The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) high school test is administered to all Bay State students--both those intending to enroll in college and the many with no such intention. The MCAS high school test is a retrospectively focused standards-based achievement test, designed to measure how well students have mastered the material in the MCAS standards. A February 2015 report of the pro-Common Core Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE) claims that Common Core and PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) will raise standards from the allegedly low level where (MCAS) lay. In this policy brief, Phelps concentrates on the "Summary of Findings" table (p.5 of the report), which purports to answer the question, "Does the test identify students who are college- and career-ready? The MBAE report continues in its MCAS criticism: "More than one-third of Massachusetts high school graduates who enroll at one of the state's public colleges or universities place into one or more noncredit-bearing, remedial courses." Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, where only laudatory praise resides for PARCC: "Students receiving the PARCC college- and career-ready determination may be exempt from having to take and pass placement tests in two- and four-year public institutions of higher education." Here Phelps argues that If PARCC is successful, by the time it completes its studies "to ensure that students [with above-proficient PARCC scores] have a high probability of passing entry-level, credit-bearing English and mathematics courses" they may find that they actually do. But, the "high probability" will more likely be a result of lowered standards in entry-level college courses than raised standards at the high school level. Without placement tests and remedial courses, the standards of entry-level college courses will be forced down. Entry-level college courses will acquire the same content as today's remedial courses. The content of today's entry-level credit-bearing college courses will become the content for second- or third-year college courses. The MBAE (Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education) report suggests that the MCAS high school test scale is not robust enough at the high end of the scale to validly measure college readiness. More high-end content however could easily be added to the test.