With a question asking voters to eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement appearing increasingly likely to be on the ballot next fall, Peabody students may no longer be required to pass a standardized test to land a high-school diploma. Superintendent of Schools Josh Vadala, for one, hopes that future comes to pass.
The question was filed with the attorney general’s office on Aug. 2, and once it is approved, supporters will work to gather 75,000 signatures to ensure its spot on the ballot. Talk of eliminating the MCAS as a graduation requirement follows a Board of Education decision last year to raise the standard for students taking the tests — and Vadala said the tests have been a subject of debate since their introduction nearly 25 years ago.
In an interview last week, Vadala said he felt the tests had merit but should not prevent a student from receiving a high-school diploma. He pointed specifically to students with disabilities who may satisfy other graduation requirements but are left without a diploma if they fail to clear the MCAS.
“As a former Special Ed teacher, I have always had a problem with many of our students with significant disabilities (who) no longer are able to receive a high-school diploma because of the MCAS exam,” he said. “If they don’t pass the MCAS, they receive a certificate of attendance. And I think that’s really hard for some of our kids and our families to understand that they’re not high-school graduates.”
“I don’t think we should be limiting the opportunity for students to graduate tied to a high-stakes exam,” he added.
While Vadala said he would not support eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement, he said he would like to see the implementation of an MCAS diploma and a non-MCAS diploma. Doing so would allow educators to keep the test in place as a measure of academic achievement and as a way to track student performance, but remove the pressure tied to the exam.
Vadala said the MCAS had particular value as a piece of the puzzle showcasing how students measure up against one another and students in other districts.
“I’ve seen some school districts that were at the bottom during the first MCAS really rise up and be able to increase the rigor and receive funding and support around that if done correctly, but we don’t want to weaponize test scores and we don’t want to say one school is bad and one school is good solely because of one data point,” he said.
But, he cautioned that the MCAS should be viewed in the context of a school’s climate and culture and how it serves the surrounding community. Vadala said in recent years educators’ accountability systems have weighted one particular academic element too highly, often ignoring other factors that might be indicative of positive trends.
“Not every student should be judged on that one data point,” he said, noting that oftentimes students in urban districts underperform on exams like MCAS compared to their peers who go to school in wealthier, rural communities.
Under Vadala’s proposed model — offering two diplomas, one for students who pass the MCAS and one for students who don’t — some post-secondary options for students would be tied to that MCAS diploma, but others would drop the MCAS requirement and allow students who struggled on the test but otherwise achieved to advance their education or career.
“My vision of post-secondary options for students is, you don’t have to go to college, but you should have the option to go to college if you want to and so I wouldn’t want to do anything to prohibit that,” he said. “There should be a lot of options for students, and I don’t think that we should really limit them.”
