Word comes in that the state’s education board has voted nearly unanimously to require successful completion of the MCAS in Science in order to graduate. Good for them. The State Democratic Party (though often not its members) are on the wrong side of the standardized testing, both on substance and for public opinion’s sake. The anti-testing argument is being pushed into stranger territory, this time the canard of laboratory testing:
Some scientists and teachers strongly opposed the new science MCAS requirement, saying it would force students to focus on memorizing facts and take time away from experimenting in the lab and learning through trial and error.
"If you take away the labs, what are you left with?" said Melissa Kosinski-Collins, a biochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You’re left with lectures and exams. Who in their right mind is going to be inspired to pursue a career in science by sitting through a lecture?"
This notion that the MCAS is simply about facts and not synthetic learning is false; just take a look at the Chemistry or Science tests, which are quite rigorous. Memorization may help you remember the name of Charles’s law, but it alone doesn’t make you understand it.
Besides, are we overstating the value of laboratory work? It’s a nice addition, but ultimately, school lab assignments are very much like Junior Achievement attempts to teach "entrepreneurship": an artificial modeling. After all, students aren’t truly doing inductive reasoning or following scientific method when they perform routine laboratory assignments. They’re simply following pre-set examples meant to illustrate ideas with every bit of a foregone conclusion as a lecture. The idea that we’re all of a sudden going to have a drop in those interested in science because we require them to have the competence to pass a standardized test is absurd. Look where we are now: for an industrialized country, could we possibly have less excitement among our students for science?
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