By Brian Yoffe
Managing-Editor of School News
Newton South and Newton North high schools have decided to alter this year’s MCAS schedule in order to accommodate more stringent state testing requirements.
The schedule change will give each grade not taking MCAS on an MCAS testing day a late-arrival schedule.
From March 24-26 and May 12-13, only the sophomore class will report to school at the regular time to take the English Language Arts and Mathematics MCAS respectively. The classes not taking the exams will report late and bus schedules will be adjusted accordingly.
During the Physics MCAS from June 2-3, only the freshman will attend school at the regular time and the sophomore and junior classes will arrive late.
According to Stembridge, this year’s schedule change is intended to accommodate the state’s more strict testing security requirements. These guidelines, paired with the increasing size of the freshman and sophomore classes, force the high schools to devote more classrooms and faculty proctors to the exam.
“Looking at the space we have available for MCAS testing and the amount of adults it takes to maintain security we both felt that our current procedure having one class stay home and having three classes here was no longer going to be sufficient,” Stembridge said. “We decided that if the only class that’s here is the class being tested then that really reduces the number of security requirements that we have.
“This is simply a practical, pragmatic issue around really the testing requirements. The state has gotten more and more stringent with what they expect schools to do in order to maintain the security of the test,” Stembridge said.
Stembridge said that the block schedule will be rotated so that students will not miss the same classes repeatedly during the MCAS special schedules.
In addition, some AP courses will have mandatory review sessions during these mornings, so some students will have to report to school at the regular time.
“Depending on the AP [course] and the teacher’s assessment of what the need is in order to prepare for the test, some teachers are really going to be happy to use that time and other teachers may feel like they are already well into review,” Stembridge said.
These review sessions will be scheduled so that students will not have a conflict if they take more than one AP course.
Stembridge feels that it is unfortunate that the new state requirements for MCAS testing, which were put in place to maintain test security, actually prevent students from coming into school.
“It’s kind of sad that the high-stakes testing that the state and the country are requiring us to do actually is having us not have kids come to school,” he said.
However, Stembridge also recognizes that the high schools may be transitioning to the PARCC Test in the near future, an online exam that South students piloted last year.
“This is probably the last year of MCAS for us. Everyone else in the district is doing PARCC,” Stembridge said. “We’re going to have to use the entire school in order to maintain a safe testing environment so this is the future anyway.”
