This article appeared in The Boston Globe
Two states require that students take independently-administered civics tests to graduate high school. Eight have comprehensive exit exams. And a vast majority require students to earn credits in multiple math, science, and language classes. In all, 47 states, including Massachusetts, require an exit exam or specific course requirements to graduate.
That means Massachusetts could soon be in select company. It has essentially no course requirements to graduate. And next month, it could get rid of its exit exam.
Voters in November will weigh Question 2, a teachers union-backed measure that would repeal the state mandate that students pass 10th grade MCAS exams in math, English, and science. A recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll found about 58 percent of respondents supported the ballot measure.
Massachusetts is already something of an outlier, but if the measure passes, it will be even more of one. While almost every other state requires students to complete a laundry list of specific course credits to graduate, Massachusetts requires only instruction in civics and physical education. And despite a decade-old trend of abolishing exit exams around the country, there appears to be little academic research into how it has played out on the ground.
If Massachusetts voters approve the measure, it would go into effect immediately for the class of 2025 and it would be left up to districts to certify that students have met state academic standards. While the Massachusetts Teachers Association disputes eliminating the MCAS requirement would result in varying graduation standards across the state, experts who spoke to the Globe said if the requirement is removed, the state should consider alternative concrete requirements to ensure a continued graduation bar.
In 2002, more than half of states asked students to pass an exit exam to graduate high school, but that number has been slowly declining since, to just eight today (plus two states with narrow civics test requirements). The number is likely to decline further, with New York education officials considering a proposal to lift the state’s test requirement.
Many states that have removed the requirements cite similar reasons advocates in Massachusetts give, including the harm to English learners and students with disabilities, who disproportionately fail the exams, and concerns that educators focus their teaching on preparing students for the high-stakes exams to the exclusion of other skills and knowledge. In Massachusetts, about 1 percent of students each year fail to graduate solely because of the exam; most who fail the exam also fail to meet local graduation requirements. And most students who never pass are English learners or students with disabilities.
The ballot measure has pitted the state’s teachers union against business groups and has caused schisms among the state’s political class. Those opposed, including the state’s top education officials, warn the state would be left with no uniform graduation standards in Massachusetts.
However, there’s little evidence on how lifting state test requirements has affected graduation rates or other educational outcomes for students around the country. Academic research on the introduction of state tests in the 1990s and 2000s tended to find minimal or somewhat negative effects.
John Papay, a professor at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute who studies the MCAS through a research partnership with the state’s education departments, said he was unaware of any research on the aftermath of removing exit exams in other states. If the initiative passes, he said, it will be “important to study.”
Related: Half of all Mass. high schools don’t abide by state recommended graduation requirements
Graduation rate trends in states that have removed the tests show no consistent effect: Nevada’s graduation rate surged the year it ended its state test, but California, for example, ended its state test requirement in 2015, and saw its graduation rate briefly plateau. Graduation rates then continued rising — but so did rates in both Massachusetts and across the nation.
But comparison to other states may not be adequate for Massachusetts because of the lack of an alternative set of course requirements. Under state law, all high schools must offer physical education and civics classes, but students don’t have to pass them. Districts in Massachusetts are allowed to come up with their own required course lists for graduation.
Just three other states — Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Vermont — have only one or fewer course credits required to graduate, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit based in Denver.
Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, a watchdog group in New York City that opposes standardized testing, said Pennsylvania and Colorado both leave graduation requirements up to local districts, but they have to align their requirements with curriculum standards and get approval from the states.
Related: Does the MCAS graduation requirement matter in outcomes of high school graduates?
“It’s not that the state throws up its hands and says, ‘Do what you want,’” Feder said. “There are places where people come in from the states and audit ... whether you are doing the things to make kids graduation ready.”
Massachusetts education officials already visit 15 to 20 districts each year and review their educational efforts.
Josh Goodman, an economist at Boston University who has studied the influence of math course requirements on students, said if the ballot measure passes, the state should consider imposing coursework-based graduation requirements instead, and work to ensure the content of those courses continues to meet a minimum standard. Goodman’s research examined the impact of many states adding more math requirements in the wake of a landmark federal report “A Nation at Risk,” which concluded that American students were falling behind their global peers. Goodman found the new standards substantially increased coursework completed by Black students, who were most affected by the heightened curriculum standards, and their later earnings.
“I take that research of mine as an example of how the state can step in and raise standards in a way that actually reduces inequality among students ... and I see that as quite parallel to the role the MCAS plays in Massachusetts,” Goodman said. “My fear is that if the state doesn’t play a role in that, the students who suffer are most disadvantaged socially and economically, because it’s their school districts that are the least well-resourced and for whom it’s easiest to relax standards so that their graduation rates don’t suffer.”
A recent report found half of the state’s public high schools do not require students to complete the recommended MassCore program to graduate. That sort of patchwork of graduation requirements is part of what the MCAS graduation test was intended to solve, and advocates of the test argue that having it as a measure of the state’s learning standards is part of why the state’s schools improved in recent decades.
Related: $7.7m vs. $1.2m: On the MCAS ballot measure, business-backed opponents are getting outspent — and out-campaigned
Massachusetts public schools are “number one” in the country, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler said in a recent interview, partly as a result of a “system of assessment and accountability” that includes MCAS standardized tests.
Even if the measure passes, Massachusetts would continue to have the MCAS. All states must assess all students regularly, under federal law, and only a few states such as Massachusetts have those assessments double as graduation requirements. A handful have state tests contribute to the students’ grades in certain courses. Some states also require students to take but not pass other tests such as the SAT or make passing the state test one of several options to graduate.
Technically, even those states that still have exit exams do have alternatives. In Ohio, for example, students can graduate after failing multiple times by enlisting in the military. Massachusetts has one of the strictest requirements, but even the Commonwealth has appeals, nearly all of which are approved by the state, noted Papay.
“The appeals process is not nearly as well used as it might be,” Papay said. “That’s a big equity issue. Some districts are filing a lot of appeals and some are not, so outcomes seem to be different.”
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.
Comments