From: Glasser, Daniel Legislative Aide
State Representative Carl Sciortino
After 4 hours in a very warm hearing room, I think we can all agree that the Education Committee Hearing was a resounding success. The panels speaking on behalf of the bill were articulate, concise, and right on message. We had a great turnout and a lot of people were clearly impressed with the caliber of our arguments.
There's a vast array of news coverage going around:
Lawmakers urged to end MCAS rule for high schoolers (Globe)
MCAS proponents demand reform (Boston NOW)
MCAS standard now under threat (Herald Editorial... if they're against us then we're clearly doing something right!)
MCAS testing reexamined in Mass. (NECN Video)
Rep. Sciortino has been on various radio stations today discussing the bill, and the Governor's office released the following statement:
"The Governor supports MCAS as a high school graduation requirement. However, he doesn???t believe it should be the sole assessment of student academic progress. He supports the development of additional assessment tools to measure other vital aspects of academic achievement. To that end, one of the challenges that the Governor???s Readiness Project is charged with reviewing is how to improve MCAS and introduce additional standards and assessments."
All in all, I'd say that this was a solid job well done by all involved.
There will be a contiunuing effort to work with the Education Committee to move the bill forward, so our work is far from done. But for the moment we can be very proud of yesterday's great success. Thanks to everyone for all your help.
Daniel.Glasser@state.ma.us
(617) 722-2014 Daniel.Glasser@state.ma.us
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