this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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I am very curious how MA is going to deal with the disparity between school districts if this passes.
I know No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds get a lot of flack for requiring teachers to teach the test, which hamstrings good teachers, and that's a problem. But the problem they were trying to solve was that schools that are ill equipped to deal with ELL, disabled, or impoverished students have a history of giving those students a diploma with no education.
The tests were to give insight into when and where that was happening, and to hold anyone accountable (infamously, no child left behind would remove funding from underfunded districts for failing their students, which... Yeah, but ESSA fixed a lot of that). This prop looks like it glosses over what it's going to do about those protections, and that makes me uncomfortable with this.
I've never taken the MCAS, I moved here from another state so I'm interested to see what y'all locals think about it. Based on my experience from other states I think they should remove the graduation requirement but still give the test to see where schools fall and see which ones need more support.
From what I've been told, the test itself will still be given and used for gauging such things. It just won't be a requirement for getting a HS diploma anymore. If that isn't correct, I'd love to learn more. I've had a hard time coming to a decision on this one.
Agreed that I'm having a hard time deciding where I am on this one. They could use the test to do that kind of thing, but not making it a requirement for graduation takes away the teeth, and I'm not sure how its going to be enforced going forward. The prop just kind of implies that the particulars would be decided after the vote, but I would feel better about it if the question of "How do we prevent harm to under privileged students who have been historically neglected" wasn't an afterthought. It feels a bit... Well... Neglectful.
My spouse is a teacher who has focused their career on underprivileged students in a variety of schools - charter, low SES, yuppie. They strongly support question 2. I can't lay out a detailed argument for it, but I trust that it's going to remove yet another hurdle from those struggling in school (and those already overburdened while teaching), and is not a significant loss to education quality.