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Commentary
The MCAS debate deserves better than our polarized politics
Politics these days are more of a duel than a deliberation. Take, for instance, the emerging battle over the proposed removal of the requirement that Massachusetts students earn a passing score on MCAS to receive a high school diploma. Last fall, the Massachusetts Teachers Association led a signature collection effort to place the issue on the ballot next November. And since then, battle lines have been drawn. Despite the complexity of the issue, the nature of our politics is flattening nuance and driving polarization.
Research does suggest that such requirements are problematic. As recently as 2014, roughly half of states had laws in place requiring students to pass standardized tests in math and English in order to earn their high school diplomas. Such laws were part of the test-based accountability movement that reshaped U.S. public schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yet according to a comprehensive scholarly review, exit exams have produced few of the benefits touted by their supporters.
Meanwhile, they have had a disproportional effect on minoritized and marginalized student populations. When exit exams are in place, students of color, English language learners, and students from low-income families are denied diplomas at far higher rates. And given the fact that a high school diploma means so much more than what can be measured by a standardized test, I have serious concerns about using that tool in a way that denies our most vulnerable students this basic credential. Many across the U.S. share these concerns — only eight states still maintain exit exams.
If faced with a stark choice between keeping the MCAS graduation requirement and removing it entirely, I’d vote in favor of dropping it.
[T]here are plenty of smart and well-intended people who support keeping the MCAS requirement; I’m more interested in hearing them out than shutting them down.
But, because the election is still about 8 months away, I don’t have to make that choice. Instead, I can continue pushing for what I support most strongly — an evidence-based compromise that all parties can live with. After all, there are plenty of smart and well-intended people who support keeping the MCAS requirement; I’m more interested in hearing them out than shutting them down.
That's apparently an odd stance to take. In a recent column in the Boston Globe, Scot Lehigh quoted me as saying the following: “I am not on the record saying that I think the MCAS should be removed as a graduation requirement. I don’t have a firm position right now on whether we should remove it with no replacement or keep it.” He concluded that I oppose the effort, and that MTA leaders are fundamentally misguided.
That's wrong; I don't oppose the effort. I'm just opting for a different approach to democracy than the version in which one side wins and the other side is vanquished. That’s a recipe for resentment and backlash.
Instead, I believe in an inclusive process that allows for the possibility that none of us have it completely right, and allows us to work together on what comes next. I believe that we still have the capacity to listen to each other, to disagree and to carve out common ground.
I don’t have a firm position right now on removing the MCAS graduation requirement because I actually think we can do better. Right now, members of the state legislature are trying to identify a compromise. And the MTA appears open to ideas. Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler, despite opposing the effort to remove the requirement, has also said that he is open to looking at the test and seeing if it can be changed. An outcome that everyone can live with is what all of us should be supporting right now.
One thing we could do is remove the MCAS graduation requirement and work to ensure more standardization in curriculum and assessment.
What might a satisfactory compromise look like?
One thing we could do is remove the MCAS graduation requirement and work to ensure more standardization in curriculum and assessment. The obvious first step would be to adopt MassCore as the program of study for all public schools in the state. Doing so would ensure that the public knows, with some degree of certainty, the types of courses that all high school graduates have taken. We might also begin doing more to benchmark end-of-course grades. By establishing voluntary norming processes, we could do a great deal to build on the existing expertise of professional educators.
Alternatively, we might create more and different kinds of pathways for students to demonstrate what they know and can do. The legislature, for instance, might direct the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to create a graduation portfolio pilot to be modeled on the New York Performance Standards Consortium. Such an effort might be most innovatively pursued by creating one pilot directly administered by DESE, while also authorizing two to four other consortia convened by universities and other qualified organizations. We could also begin to scale-up the work of the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (an organization that I help lead), which has long maintained the support of both the state legislature and the MTA. We have never produced an estimate for what statewide work would cost, but we’re prepared to do that if there’s real interest.
There are plenty of alternatives. And they’re all worth getting on the table. But that’s going to require two things of all of us. First, it means we should all do our homework—there’s a lot of information that we should consider, and we shouldn’t settle for simplistic sound bites. And second, we need to acknowledge viewpoints that we may not like, and do our best not to distort the arguments of those we view as the opposition.
