Educated Bet: Massachusetts Schools May Risk Top Ranking to Lift Struggling Students

But the architects of the sweeping 1990s reforms in Massachusetts that introduced high academic standards and accountability through testing are trying to hold the line. They fear that the focus on the fundamental subjects of English, math, and science – as well as the state’s top ranking – will be sacrificed along the way, hurting disadvantaged students most of all. 

The state’s consideration of a revamp of its relatively successful school system is notable because it’s happening as several southern states, which have long been at the bottom of the education rankings, are embracing the reforms that drove up student performance in Massachusetts. Mississippi and Louisiana, for example, are having remarkable success in lifting student English and math proficiency by doubling down on fundamental academics and holding schools accountable through testing. 

Steven Wilson, a player in the Massachusetts reforms, says the state’s possible diminishment of core academics is part of the playbook of social justice advocates, who consider tests of English and math proficiency as manifestations of white supremacy – a position espoused by the former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). “If academics and testing are elitist and oppressive, then the answer is to broaden the aperture to other forms of knowing and experiences like social-emotional learning that are considered equally valid for obtaining a diploma,” said Wilson, author of “The Lost Decade” about the rise of the social justice movement in education. “This, in my view, is absolute nonsense.”

A “Hades-esque” Limbo

In Massachusetts, the MTA provided the impetus for change in November by winning its long-fought battle against the requirement that students must pass three tests of core academic subjects to graduate. MTA’s ballot measure campaign convinced voters that the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exit exams, which were the last piece standing of the sweeping reforms, must also fall because most of the very small percentage of students who failed were disadvantaged kids. 

The problem is that the ballot measure left Massachusetts in the remarkable position of having no meaningful statewide graduation requirements – a crisis that state board of education Chair Katherine Craven described in January as a “Hades-esque” limbo. 

In order to comply with the ballot initiative, the board of education created temporary graduation standards in May, which are now among the lowest in the nation. Starting with the class of 2026, students must complete only a handful of 9^th and 10^th-grade English, math, and science classes, in addition to other courses required by each district, to get a diploma. Districts, which vary significantly in the rigor of their courses, set the bar for passing, with some saying a D- will do. 

Critics warn that the lower standards will remain in place for several years and threaten to leave students, particularly in poor-performing districts, further behind academically and woefully unprepared for college and the job market. 

“What it means to pass a course varies dramatically from one school district to the next when you don’t have a statewide graduation assessment to ensure comparability,” Marty West, a member of the board of education and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told RealClearInvestigations. “And those differences in rigor and expectations emerge inevitably among disadvantaged students by holding them to lower standards.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey in January established a graduation council of lawmakers, officials, union leaders, and teachers to make final recommendations for permanent graduation requirements by mid-2026. Then lawmakers must approve a plan, which could take another year or more. 

The graduation council’s charge is broad, with the potential to entirely redesign high school education leading to a diploma. There’s no mention in the governor’s executive order establishing the council that teaching English, math, and science – the subjects formerly tested for graduation – will remain the top priorities of schools. Alternatives are on the table. 

At three closed-door council meetings so far, many participants, including union leaders and administrators, are supporting the creation of multiple pathways to a diploma, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations. Each pathway would be defined by particular courses and activities, such as internships in the trades, college prep courses known as MassCore, capstone projects and portfolios, dual enrollment in college, and more. The hope is that the various pathways would better reflect students’ genuine interests and engage them more deeply in learning – a position pushed by MTA Vice President Deb McCarthy. 

New York, which recently adopted a pathways approach in place of its Regents graduation exams, is held up as a model. As part of these pathways, New York defines seven proficiencies that students need to master to graduate, including innovative problem solver, global citizen, and social-emotional competence. The list of proficiencies doesn’t name English, math, or science, suggesting that while New York high schools will still teach these subjects, they will compete for attention in a short school day with the new proficiencies. 

The executive director of Citizens for Public Schools, a teachers’ union-supported advocacy group in Massachusetts that campaigned against the graduation tests, told the board of education in January that it could learn from New York’s approach. “We believe social and emotional development are as important as academics,” the group says on its website. 

Will Academics Take a Back Seat?

In theory, leaders of the reform movement don’t oppose the creation of pathways. Giving students more agency to choose a pathway can be motivating. The problem is that the mastery of core academic subjects that are essential to lifelong learning and almost every career – even plumbers need a solid foundation in math – may lose their primacy. 

James Peyser, the Massachusetts education secretary from 2015 to 2022 and now on the governor’s council, says it’s crucial that the state mandate rigorous academic coursework in English, math, and science for all students, no matter their pathway. But the current secretary of education, Patrick Tutwiler, created some doubt when he presented the department’s amended graduation framework at a recent council meeting. The category of “Coursework” had been removed from the framework and replaced with the broader “Learning Experiences,” suggesting that pure academics will be just another ingredient in the stew of learning. 

Massachusetts is a local control state, which means each of its more than 300 school districts has considerable autonomy – and variation – in setting their own coursework requirements for graduation in addition to what the state mandates. Without a uniform statewide policy, some districts will likely require fewer English, math, and science courses, or allow students to take an easier business math course in place of algebra, or a culinary arts course in place of chemistry. 

“I worry about districts saying if students are struggling, let’s lower the bar so they can succeed,” Peyser told RCI. “This does not serve disadvantaged children well because they come out of high school without the knowledge and skills they need to move on to college or career.”

Carolyn Plosky, the English Language Arts director at Winchester Public Schools in Massachusetts, says the pathway approach doesn’t diminish academics but rather layers them onto real-world assignments. For example, in a performance-based assessment (PBA) pathway that Plosky and other teachers are piloting statewide, she has instructed her class to research a problem in their community and come up with solutions. 

Teams of students might focus on the recreation department or library. They interview local experts and read research literature before presenting their ideas in a proposal to classmates, who stand in as community decision-makers. Core subjects such as reading, writing, and speaking are all practiced and assessed while students also learn how to collaborate and think critically about the obstacles to social progress. At council meetings, MTA President Max Page has urged the state to adopt PBAs.

“What’s so magical about PBAs is that they are authentic assessments of things that students might actually do in the real world,” said Plosky. “I didn’t become an English teacher because I wanted kids to use commas correctly. I went into teaching because I want to change the world. I want students to explore social justice and speak up when they see injustice.”

Reformers say PBAs might sound compelling but threaten to divert attention from the primary academic mission of schools in an already packed seven-hour day. “There is an enormous crush for time in schools and what the social justice advocates want will suck the oxygen out of academic teaching,” said Wilson, who founded a network of high-performing charter schools in Brooklyn focusing on liberal arts. “It amounts to condescension because we are mocking students when we claim to empower them rather than teach them how to reason and write.”

Massachusetts Rises to the Top

The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 helped kickstart a national movement. It was a heady time. The state created the highest standards in the nation and a school accountability program, including the MCAS graduation tests, in exchange for a massive infusion of funds, especially to poorer districts, to close the academic achievement gap with wealthier ones.

The crusade for reform was led by elite-educated politicians like Republican Gov. William Weld, a classics major at Harvard who wanted to provide students, rich and poor, with a robust liberal arts education. Reformers were proud of the standards that included a focus on classic literature, both ancient and modern, says Wilson, then a special assistant to Weld. 

“The standards were intellectually exciting,” said Wilson. “You would really want to be a kid in these classes.”

To ensure the standards were faithfully taught, a new independent agency evaluated the academic performance of districts, focusing attention on troubled schools that needed to improve. The MCAS graduation tests given in 10^th grade were another means of accountability that galvanized the attention of teachers and students around core subjects.

When the tests were first given in 1998, there were no consequences for not reaching proficiency, and perhaps unsurprisingly, students performed very poorly. But in 2003, the first year the tests were tied to graduation, performance improved dramatically. The upward trend in proficiency continued for the next decade, rising from 60% to 90% of students in English. 

Other important benchmarks, such as the graduation and college attendance rates, also shot up for all groups of students in the decade after MCAS became a graduation requirement, according to a study led by Brown Professor John Papay. The percentage of low-income students attending college jumped by a remarkable 20 percentage points. 

What’s more, the closely watched achievement gaps narrowed significantly for high school graduation and college attendance rates but widened for college graduation. Overall, Papay found “substantial progress” with much work left to be done in closing the gaps. 

Even as Massachusetts rose to the top of the national rankings by 2005 in both reading and math for 4^th and 8^th grades – marking the first time any state had achieved such a feat on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – the reforms faced growing opposition. Under pressure from MTA and other unions, the independent accountability agency was criticized for shaming districts and disbanded in 2008. Today, the state’s accountability system is widely regarded as ineffective, with districts in the driver’s seat and little oversight by the state. 

The standards also took a blow when the state adopted the Common Core in 2010, which Wilson says dumbed down instruction. The emphasis on great books was replaced by the Common Core’s focus on nonfiction. In math, algebra was moved from 8^th grade to 9^th and 10^th grades. 

The rollback of the reforms coincided with a decline in Massachusetts’s NAEP scores between 2011 and 2019, but there was likely more to the academic slippage than state policies. The entire nation entered an academic slump that continues today. More troubling for Massachusetts, following the pandemic, the achievement gap widened the most of any state, according to a Harvard study.

“We have the widest achievement gaps,” said Jack Schneider, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a prominent MCAS critic. “If the magic ingredient is our testing regime, then why does it only seem to work for affluent kids?”

There were also concerns over test prep. If teachers based their instruction on the standards, which were aligned with the MCAS exams, the students should be prepared. But some teachers felt compelled to spend additional time on prepping for anticipated test questions and other techniques that could suck the life out of a classroom.

Students were given five chances to pass each of the tests. Only 1% of seniors, primarily English language learners and those with disabilities, didn’t graduate in recent years because of failing the tests. Reformers saw this as the unfortunate cost of maintaining a uniform standard that benefited most students. 

But these issues, plus an estimated $15 million from the MTA, fueled the ballot initiative that killed the MCAS graduation tests, putting an end to the era of reform in Massachusetts.

A New and Uncertain Course

The course that Gov. Healey and lawmakers will set for Massachusetts’ high schools after her council submits its recommendation next year is anyone’s guess. Although the governor and leaders in the House and Senate sided with reformers and opposed the ballot measure, the political momentum, spurred by the teachers’ unions, is moving in a progressive direction. 

Lawmakers could, in theory, approve a new statewide graduation test, but that would defy the will of the voters and seems the least likely outcome. The most likely, says council member Peyser, are multiple pathways. From college prep to on-the-job training, there is something in it for everyone. 

But would all students face academic rigor, as they did during the era of graduation tests, or just those in the college prep pathway? The ability of Massachusetts to remain the top state for education might depend on this answer.

“It’s hard to say which pieces of the reform act were responsible for making Massachusetts the best in the nation,” said West, the board member. “But the more elements we remove from the act, the more we should be worried about backsliding.”