After a historic 11-day strike, the Newton Teachers Association reached an agreement on a new contract with the Newton School Committee.
That strike was illegal under current state law, but it was just one of an increasing number of teacher strikes in recent years. As a result, lawmakers such as Rep. Mike Connolly of Cambridge are proposing legislation that would legalize these labor actions.
Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teachers Union, voiced support for the legislative efforts on Boston Public Radio Wednesday. Tang emphasized the successes of legal teacher strikes in other states, such as Chicago and Los Angeles, in securing improvements to education quality.
“They've won really significant things that improve our schools and reach our goal of quality education for all students,” said Tang.
The BTU is also supporting the Thrive Act, a bill eliminating the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as a high school graduation requirement. The BTU also supports the potential ballot question if it does not pass through legislation.
Tang clarified: “I am pro–graduation requirements, and I think that those of us who are advocating for the Thrive Act are actually pro–graduation requirements as well. We are against MCAS being used as the graduation requirement.”
Instead, she referred to the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) as an alternative. The MCIEA pushes for teacher involvement in creating fair and effective assessment systems.
“What they're doing is creating assessments that are essentially normed across districts, but are teacher-created,” Tang explained. “It's actually much more powerful for the educators to be able to create these assessments jointly.”
She argued that MCAS has not improved education equity in Massachusetts.
“I think anyone could say that you can have one bad day or not be a great test taker, particularly for English learners. It doesn't actually really show their learning and growth,” she said.
Tang also argued that the MCAS has become a barrier for students to go on to four-year colleges. “It's not always actually a great indicator of whether or not you'll be successful in a four-year college.”
Tang believes the MCAS is not a “great indicator” of a student's potential success in a four-year college.
On the other hand, research by professor John Papay of Brown University found that students who earned higher MCAS scores were more likely to enroll in college and graduate than those with lower scores. Research also showed that students with high scores earned higher incomes in their late careers than those who received lower scores. The outcomes were seen across racial and ethnic groups.
In response, Tang said, “I'd love to see whether it's [Papay's research is] peer reviewed and what data they're looking at. I mean, there's so many different studies these days.”
“The MCAS was initially supposed to be used as a dipstick of ‘How are we doing?’ It wasn't supposed to be used as a punitive measure, and that's how it's being used. It's penalizing students,” she said.
