Criticizing MCAS

BY HARIKA GOTETI '24

Blaring announcements telling students to hurry towards their designated rooms, phones on Do Not Disturb getting shoved into backpacks, and teachers monotonously reciting from an instructions packet: it's the annual MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) season. In the weeks leading up to the MCAS, students wonder about the test’s difficulty, sacrifice sleep to review course content, and anticipate sitting in a room for three hours while juniors and seniors get to sleep in. Ultimately, due to its mandatory status, the environment it creates and failure to cover all academic subjects, MCAS is an outdated and anxiety-inducing system which inaccurately measures student academics.

High school MCAS covers mathematics, English, and biology. However, it does not assess subjects like social studies and arts, leading to an incomplete assessment of full student skills and knowledge. Furthermore, the MCAS does not test students' ability to apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios; rather, it creates unnecessary pressure for students by using a score system to compare students. For example, many students feel obligated to score highly to receive a scholarship, and this pressure can mentally affect them. Therefore, instead of accurately assessing students’ academic skills, MCAS, a mandatory exam, measures how well students test under pressure; even a similar test like the SAT is voluntary and has far less pressure. The lack of diversity in different subjects on the MCAS is detrimental to a student's mental health because every student has different interests.

​A chief goal of MCAS is to evaluate teachers’ performance, often causing teachers to feel stressed or teach in different manners prior to the exam. This can lead to decreased enthusiasm and performance, which directly affects student performance. Often, students feel that their teachers seem different just before MCAS. 

Lastly, these tests are given in an artificial environment. MCAS tests are proctored in complete silence with no ability to ask for help or move around, except for a five-minute break which is disproportionate to the exam’s three hours. The test is unlike that of the real world, where people are expected to work with others and to ask for help. Therefore, it is important for our state to reconsider mandating MCAS due to the harmful factors of its fake environment and stress that affect both students and teachers.