A More Turbulent New England Schoolhouse

This April, Governor A. Paul Cellucci happily joined in a rally at the State House calling to save New England's beloved Patriots.

He was not so generous two months later when 20,000 teachers dropped by his doorstep.

Cellucci's agenda of more extensive teacher testing has alienated teachers, who complain that the tests are poorly designed and too new.

Now, he has lost more teacher support as he tries to evaluate individual schools by standardized test scores--which teachers also say are relatively new and untested. Other states have taken similar measures, and the state Board of Education already announced that it would grade school districts, but that hasn't won Cellucci any friends among teachers.

Monty Neill, executive director of the Cambridge-based Fair Test, is a vocal opponent of Cellucci's program.

"You're essentially praising schools for being wealthy," he said, pointing to the wide discrepancy in scores between wealthy and poor communites.

Under Cellucci's plan, schools would be evaluated through aggregate score from their students annual standardized MCAS tests and their annual improvement. The grades won't be B pluses or C minuses, but simple terms like "good," "excellent" and "poor."

Ultimately, schools which consistently perform poorly would face takeovers by the Board of Education and good schools will receive additional kudos.

But Neill contended that test scores are just one part of the equation to evaluate schools, not the only element.

"This is like choosing people as healthy or unhealthy based on blood pressure," he said.

Some educational advocates are fuming that schools will be evaluated on a test as new as the MCAS (it was first given in 1998), but Cellucci is happy to take them on.

Though certainly trying to forward his education agenda, the governor has made the issue too personal for teachers, directing his fire at the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA).

He has said his job is to not to befriend teachers, a sentiment shared by Massachusetts Speaker of the House Thomas M. Finneran (D-Mattapan).

"It's not unfair to insist that there be a validation of competence," Finneran said. "[The MTA] is ever concerned with keeping the status quo."

Trying to shake up the status quo, Cellucci has also been working on having veteran teachers pass a test like that which novice teachers must take.

And though Finneran infamously labeled the 59 percent of the prospective teachers who failed the first teacher tests in April of 1998 "idiots," he is not a big advocate of extending testing to seasoned veterans.

"I'd like to think that we would find a way of measuring proficiency without a pencil and paper test," Finneran said.

For the education front, other battles are to come over the budget.

The most prominent: how much money Cellucci can direct toward charter schools.

"While he has quite strongly embraced choice programs, I believe the Governor is still committed to the public schools," Finneran said.

The question of what commitment the state government should show to public schools, and how that might conflict with the tenet of local independence, will continue to create a spirited dialogue.

With the political bickering thrown in, the picturesque New England schoolhouse is starting to look a lot more complicated.