By Jim Stergios in the Boston Globe
The MCAS exam is the rare education tool that promotes both academic excellence and fairness. It promotes excellence by setting a bar for college and career readiness that higher education institutions and employers can trust. It promotes fairness by identifying performance gaps and giving educators the data to narrow those gaps. Voters should say “no” to the proposed state ballot question seeking to eliminate the MCAS graduation requirement in the Commonwealth’s public high schools.
The assessment, together with high academic standards and billions of dollars in new education investments, was introduced in 1998 to drive transformation in our public schools, which at the time were middling at best. Massachusetts imposed just two public high school graduation requirements (a year of American history and four years of physical education), and school funding varied wildly based on a community’s wealth.
The class of 2003 was the first for which passage of the MCAS was a high school graduation requirement. Today, students are required to pass 10th-grade assessments in English language arts, math, and science to graduate.
The state assessment’s impact was already felt by 2005, when Massachusetts public school students outperformed students in all other states in all subjects tested on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. They have continued to do so in most years since then.
SAT scores rose for years. Massachusetts students perform well on international tests, with our eighth-graders tying for the best in the world in science on the gold-standard 2007 Trends in International Math and Science Study assessment.
From 1998, when the assessment was first administered, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the portion of students scoring proficient or better on the 10th-grade test rose from 24 percent to 78 percent in math and from 38 percent to 91 percent in ELA.
Assessment scores have improved for all disadvantaged student groups, though not enough to bridge racial and wealth differences. Higher education attainment has also increased for higher-risk groups like English learners, and low-income and minority students. Seven years after taking the state assessment in 10th grade in 2003, 32 percent of students had graduated from a four-year college. For the 2011 cohort, this percentage grew to 43 percent after seven years. These gains occurred amid a significant rise in the number of low-income students and ELs during the period analyzed.
For these reasons, Governor Maura Healey supports the assessment, as did every one of her predecessors. So do legislative leaders like Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka.
Massachusetts’ race- and income-based achievement gaps remain troubling, but they are not the fault of the assessment. The MCAS makes preexisting gaps visible and, importantly, provides a road map for educators to address such gaps. MCAS data remain the only consistent and objective source to identify disparities in educational outcomes and ensure fair resource allocation, preventing a return to the state’s longtime neglect of ELs, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families.
Disaggregating MCAS data by subject and test-taker characteristics, such as race and family income, gives educators the insights they need to make early and effective interventions.
Contrary to some claims, the 10th-grade assessment is not increasing the number of students dropping out or greatly affecting graduation rates. In fact, since MCAS was introduced, the statewide dropout rate has been cut in half.
Fully 96 percent of Massachusetts high school seniors pass the MCAS and graduate on time; only 1 percent do not graduate because of a failing assessment score. (Three percent fail the assessments and fail to fulfill their local school district requirements; these students would not graduate regardless of MCAS.)
MCAS’s limited impact on graduation rates is by design. Students not passing the assessment on their first try in 10th grade receive personalized academic improvement programs. They are provided multiple opportunities to retake the assessment over the next two years. And students with disabilities, ELs, and others receive necessary accommodations.
The idea is to help all students attain a trusted statewide standard, which is a key factor in the quality of Massachusetts’ workforce. The Bay State boasts the nation’s most educated workforce, which attracts employers, jobs, and investments in growth industries like biotech and advanced manufacturing. Without such a standard, employers have no assurance that our graduates are qualified for these jobs.
Eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement would turn the clock back more than 30 years and return Massachusetts to a time when many students graduated without the skills to be successful.
Each of the 300-plus districts would again set its own graduation requirements, resulting in a jumble of unequal standards. Unlike today, the standard would probably be lower in poorer communities than in affluent districts — and the impacts would be disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable students.
That’s the way it was until the introduction of the MCAS, and it was unfair. It still is. Eliminating the objective bar the state has set won’t allow us to magically wish inequalities away, but it will make it easier to look the other way.
Come November, we have a choice. We can choose willful blindness by eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement or we can face reality and recommit to a new generation of school improvements.
Jim Stergios is executive director of Pioneer Institute, a think tank with offices in Boston and Washington, D.C.
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