THE CHARGE of the 21st Century Skills Task Force that just delivered its recommendations to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education seems so reasonable at first glance: Review the curriculum frameworks and MCAS tests. "Evolve" them to include skills students will need to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a national advocacy group, the skills include creativity, media savvy, cultural competence, problem solving, and improved teamwork.
What those skills have in common is that being proficient at each requires knowledge of the liberal arts. Recognizing the central role of the liberal arts has been a key to the success of education reform since its enactment in 1993.
Noted educator E.D. Hirsch lauded the Massachusetts model earlier this year in a Washington Post opinion piece. "Consider the eighth-grade NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline," he wrote. "That is because Massachusetts decided . . . students (and teachers) should learn explicit, substantive things about history, science, and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge."
Reform-minded Chancellor Michelle Rhee just adopted MCAS and the Commonwealth's curriculum frameworks as models for Washington, D.C. Our frameworks have been praised by groups ranging from teachers unions to education think tanks. Last year, the US Department of Education hailed the standards MCAS uses to measure proficiency.
A review of the task force recommendations shows just how far removed they are from the reforms Hirsch touted, which use clearly articulated goals and objective assessments to promote excellence and accountability. Instead, the task force proposes revamping MCAS and using the US history test to try out project-based assessments that require students to demonstrate skills like "global awareness" and would crowd out more central topics like the Constitution or causes of the Civil War.
The track record of these so-called complementary assessments is poor, because they are costly and cumbersome. Introducing subjectivity would have a corrosive effect on the Commonwealth's efforts to ensure that all students, regardless of where they live, have access to academic content that is the foundation for economic success.
One reason why two-thirds of students in Massachusetts' urban areas don't achieve proficiency is the failure of many cities to align their curricula with the state's MCAS frameworks. We can't ask students to exhibit hard-to-measure 21st-century skills if they haven't mastered the English, math, science, and history upon which the skills are based.
Subjectivity is also expensive. A 2003 General Accounting Office study found that it cost 60 cents per test to score North Carolina's multiple-choice assessment, while scoring multi-faceted college work and readiness assessments would run about $40 each.
Scoring MCAS cost $7 per test, suggesting that Massachusetts has achieved an appropriate balance that includes written answers that measure reading, writing, and problem solving. The correlation between MCAS scores and college performance is further proof of the assessments' quality.
The task force report claims that, "Massachusetts can learn from the experience of West Virginia" when it comes to integrating 21st-century skills into the curriculum. In 2005, Massachusetts became the only state to place first in every category on the NAEP test, known as the nation's report card. The next time the test was administered, the Commonwealth's students did it again. West Virginia is below the national average in all four subjects the tests measure.
A draft from the task force's subcommittee on assessments and accountability literally cut and pasted sections from a report by MassPartners - the teachers unions, school committees, and superintendents that have fought education reform for 15 years. The final report calls on them to define how to integrate 21st-century skills in our schools.
The 21st Century Skills Task Force report declares that, "Doing this right will require a shift in our curricular priorities." It would indeed require a shift from an unwavering focus on enduring academic content and raising student achievement to one that favors jargon and the politically connected.
Our progress has been great, but we are in no position to get complacent. Watering down academic standards would take us beyond complacency and effectively close the book on education reform in Massachusetts.
