After 25 years, an article about the Massachusetts Teachers Association opposing the MCAS tests is not exactly “Man Bites Dog” material. Whether you are celebrating, commiserating, or merely commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System this summer, you know that one constant across the MCAS quarter century has been the opposition of the MTA to the tests. What’s so different about the contents of this article that it drove me to write a blog post?
It appears that this time the MTA may be taking its fight directly to the people in the form of a referendum question. After years of supporting legislation to eliminate or alter the MCAS program, its tests, or their uses, the MTA is considering starting the process to place a referendum question on the 2024 ballot to eliminate the “MCAS graduation requirement” that was established by the landmark Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 and has been in place since the graduating Class of 2003.
If the MTA decides to move forward Massachusetts will put democracy to the test by subjecting its test to democracy.
The Purest Form of Democracy
We will inevitably hear the argument that the referendum, or ballot initiative, is the purest form of democracy, a direct democracy, establishing laws based on the will of the people. That may be true.
Few, throughout history, however, have viewed democracy as the purest form of government. As John Adams, the forefather of public education, noted about democracy:
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.
In contrast to other forms of government and procedures for making laws, however, direct democracy, operates from a position in which its players (i.e., voters) are less informed. In fact, the appeals to emotion that so often characterize populist referenda campaigns thrive on providing voters with limited information, or worse, misinformation and disinformation. Recent history has provided us with enough examples of this endless barrage of half-truths and outright lies to last a lifetime.
The effort to end the MCAS graduation requirement is not any different. Prior to the pandemic, as the state board began considering how the graduation requirement would be applied to the new MCAS tests and achievement standards, critics adopted the mantra that more than 52,000 students had been denied a diploma since 2003, solely because of not being able to pass the MCAS test. Despite being easily and quickly debunked, the claim of 50,000+ students denied diplomas re-emerged post-pandemic, and there is little doubt that it will be featured in ad campaigns crafted for a 2024 referendum alongside the usual anti-testing rhetoric and stagecraft.
A primary goal of public education since its inception has been to produce an informed citizenry. The primary goal of many referenda is to capitalize on the failure of public education to fully realize that goal.
A Graduation Requirement by Any Other Name
Stepping back from referenda, let’s take a moment to consider the issue ostensibly at the core of the debate; that is, the MCAS graduation requirement. A test-based graduation requirement is always controversial, and the MCAS requirement was no exception.
There were misgivings about instituting the requirement even within the student assessment unit at the DOE. We had read High Stakes, published by the National Research Council. We knew the limitations of large-scale tests, particularly the folly of basing a high-stakes decision on a single test score. We were familiar with Debra P, were keeping track of the events unfolding up the street from The Alamo, and we knew that there would be lawsuits.
We knew that it was unfair to hold students accountable for the failings of a flawed educational system. But we also knew that it was unfair to send students out into the world with a diploma, but without the knowledge and skills necessary to compete.
In short, we knew that we were between a rock and a hard place, needing to the thread the needle between Scylla and Charybdis.
We gave it our best shot.
We spent days in the Commissioner’s conference room brainstorming every possible individual student scenario that we could imagine or was thrown before us. What about the student who in their senior year moved in from another state? Or another country? And didn’t speak English? What about kids who were hospitalized for a long period of time? What about kids with disabilities? Significant cognitive disabilities? Significant physical disabilities? Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller? (seriously)
And we didn’t do it alone. We collaborated with, met with, and listened to every advocacy group, critical friend, and more critical enemy – even the faculty from Boston College. When it came time to draft the appeals process for the graduation requirement that would be brought to the State Board, the Commissioner convened a blue-ribbon panel, drawing members from all of those groups. Everyone had a seat at the table.
One of the only groups not at the table has been the MTA. Unlike their counterparts in the AFT-affiliated Boston Teachers Union, the MTA has consistently refused a seat at the table. As aspects of the graduation requirement were reconsidered over the years, up to and including the committee convened in early 2020, the MTA maintained that stance, opting to stand in the back of the room at these public meetings and observe the proceedings rather than to take a seat and participate. I’ll admit that there is a part of me that respects that principled position, while another part wonders what all the kicking and screaming is really about.
The Standards, Stupid!
When the going gets tough, the tough adopt catchphrases to keep going. For MCAS, we adapted James Carville’s famous “The Economy, Stupid” as a reminder to keep the focus on the achieving the standards and not on attaining a test score. We adopted “Failure Is Not an Option” complete with baseball caps from the NASA gift shop.
We set the lowest credible test score as the passing score as a starting point. And the graduation requirement policy that we developed included a performance appeals process which, as a last resort, provided school systems with a way to certify that students who had not earned the passing score on the test after multiple attempts did indeed possess the required level of knowledge and skills.
A few years later (after my time with the DOE) when it came time to raise the graduation standard to Proficient, the Board approved a policy that kept the test-based portion of the requirement at the same low point and placed everything else in the hands of local school districts – centered around locally developed plans for moving students toward proficiency over their final two years of high school.
As test-based graduation requirements go, the MCAS requirement is about as local as it can get.
So, what’s the fighting for and who is it for?
The 52,000
There’s no doubt that the number 52,000 makes an impression. That’s a lot of students, almost enough to fill Gillette Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots.
Aggregated over almost 20 years, however, it pales in comparison to the 30,000+ students who were not meeting the passing score each year before the graduation requirement went into effect – enough to fill Fenway Park.
Or the 15,000+ students in the Class of 2001 who did not meet the MCAS passing score on their first attempt in the spring of tenth grade – a good weeknight crowd at the TD Garden.
But when students who did not actually meet local graduation requirements were eliminated, that 52,000 drops to about 700-800 per year – enough to fill a moderately-sized high school auditorium.
The 700 Club
Who are these 700-800 students who are unable to pass the MCAS test after multiple attempts, who have passed local high school courses, but for whom their districts cannot provide the evidence needed for a successful performance appeal?
700 students represent about 1% of a graduating class. Not a large percentage, but …
I could go the Genesis route and start asking whether a test-based graduation requirement is fair if 700 or 70 or even 7 students who don’t possess the required knowledge and skills because of the “Sodom and Gomorrah”-like school experience they endured are denied a diploma.
Or I could ask if it is worth the time and effort to maintain or fight for a test-based graduation requirement that has the ultimate impact on 1% of the students?
But who are these 700-800 students and the additional 2,000 students each year who reach twelfth grade (at least on paper) but do not graduate?
Are they disproportionately students of color, or students with disabilities, or English learners as has been claimed? Does the same hold true for the thousands of additional students who don’t meet the graduation requirement in the tenth grade but do meet it before they graduate?
If so, aren’t these the very students whom the MCAS graduation requirement was put in place to protect?
In 2001, interest in, outrage over, and demonstrations against the MCAS graduation requirement dwindled dramatically almost overnight when most of the state (i.e., white suburban folks) realized that the test score would not be a barrier to their own child’s graduation or to maintaining the status quo in their district.
Do we really think that a statewide referendum on a topic that has no impact on most voters at the end of a year-long advertising blitz is the best way to protect the interests of 1%, 5%, or even 10% of the population, predominantly from marginalized communities?
Don’t we rely on state and federal legislatures and the unbiased opinion, mature judgment, and enlightened conscience of our elected representatives (to paraphrase Edmund Burke) to ensure that the rights of individuals and small percentages of the population are secured and preserved?
There is a pressing need to improve state testing (and federal assessment policy, too, for that matter) to meet the needs of all students. It would be great to have the MTA and NEA and any other teachers out there at the table to help craft a solution so that we don’t have to resort to test-based graduation requirements or referenda.
The current assessment policy and graduation requirement has resulted in unintended, if not unanticipated, consequences, but I don’t think that simply removing testing and test-based requirements is an appropriate solution. It’s never been about the test.
It’s the standards and the system, stupid!
Failure is not an option!
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Embrace the Absurd 