Max Page, the head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, lifts up a sign for his ballot question eliminating the MCAS test as a graduation requirement. (Photo by Gintautas Dumcius)
Massachusetts voters resoundingly approved a ballot question that will remove the requirement that high school students pass a 10th-grade standardized test in English, math, and science to graduate.
The vote pulls down a central pillar of the state’s 1993 education reform law, and makes Massachusetts one of only two states with no statewide requirements for high school graduation.
By a 59% to 41% margin, voters endorsed the change following a high-profile campaign bankrolled by more than $16 million from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which has long opposed the test-based accountability system for public schools ushered in three decades ago by the reform law.
Proponents argued that the high-stakes graduation test causes undue stress and punishes those who don’t perform well on standardized tests. They said the test doesn’t fully capture students’ abilities, particularly English language learners and students with disabilities, the two student groups that struggle most to pass the exam. They also said it forced educators to teach to the test, narrowing the focus of school curriculum.
Opponents – including Gov. Maura Healey, Senate President Karen Spilka, and House Speaker Ron Mariano – said it was vital to maintain a common assessment for all students, regardless of their demographic background or the district where they attend school. They argued that the accountability system established under the 1993 education law helped Massachusetts rocket from just above average in national rankings of student performance to at or near the top in math and reading scores.
In a statement, MTA president Max Page and vice president Deb McCarthy, hailed the vote as a victory for teachers and students. “In passing Question 2, Massachusetts voters have proclaimed that they are ready to let teachers teach, and students learn, without the onerous effects of a high-stakes standardized test undermining the mission of public education: to prepare all students for future success as citizens, workers and creative, happy adults,” they said.
The campaign against the ballot question, “Protect Our Kids’ Future: Vote No on 2,” decried the vote as a move backward and encouraged state leaders to consider intervening to block it. “Eliminating the graduation requirement without a replacement is reckless,” campaign chairman John Schneider said in a statement. “The passage of Question 2 opens the door to greater inequity; our coalition intends to ensure that door does not stay open. Those responsible for our state’s public education system need to have an honest conversation about whether moving forward with this proposal is the right decision for Massachusetts.”
The campaign against the ballot question, which relied on wealthy donors, was outspent more than 3-to-1. It brought in $5.4 million, nearly half of which came late last month from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $2.5 million.
State-established standardized tests, known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS, were a key element of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which combined curriculum frameworks and rigorous standards with a huge infusion of new state spending on schools, much of it directed to low-income districts that struggled to fund classrooms adequately.
The law was often referred to as a “grand bargain” – bringing new standards and expectations for student achievement that business leaders said were critical to the state’s growing knowledge economy, while addressing the call by teachers unions and other advocates for more state aid to offset huge disparities in school funding at the local level.
Teachers unions were never enthusiastic about the new standards and testing regime. The ballot campaign to strip away the graduation test requirement capped a decade of growing resistance from the Mass. Teachers Association to the use of standardized tests to judge schools and students.
The union has taken aim over the last decade at various elements of the state’s education reform law under a succession of leaders who have steered the union sharply to the left.
Two years ago, in a scathing and sarcasm-filled attack before members of the state education board, Page, the MTA’s current president, darkly characterized the state testing system as the “MCAS hunger games.” He accused the board of being “obsessed with a test invented some 20 years ago and repeatedly shown to do little more than prove the wealth of a student and the community where it is taken.” Page also railed against what he called the board’s “focus on income and college and career readiness,” which he said “speaks to a system that is tied to the capitalist class..and its needs for profits.”
A student who fails the MCAS in 10th grade, can take it four more times in 11th and 12th grade. There is also an appeals process through which students can be cleared to graduate by showing a portfolio of school work or if school officials determine they have met state learning standards through coursework. Of the roughly 65,000 high school seniors each year in the state, only about 1 percent, or about 700 students, fail to graduate because of MCAS after meeting all other district requirements. About 85 percent of those students are English learners or students with disabilities.
Massachusetts is one of just nine states with a high school exit exam. That number has been steadily dropping, down from 13 states in 2019 and from more than half of all states in 2002, according to Education Week.
John Papay, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University who has carried out extensive research on MCAS, said resistance to test-based accountability has been growing for more than two decades, dating to passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Law of 2001. But he said opposition to graduation tests has intensified since the pandemic, when states paused testing amid the disruption of school closures. “Many of the places that we’re seeing now moving away from exit exams just did not come back after the pandemic,” he said of states that have dropped the requirement since 2019.
Ads in support of Question 2 urged a yes vote to “replace” the high-stakes graduation test, but the ballot question does not actually put forward a replacement for it. MTA leaders say the replacement is the state’s curriculum frameworks and standards, which spell out the material to be covered in classes and the expectations for student mastery of those subjects.
But those standards have already been in place. What’s more, unlike many states, Massachusetts has no state-required high school course sequence that students follow, so removing the graduation test will mean there is no common statewide standard for receiving a diploma.
Although Tuesday’s vote removes use of the test as a graduation requirement, students will continue to take MCAS exams in grades 3 through 8 as well as in the 10th grade.
Education reform policies ranging from testing to charter schools once enjoyed fairly robust bipartisan support. But views on education issues have taken on an increasingly partisan bent, with Democrats turning away from various reform initiatives.
A University of New Hampshire poll released over the weekend showed a sharp partisan divide on the ballot question, with 65 percent of Democrats favoring the move to end the MCAS graduation requirement and 32 percent opposed. Among the Republicans the numbers were essentially reversed, with 25 percent favoring Question 2 and 66 percent opposed.
Both of the state’s US senators and four members of the nine-person US House delegation came out in favor of Question 2. But on Beacon Hill, a bipartisan succession of governors and Democratic legislative leaders, who are responsible for overseeing state education policy, have maintained strong support for the education reform law since its adoption more than three decades ago.
Healey called the graduation test a crucial cornerstone of the effort to hold schools to a common standard. “Eliminating the MCAS requirement means that we won’t have the same standard for schools across the state,” she said last month at a Roxbury youth services agency where she went to speak out against the ballot question. “I don’t believe that the standards should be different for students in our state depending on what ZIP code they’re living in and attending school in.”
Whether the voter-approved change will be the last word on the issue is unclear. The Legislature has the power to alter laws enacted through ballot questions or repeal them altogether. Mariano and Spilka sent signals last month that they might look to craft a new statewide graduation requirement in place of the MCAS test.
“We’ll have some discussions if it passes, and then we’ll follow up,” Spilka said. “I am not in favor of getting rid of MCAS.”
At the time, Page, the MTA president, blasted any talk of reworking the ballot question if it passes. He called Spilka and Mariano the “lonely few opponents from Beacon Hill” with a “weird obsession” with standardized testing.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.