Where does MCAS ballot question leave state grad requirement? That’s far from clear

December 18, 2024

By michael jonas

While voters opted last month to scrap the state’s MCAS test as a high school graduation requirement, exactly what will be required of students in its place in order to receive a diploma seems as clear as mud. 

That was the sentiment voiced Tuesday by some members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who signaled frustration with language they’ve been left with in the wake of the ballot question that several said was confusing. Meanwhile, the board chair raised for the second time since the election the possibility that the board could face a lawsuit over the move to end a uniform assessment for graduation. 

The statewide vote ended the requirement that students pass 10th grade tests in math, English, and science to receive a diploma. Instead, the ballot question language said a student would be eligible to graduate “by satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified by the student’s district as showing mastery of the skills, competencies, and knowledge contained in the state academic standards and curriculum frameworks in the areas measured by the MCAS high school tests…and in any additional areas determined by the board.”

Katherine Craven, the board chair, said at Tuesday’s meeting that definitions remain unclear for both how local districts certify coursework and what constitutes “mastery of skills, competencies, and knowledge.” 

Board member Marty West suggested pinning down those definitions will prove elusive because the ballot language itself is muddled. “I think what we have now is hard to make sense of,” he said. “It says satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified as showing mastery. Well, coursework doesn't show mastery; work on an assessment shows mastery. So that can be read as showing assessment needs to play a role in here.”

West raised another point about the change ushered in by the ballot question that hasn’t received attention. While it made sense to use the 10th grade MCAS as the state graduation test because it allowed multiple chances for students to retake the test if they failed, West said it makes little sense that the new law substitutes completing 10th grade coursework as the graduation requirement. 

“If we’re not doing it based on a test, why would we have our graduation standards based on 10th grade content?” he said, suggesting the standards should pertain to courses that students complete through 12th grade. “I guess the ballot question process is the ultimate version of writing by committee, which is never a good idea,” West said. 

“So this language is a mess,” West said, adding that he doesn’t think it’s possible for the board to “come up with a coherent approach within the current legislative language” of the ballot question “and that ultimately the legislative language needs to change.” 

Another issue that the ballot question seems to leave up in the air is how students who arrive in Massachusetts from out of state or abroad in 11th or 12th grade will be cleared to graduate. Under the MCAS system, those students had to take and pass the 10th grade test, but the language of the new law suggests they would have to have completed coursework certified by their district as showing mastery of 10th grade content, something that local districts obviously can’t do. 

Looming over all the discussion of graduation standards is the possibility, first raised by Craven at the board’s November meeting, that the state could face litigation over the ballot question vote to end the use of a common statewide graduation assessment. 

The 1993 Education Reform Act, which established the MCAS standards and brought a huge infusion of new state education funding to districts, was signed into law only days after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the landmark McDuffy case that the state had failed its duty, spelled out in the Massachusetts Constitution “to cherish… the public schools and grammar schools in the towns."

The McDuffy case was brought against the state in the name of a Brockton sixth-grader, arguing that the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to ensure a quality education for all students. “I expect that this will happen again,” Craven said last month of litigation that could result from ending the graduation assessment.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Craven reiterated her concern. “I said something at the last board meeting, but I just wanted to make sure that I put a double down marker on it,” she said. If the SJC required the state to “cherish” education not only in terms of school funding but also in terms of accountability for student learning, Craven said she’s unclear how the board can “fulfill our constitutional requirement” if the new law leaves it to each district to certify graduation standards. 

“We have considerably diminished the value of a Massachusetts high school diploma,” said Paul Reville, who served as education secretary under Gov. Deval Patrick. He said we’re now “kind of a standardless state in terms of what we expect from students at graduation” except for vague language that Reville called “highly fungible.” 

“It would be easy to imagine that some plaintiffs would come back and say, one way or another, 

we need to have a common standard against which we measure performance,” Reville said. 

Jim Peyser, who served as education secretary for all eight years under Gov. Charlie Baker, said Craven is right to at least raise the possibility of a lawsuit. 

The 1993 education reform law, crafted to comply with the SJC’s widely anticipated ruling in the McDuffy case, was termed a “grand bargain” because it won buy-in from groups that were not always in agreement by drawing together new funding, standards, and assessments that were then used as a graduation requirement. 

“When you pull one of those out,” Peyser said, “I think there’s a question of whether the grand bargain – not only from a political point but from a legal point – still holds.”