RE “THE MTA’s myopic agenda’’: What MCAS testing has done best is to train our students to take MCAS tests. Yes, their scores are improving, because teachers are under enormous pressure to teach to the test. Have any studies been conducted showing that improved test scores have long-term academic benefits for students?

In ancient times — the 1970s and early ‘80s — prior to the onset of our testing culture, I was privileged, as an artist in education, to work in hundreds of schools, integrating the arts into ongoing cognitive, curricular, and social objectives.

The arts provide children with a variety of strengths, from gross motor coordination to spatial organization, and an opportunity not only to revel in those strengths but to develop learning strategies through them. Except for in the wealthiest schools, which can continue to hire specialists, the work I did barely exists now. The objective of nurturing creativity does not feed into “the test,’’ and thus there is no time or money to support it.

Without imagination, even the brightest minds cannot solve the problems we have yet to encounter. Without empowerment around their strengths, too many students will drop out or simply feel that any path leading out of academics is beyond them. Without the arts we will lack vision.

There might be reasons to criticize the legislative agenda of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, but its desire to rid our state of MCAS is not one of them.

Judith Black

Marblehead

The writer is a storyteller.