The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) have been used as a scoring system for Minnesota schools for years. However, recent scores have failed to show an accurate representation of some Minnesota schools’ successes.

According to the MCAs, the Orono School District ranks number 34 out of all of the schools in Minnesota, putting schools like Wayzata, Delano, Minnetonka, Edina and Mound ahead of Orono.
Schools ranked ahead of Orono have been using the MCA results to advertise their schools as being better and more highly ranked than Orono.

I have witnessed the hard work of the students in Orono, as well as put in my own hours toward maintaining an above-average GPA. Therefore I know that the scores of the MCA do not represent Orono students’ success. In actuality, I find the scores embarrassing.

Orono has the highest scores on the ACT out of all of these schools, sitting at a 26.5 average score. Also, Orono has an 86 percent passing rate on the AP exams offered and in 2013, 94 percent of graduated students went on to postsecondary education.

How is the MCA supposed to be the only representation of a school’s success when the evidence is obvious? It can’t. It has failed to show how successful students are in Orono while the ACT clearly demonstrates it. The MCA is no longer accurate. Students learn over time that their individual scores on the MCA do not affect them directly, therefore, Orono students tend to put less effort into the test. This is what is affecting Orono’s score overall.

MCA scores are used by potential Orono School District residents to determine which school they want their children enrolled in. If I were to see that Orono was ranked 34 in the state for academics, I would look elsewhere.

On a standardized test like the ACT, however, students know that their future is dependent on the score they receive, therefore the effort put into the ACT increases for one reason: students care. Who is going to put their best into something they do not care about?

This is why the MCA has failed to create an accurate representation of Orono schools, making Orono look, to some, like a school undeserving of funding at the same rates as the other schools in close proximity. While Orono students’ results explain otherwise, the MCAs do matter. They create a school status of success. Without a high status, funding gets cut, enrollment goes down and the reputations of the students and teachers are hurt.

Don Germanson, a candidate for the School Board from the past election, also used Orono’s MCA scores against the school. He campaigned that the teachers and staff were not doing enough, causing the teachers to spend more hours in teacher workshops and meetings in attempts to solve the problem.
Unfortunately, the problem cannot be fixed by the teachers. The scores are in the students’ hands and in how much effort they are willing to put forth to accurately demonstrate the achievements of Orono.

As many others have proposed, it is time to scratch the MCA, discard it completely, and rely on the scores of the ACT and AP exams to show what Minnesota schools are capable of achieving academically. Students care about the ACT and AP exam scores, so why not focus on this fact instead of getting caught up in the numbers on a test that seems pointless to those taking it?

I agree with Germanson that we, as Orono students, can do better. However, when the numbers are inaccurate, how do we know where to begin? We begin by no longer relying on the MCA to determine if a school is excelling academically and start letting the scores that are already achieved speak for themselves. There are more ways to determine a school’s success outside of a statewide test.

ACT scores can be compared along with the AP exams, average school GPA, or academic scholarships offered to students in the school. The MCA has lost its purpose and is no longer applicable to today’s school systems. The MCAs inaccuracy of schools’ scoring has created such controversy in Minnesota state schools that it should be discontinued and instead be replaced by ACT scores to determine each school’s ability to teach its students.