Mayor Lang and the New Bedford School Committee want to issue diplomas to students who fail the MCAS. In crafting his argument, Mayor Lang questions the state’s (and presumably the Federal government’s) authority to set educational standards. “It comes down to this. Public school administrators and teachers are not trusted to accurately assess and pass a kid onto the next grade or course.” They also blame the MCAS for New Bedford’s high dropout rate. But let’s do a little math.

89% of New Bedford’s teachers are “highly qualified” versus 96% of Greater New Bedford Voc’s. Teachers at Voc make an average of $6000 a year more, the student ratio is lower, the number of non-English speakers is half that of the New Bedford public schools, and the number failing the English MCAS is almost half that of the New Bedford public schools. NB public schools have a whopping 18.6% of students in Special Education, while Voc has 11.3%. The dropout rate is half at Voc, and so on. When you look at the number of students in the NB public schools who failed 8th grade Math and Science, it was 53% and 63% respectively! These students’ problems started in Middle School and apparently the kids were promoted all the same. This completely undermines Mayor Lang’s remarks above. Somebody has to pull these kids off the assembly line. Accountability is not a bad thing.

It is pretty obvious that New Bedford’s schools do have problems not of their making, but are cranking out students with inferior educations all the same, and the MCAS tests unfortunately reveal this nasty little secret. Looking at the statistics, it’s also clear that New Bedford has a higher proportion of students with learning, social, economic, and language problems, and it’s probably not getting the funding it needs. Like it or not, the high dropout and MCAS failure rates indicate external problems. Whether these students pass or fail an MCAS test, they are still as much at risk for dropping out or failing other tests.

But denying the validity of the MCAS is shortsighted. And so is putting the District’s funding at risk at a time when it needs to be asking for more help.

The mayor should be working with the DOE, not fighting it, or with concerned Massachusetts legislators to demand the state’s fair share of federal “No Child Left Behind” funding. Besides opening up schools to military recruiters and imposing unrelenting standardized testing upon them, one of the things NCLB is supposed to do is to actually help school districts improve. Well, supposedly. Massachusetts could join Connecticut, Utah, Texas, California, Virginia, Maryland, and several others in fighting for more help than just better looking bubble test forms. The National Education Association estimates that the Bush administration’s NCLB act has actually taken $22 billion away from schools in 2005 and 2006. I wonder which defense contractor got that money? We surely could have used it.

The advice to “follow the money” always seems to hold. New Bedford should be going after the funding to deliver better education to its students rather than telling the world that the MCAS figures lie. Unfortunately, the figures are right on target.