Today's Boston Globe has an editorial warning of the demise of the 20 page term paper from today's high school. Everyone's focus on MCAS means that scholastic writing is now geared almost exclusively towards the five-paragraph essay. This is good news when it comes to raising MCAS scores, but bad news when it comes to developing a generation of good writers. Class size and teaching loads have much to do with it, too. You can't expect a high school history teacher with five classes of thirty students each to scrutinize a 20 page paper from each - that's 3000 pages to correct and comment upon. Urban communities that struggle to reach their goals for standardized test results really have no choice but to train students to pass the test. The reality, however, is that even that lofty goal of MCAS success doesn't guarantee that students will be well educated.