Lexington mother wants voters to decide MCAS graduation requirement with ballot question
By Sam Drysdale, State House News Service
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JULY 27, 2023 (State House News Service) - Someone has officially filed a petition to put on the statewide ballot the question of whether students should be required to pass a standardized test in order to graduate -- but it wasn't the state's large teacher's union, which has been publicly considering whether to bring the question to voters.
Shelly Scruggs, a Lexington resident and mother to a 15-year-old boy, told the News Service Thursday she filed the petition on behalf of her son.
He's a rising senior at Minuteman Vocational High School and wants to be a plumber, but Scruggs said he has ADHD and "isn't a great test taker."
"But he works hard," Scruggs said. "And he can do all this hard work, can get really good grades in class, go to school every day, and be set up to do a great job at what he wants to do -- and still not get a diploma. I just thought that's criminal."
The Massachusetts Teachers Association has long opposed the state law that ties a student's graduation to whether they pass the tenth grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam, and earlier this month polled residents on removing the requirement.
Out of 800 voters asked, 73 percent said they would support eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement, according to the poll conducted by Echo Cove Research between June 2 and June 11.
Though Scruggs beat the union to the punch with her petition, the MTA is "still considering" filing with the attorney general's office to put the question on the ballot. A union spokesperson said, "we should know by early next week if we're moving forward with it."
But whether or not the teachers put forward their own ballot proposal, Scruggs said she is hopeful the question will get to voters.
Once a petition has been filed, the attorney general's office determines whether it is ballot-eligible under the constitution. If it is found to be legally sound, petitioners must collect 74,574 signatures by November 22, then, dependent on legislative action, an additional 12,429 signatures by June 19, 2024, according to the attorney general's office.
Scruggs said she worked with Anne Sterman, deputy chief of the attorney general's government bureau, to get the wording right for her petition, so she hopes it will clear the first hurdle.
The MCAS exams were created in a 1993 education reform law aimed at improving accountability and school performance. The first tests were given in 1998, and high school students have been required to pass the tests to graduate since 2003.
Massachusetts is one of only eight states that still ties a standardized test to a high school graduation requirement, according to the MTA.
"The kids who don't pass the test may be the same kids who aren't planning to go to college, but they're the ones who need a high school diploma the most," Scruggs said. "If you're not going to college, your high school diploma is the most important piece of paper you can have starting in the working world."
Supporters of the exams say they provide valuable data on school performance and achievement gaps that can then be targeted with funding and interventions, and the graduation requirement gives more weight to a Massachusetts diploma.
"MCAS truly is a tool for equity. It provides educators with information on how their students are doing and what lessons are resonating, and what may not be resonating. That's one of the things that has been lost in this conversation -- MCAS is a tool. It doesn't tell us everything, but it tells us something really important about how kids are doing in the classroom," Mary Tamer, state director of Massachusetts' Democrats for Education Reform, said in April.
Democrats for Education Reform is among the education groups that came together earlier this year under a banner they dubbed "Voices for Academic Equity," arguing that the benefits of the MCAS exam far outweigh its possible flaws.
In place of requiring passage of the exam to graduate, the language in Scruggs' petition would determine "competency" to graduate by "participation in the assessment program without any requirement for minimum demonstrated level of performance."
Students would take the exam in tenth grade, aiming to demonstrate a "minimum level of competency (as defined by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education)". If the students' test results do not meet this minimum level, they would take the test again. If they fail to meet the minimum twice, they would still be allowed to graduate, under Scruggs' petition.
"I understand the importance of standardized testing," she said. "It's very important to assess where kids are and what's going on in school. It's just that if you don't pass the test it looks like you dropped out, it follows you."
The language in Scruggs' petition would also retroactively grant diplomas to any former Massachusetts high school students who were denied one due solely to having failed the MCAS.
"You cannot have a one size fits all type of test and then penalize people who just can't do it," Scruggs said.