I have neither time nor inclination to get involved in debates on this here or elsewhere. This has been a tiring season (as you may have gathered from my earlier post), in a busy time of year.
This is not an exhaustive post; it is not intended to be. It will not respond to the myriad of what if's and what about's that have circulated.
It also need not, as "no" is simply a vote not to change things in this manner at this time.
Massachusetts has deserved better than this question.
- The question is unconstitutional.
Massachusetts has the distinction of being the first state in the country to enshrine in its original constitution public education. In the passage I keep at the bottom of this blog, John Adams outlined in 1779--before we had a country--a requirement that the state ensure that children raised in the Commonwealth had an education, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of the continuation of democratic governance in the state.
Adams had written a great deal on governance; it was not accidental that he was tapped to write the draft of what became our state constitution. Something that Adams thought a great deal about was how it was that a democratic country was to create and to sustain itself, in contrast to Europe, which was most of what Adams and others of the founders at the time knew. In earlier writing, you can see Adams grappling with this challenge of a system that did not fall into other systems of tyranny. Education is what is needed, Adams and the others who put the document together held, is what is necessary not simply for the good of the individual, but, as the state constitution puts it, "necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties."
In the 1993 McDuffy decision, the court took the elegant language of the Constitution, and let the state government know that it was more than pretty words:What emerges from this review is that the words are not merely aspirational or hortatory, but obligatory. What emerges also is that the Commonwealth has a duty to provide an education for all its children, rich and poor, in every city and town of the Commonwealth at the public school level, and that this duty is designed not only to serve the interests of the children, but, more fundamentally, to prepare them to participate as free citizens of a free State to meet the needs and interests of a republican government, namely the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It was thus that the Legislature passed the 1993 Education Reform law, due to the Supreme Judicial Court's finding that the state government had an obligation to every child in the state "rich or poor, in every city and town of the Commonwealth." No more could the state largely leave it to each town and city to muddle along in its school funding as best it felt it could, nor could the state simply leave it to each town and city to decide what it was doing about public education. It was a state obligation to every child on the state's own behalf.
This has meant not only that we in Massachusetts have a state system of school funding that spends billions of dollars in a (largely) progressive manner, ensuring that towns and cities that have less capacity to fund education receive more assistance, and that students that have larger need for support get it.
That also means that districts do not get to decide that they simply aren't going to teach basic principles of history, or skip some section of science. It means we have statewide standards, written by teachers (yes, by teachers) and set at grade levels also by teachers, which periodically the state checks on with a state testing system of test questions reviewed and leveled by teachers, where the standards are created and set by teachers.
Yes, that's the MCAS. If you didn't know the level of educator involvement, it isn't for lack of the Department noting it over and over in their reporting. It doesn't tend, though, to attract the same level of headlines as people being angry over things. (It does, of course, raise some questions about what the "more important skills and knowledge" being touted by the pro group are.)
Overall, the MCAS is the "performance system" required by Massachusetts General Law Ch. 69 sec. 1l , "as defined by student acquisition of the skills, competencies and knowledge called for by the academic standards and embodied in the curriculum frameworks established by the board."
The competency determination--the graduation standard under consideration by the ballot question--is the legally required determination required by MGL Ch. 69, sec.1D:shall represent a determination that a particular student has demonstrated mastery of a common core of skills, competencies and knowledge in these areas, as measured by the assessment instruments described in section one I. Satisfaction of the requirements of the competency determination shall be a condition for high school graduation.
As written, thus, the law requires that the competency determination be based on the same system of assessment required by the law.
It requires that because the state constitution requires that the state itself be held accountable that every child "rich or poor, in every city and town" be ready to assume their place in ensuring we continue to have democratic governance in Massachusetts. It is the check in that the state does on each individual before they leave public education that the state has done its constitutionally required job.
That standard, by the way, for the class of 2026, is:
The ballot question removes that statewide check on each individual, substituting only "satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified by the student's district as showing mastery of the skills, competencies, and knowledge contained in the state academic frameworks." In other words, it abandons the state's constitutionally mandated support for each individual.39% of the possible points in English Language Arts25% of the possible points in math30% of the possible points in biology28% of the possible points in physics
That's not only wrong; it's unconstitutional. I am entirely unwilling to let the state off the constitutional hook on each child. And I think that we, as the state, should be ensuring our guarantee for each child is actually carried out, not only in whatever district we happen to reside in, but in every single place in Massachusetts. - It is proposing a change to the wrong sector of government in the wrong capacity.
Most of the arguments I have heard in favor this question are some objection to the MCAS test itself: people object to standardized tests, or to this standardized test, or to some particular item regarding this standardized test.
That's an entirely fair discussion to have: I've had it myself, since the first year it was implemented, when I was in a classroom as an English teacher.
But if you read the laws referenced above, nowhere in the law is the MCAS, as the MCAS, referenced. That's because that isn't where the MCAS, as the MCAS, resides. The MCAS being specifically referenced as the state competency determination is set in state regulation, specifically 603 CMR 30.
Education regulation for Massachusetts K-12 is set, not by the Legislature, but by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Thus the state legislature cannot "legislate out" the MCAS save by essentially making the state regulation illegal.
And state regulation cannot be amended through a ballot question.
Yet there has been--and I say this as someone who has been attending every meeting for years--no effort made to have the Board amend the state regulations: no organized proposals for alternative regulations, no persistent testimony making other proposals...nothing.
Instead, there have been persistent efforts at legislation, when the objection, from all I have read, is not to the law at all.
This, by the way, is where I think the sniping at the Legislature on this particular one is misplaced: to refuse to move forward changes to laws where in fact the particulars lie under another body's power is a reasonable response, not a failure to act.
My late mother always advised to ask the right people; this isn't asking the right people. - It will leave us in a complete mess.
There has been a persistent notion that "only" X groups are opposing the question. I'd note that in a year in which Dick Cheney has endorsed the Democratic nominee for President, it is an awkward year for objecting to one's political bedfellows.
Two groups I have not heard mentioned very often, though, are the Statewide Student Advisory Council, the only statewide elected group representing Massachusetts public school students, which in June reported out that its subcommittee did not endorse this ballot question, and the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, whose executive committee in early September released a statement in opposition to the question.
Part of the released statement founded MASS's objection on the question presenting only two paths forward: either ditch the statewide 10th grade competency determination, or keep it as is. The question, of course, is much more complicated than this.
This is not the level of complexity that we can actually sort out through yes/no ballot questions. I thus will reiterate that ballot questions make for terrible public policy. We have no choice, though, to grapple with outcomes, as the ballot question requires us to become policy makers.
It's pretty good bet, given the first item here, that there will be a constitutional challenge; it's well grounded in McDuffy, and thus there's a good chance that there then is an injunction keeping the MCAS. That would then put the K-12 system in Massachusetts in a space of statis, as none of us know what the requirements for graduation requirements are for upcoming classes, including the students in those upcoming classes.
I've heard several proposals that there should be "immediate" committees created to create a new statewide system. I'd remind us all that it took us years to pass legislation requiring the Foundation Budget Review Commission, and then took five years to get the main parts of the report passed. In the meantime, of course, it's anybody's ballgame as to what we're doing.
I've heard it proposed that MassCore could be required; with no legislation undergirding a statewide system, though, that would likewise require legislation, which takes years to pass.
This reminds me of nothing so much as the quote we all didn't appreciate when we were hearing it from former Commissioner Riley: we're building the plane as we're flying it. It does not matter who proposes such a thing; it continues to be a terrible way to run an educational system.
The tagline of the "yes" group is "Let teachers teach. Let children learn." We have, as a state, made "teach what? learn what?" a state, a Common(wealth), responsibility.
That isn't a responsibility we should abandon. Question 2 does, in fact, abandon that responsibility we have to every individual, for our own good as well as theirs.
As such, I will vote "no."
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