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Proposal to remove MCAS scores as graduation requirement sparks heated debate
Over more than three hours of discussion about a proposal to stop using MCAS exam scores as a high school graduation requirement, lawmakers kept returning to one specific question: if the measure passed, how would Massachusetts ensure that every school district has roughly the same baseline for determining if students have earned their diplomas?
Opponents of the idea, including former Education Secretary Paul Reville, warned that decoupling MCAS from graduation requirements would usher in a new era of scattershot standards and undermine decades of previous education reform. Supporters, led by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, argued that the existing system puts undue pressure on students and that the exams fare worse at measuring academic performance than more teacher-driven options like classroom tests.
And in the middle of the debate was a new committee of four representatives and four senators, tasked with reviewing each of the ballot questions that the Legislature could address in the coming months, or just leave them to voters to have the final say.
Members of the panel did not make their views explicit Monday, but they asked more pointed questions — and a greater number of questions overall — of proponents than they did of opponents.
Many of their comments and inquiries suggested concerns about the system that would emerge if MCAS scores were no longer a prerequisite for a diploma, particularly if individual districts implement different graduation requirements.
“I don’t have a dog around the MCAS. I don’t particularly care, except it is the way we assess today what’s going on in this town versus what’s going on in this town in, yes, a narrow way,” said Sen. Cindy Friedman, the Senate chair of the panel. “This ballot question will take all of that away, any chance of that away. How do we ensure that our kids, no matter where they live, are getting the education that they need?”
“I hear your question. I’m grappling with the fact that there’s still deep inequity with the MCAS,” replied Rev. Willie Bodrick II, president of the Boston Network for Black Student Achievement and a supporter of the ballot question. “I’m not sure that the MCAS is actually going to fix the problem that we’re actually trying to address.”
“Before we did any of this, we couldn’t even figure out what was going on,” Friedman, an Arlington Democrat, shot back. “I’m just asking: what’s that going to be, and how do we ensure that happens? This ballot question does not do that. It takes something away. It doesn’t put something in its place. That’s what I’m trying to grapple with.”
Other legislators lodged similar points during the hearing. Rep. Michael Day of Stoneham asked if giving districts “unfettered ability” to dictate graduation requirements would lead to “a little bit of a doom cycle.” Sen. Paul Feeney of Foxborough said the question as written could create a “wild, wild west of a patchwork of different assessments across the commonwealth.”
Sponsors of the measure on multiple occasions argued that taking away the MCAS-linked graduation requirements would not lead to a chaotic, uneven approach because Massachusetts education officials already set statewide education standards.
“Before the MCAS, there were no state standards. We have the state standards now. We have the curriculum. No district in this state can afford to not adhere to those standards,” said Kirsten Frazier, a ballot question supporter who teaches English language learners in Worcester. “Those standards, that Mass Core that we have, all of our curriculum has to meet that. That is extensive and it is the gold standard model across the country.”
Ed Lambert, a former state representative who today leads the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education that opposes the MCAS ballot proposal, called it “misleading” for question backers to point to state education standards.
“The ballot language question says that students would be required to complete coursework certified by a student’s district as demonstrating mastery of the competencies contained in the state academic standards,” Lambert said. “While they attempt to suggest that this means that the state standards will still apply, we all know — as we all learn from our high school teachers in our statistics and research courses — if you don’t have uniformity in how you assess something, like achievement, then you don’t have a single standard. Only a common assessment can assure that.”
Beacon Hill created the MCAS exams under a 1993 education reform law that sought to boost school performance and increase accountability. The first exams were administered in 1998, and they became a high school graduation requirement in 2003.
Today, ballot question supporters contend, the stakes for scoring high enough on MCAS have become so high that teachers need to focus too much of their attention on preparing students for standardized exams rather than ensuring students have mastered the material — or are ready for life after high school — more broadly.
“There is a difference between a student demonstrating the depth of their knowledge to the Massachusetts state framework standards and answering test questions. It’s two different skill sets, and when people say we shouldn’t be teaching to the test, the problem is you have to,” said MTA Vice President Deb McCarthy. “You have to teach students how to look for the word ‘not’ in a multiple-choice question because that’s what will catch some of my dyslexic learners, to look for the answer in a picture, to compare and contrast a reading passage. Let’s say the passage is on baseball and you didn’t understand the game — then you have to teach them skills on how to look for that information within the text.”
The ballot question would not eliminate MCAS tests altogether — in fact, as supporters pointed out Monday, some standardized exams are required under federal law.
Instead, it would spike the mandate that students obtain a state-level “competency determination” through MCAS before they can receive a diploma, leaving in place individual districts’ graduation requirements.
“If we were to abandon a minimum statewide standard for graduation in Massachusetts, we would absolutely be taking a giant leap backwards in education policy,” said Doug Howgate, president of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which opposes the ballot question. “We would absolutely be doing something that was antithetical to 30 years of education reform in Massachusetts, and most importantly, we would be doing something that would be harming the 2,500 to 2,800 students every year who are struggling to graduate from high school.”
The vast majority of Massachusetts high schoolers achieve the scores they need on MCAS exams to qualify for a diploma, according to state research. Data compiled in the fall by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Matt Hills found that 96% of the roughly 70,000 students in each graduating class fulfilled the MCAS competency determination.
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About three-quarters of students who do not pass the exams also fail to meet their local district requirements to graduate. The remainder — about 700 students per year, or 1% of each class — met local standards for graduation but left high school without a diploma solely because they did not get sufficient MCAS scores, the data show.
“Is it your position that what motivates you is that there are 700 students a year, let’s say 1%, that don’t pass the MCAS and then are prevented from graduating? Or is it your position that it’s just taking something from the other 99% during the school year?” Rep. Kenneth Gordon, a Bedford Democrat, asked union leaders. “If that’s your position, then how would we as a society assess how we would not go back to a different standard for 351 districts in the commonwealth?”
MTA President Max Page replied that even if only a small fraction of students are denied diplomas just because of their MCAS scores, “one is too many.”
“It’s bigger than that,” he added. “The system has distorted what happens in the classroom. When you say there is this high-stakes test every year and it’s going to build toward that, it shapes what happens in the classroom. In low-income districts, it is actually even more intensely that the whole curriculum is built around test prep.”
Committee co-chair Rep. Alice Peisch, who previously served as the top representative on the Legislature’s Education Committee, suggested Monday that attaching stakes to standardized tests ensures that students take them more seriously.
Peisch serves as vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, and she says the group “struggles” with the 12th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress exams “because it’s voluntary.”
“Getting enough students to take it — one of the factors that we’ve been told exists is that it’s very difficult to get high school students to engage in something that they don’t see as directly beneficial or having some consequence to them,” she said.
The Education Committee under Peisch’s leadership sent a similar bill ending the MCAS graduation requirement to a dead-end study order in the 2021-2022 lawmaking session.
Lawmakers are deciding if they want to wade into topics covered by half a dozen planned ballot questions, some of which emerged in the first place because their sponsors are frustrated with legislative inaction.
The Legislature can either approve any of the ballot questions or propose a substitute. If the House and Senate take no action by May 1, sponsors must collect more voter signatures to secure a spot on the November ballot.
Initiative petition campaigns sometimes put pressure on lawmakers to broker a compromise, and Feeney asked at one point if MTA leaders were open to having a “conversation beyond what’s written in the ballot initiative itself.”
Page, the union’s president, replied that MTA also supports standalone legislation dubbed the Thrive Act “as written,” which would similarly eliminate the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement.
The dynamics might change now that Gov. Maura Healey has joined the debate. Healey’s education secretary, Patrick Tutwiler, said in an interview that aired Sunday that both he and the governor oppose the ballot question.
“I support the idea of there being a standard, a state standard for high school graduation,” Tutwiler said in an interview on WBZ’s Keller @ Large. “That question, if it passes, would deliver us to a place of no standard — essentially, 351 different standards for high school graduation. I don’t believe that is the direction to go. The governor does not believe that is the direction to go, so no, I do not support it.”
He signaled that the administration could be on board with changing the tests themselves.
“Could it be a different assessment? Absolutely. Should the assessment evolve and maybe look different ways? Absolutely, and I’m more than open to that conversation,” Tutwiler said. “But inasmuch as it relates to a standard, I believe there should be one.”
At a press conference before Monday’s hearing, Page said he found Tutwiler’s comments “disappointing” and referenced the statewide standards.
“They shape teacher preparation, they shape licensure and they are what our educators behind me referred to as they develop the curriculum in all their schools. So in fact, it says right there on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website that these standards were designed and they do provide a universal set of curriculum standards across the entire state,” Page said. “We have very strong standards. We need to strengthen and support educators being able to teach with those standards in mind.”
Sam Drysdale contributed to this reporting.
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Medway home where 7 children were removed was scene of bloody fight between family members
A violent encounter between a father and son preceded the removal of multiple children from a Medway, Massachusetts, home last month, according to documents obtained by the NBC10 Boston Investigators.
As we reported on February 23, social workers removed seven children between the ages of 3 and 16 from a home on Holliston Street and police spent the day gathering evidence.
Medway Police Chief William Kingsbury told reporters that day he could not share specific details about the situation while it remained under investigation.
However, court records the NBC10 Investigators reviewed shed light on a tumultuous environment in the days leading up to the removal of the children.
According to a Medway police report, officers responded to the home on the night of February 16 and found the aftermath of a bloody encounter between Thomas Logan, 55, and his 27-year-old son, Matthew Logan.
Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan was watching television in the home with his girlfriend and 29-year-old brother when his father entered the room with a metal flashlight and tried to attack his son.
After Matthew Logan fought off his father, Thomas Logan allegedly returned from the kitchen holding two knives.
Witnesses told police Matthew Logan wrestled the knives away from his father and then started punching him repeatedly in the head. At one point, Thomas Logan’s wife tried to intervene and break up the fight, but was also struck in the face during the struggle, according to the report.
Police arrived at the chaotic scene, unsure of what was transpiring inside the home after the frantic 911 call placed by Matthew Logan’s girlfriend, who was holding the couple’s young child when officers got to the home.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.
One officer reported scaling an elevated patio and arresting Matthew Logan. Another officer kicked in a door and found Thomas Logan bleeding extensively from the head.
Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan had a tattoo on his face of his deceased brother’s birthday, which seemed to spark the anger from Thomas Logan.
In a video posted on Facebook the day after the altercation, Matthew Logan corroborated that detail and described the fight with his father.
“My dad tried to assault me in front of my woman and my baby,” Matthew Logan said in the video. “He tried to assault me with a flashlight and I just decked the (expletive) out of him and he was instantly bleeding.”
According to the report, 12 people live at the home on Holliston Street and many of the children were sleeping in their rooms when the violent struggle erupted.
The father and son were each charged with felony counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Matthew Logan was wearing two large gold rings on his hand during the fight, which contributed to his father’s injuries, according to the report.
Matthew Logan was arraigned on February 20 and released on $540 bail with an order not to contact his parents. Thomas Logan was treated at the hospital after the fight and will be arraigned on March 28.
A source familiar with the case told NBC10 that the removal of children was not directly related to the fight on February 16, but instead allegations that surfaced during an investigation following that incident.
On February 26, Julie Logan sought a restraining order against her son, Matthew. In her affidavit, the mother wrote that her son struggled with several mental health disorders and had not been taking his prescribed medication.
Julie Logan also said her son had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and his mental state had declined in recent weeks. The mother said she feared for her safety.
“My son recently assaulted my husband leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood,” Julie Logan wrote. “Given his diagnosis and the seriousness of it, there’s not a way of predicting his unstable behavior.”
NBC10 reached out to the parents, Thomas and Julie, to ask about the altercation or any perspective they could provide about the ongoing law enforcement investigation. They have not responded to messages left at the phone numbers listed in police reports.
When reached by phone, Matthew Logan declined to comment.
In their summary of the fight on February 16, police officers indicated they were familiar with the family and had been to the address on multiple occasions for medical emergencies, noise complaints, and an assault on a family member.
According to calls for service to the home on Holliston Street, police have been to the home more than a dozen times since the family purchased it in 2016.
In one report from February 2019, Thomas Logan called police and said “he just saw five lights go over his house but could not hear any sounds.” An officer who responded to the house said Logan showed him a video taken on his cellphone.
In another report from May 2020, a caller told police that Thomas Logan was standing outside his house shouting obscenities at people. Records show that Logan also called police in June 2022 to report a neighbor who had taken a photo of his trash sitting out by the curb.
On Monday, Chief Kingsbury told NBC10 the situation remains under investigation and there were no new details he could share with the public.
A spokesperson for DCF said the agency could not comment because of state and federal privacy requirements.
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