BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: Keep MCAS graduation mandate temporarily while new standard is created

By Editorial
This article originally appeared in the Boston Business Journal on January 9, 2025

Last November, 59% of voters statewide said they’d like to do away with a single test — the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam — as a requirement to graduate from high school.

Despite that margin, a December poll from the Mass Opportunity Alliance found that even more voters — 75% of voters, in fact — support creating a new standard to replace the MCAS as the minimum bar high school students must clear in order to graduate.

The vast majority of voters agree with what local business and economic leaders have been saying: A statewide standard is needed to protect the gains our state’s education system had made ever since Education Reform was passed in 1993. Namely, there needs to be a way to ensure that cities and towns don’t lower the requirements so much that some students graduate from Massachusetts high schools ill-prepared for successful entry into the workforce.

Figuring out what will be the new standard will take some time. Edward Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, says he’s been advocating for the state to adopt new statewide standards since long before the Massachusetts Teachers Association ever put Question 2 on the ballot. He envisions a system under which students can earn credit toward graduation through college courses, internships or co-op programs, and firmly believes that educators and union leaders ought to be part of the standards-development process.

But he also believes that lawmakers need to delay getting rid of the MCAS graduation requirement for a couple of years in order to give the state time to develop the replacement. That would be a common-sense approach that complies with the will of voters to change the current system, yet ensures that no students go without meaningful statewide minimum graduation standards.

For its part, the teachers union says it will “fight any attempts to undo the election results with legislative schemes aimed at defying the will of the voters,” but in an email to the Business Journal, it stopped short of saying it opposes a two-year delay. Considering that the business community, along with Gov. Healey and many state legislators, opposed ballot Question 2, we believe it would be in the union’s best interests to work with the administration on a viable alternative and enacting a two-year delay.

Education reform helped make Massachusetts K-12 education the envy of the nation. It has been a major factor behind the success of our knowledge-based economy. Let’s not squander that progress. Instead, let’s come together and create a system that upholds the premium our state places on a high school diploma.