WHEN IT COMES to the November ballot question asking whether the state should end the MCAS graduation requirement for high school students, voters will face a stark choice: A yes vote removes the statewide standard all students must meet to graduate, a no vote would keep it in place.
But a number of mayors across the state seem to be gravitating toward a third option that won’t actually appear on ballots: none of the above.
Standardized testing has long been a hot-button issue in education policy, and there may be no clearer proof of that than the ways local officials are weaving their way through talking points on the MCAS ballot question without taking an actual position on it. Some are just dodging the issue altogether when asked.
In early August, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said she needed more time to study the issue. “I have not yet sat down all the way and made sure to feel as deeply educated on the particular consequences of the ballot language yet, so that is something that is on my list to make sure that I do very soon,” Wu said on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.” “I do have some discomfort with the idea of the be-all, end-all being one particular test… But also, there’s a need for making sure there are standards in place that continue to hold all of us accountable for the delivery of education to our young people.”
When asked on Wednesday whether Wu was available or had decided on the ballot question, her office referred back to her comments from last month.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell seemed similarly torn and declined to take a position on the ballot question when his office was contacted. “While I’ve long had reservations about the practice in our state of making complex policy decisions through ballot referenda, I also believe that the MCAS graduation requirement has become unmoored from its original purposes,” he said in a statement.
“Rather than a means primarily to ensure that a diploma from a Massachusetts high school reflects a basic level of competence in core subjects, the test has become a cudgel to punish high needs districts for not keeping up with others where students generally face far less challenging circumstances.” Mitchell said “a legislative fix that preserves the test’s basic accountability mechanism would be preferable to the binary choice voters will soon confront at the ballot box.”
One city leader taking a stand on the ballot question is Mayor Joshua Garcia of Holyoke, whose long-struggling school district has been under state receivership for nearly a decade. In a statement, his office said Garcia supports the ballot question and believes the MCAS graduation requirement sets “an unrealistic expectation especially in Gateway Cities such as Holyoke where there is a high proportion of migrants and immigrants” and where some students arrive “mid-year with no English.” Garcia said, “The ‘one size fits all’ assumption of the MCAS is flawed.”
While Garcia staked out a clear position on the ballot question, and Wu and Mitchell at least engaged with the complicated issues it raises, a check with a handful of other mayors across the state found city leaders apparently content to give the issue a good leaving alone.
No reply came to emails and phone messages this week to mayors Melinda Barrett of Haverhill, Dean Mazzarella of Leominister, and Jennifer Macksey of North Adams. In all three cities, the mayors serve as chair of the school committee.
In her comments last month, Wu suggested some of her ambivalence stems from believing it’s important to have clear standards and have high school diplomas “mean something,” but recognizing any potential alternative to MCAS is no sure thing and would have to be agreed on after the fact if the ballot measure passes. “If there were a clear alternative proposed that would be one thing, but there’s a little bit more gray area when the alternative proposed is to set up a task force and then wait and see what happens and try to have that work out,” she said.
Earlier this week, state Sen. Jason Lewis, the co-chair of the Legislature’s education committee, said he supports the ballot question and floated such an alternative, saying he would propose legislation next year that would include the requirement that all students follow a state-established sequence of high school courses to graduate.
The prospects for such a proposal, however, are unclear. The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union and the force behind the ballot drive to scrap the MCAS graduation requirement, was non-committal when asked whether the union would support such a requirement.
Meanwhile, the executive committee of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents voted recently to oppose the ballot question. In a letter to state officials, the organization’s leaders stressed that the superintendents’ group has long believed “Grade 10 MCAS exams alone are insufficient as the statewide standard for high school graduation” and supports developing a new set of standards for holding “schools and districts accountable for student success.”
That said, the superintendents said the only options before voters next month are to keep or end the MCAS graduation requirement. The “primary objection” of the group’s executive committee to the ballot question, their letter said, is that “it fails to stipulate a replacement for MCAS as a statewide standard for earning a high school diploma,” If it were to pass, they wrote, “there would be no standard by which every student in Massachusetts demonstrates readiness to graduate, which will inevitably exacerbate inequity among marginalized student groups.”
“Unfortunately, Question 2 presents only two options – the current statewide graduation requirement, or no statewide standard at all,” the group’s executive director, Mary Borque, a former superintendent of the Chelsea schools, told State House News Service. “Given those choices, we advocate for the former.”
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