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Writer's pictureProtect Our Kids' Future

MCAS provides equity; vote 'no' on Question 2

This op-ed appeared in the Boston Globe


Massachusetts has more than 500 school districts. Each one has its own standards for awarding grades and diplomas. A grade of A in one district might rise only to the level of a C grade in another district. These variable standards used to mean that students across the Commonwealth ultimately graduated with very different levels of skill and knowledge.


Some were well-prepared for college and careers while others were not, but they all got a high school diploma, which suggested to colleges and employers that they all had the skills and knowledge to succeed when many actually didn’t. This unevenness was grossly unfair to students, particularly the most disadvantaged.


More than 30 years ago, policy makers found this unacceptable and took action by passing the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. It required state education officials to establish a minimum standard of skill and knowledge that every student would have to meet prior to graduating. (I was involved in that process.) The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, for the first time in the Commonwealth’s history, required the achievement of state standards as a prerequisite for graduation. MCAS was created to assess whether students had met standards in English and math (a science requirement was added later).


The MCAS exam was essentially a diagnostic yardstick that could be used to measure whether students had the knowledge and skill they would need to successfully perform in college or career.


MCAS data are essential for guiding the improvement of teaching and learning. While Massachusetts’ standards and the MCAS tests were widely acclaimed as the best in the nation and enabled Massachusetts to become the top performing education state in the country, the standards we set, while high compared to other states, were still modest, representing only a 10th-grade level of achievement. Is this too much to ask of our high school seniors?


The requirement that students pass the 10th-grade MCAS to graduate was instituted to measure progress against a specific set of achievement criteria, thus ensuring fairness while guaranteeing that no school district could graduate a student who lacked the skill and knowledge to succeed. This was an equity strategy, quite the opposite of what its critics assert and why voters should reject Question 2, which would remove the MCAS as a graduation requirement.


Opponents have attempted to mislead the public by claiming that the MCAS graduation requirement relies on a single test. Not true. Students have many opportunities to retest — twice in their junior year and twice more as seniors. They can also take it after graduation. Additionally there are alternate tests and an appeals process. Opponents claim that the test is “high stakes,” but students who don’t meet the standard are entitled to extra help, more instruction, tutoring, an educational proficiency plan, and all the instruction needed to meet the standard.

The MCAS as a graduation requirement made it so all graduates had a minimum body of knowledge and skill. Parents, colleges, and employers could trust that a diploma from a high school in Massachusetts meant students were prepared for success. The graduation requirement also, importantly, made performance matter because students would have to meet a standard prior to graduation and schools would be judged on their effectiveness in preparing students to pass. Students, teachers, and schools were given clear incentives to make sure that all students — the reform mantra was and is “all means all” — had met at least the minimum requirements for advancement.


Prior to the class of 2003, Massachusetts’ statewide testing had no consequences. Not surprisingly, the test was largely ignored by the public and educators. By contrast, the MCAS as a graduation requirement grabbed people’s attention, creating a sense of urgency for everyone to do their utmost to help students achieve the standards. The data generated by the test became a central diagnostic tool guiding the work of districts, schools, and teachers. The media followed the results closely. A sense of accountability was infused into a system that had been largely unaccountable for performance.


One immediate indicator of the focusing power of MCAS came from the students themselves. The class of 2003′s student performance on the 10th-grade exam skyrocketed over the preceding year. Students and their teachers had gotten the message: learning counts, mastery counts. They were paying attention. If the ballot measure succeeds, that message will die, and many students will stop paying attention.


It’s important to remember that MCAS is just a measuring instrument. The graduation requirement ensures that everyone will pay attention to the measurement data. Because everyone has to meet the standard, teachers and students will want to know exactly where they’re falling short so they can make up the difference. Without that data for diagnostic purposes, educators have less guidance as to how students and schools can improve performance. Many of those who oppose the graduation requirement actually aim to eliminate MCAS altogether, even though this federally mandated assessment provides vital information to guide the closing of achievement gaps.


MCAS should be improved, not eliminated. For example, MCAS could factor in more data, such as attendance rates, to present a more complete portrait of factors affecting school performance.


Opponents of the graduation requirement want to return to a world where all standards were local and variable, where there was no public data on performance, no accountability, and where students were routinely graduated without adequate preparation to do college or career work. Opponents like to proclaim that data on individual students are not necessary and that there are other approaches to measuring performance. Many of these untried alternatives typically rely on subjective judgment, are expensive, and present major practical problems, to say nothing of their dubious validity and reliability.


This retreat from common-sense assessment would guarantee a return to an era of social promotion, graduating students based on seat time rather than subject mastery. Social promotion disproportionately punishes low-income and minority youth by sending them forward without the preparation to succeed. Massachusetts shouldn’t return to those darker days when such inequity was somehow acceptable.

Improving learning is important for students, school systems, and the communities they serve. When mediocre or poor performance doesn’t really matter, it will be ignored. MCAS and its graduation stakes make learning matter and drive the performance improvement that is essential if we truly aspire to every child having a fair chance at social and economic mobility.



Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he is the founding faculty director of the EdRedesign Lab. He is a former Massachusetts secretary of education.

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