Battle lines have been drawn over what may become one of the most hotly contested issues this session -- whether or not Massachusetts should maintain a high school graduation requirement tied to students passing a statewide standardized test.
The discussion of whether or not to keep the MCAS exam mandate in place has already grabbed headlines this year, with a significant effort underway from progressive education advocates and the state's teacher's unions to dismantle the requirement both at the ballot box and through the Legislature.
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Ballot questions garnering significant ground support have in the past prompted lawmakers to act, while many other initiative petitions have gone to the ballot.
Advocates for and against the education reform showed up in droves to a Joint Committee on Education Hearing on Wednesday. The hearing, which started at 2 p.m. to allow students and teachers to come speak, continued into Wednesday evening with more than 120 people signed up to testify.
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Supporters brought in some heavyweights to testify in favor of the so-called Thrive Act, which would replace the statewide testing requirement with a requirement for districts to independently certify that a student has completed coursework that shows they meet state standards. It would also eliminate the policy that allows the state to take control of an underperforming district, called state receivership, and establish a commission to create a new assessment system based on the "whole-child."
When the hearing ended at 8:30 p.m., committee co-chair Rep. Denise Garlick thanked "capable testifiers" for and against the bill.
"I think this has been an extraordinary day for the Education Committee," Garlick said.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Darlene Lombos, who did not introduce herself as a member of the board but as the secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council and Boston Public School parent, both spoke out against the testing requirement.
"All of our students deserve an education that provides them with the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in today's world, and that includes a curriculum that incorporates the arts, history, social studies, project-based learning, internships and electives that help prepare students for college and career," DiZoglio said. "I think we can all here agree that MCAS missed the mark. And it is beyond past time that we stop allowing this one test to be the ultimate judge of educational achievement."
The bill before the committee would not completely eliminate the MCAS, which is taken in third through eighth grade and 10th grade. It would only uncouple whether a student earns a diploma to their achievement on the test. There are currently alternative routes for those who cannot pass the exam, such as an appeal process through the state.
Every year about 700 students do not get a diploma who otherwise would have, because they failed to pass the standardized exam, according to data compiled by Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Matt Hills.
"Instead of enhancing student outcomes, [state receivership] has prevented local students, parents -- and particularly parents of Black and brown children -- educators and community members from having a voice in their school leadership. The biased MCAS requirement has already hindered thousands of students' futures by depriving them of high school diplomas, even though they otherwise demonstrated mastery of required skills and knowledge," Lombos said.
Running over her allotted time to testify, Lombos quickly added, "I just want to say -- we are coming out of this pandemic. We are coming out of this racial reckoning. And if we can't figure out how to get rid of this MCAS and if we can't figure out how to get rid of state takeover, we have not learned lessons from these incredible uprisings that we've seen."
Opponents of the testing graduation mandate and state receivership say the policies unfairly harm communities of color. English language learners on average require the most tries to pass the test, and the three districts under state receivership -- Lawrence, Holyoke and Southbridge -- are lower-income communities with high populations of students of color.
In addition to DiZoglio and Lombos, a dozen lawmakers testified in support of the bill -- including committee member Sen. Pat Jehlen; AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman; former deputy undersecretary of education and BESE member Margaret McKenna, and dozens of educators.
Representatives from the state's two largest teachers' unions, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts -- who have been among the most vocal supporters of repealing the testing mandate -- were wearing the matching blue "Thrive Act" T-shirts alongside about 100 other people in the hearing room Wednesday.
Those groups are also among those collecting signatures on a potential ballot question to bring question of an MCAS graduation requirement to voters in 2024.
But it was not all a show of support.
A coalition of 21 business groups and advocates, including eight local chambers of commerce, released a statement Tuesday opposing the bill.
The statement of opposition says the legislation would "lower education standards and strip the state of its ability to intervene in and support districts whose students are struggling academically."
"In 1993 and again in 2019, the business community supported substantial increases in state funding for education that were accompanied by high expectations for all students and a transparent system for measuring progress and results. As a result of that balance, Massachusetts leads the nation in student achievement, a key competitive advantage for our Commonwealth. This legislation guts key provisions of that deal and dismantles the very foundation of our success," it says. "This legislation risks setting students and entire communities back and will worsen already significant workforce challenges that threaten the state's economic competitiveness."
Ed Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and one of the statement's signers, testified Wednesday that removing the MCAS requirement would weaken the meaning of a Massachusetts diploma.
"Eliminating a statewide standard for graduation in favor of having over 300 local standards will diminish the value of a high school diploma, to the detriment of the commonwealth and its students, and return us to a dark period in our education history of savage inequality," Lambert said. "Rather than change the standard, we should do more to help every student achieve it."
Lambert recalled serving on the education committee as a member of the House in the 1990s when the education reform law that created the MCAS system was created. He said that prior to that reform many school districts were content to pass students on through graduation with "inadequate educational opportunities" or "urgency to prepare them for future success."
Since the 1993 education reform law Massachusetts has climbed to top spots on public education rankings, he said.
Jehlen, from her spot on the committee panel, challenged Lambert, saying that she was also in the House at the time and that Massachusetts schools were not doing as badly in national rankings as he suggested.
"I was also on the school committee back in that day as well, and the experience was different in various communities, and I represented Fall River," Lambert replied to Jehlen. "There were a lot of students in some of our urban areas and gateway cities who were getting a lesser quality of education than they were in other communities ... there was this belief that folks had that students in certain schools and districts only needed to have to check off the box 'education.' "
Committee co-chair Garlick thanked Jehlen for her comment, though committee members had been asked to keep comments limited.
"I appreciate your comment very much," Garlick said. "I have spent considerable time, not just on the bills that are before us, but understanding the educational history. And we have to appreciate that to know where we were and where it is we're trying to go."
Mary Tamer, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform and vocal advocate against removing the MCAS requirement, told the committee that eliminating the mandate would "amount to a huge step backward."
"Grade 10 MCAS scores have proven to be reliable indicators of a student's college and career readiness. Eliminating the graduation requirements would leave us without a common, objective measure of achievement that all students across all communities are expected to meet," she said. "At Education Reform Now Advocacy we believe that students deserve more than 300 variations of diplomas."
