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Sunday, September 23, 2012

UNWRAPPING THE MCAS, MARSHALL MALAISE


We are on the verge of being asked to commitment of a lot of money to build a NEW MARSHALL, WOTRING WING and all. There’ll be a vote and you will have to give the city permission to put it on their card. Will your taxes go up? Don’t ask me, I’m too poor to care.

Whether they will or not, you make sure you probably want to make sure your money is being well spent. You are going to be told that a new building that pretty much everyone agrees is going to be too small, will bring up those MCAS scores. I am sure it will help, but I don’t know if it will be enough because just because you got NEW shoes doesn’t mean you can run fast.

NO,

you have to be in good condition. WELL TRAINED.

According to the DOE statistics for 2011, MARSHALL had a score of 0 in the ADVANCED category for SCIENCE/ ENG. TECH part. That’s right, NO ONE. The average score for the STATE  was 17. Okay, only the EIGHTH GRADE took that part of the test but still. That category is the current HOT topic. MASS. leads the nation in this kind of stuff and it looks like MARSHALL is leading NO ONE.

Even in the other two categories of the MCAS which everyone takes, no higher than 4 was scored and that was only twice (thank goodness for the sixth grade). Do I think that not that many smart kids go there? No, I mean my daughter goes there.

Let’s look at the other end of the spectrum in that SCIENCE category, WARNING/FAILING. MARSHALL had a score of 59. Now that’s more than 4 times the STATE average of 13. Now I’m not good with raw data, formulas, statistics and such but I would not hesitate to guess that’s not good.

What I do know from personal experience is that you can only learn what’s taught. Who’s in charge of CURRICULUM? There may be some SIX YEAR master plan out there but believe me, you will be asked to pay in a little more than ONE.

Now some people will argue that you get what you pay for and that’s mostly right,

UNLESS…..

you are stuck with what you got, and then you need to remember how you got it.

































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