How Should Massachusetts Measure Academic Success?

Last month, 59 percent of Massachusetts voters chose to eliminate the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as a high school graduation requirement via ballot measure Question 2. In the absence of the MCAS graduation requirement, there is now no statewide standard for graduation. As a result, there is broad concern that a Massachusetts high school diploma is not worth the same across the board. 

Beginning with the 1993 Education Reform Act, Massachusetts has seen student outcomes improve as the state implemented new school standards, including curriculum and testing standards.

With the repeal of the MCAS graduation requirement, many education advocates, including Ed Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, have called for “a different state graduation standard, something that is uniform.” Those who value Massachusetts’ highest-in-the-nation student outcomes, like Governor Maura Healey, also believe that “a really uniform standard” should be set so that there are not “different expectations for students depending on which ZIP code they’re in.”

MOA’s latest polling shows that 75 percent of surveyed Massachusetts residents support a new graduation requirement based on statewide curriculum standards. 

Voters are right to desire a new standard: Whether you supported or opposed the MCAS graduation requirement, it created a uniform state requirement that all students had to meet. That requirement no longer exists, and is backfilled only by a diverse range of local curriculum standards. According to the Boston Globe, the “wide variation” of these curriculum standards across individual school districts could lead to a variance of outcomes for students.

For example, only 12 of the state’s 50 largest school districts require students to complete the coursework that makes them eligible for admission to any of the state’s public colleges or universities. According to the 2019 Admissions Standards Reference Guide from the Mass. Department of Higher Education, all applicants to public state colleges and universities are required to pass a total of 17 courses in school, including courses in English, mathematics, science, social science, foreign language, and electives. Despite these requirements for public higher education institutions in the Bay State, only 19 of the 50 largest school districts in the state require four years of math classes.

Maintaining a high state-level bar for high school graduation and investing in efforts to help more students achieve that goal is key. It’s a proven strategy to help these students succeed in postsecondary education and their careers.

Our state legislature should ensure that Massachusetts' public education system remains one of the most competitive in the world. That does not mean legislators need to defy the will of the voters, but it does mean filling in the blanks left by the recently-passed ballot measure.

In this, they’ll have the voters’ support: More than two-thirds of surveyed Massachusetts voters believe that the state legislature can modify a previously-passed ballot measure–particularly if voters didn’t have the whole story about what they were supporting or if the ballot measure is not working as intended.

One thing is for sure: Massachusetts became one of the top states for public education because of its high standards. Instead of leaving a vacuum of removed graduation requirements, voters agree something new should be put in place to solidify Massachusetts’ public education legacy for years to come.