MCAS ballot question: A battle over clashing views of educational equity
IN 1848, Horace Mann, the first Massachusetts secretary of education, famously proclaimed education to be “the great equalizer of the conditions of men,” a powerful declaration of the belief that schools could help erase the economic and social disparities of birth and social class. More than 170 years later, voters are facing sharply conflicting arguments over whether a central pillar of state education policy is working to advance or undermine that lofty goal.
When the Massachusetts Education Reform Act was passed 31 years ago, it set in motion the biggest changes to public education in the state in a century. The law established a set of curriculum goals and standards for meeting them, backed by a new system of accountability that would measure student achievement using a set of standardized, statewide assessments, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS. The exams included a 10th grade test in math and English that students must pass to receive a high school diploma. Along with the new standards and accountability came a huge infusion of new state funding to school districts, much of it directed to lower-income communities that long struggled to fund their classrooms and schools adequately.
While the goal was to improve education for all students across the Commonwealth, it was widely understood that the driving force behind the 1993 law was the recognition that too many students from marginalized backgrounds were being left behind in a public education system that tolerated vast disparities in achievement, with lots of low-income students and students of color allowed to graduate without gaining the skills needed for college or career success.
Three decades later, as voters face a statewide ballot question on Tuesday asking whether Massachusetts should scrap the MCAS graduation requirement at the heart of that accountability system, both sides agree that the state’s most vulnerable students remain at the center of the debate. But they could not be more at odds in framing what the graduation test means for those students and the effort to ensure that all students are prepared for post-secondary success.
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/education/mcas-ballot-question-a-battle-over-clashing-views-of-educational-equity/