This Isn't Just a Test

Last Wednesday, I cleared my schedule for 3:30, the time when MCAS scores were scheduled to be distributed to City on a Hill’s 11^th graders.

Two years ago this fall, these 11^th graders began their freshman year achieving far below grade level, with few of the study, problem solving, and social skills that students in more affluent communities have learned by the time they are 14.  Some entered with all Fs on their 8^th grade transcript, but — strangely — had 8^th grade diplomas.  Many entered the 9^th grade at City on a Hill never having passed an MCAS test before.   It wasn’t that this group of new City on a Hill freshman couldn’t learn, it was that many of them attended schools that simply hadn’t taught them.

Between the time these students arrived as freshman until the days they took the test in the 10^th grade, their teachers, tutors, advisors, and administrators at City on a Hill worked with them to fill in the gaps between their academic strengths and challenges.  By the time they sat for the MCAS last spring, an army of well-educated, passionate, and ferociously hard-working adults had intervened on a fundamental injustice:  that most of these young people had reached the age of 14 without access to the kind of education that families living in places like Brookline or Newton are accustomed to.

Now 11^th graders, these students sat to the exams last spring, in March, in May, and in June.  Their teachers and tutors cheered them on before the tests started, congratulated them when they finished, and protected the sanctity and integrity of the testing environment like mother bears protecting the den.  The students knew they would receive their exam results together in our community meeting space, because they had attended last year’s score release and learned firsthand the power of this community ritual.  And their teachers and tutors attended too, even though by now they had closely examined (and made curricular adjustments informed by) the results. 

So when our Principal fired up the LCD projector, these 16-year-old 11^th graders knew what was coming.  They sat on the community meeting benches, close together, holding hands.  First, the Principal showed them the results of the classes before them, naming graduates who belonged to each group, some of whom have attended college, returned, and served as their teachers.  The room collectively held its breath in the millisecond before the class of 2013’s scores showed.  All of them — 100% of the class of 2013 — had passed the ELA and Math exams on the first try.   Over 94% of them had earned Proficienct or Advanced.  Their growth from middle school results was astronomical.

They jumped, they screamed, they cried, they hugged their teachers and tutors. 

A new teacher standing with me at the back of the room commented with awe:  “I’ve never seen anybody get so excited about a standardized test.” 

I answered, “This isn’t just a test.”  As a 10^th grade English teacher I always attended these score releases because I was so proud of my former students’ scores.  As a Principal, I ran these score releases to maximize the whole school community’s understanding of what success can be.  Now, as the school’s Executive Director, I stand to the side while the proud students, tutors, teachers, advisors, and administrators—without a single ounce of condescension or irony—celebrate their legitimate success.  And I am convinced to my very core that more young people deserve the opportunity to experience this magical thing—a community that cares, cares enough to hold everyone to the highest standards, and cares enough to succeed together.

However busy my schedule becomes with the many competing and bureaucratic demands of running a successful high school, I will always clear my schedule for this demonstration of community.

Erica Brown joined City on a Hill in 1998 to teach 10th grade English.  She became the school's Principal in 2003 and has been the Executive Director since 2007.  Ms. Brown received her B.A. in British and American Literature from Harvard College and her M.Ed. from Tufts University.