Fomenting Revolution (aka MEPA Protests)

Over 800 students at my high school were given the MEPA (Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment) today and yesterday. You can read a previous post to understand my issues with that test and TO WHOM it is administered. My advisory is usually pretty mellow (when not hitting me in the head with duct tape;  again a previous post).

But there was some visible anger when these students were handed the notice that they were scheduled to take MEPA…again…for the 4th, 5th or 6th time.  One young man of Cambodian ethnicity, but born in the US,  simply took the notice and ripped it up. They were annoyed and humiliated.

Now, I have noticed that teachers have two different responses to the protests by their students who don’t want to take MEPA. There is one group of teachers that thinks and often says to the students something to the effect of  ‘quit your whining, take the test, we all have to do things we don’t like so just do your best and get it over with.’ (These teachers might not realize that a passing score does not necessarily get rid of your Limited English Proficiency {LEP} label.) And then there is the other group of teachers who doesn’t mind fomenting a little revolution now and then. This group of teachers agrees with the students, and supports their feelings of unfair treatment. I’ve decided it is a fundamental difference in how we look at the world and is based on our culture and our experience.

I encouraged my students to express their dismay, but I also knew nobody was going to listen to them. Everyone must kowtow to the state mandate including teachers, American-born students*, and administrators. My students were powerless; they are seniors and they just want to graduate and don’t want anything to derail their future plans. But to assuage their feelings of powerlessness they created art;  anti-MEPA protest art.

My whiteboard at school with student-created MEPA protest art

As they begrudgingly trudged off to take their exams, I couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of hope that things will change soon and that Americans will realize that we are wasting millions of dollars and losing valuable class time because of constant testing.

Now that Diane Ravitch, former NCLB proponent, has written,   “All of this test prep and test review narrows the time available to teach science, history, geography, the arts, or anything else that is not related to the annual test. This path leads to higher scores but worse education”,  I wonder if the rest of the educational establishment will be that far behind.

Let the revolution begin!

* I believe the test is an appropriate measure of progress for English language learners who have a first language that is not English. My main complaint is that students who were born in the US, and speak English as their first language and often their only language, are still being tested. I believe the English language learners should only take MEPA and not MCAS.