Students will need to achieve higher standardized test scores to earn a high school diploma in Massachusetts.
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted Monday to approve a controversial plan to raise the scores students need on the MCAS exams in order to graduate from high school, a change critics say will only widen existing educational achievement gaps.
Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley proposed the change, saying the current standard was insufficient in determining if students are ready to go on to college or careers.
“Parents need to be told the truth about where their students are functioning,” he said.
The board voted 8-3 to approve the new graduation requirements. Beginning with the class of 2026, whose members will be entering the ninth grade this fall, students will need a score of 486 on both the English and math MCAS tests to graduate. The current minimum scores are 472 for English and 486 for math. Beginning with the class of 2031, the bar gets even higher with scores of 500 required on both tests.
Students can still graduate with lower scores if they complete what is known as an “educational proficiency plan” that takes into account their classroom work, grades, and teacher evaluations.
Newly-appointed board member Tricia Canavan, a Springfield business leader, said the new standards will require school systems to tutor students and encourage them to enroll in early college or vocational programs.
“By measuring what our students need and investing in more supports, I think that the outcomes will be better for our kids,” she said.
One of the board members who voted against the new standards, Mary Ann Stewart, said already-marginalized students will have an even steeper hill to climb to graduate. She pointed to statistics she said show that while students who don’t speak English as a first language are 11 percent of the statewide school population they account for 28 percent of the students who don’t earn a high school diploma.
“It’s significant and so my concern is seeing an insurmountable equity problem as a result of raising these scores,” Stewart said.
The new graduation standards were proposed by Riley back in April and drew strong rebukes from the teachers’ unions and more than 100 state legislators.
Before the board voted Monday, Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, spoke forcefully against the MCAS graduation requirement.
“You’ve fetishized an approach to education that is at the very least outdated and at the most destructive of our schools and communities,” he said.
Sarah Bol, a special education teacher from Fall River, said the timing for the changes is bad, coming as students are still feeling stressed and anxious as a result of the pandemic disruptions to their schooling.
“As someone in the trenches on the front lines, I have to sit there and encourage my kids to get through these tests and they are having a hard time,” she said.
Since 2003, Massachusetts has required students to reach certain MCAS scores to graduate. The tests are first given in the 10th grade and students who don’t pass have multiple chances to try again.
The MCAS exams were canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic and scores fell steeply statewide when testing resumed last year.
