Adrian Walker, Boston Globe
With a $250,000 ad buy earlier this week, the fight for the future of the MCAS has officially begun.
Massachusetts voters will decide in November whether the state will continue requiring the standardized test to graduate from high school.
If the test is “high-stakes” — as it is often described — so is the ballot question. If it succeeds, Massachusetts will become one of only three states in the country with no statewide requirement for graduation.
The fight currently pits the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has long opposed the test, against business leaders and others who believe it has created badly-needed educational standards for the state’s students.
Throughout its 21-year history, MCAS has always divided people and drawn critics who believe — among other things — that the emphasis on testing has distorted education and that it is bad for underserved populations which have historically fared worse on standardized tests.
The petition on the ballot would eliminate the 10th-grade MCAS. That’s the test students have to pass at some point to receive their diplomas.
The teachers union is riding high after a couple of successful strikes led to favorable outcomes for its members. But the left-leaning group has had much rougher sledding at the State House. Measures like legalizing teacher strikes and, yes, eliminating MCAS, have gotten no traction.
So it’s onto the ballot box, where the union will try to persuade voters to abandon a quarter-century of educational policy.
Business leaders who support keeping the test have launched an advertising campaign in support of keeping the status quo. They believe the test has been a central component in improving public education and building a skilled workforce.
One opponent of eliminating the MCAS has been Governor Maura Healey. While she seemed to signal some willingness to reconsider the issue when she campaigned for election in 2022 — winning the MTA’s endorsement in the process — she told Radio Boston in March that she opposes eliminating the exam. Her education secretary, Patrick Tutwiler is also against the change.
“We need to be able to assess how students are doing,” Healey said then. She and Tutwiler have also expressed concerns that getting rid of MCAS would leave the state with no uniform graduation standards.
Like the charter school battle before it, this debate is — unfortunately and inaccurately — starting to be framed as a battle between working-class teachers unions and the business community.
I use the term unfortunate to describe that framing because I don’t think the two sides of this issue break down nearly that neatly. This isn’t a class issue. It’s a question of how to do right by the state’s public school students.
I don’t think the case for eliminating MCAS is persuasive at all. To begin with, 96 percent of the students who take it eventually pass it. That strongly suggests it isn’t much of a barrier to graduation.
Over that time, graduation rates have gone up, dropout rates have gone down, and the state’s schools have improved. While plenty remains to be done, the education reform movement that it grew out of has, broadly speaking, delivered on its promise to made Massachusetts schools better.
They aren’t better for everyone. About 700 students a year are denied diplomas because they did not pass the MCAS. That number is larger than it should be, and the state should work hard on finding ways to substantially reduce it. But it isn’t a compelling reason to throw out the test completely.
If anything, Massachusetts might benefit from more statewide standards. A diploma should have the same meaning and value regardless of whether it was earned in Boston or Brockton or Longmeadow. That’s what real equity would look like — and isn’t that what everyone claims they want?
While democratic in theory, ballot questions are dicey ways to make public policy. That’s especially true in matters of education, where nuance is the rule and many important questions don’t have simple yes-or-no answers. If we’re being honest, it’s a lousy way to make this kind of decision.
I believe Healey and Tutwiler are clear-eyed about where Massachusetts schools need to get better, and I think they should be trusted to follow that vision. Killing MCAS — with no replacement in sight — won’t make anyone’s education better.
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