If the State Graduation Council’s Interim Report is a first draft, it needs serious revisions for the final version to meet the needs of our students and schools. The report comes after voters resoundingly rejected a state-imposed standardized exam and after extensive input about what stakeholders want students to know and be able to do. Changes must be made for the state to do more than pay lip service to demands for a whole child, 21st century education, as well as flexibility, educator autonomy and student agency.
Despite many calls for multiple pathways to graduation, the interim report lays out a multilayered set of graduation requirements, with the emphasis on standardized end-of-course assessments to be designed, administered and scored by the state. On top of these will be a state-defined capstone or portfolio requirement and requirements for students to complete a rigorous course of study that aligns with higher education admissions requirements.
Piling multiple layers of new requirements on our students will create new obstacles rather than providing opportunities for them to increase their life skills and pursue their individual goals. Districts should be able to provide a range of alternative pathways for their students, not require them to check every box. Much like occurred with MCAS as a graduation requirement, state-created and scored end-of-course tests will likely result in narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, and taking the joy out of learning, without providing meaningful information on what many of our diverse students know and are able to do.
As the decades-long record for the MCAS graduation requirement demonstrated, a high-stakes standardized instrument does not promote or measure the range of what stakeholders want students to know and be able to do.
Hundreds of participants in CPS People’s Forums on graduation readiness in Cambridge, New Bedford, Worcester, Greater Boston, Lowell and by Zoom, said they want students to develop a wide range of capacities, most not measurable with standardized exams. In fact, participants in both the CPS forums and the Governor’s Graduation Council listening sessions expressed many common themes and goals: they said students preparing for adult life need higher-order abilities like critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration skills. Participants also said they wanted students to be literate in math, English language arts, science, and history.
The appendix to the State’s recommendations lists 20 responses to the question “What should students know and be able to do?” Fifteen — including the top four — are not measured on standardized tests. Those four, in order, are:
• Communicate effectively verbally
• Exhibit critical thinking
• Interact respectfully with people from diverse backgrounds
• Identify credible sources of information.
The responses were similar among parents, educators, students, and employers; across races and ethnic groups; and for students with disabilities or students whose first language was not English.
Out of six ways students should demonstrate their competence, portfolios were the clear favorite. “Assessment or test” was the least favored. That was especially true of students with disabilities and their parents, and for those whose home language was not English. We suspect that if the category had specified “state-administered standardized test,” it would have been even more unpopular.
Based on the will of voters as expressed in the victory of Question 2 and the input from hundreds of participants in our People’s Forums, we propose the following course of action to assess graduation readiness:
- Districts should adopt multiple ways for students to demonstrate graduation readiness, including capstones, portfolios, and other ways to assess both skills and content knowledge.
- New statewide course requirements can be considered but must be flexible enough to allow exemplary and interdisciplinary ways to teach content, including with career technical education, International Baccalaureate schools, and other innovative programs.
- The state’s role should be to support local efforts through professional development funds and sharing information, not to issue top-down edicts.
- Any new requirements must allow enough time for educators and their students to make the changes, with adequate funding for professional development and experimental programs.
The state must not repeat the mistake of the high-stakes MCAS, which over 20-plus years failed to improve education quality or close gaps in opportunity and was overwhelmingly rejected by voters.
Did the state really hear those who spoke at its listening sessions, or was it an exercise in selective listening to reaffirm a desire to impose a reboot of its failed model? It’s time for some serious revisions and a new blueprint for the future of our students.
In her closing remarks at today’s press conference announcing the preliminary recommendations, Gov. Healey said, “We’re going to take our time here and really get this right.”
CPS says, “Amen to that!” We and other education stakeholders will be paying attention and speaking up to ensure that is the case.
