This month, Massachusetts voters elected to eliminate the 10th grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement. The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), the largest educator’s union in the state, championed the ballot initiative – Question 2 – arguing that the test is unjust and disproportionately prevents low-income students and students of color from graduating.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges have moved to test-optional policies, where applicants may submit their SAT/ACT scores if they want, but are not required to. More broadly, public opinion has shifted pretty severely against standardized testing over the last decade.
While this push to eliminate standardized testing requirements is well-intentioned, it is misguided. Disparities in test performance are a symptom of underlying issues, not an issue in and of themselves. Rather than eliminating hurdles that disproportionately challenge certain demographics, we need to prepare everyone to get over those hurdles. When done right, standardized testing is an important accountability system for both teachers and students that has the power to promote equity, not diminish it.
When we see that students of color consistently underachieve on the MCAS and our reaction is to eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement, what we’re doing is giving up on those students. We are saying we don’t believe in their ability to learn, grow and pass the test. We are saying that we’re not even going to try to teach them anymore because those benchmark scores – which are pretty low – are too high for students to reach. That’s a shame because those students can and should pass the test. If they can’t, it is not their fault. Rather, it is our fault for creating an educational system that underserves them for years leading up to the test, and it is our fault for giving up on them.
Before the MCAS was first introduced in 1993, education in Massachusetts was vastly unequal in different districts, according to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling in the case McDuffy v. Robertson. Only a few months after that ruling, the MERA was passed, implementing, for the first time, strong state-wide standards and an accountability system: the MCAS.
Today, as with the SAT and ACT, there are severe racial disparities in performance on the MCAS, but that is not because the tests systematically disadvantage students of color. It’s because of the dozens and dozens of systemic problems that disadvantage low-income students and students of color before they ever sit down to take the test. They, like everyone else, can ace the test with adequate support in the years leading up to test day – support they aren’t receiving most of the time.
The MTA spent nearly $10 million on their campaign to pass question two. Imagine how much good $10 million could have done if it were used to combat these disparities, and how much support it could have provided. Ten million dollars could have funded private tutors for tens of thousands of students. Only 702 students across Massachusetts failed to graduate because of poor performance on the MCAS in 2019. The MTA could have hired private tutors for every one of them. Ten million dollars could have paid for new computers for schools that don’t have them. Ten million dollars could have been spent raising teachers’ salaries to attract better teachers to Massachusetts schools. Ten million dollars could have done something meaningful to raise the quality of education in Massachusetts rather than lower our standards.
In Brookline, we’re going to be fine. It’s Boston schools I worry about, and other under-funded school districts that are already struggling. One of the big arguments against the MCAS was that teachers felt like they needed to teach to the standards of the test. Maybe that argument makes sense in Brookline, where we have an amazing faculty and the alternative is more meaningful, personal and relevant education. But in more poorly funded school districts with more students of color, the alternative to teaching to the test is teaching less. And that’s not fair.
Schools care about their graduation rates. Now that we’re going to start letting students graduate without meeting benchmark scores on the MCAS, we’re getting rid of schools’ incentives to raise their standards. The elimination of the MCAS graduation requirement is going to increase educational disparities in Massachusetts.
Every high school has a different grading system, different curriculum, different teachers who care about their students to varying degrees and different courses offered with different levels of grade inflation. It’s really hard to look across multiple schools and compare the educational outcomes of two students from different districts. As a Commonwealth, we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone is receiving roughly equal levels of education through the public system, or at the very least meeting certain benchmarks. That is what the MCAS did. Without the MCAS, we now have no uniform state-wide graduation requirements and no system for holding floundering school districts accountable. The worst part of it all is that the students who will suffer the most are the ones who need the most support.
