MCAS

As we sift and sort through the latest MCAS results and attempt to make sense of what was positive and what we need to work on, I am trying to give food for thought based on how our students respond to MCAS. Many of our students, even those who passed their MCAS with flying colors, have reported that they are very disenchanted with the length of the test and specifically the open response portion. In a day and age of instant gratification, they want to be able to come up with the answer NOW! What would take me two sentences to write in a text message, they use 8 words to complete the same thought. Many of the students simply skim over the open response section or don't read it all based on its length. Maybe instead of "designing" better MCAS test taking students, we design a better MCAS test which accentuates our students academic and technological strengths?? The test "is what it is" and it doesn't appear that it's going anywhere so our job as educators is to find strategies to get our students to a point where they can all have success with it.