School Committee candidates agree on a lot during forum on MCAS, pay and leadership
Cambridge School Committee candidates after a forum Wednesday at the Cambridge Main Library. (Photo: Alex Bowers)
School Committee candidates talked about standardized tests, educator pay and retention and the work of superintendent Victoria Greer at a candidate town hall Wednesday held by the Cambridge Educators Association at the Cambridge Public Library.
Eleven candidates are vying for six at-large seats on the committee. Nine candidates participated at the forum: incumbents Caroline Hunter, José Luis Rojas Villarreal, David J. Weinstein and Rachel Weinstein (no relation); and challengers Richard Harding, Elizabeth Hudson, Andrew King, Eugenia Schraa Huh and Robert V. Travers Jr.
Two incumbents chose not to run for reelection: Fred Fantini announced his retirement after serving 20 terms, and Ayesha Wilson is running for a City Council seat.
Candidates Alborz Bejnood and Frantz Pierre did not participate.
The candidates were largely in agreement on most issues, though incumbents were sometimes cautious and stressed collaboration over confrontation, while challengers were more free to critique the status quo in questions posed by moderator Joel Patterson, a math teacher at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, supported by Banke Oluwole, the vice president of community relations at the CEA, the educators’ labor organization.
High School MCAS Tests
Candidates were universally in favor of removing the MCAS as a “high stakes test” that determines whether a student graduates – a goal of the Thrive Act, a bill state legislators are debating – but wanted alternative ways to evaluate and ensure teaching effectiveness and student learning.
Massachusetts is one of the few states that requires a high-stakes test, Rojas noted.
Candidates including Hunter spoke of strengthening the curriculum so students can pass the MCAS without issues, with Schraa holding up a printed copy of one and saying the district should prepare every student to ace the test even if it is not required.
Harding noted that he’d supported removing the test requirement during his previous tenure on the committee – he’s served seven terms beginning in 2001 – but the test has endured. Travers encouraged audience members, who were largely educators, to submit testimony in favor of the Thrive Act to the Legislature before its next hearing Oct. 14.
Superintendent communication
Because “the previous and current superintendents have not done enough to operate transparently and to engage all stakeholders, including students, families and educators,” moderator Patterson asked candidates how they would hold a superintendent accountable.
The incumbents stressed collaboration; challengers were more pugnacious.
Several candidates referred to the committee’s recent lukewarm performance review of Greer.
Hunter said the assessment was fair, lauding Greer’s efforts with reading and curricula frameworks while highlighting the need for improvement in community relationships, communication and management. She noted that it’s the committee’s job to “support the superintendent, not to literally do her job.”
Communication with families and building trust with school communities and educators were priorities, though Travers didn’t seem to expect things to get better quickly: He urged the audience to file Freedom of Information Act requests to read the weekly reports Greer sends the committee.
There was a complaint from Hudson that “School Committee meetings get bogged down in presentations.”
“It’s hard to have accountability without clarity,” Hudson said. “A simple short list of what we want to accomplish and how we’re gong to get there” is needed.
Harding was blunt: “Check my record, no one has hired or fired more supers than me,” Harding said, referring to his previous service on the committee. “But I don’t know that that’s the answer. I want to make sure that we have a strong relationship with the superintendent that we hold accountable to make sure that she’s reaching the goals.”
Paraprofessional salaries
Patterson noted that the starting salary of a full-time paraprofessional is $26,000 – and committee members are paid $47,000 for a part-time position – and asked candidates how they’d address a wage issue that’s bad for workers and the district.
There was universal support for raising paraprofessional salaries, with Schraa citing U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data showing $52,000 was half the median income for a single person in the metro area that includes Cambridge.
Rachel Weinstein said she would support higher wages during contract negotiations (“not just fair pay, but good pay”), as would Hunter, who said that as a retired educator she values paraprofessionals’ work. “For sure ‘paras’ don’t get a fair share,” Harding said. “I would pay all the money in the world if all kids get good education,” adding that “there are a lot of problems in Cambridge, but money isn’t one of them.”
Cambridge’s tax base is under-levied, Hudson said, and higher taxes could bring in more money for schools. District administrative positions should be scrutinized, she said, pointing to an open position for a chief of staff. (In the meantime, King, Rojas and Schraa highlighted the paraprofessional career pathway at Lesley University, which offers discounted tuition to earn master’s degrees and teaching licenses.)
Recruiting and retaining educators
There were several panel questions on the difficulty of hiring and keeping educators, particularly educators of color in a district that even now has unfilled positions. “Significant recruiting to historically black colleges” lapsed years ago, and an affirmative-action event at the high school is no longer held, Hunter said.
King said offering quality education is “an economic justice issue and it’s a racial equity issue” and stressed that “retaining educators of color is critical for students of color to have racial representation and feelings of belongingness,” suggesting a Boston teachers residency as a model for Cambridge.
District culture was a key topic among candidates. Several, including Travers and Rachel Weinstein, focused on using exit interviews to help understand why teachers leave, with Weinstein citing resignations in late summer from the Fletcher Maynard Academy and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School as examples of the problem. Exit interviews are vital to understanding the cause, and the committee should insist on seeing the data, she said.
Rojas pushed for more support for principals, who set the tone for their schools and have an outsize influence on their staff. Travers, who works at the Peabody elementary school, agreed. The principal “sticks up for us,” and educator turnover has been extremely low for the past three years as a result, he said.
A culture of transparency with competitive wages and benefits is necessary to recruit the best talent, including nurturing new talent, and that a CRLS student is a potential teacher for the district, Hudson said.
Several candidates noted that while contract negotiations continue, the lack of a teacher contract – the most recent expired Sept. 1 – may be a factor in failing to attract educators.
CEA endorsements are expcted by the end of September, Oluwole said.
“The School Committee is obviously an incredibly important body that sets the direction of policy for our schools,” said Dan Monahan, the labor organization’s president, to the group. “We need to have the best people on School Committee that we possibly can.”
Candidate biographies, platforms, contact information, and videos are available at the Cambridge Civic website run by long time civic chronicler Robert Winters, who is running for city council this year.
If we eliminate MCAS how would we know that so many 3rd graders are so behind on math? Or middle schoolers unprepared for algebra which most of the current board wants to eliminate?
The MCAS aren’t perfect but let’s create some better evaluations before tossing them out.
Massachusetts improvement in public education since the 90s is a great success story and the MCAS is a critical part of it. In general, if we are “one of the few” that does anything in education, we should initially assume that’s probably a good thing others should emulate rather than the other way around.
It’s a good test and I see no reason why we should get rid of it as a requirement to graduate. Internationally it is very common to have a standardized test you need to pass in order to graduate from high school.
Finland, the global leader in public education has no standardized tests. As someone educated in MA public schools in the MCAS era, and who works in public education, MCAS is a clear and obvious distraction from actual education. It also tests socio-economic and ethnic background more than performance or improvement. The sooner we get rid of it the better for both educators and students.
Did you mean that $26,000 was half the median single-person income (as written, you have said that $52,000 is half the median single-person income, which would mean that the actual median income is $104,000 — surely not possible, as the figure for 2020 is under $50,000)?
@ Slaw
“It also tests socio-economic and ethnic background more than performance or improvement.”
That is a false premise that is so often used.
I, and a number of friends, have looked closely at the MCAS math, and socio-economic and ethnic background has nothing to do with the test. Black and brown students can’t pass the tests? With good teaching, of course they can. Don’t try to make them look inferior by saying that they can’t perform.
While Finland might not have standardized tests, among the other countries that do are France, England, and Italy.
It’s a weird myth that Finland has no tests or homework. It’s just not true.
If you haven’t noticed every perspective slaw has is flawed. Don’t bother reading the naive viewpoint.
It’s almost an onion headline: School committee candidates all endorse no evaluations!
It’s downright disturbing where public education has gone and is going in wokeville.
“I, and a number of friends, have looked closely at the MCAS math, and socio-economic and ethnic background has nothing to do with the test.”
For some reason what you and your friends found is a lot less meaningful to me than peer reviewed research saying that it absolutely does have an incredibly clear, determinative impact. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3316&context=dissertations
“Black and brown students can’t pass the tests? With good teaching, of course they can. Don’t try to make them look inferior by saying that they can’t perform.”
This is such a bad faith argument that your side likes to trot out a lot. It is not racist to point out the way that racism manifests in society. Pointing out a test is classist and racist is challenging the legitimacy of the test not saying Black people or poor people are inferior. That’s pretty obvious.
Only people who think the MCAS is a good test, despite the evidence to the contrary, imply Black people or poor peoples inferiority because you deny systemic barriers to working class students of color, implying individual and in this case racial failing.
No. I refuse this framing. White flight was resegregation and the funding imbalance of property taxes maintains enormous inequalities in our entire region but especially revolving around the school system. Saying things like “with good teaching, of course they can” obscures the actual problems in our education system that need addressing while using flimsy accusations of racism against attempts to address systemic racism in the education system.
“It’s a weird myth that Finland has no tests or homework. It’s just not true.”
I did not claim Finland has no tests and made no mention of homework. I specifically said “Finland, the global leader in public education has no standardized tests.” This is true and what is relevant to the topic of MCAS. They absolutely have nothing at all like it and manage to provide better education than we do. Teachers in Finland do test on the subjects they teach, and getting rid of MCAS wouldn’t make it so teachers couldn’t do that here. In fact, it would give them more time to do so.
Slaw please go back to some communist country. America isn’t yet – however with people like you maybe you can push us there!
Which side of the wall did the overwhelming majority of people run from / to in Germany when it went down…we know slaw runs to North Korea where communism is flourishing 😂
@prc Finland is a capitalist country and it was never communist. It even famously fought a bloody war with the USSR, the Winter War. But don’t let some basic history stop you from unhinged red- bating. Go back to the 1950s.
You are a modern don Quixote fighting ghosts of misremembered windmills.
@Slaw
You work in public education, but in another article you said you’ve done landscape work.
Any other professions you’d care to share with us
so that in a forthcoming article we’ll know that you can comment as an expert.
I do work in public education, although I do not actually reference that here or claim any form of expertise because of it so not sure what you are trying to do. I do seem to be occupying a lot of rent free space in your head though.
I have also worked as a landscaper and gardener and still do some of that work occasionally. Its pretty normal for people to work different jobs at different times in their lives, or to work multiple jobs at the same time (for example when I was working in both public education and as a landscaper). This city is really expensive and like many in my generation I have had to work from a young age and have worked a variety of jobs.
You’ll get a kick out of that I’ve worked as a delivery driver and found that bike lane projects usually improve ease of delivery since they generally also include dedicated drop off space and you no longer have to compete with private parking for space.
Let me guess slaw you get drinking water from alewife brook and sustainably fish 🎣 the Charles.
What a joke – go back to Finland and enjoy the 56% top tax bracket. Although pulling weeds up as a “landscaper” you won’t pay that but you can always aspire to! Maybe delivering for Amazon will get you there!!
You are the Joke. So high on your own farts and red scare propaganda you can’t see that laughing at the very existence of working people discredits you not me.
Hahaha yes the family trust fund pays for everything! You should get one slaw makes life so much easier.
The internet was terrific until it gave socialists like you a platform to pollute people’s minds. One day people will wake up to myths of free health care – rent control – free money – free lunch – free free free. Not until the debt/gdp doubles from where it is now but things are moving quickly. A slow boil of the frog feels nice at first.
Good luck fishing slaw!
Babbling like a brook.
Nonsense, the seton hall dissertation you cite, (not exactly a peer reviewed published article), excluded regional schools and charters, and points out that scores are correlated with income. No one doubts that.
The question is why- is it the tests are racist? Or is it the way the teachers are teaching? Probably the tests could use some improvement, but undoubtedly the teachers need to learn how to teach in ways that don’t reinforce social barriers, and they arent.
I’d gladly get rid of the tests if they were replaced with another system that more effectively helped students and families and schools know how well they were performing.
Right now it seems like they want to just get rid of them, which its condescending toward all students, especially marginalized ones who need the most help.
Its the educational equivalent of donald trump saying the covid rates go down when you dont test. The math failure rates go way down when you eliminate tests too.
“The question is why- is it the tests are racist?”
Simple answer for that is yes: https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/04/04/underground-railroad-mcas-question
“Or is it the way the teachers are teaching?” Those aren’t the only explanations. Great teachers with poor resources can only go so far with their pedagogy.
“but undoubtedly the teachers need to learn how to teach in ways that don’t reinforce social barriers, and they arent.” This is true, some of this again though is having the resources (including training on inclusive education) to do so.
“I’d gladly get rid of the tests if they were replaced with another system that more effectively helped students and families and schools know how well they were performing.”
There are ways to do that without high stakes testing and I personally do not want to simply replace the MCAS with the MCAS2.
“Right now it seems like they want to just get rid of them, which its condescending toward all students, especially marginalized ones who need the most help.”
How? That simply does not follow. If anything it is defenses of the MCAS which is condescending to marginalized students, considering it wastes their time they could be learning and is terrible at actually assessing their achievements.
“It’s the educational equivalent of donald trump saying the covid rates go down when you dont test. The math failure rates go way down when you eliminate tests too.”
This also does not follow. People who passed the actual math class shouldn’t be unable to graduate because they do not do well on a single high stakes standardized test. MCAS doesn’t actually test for failure rate, again it primarily tests for family background.
Clearly, SLAW, you do not follow, on that we can agree. And clearly, we can agree that systemic issues are keeping many bright students from achieving.
However, until we come up with a better system of evaluating student educational achievements, talking about getting rid of the test altogether is objectively shortsighted. MCAS are not perfect, but I hear far more clamor (from the CEA and other unions) about getting rid of them than I do about what to realistically replace them with.
And no, I don’t think that passing math class is an objective enough criteria for passing HS.
You can either do the math, or not, and employers need to know whether you’ve achieved a basic competency before they hand you the keys to a register.
Employers don’t look at MCAS results. They do look at high school diplomas.
Precisely. Which is why diplomas should reflect a basic standard of achievement so that employers can know what graduates are capable of.
Unfortunately massively different grading metrics across teachers, schools and districts lack transparency and consistency that would be useful for colleges, community colleges and jobs.
Moreover, MCAS identify schools that are failing students so resources can be allocated (be they financial, pedagogical or otherwise) to support those very students and schools, not punish them.
Except again MCAS tests more for family background than actual performance. Objective standards across the board are only better if they are actually objective and MCAS completely fails at that.
That also actually hasn’t happened in practice. MCAS has done nothing to diminish inequalities in the school system.
Slaw, are you a parent with kids in CPS?
You keep histrionically saying get rid of them because they are “w complete failure” without a suggestion with how to replace them. Thats unhelpful.
I am not sure if you are aware that “high school diploma” wasnt very meaningful before MCAS. You might want to check out books like “savage inequalities” which lay out the inequities in our school systems, and revealed that a degree from say, Dover Sherborne HS and Holyoke High School were fundamentally different.
MCAS can tell us a basic standard of achievement of all schools.
Personally, I see the cover of todays globe (“cambridge MCAs scores show schools have fully recovered”) and I feel proud and relieved to know CPS is back on track.
Without MCAS, we wouldnt know how well cambridge students had come back, and that would be a real shame to the hardworking teachers.
BTW, I dont know if you were a teacher in CPS or what, but when I taught special ed many years ago (not here), the hardest, most heartbreaking part of the job was when a kid was failing, and we knew it could impact their future and their graduation.
Many teachers I knew back then found it a relief that they didnt have to be the one to make the call to impact a kids future, but a more objective test like MCAS could clarify their competencies and make the decision.
“You keep histrionically saying get rid of them because they are “w complete failure” without a suggestion with how to replace them. Thats unhelpful.”
Get rid of it and replace it with nothing. High stakes testing is bad. Again as I said above I do not want to eliminate the MCAS for MCAS 2.0 and it seems that is the only acceptable answer to some people.
Referencing “savage inequalities” (A great book everyone should read) to defend the MCAS is genuinely ridiculous. MCAS reifies the same inequalities.
“MCAS can tell us a basic standard of achievement of all schools.”
No it cannot. It is a culturally biased test that tests more for social background than achievement.
Headlines like “cambridge MCAs scores show schools have fully recovered” should not exist. MCAS does not show that, it cannot show that. There are so many important factors it simply does not mature. This is one of the perils of assuming a test can do things it cannot actually do.
” but a more objective test like MCAS”
MCAS is simply not objective, no matter how many times people claim that it is. Again it tests more for social background than anything else. That is far from an objective test.