Matt Stout, Boston Globe
Governor Maura Healey, who campaigned two years ago on reassessing the role of standardized testing in K-12 education, said Tuesday that she does not support eliminating the state’s MCAS exams as a graduation requirement, putting her at odds with the powerful teachers union pushing for the mandate’s repeal.
Healey’s stated opposition comes weeks after her education secretary said her administration did not support a ballot question to no longer make high school diplomas contingent on students passing MCAS exams. Her public comments, however, appear to be the first time that Healey has weighed in directly, noting that she believes the state needs “to be able to assess how our young people are doing.”
“So I do not support getting rid of MCAS,” Healey said during an appearance on WBUR’s “Radio Boston,” adding that hundreds of students each year don’t pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, barring them from getting a diploma.
“We’ve got to find a way to take care of those young people, get them what they need, and see them through,” the first-term Democrat said. “That’s a different discussion that my team is engaged on right now.”
As a candidate in 2022, Healey said she was open to reexamining the role of standardized testing, and that she “supports the efforts of the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment,” a partnership of eight school districts, including Boston, and their local teachers unions, that is examining how to build a system “that goes beyond a multiple-choice standardized test.”
She also had the backing of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has nearly 120,000 members, saying she would be “the education governor” if elected.
Healey has backed putting more funding toward public schools, proposing an increase of more than $260 million for state education aid for the next school year. But the school funding formula the state overhauled just five years ago is struggling to keep up with the high rate of inflation that’s helped drive up costs for local districts.
Healey also has been at odds with the powerful teachers union before, saying she, like the state’s legislative leaders, opposes legalizing teacher strikes in the state. Massachusetts is one of 37 states in the nation where teacher strikes are illegal — something the Massachusetts Teachers Association has pushed to change.
The MCAS-focused ballot question, should it ultimately reach the November ballot, is likely to spark a divisive, and expensive, campaign.
The proposal would ask voters to eliminate the MCAS graduation requirement, established under the 1993 Education Reform Act and enacted a decade later. Instead, the measure would require students to complete coursework that is consistent with the state’s academic standards to receive their high school diplomas. The MCAS is based on those same standards.
The teachers union has long argued that requiring students to pass the MCAS exams in order to receive a high school diploma creates immense inequities in public schools, rewarding students who are good test takers, while unnecessarily punishing those who struggle with standardized tests. Those include students with learning or physical disabilities or who are not fluent in English.
But should the ballot question pass, Healey’s education secretary, Patrick Tutwiler, warned that it would put the state in “a place of no standard — essentially 351 different standards for high school graduation.”
“The governor does not believe that it’s the direction to go,” he said in a WBZ-TV interview this month.
Healey confirmed as much Tuesday, while echoing past comments that she’s open to reshaping the test itself.
“It’s important to maintain the ability to assess our young people,” Healey said Tuesday, “and also to always express, you know, a willingness to consider what it is we’re measuring, how we’re measuring.”
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