NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER Massachusetts voters eliminated the MCAS graduation requirement, state officials are proposing a new set of statewide exams that could once again make standardized testing part of earning a high school diploma.
A proposal released by the K-12 Statewide Graduation Council recommends that students complete state-designed and administered end-of-course assessments in English, math, and science as part of a broader graduation framework.
Exactly how much the tests would count towards graduation remains unclear. Under the plan put forward by the council, results “will meaningfully count toward students’ academic record and path to graduation,” but it did not specify whether students must pass these assessments in order to earn a diploma.
The proposal also recommends that students be required to complete a statewide sequence of courses known as MassCore, a capstone project or portfolio, and gain a background in financial and digital literacy to graduate.
The set of recommendations represents the state’s new proposed graduation standard after voters approved the 2024 ballot measure ending the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement. While the proposal would require legislative approval before taking effect, it has already revived debate over whether the state is reintroducing the kind of standardized testing voters rejected.
Students would take these statewide assessments after completing their related core high school classes. A history and social science assessment could be added later on.
Supporters argue that statewide assessments would restore consistency to a diploma that has become increasingly dependent on local standards.
“Parents and families don’t want a different test in every different classroom, and they don’t want a different grading policy so they can’t really know for sure how well their student’s doing,” said Ed Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, who opposed the 2024 ballot measure doing away with the MCAS graduation requirement. “That’s the importance of these end-of-course assessments.”
Critics counter that the proposal simply brings high-pressure testing back under a new name.
“We had this debate about high-stakes testing and the voters overwhelmingly said no. But now they are trying to repackage it,” said Max Page, who just ended a four-year tenure as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a union representing over 117,000 Massachusetts educators.
He argued that standardized testing forces teachers to teach to the test and prevents them from offering comprehensive instruction. “Standardized tests are a blunt and ineffective way of measuring student learning.”
Research on Massachusetts’s testing system paints a more nuanced picture.
A 2024 paper produced through a research partnership between the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and the Massachusetts Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education and Higher Education found that strong MCAS performance was a good predictor of students’ long-term college and career outcomes.
The report also found that low-income students who narrowly passed the MCAS math exam on their first try were more than three percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than comparable students who fell just short, suggesting the requirement itself may have motivated students.
At the same time, the researchers cautioned that relying too heavily on standardized testing could encourage schools to prioritize improving test scores rather than broader learning outcomes.
The state graduation council determined that nearly three-fourths of districts already use one or more end-of-course assessments as a way for students to work towards their competency determination, a state requirement that asks students to meet certain academic standards in order to earn a high school diploma.
Under the old system, in which students had to pass 10th grade MCAS tests in English, math, and science, the decision of whether to impose other graduation requirements was left to local districts.
The new blueprint recommends that students complete the state’s MassCore curriculum to graduate, which includes four years of English, four years of math, three of lab-based science, three of history and social science, two of world language, one of art, and five additional year-long courses.
Forty-six percent of Massachusetts high schools already require the full completion of MassCore as a graduation requirement.
For districts that do not meet these requirements, the Healey administration has announced $500,000 in grants to help them align their curriculum with MassCore.
Page argued the amount falls well short of what implementation would require. “If you have to hire a number of educators to be able to offer two years of world language or to offer the full sequence of math for every student in the Commonwealth, it’s going to cost a lot more than that,” he said.
He also questioned whether districts facing budget pressures and staff layoffs could realistically implement the new framework on the proposed timeline.
“We have a huge fiscal crisis, and we have been laying off hundreds of members all across the Commonwealth, but the proposals here will require greater investment to have more MassCore courses, to have counselors, to do capstone experiences, and so on,” he said.
The graduation council proposal also calls for students to meet a set of milestones designed to prepare them for college and career, including in work-based learning, civic readiness, and artificial intelligence.
Graduates must also complete a capstone project or portfolio demonstrating student learning. While the state would create a common rubric, local districts would have the authority to evaluate student work for portfolios or capstone projects.
Implementing these new requirements would happen over multiple years. Under the recommendations, students entering ninth grade in the fall of 2027 would only be required to meet MassCore graduation requirements, while students beginning high school in 2028 would be the first class required to meet the complete set of graduation requirements.
The timeline for the Legislature to take up the recommendations is unclear, but with the July 31 deadline approaching for considering new major business this year, the debate over what should replace MCAS is likely to spill into the new legislative session that begins in January.
