http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/05/pursuit_of_diploma_requires_final_challenge/
Pursuit of diploma requires final challenge
MCAS hurdle tests 68-year-old student
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | March 5, 2007
After being out of school for 45 years, Lula Mae Johnson enrolled in an adult education program five years ago in hopes of earning her high school diploma.
- Now 68, Johnson is the oldest student in the Boston public schools taking the MCAS this week -- her final hurdle before walking across the graduation stage at Faneuil Hall in May.
Starting this school year, adults working toward a high school diploma must pass the math and English exams of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test. Traditional high school students have been required since 2003 to pass the state exams to graduate.
Some older students who have gone back to school for a shot at better careers balk at the idea of sitting for the five-day exam, which includes multiple-choice questions, open response, and an essay. Some have been out of school so long that they have never taken a standardized test.
"This is all tough stuff to look at," Johnson said. "It's been a long road but when you want something, you really put forth the effort to do it."
Johnson is one of 172 Boston adults registered to take the tests, which start today. She hopes a high school diploma will allow her to study criminal justice at UMass-Boston and eventually enter law school.
This will be her second attempt. She came close to passing in November, when the tests were offered to adults for the first time. She has spent every Saturday since January in a new program offered by the school system to prepare adults for the exams. Johnson, a Jehovah's Witness, has given up preaching door to door on Saturday mornings so she could attend class.
On Saturday at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury, during their last class before tonight's test, 15 students spent more than three hours solving math problems and learning strategies for answering reading comprehension questions.
"Emotionally, it's been challenging trying to keep their spirits up," said Lisa Patrick, assistant director of the Department of Adult Education and Community Services for the Boston public schools. "It's a high stakes test and we understand their anxieties and their fears."
The adult students juggle work and family responsibilities as they complete their high school requirements. The MCAS is just "one more barrier that's put in front of them," Patrick said. But she said she fully supports the Department of Education in raising standards for adults.
"The adults are receiving a high school diploma so why shouldn't they be held to the same standards?" Patrick said. "We're setting them up to succeed."
Previously, to earn a diploma, adults in Boston's night school program only had to pass a traditional high school curriculum with a grade of D or above. Those in the city's Adult Diploma Program, which gives credit for take-home projects, merely had to demonstrate proficiency in subjects such as health, government and society, and occupation and career awareness.
Students in Adult Diploma Programs can take an alternative to the MCAS that tests the same math and English content to fulfill the state's new requirements. Patrick said most Boston adults choose to take the MCAS to see how they do.
Johnson said she was stumped by all the geometric principles and algebraic equations during her last try at the MCAS. She said she also struggles with writing because she is "a person of few words."
She pushed herself to write an essay a week on her own time and asked her teacher for feedback. Her last one was about how to make a marriage last. She and her husband, to whom she was married while still in high school in South Carolina, have been together 48 years.
Both she and her husband quit school after they married, when she was 19. He worked for a lumber mill. She took care of their infant son. The couple, who now live in Mattapan, moved to Boston when she was 21 for better job opportunities. He started a car wash. She began pressing shirts at a Roxbury laundry.
"I figured I was a grown lady and didn't have to go back to school," Johnson said. "Look at me now. My thoughts are completely different."
She worked as a nursing assistant for nearly 30 years before running her own day care, which she quit to go back to school.
Johnson made sure that all five of their children, now ages 38 to 48, completed high school.
"I didn't do it. My husband didn't do it," she said. "It was a must for them."
Tracy Jan can be reached at [email protected]. 
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.