ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
June 3, 2004
African Americans, Latinos
demand more MCAS funding
Jeremy Schwab
ACORN member Angie Wilkerson fired up the crowd
at the Eliot Church of Roxbury last week with a call to action.
“We are here because our children did not get the education
we wanted for them,” said Wilkerson. “Is that right?
Are you aggravated about it? Are you going to do something about
it?”
The crowd of over 80 public school parents and community members
responded with a resounding, “Yes.”
The goal of the meeting, held by the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now and the Boston Parent Organizing
Network, was to convince legislators of the urgency of ramping
up money for MCAS remediation.
The state cut funding for MCAS tutoring from $50 million to $10
million last year, leaving inner-city children who are struggling
to pass the test, required for high school graduation, with reduced
financial support.
But the legislators who attended the meeting — state representatives
Marie St. Fleur, Shirley Owens-Hicks, Liz Malia and Gloria Fox
and Sen. Dianne Wilkerson — were already convinced of the
need for more MCAS money.
Furthermore, the House and Senate were reportedly considering
allotting either $14 or $15 million for MCAS during joint discussions
last week, a relatively small difference.
So what did ACORN’s meeting accomplish? It gave community
members, frustrated at what they see as the indifference of government
to the education of children of color, a chance to vent their
frustrations before a high-ranking school official.
“Given how hard it is for regular education children to
pass, I want you to realize how much harder it is for children
with special needs,” said one panelist representing the
community group JPPOP. “I would like to ask the teachers
if you had to pass the achievement test every year, would you
pass?”
Besides MCAS, participants criticized a range of education policies.
Some complained about the city’s reading curriculum that,
unlike those in some school systems, does not teach phonics, which
some educators say is the best way for black children to learn
to read. Others panned Governor Mitt Romney’s plan to drop
the income tax from 5.3 to 5 percent, as mandated in the stepped
decrease passed in recent years.
“I don’t make much, but I am willing to pay $100 more
in taxes in order to make a great future for my children and all
the children,” said Boston Public School parent Gloribell
Mota. “There is not enough money for our schools already
and this tax cut just makes it more and more of a crisis.”
But the legislators in the room pinned the blame on the way the
school system distributes its funds, not the amount of funding
coming in.
“I can go to Worcester and they can show me what each student
is supposed to be achieving by the end of the year, and where
each teacher is going to sit in a cluster and talk about what
each student needs,” said St. Fleur, who heads the House
Education Committee. “I go to Boston and I can’t get
that.”
School department Deputy Superintendent Chris Coxon, who attended
the meeting, admitted that the system is far behind in creating
individual student success plans for those failing the MCAS.
“This is our second year with the [plans.] We’ve been
slowly getting them done and established an electronic system,”
he said. “All students who scored at level one will have
it in place. Level two’s we have not gotten to, and that
is an issue we had to bargain with teachers in recent contracts.”
Coxon was referring to those scoring in the lowest bracket (level
one) and second-lowest (level two). The district is supposed to
come up with plans for all students at both levels.
Immigrant children whose first language is not English have had
a particularly tough time passing the math and English test.
Virginia Suaréz, an eleventh grader at East Boston High
School, did not pass the test until she squeaked by with a score
of 220 on her third attempt.
“I’m worried about bilingual students not getting
support,” she said. “Some are honor roll students,
but they can’t pass the test. Everybody wants to go to college,
and we go nowhere if we don’t pass the MCAS.
Back
to Lead Story Archives
Home
Page
