Goodbye standards and excellence? Long a leader in public education, Massachusetts is now adrift when it comes to high school graduation requirements

First appeared in Contrarian Boston 2.14.25

By David Mancuso

Last fall, the Massachusetts Teachers Association pumped millions into a successful statewide ballot campaign repealing the MCAS test as a high school graduation requirement.

Now just how the Bay State will define and measure a student’s mastery of lessons qualifying them for a high school diploma is suddenly the most important education policy issue in the Commonwealth in the last three decades.

At the recent special Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) meeting, top state education officials sputtered incoherently in an unsuccessful bid to answer that crucial question.

It’s not an academic question by any means. The state of Massachusetts has an enforceable, legal obligation to provide all students with an adequate public education, and individual students denied that right can sue to enforce it.

Sadly, BESE chair Katherine Craven has been compelled to remind the leadership of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education - and her fellow board members - of this reality in the last several meetings.

Second, the law resulting from the adoption of Question 2 - which killed the MCAS test as a statewide high school graduation requirement - nevertheless declares students must still show “mastery of the skills, competencies and knowledge contained in the state academic standards…in the areas measured by the MCAS high school test.”

Yes, you read that right: Students must still demonstrate their proficiency in the areas “measured by the MCAS,” even as the test has lost all its power to determine whether students actually graduate or not.

To address the state’s legal obligations, the state’s top education officials proposed to BESE that districts will certify course work, against which students must prove their mastery.

Moreover, the MCAS test could still serve as proof of that mastery, but only for students with extenuating circumstances, like coming from another country where their transcripts may not clearly match state standards.

Now here's where things got silly.

Officials from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, or DESE, went on to say that the MCAS test could not be used to demonstrate mastery for competency determination for any other students.

So our state’s top education bureaucrats are saying students who recently entered Massachusetts schools from another state or country could show mastery of state mandated coursework by passing the MCAS, but a student who has been educated only in Massachusetts would not be allowed to do so.

Go figure. The department’s proposal is illogical and undermines local control over education.

If a district can use the MCAS test as a measure of mastery for some students, why could it not use its discretion under local control to do it for all of its students?

When Contrarian Boston asked officials at DESE to answer that and other questions around the conflicts in their proposal to the board of Elementary and Secondary Education, a spokesperson could only say “please stay tuned for further discussions and possible regulatory proposals.”

Maybe a more honest answer would have been something along the lines of: “We are trying to figure out politically what the Massachusetts Teachers Association will accept for the state’s oversight of education standards and accountability before we say anything else.”

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t the state’s top education officials who were unable to offer any clear answers.

Two members of the state board of education, Ericka Fisher and Dàlida Rocha, tied themselves into a gordian knot in their attempts to discredit the MCAS test as a possible option for districts to certify mastery.

Fischer and Rocha argued for local control over curriculum and coursework, yet opposed local control if a district chose the MCAS as a tool for demonstration of mastery as the law requires.

Neither Fisher nor Rocha responded to Contrarian Boston’s request to clarify exactly where they stood on the matter.

The whole conversation at the state board of education meeting makes it impossible to have confidence that the governor’s K-12 Graduation Council (GC) solution will come up with a substantive replacement standard for the MCAS graduation requirement.

That’s especially the case if school districts are forced to use the incoherent interim solution to determine mastery and competency determination currently being pushed by state education officials.

As both a member of state education board and the Chair of the GC, one would have thought Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler would have something to say on behalf of the Healey administration as to whether the interim solution being presented would help or hinder the work of the council in its efforts to come up with a replacement for the MCAS requirement.

Instead, he was inexplicably silent.

Concern for the future of education in Massachusetts is growing.

Contrarian Boston has been told off the record that the expectations are currently low for both the council and the legislature to do what is right for students.

It may be time to throw in the towel and simply congratulate the MTA for its big win killing standards and accountability in Massachusetts.

That’s a sad ending for a state that has prided itself on excellence in public education since the 1600s.