I would call this blog post "in which the Globe gets it wrong again," but once you've used that as a title once, you've used it.

Anyway, the Boston Globe (specifically Mandy McLaren, who tends to decide what the answers are before writing articles, as evidenced by, for example, her coverage of literacy) wrote today about Governor Healey's graduation council, as announced in her State of the State address earlier this year. In the article, McLaren repeats a big misunderstanding of where November has left us: 

To graduate from high school in Massachusetts, students since the class of 2003 had been required to pass 10th grade MCAS exams. That changed in November, with the overwhelming passage of ballot Question 2, which immediately struck down the requirement, leaving standards up to the state’s more than 300 local school committees.

(emphasis added)
This is not the case.

First of all, the "standards"--which actually means something in education in Massachusetts--are the state subject standards, set by Board vote, after having been written, reviewed, and overhauled by educators. Those are the standards.

As for the graduation piece, I feel as if I have pointed out over and over (and I can only imagine those in other positions are even more frustrated!), there remain two requirements for graduating in Massachusetts: 

• the local graduation requirements set by the local school committee. This is usually a set number of courses, and it may also include things like community service
  
  
• the competency determination, which, while local determined, STILL HAS TO MEET STATE LAW as amended

The law as amended by the November ballot question now says students must demonstrate: 

mastery of a common core of skills, competencies and knowledge..., by 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 standards and curriculum frameworks in the areas measured by the MCAS high school tests described in section one I administered in 2023.

(emphasis added)
Those areas are: English language arts (which has standards, but isn't specific in terms of, for example, texts that must be covered); algebra I and geometry; biology, or physics, or technology and engineering. 

So, no, school districts--specifically school committees--don't have the authority or responsibility of just creating this from whole cloth. THEY HAVE TO MEET STATE LAW.

Is that a mess? Yes. But here we are.

As has already been said: if your local graduation requirement requires three years of mathematics, but you have seniors who haven't taken algebra I or geometry, they haven't met the requirement of the law as amended by the voters in November. 

I'd also note that the piece is very sure that "school committees making decisions" is the concern here--one that McLaren has made clear concerns her in her other writing--but that also is not why the Governor is creating the committee, nor is it why the state has oversight at all.

The state has constitutional obligation to ensure every single child has a public education, as written into the state constitution, as quoted at the bottom of the blog. That constitutional language, per the McDuffy decision, is “not merely aspirational or hortatory but obligatory” and is for "every child, rich or poor, in every city or town in the Commonwealth."

I really wish the Governor had cited in that in her speech, but that doesn't mean the rest of us, particularly those with a responsibility for informing the public, need also miss the point. 

I have said before how much we all would benefit from better coverage at Board of Ed meetings; this was extensively covered at the last one. 

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There is always a Pratchett quote for everything. One just has to find it.