the dominant narrative is emphasized throughout nearly all humanities classes. In English class, students read the book Homegoing, which describes the impact of European colonization in Africa and slavery on African-Americans today. In history class, it is emphasized that students should see the other side of the story, and how a Eurocentric perspective on teaching only furthers racial stereotypes. To have a prompt on a standardized test that goes against the objective of education—understanding the perspectives of others—demonstrates privilege and entitlement within the foundation of the education system. When the experiences of thousands of black students that attend Massachusetts public schools are disregarded in this way, the underlying affluence of the majority of the Board is revealed, and stereotypes about African-Americans only continue to be perpetuated. Taking a story about a young girl’s escape from slavery and turning it into a justification for the reasons why white people would feel afraid only emphasizes the views of white, privileged Americans in the 1800s, and continues to maintain the narrative of the white Europeans and glosses over slavery as something that is insignificant and not worthy of mentioning.
The author of the book, Colson Whitehead, wrote in an email that he was “appalled” that a blatantly demeaning prompt got put on a standardized test, exclaiming “What kind of idiot would have students imagine the rationalizations of a racist coward who shrinks from moral responsibility? There are plenty of heroes in the book — black and white — who stand up and do the right thing in the face of terrible consequences; certainly they are more worthy of investigation. Inhabiting characters like Ethel caused me great emotional distress.” The Department of Education not only severely misrepresented the intentions of the author, but they also furthered the divide between what it means to be white and what it means to be black in America. Being a racial minority in America means that one’s character can be evaluated solely on the basis of skin color. Seeing this norm continue to be enforced on children only shows that maybe the education system still sees things through a unilateral, white perspective, and that racial minorities will never be equal.
Ultimately, the MCAS question was removed after the test, but not until superintendents and students raised their voices about the immorality of putting a question like that onto a state wide exam. The problem is that the question should never have been on the test in the first place, and controversial topics like racism or feminism should be more carefully screened as subjects of discussion for students on exams, especially when harmful conventions are only enforced.
by PIA JAIN & ANGELIQUE PHAM