Despite a 2024 ballot question removing MCAS as a state graduation requirement, Massachusetts students will continue taking the exam as districts, including Northborough-Southborough, deliberate if they will keep the exam as a graduation requirement.
The Massachusetts Department of Education requires a Competency Determination (CD) in order for students to graduate. Until Massachusetts Ballot Question #2 passed in the 2024 election with 59% of the votes, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) was the required CD for all public school students. Now the CD is determined by individual districts, which can change the CD to have graduation requirements unrelated to the test.
District administrators are working to determine Algonquin’s CD.
“What will ultimately happen is that each community will have their own localized decision on whether or not they want to have MCAS in their community via graduation requirement, and I suspect our community will still have very high standards for kids and students will still have to meet lots of graduation requirements,” Principal Sean Bevan said.
Assistant Principal Janet Brown, the ARHS administrator responsible for MCAS, explained that Algonquin uses MCAS results for much more than just to ensure a student graduates.
“There is a lot we learn from the testing and there’s a lot of support that students receive based on the testing,” Brown said.
The MCAS is used by the district to primarily help students get the education they need before they graduate. According to Brown, department leaders analyze scores to organize information and assess overall performance as well as identify skills gaps in the curriculum. Next, teachers break down the data by class and individual students to adjust the curriculum and provide additional support as needed.
English department head Jane Betar believes it’s important to have a standardized exam in Massachusetts, but she is unsure how she feels about the exam being a graduation requirement. Betar explained that exams such as MCAS can be useful to help ensure all students receive a good education.
“One way to try to ensure equity among learners, no matter what district they’re in, is to create a standardized program or a standardized exam,” Betar said.
A concern with the new state requirements is that students will not put their best work into MCAS as it would no longer be a graduation requirement, which would lead to skewed results that could possibly impact the curriculum.
Students have reservations about the value of taking MCAS. According to a Harbinger survey of 134 students conducted through Google Forms from Dec. 12 to Dec. 15, 93% of respondents say that the MCAS isn’t very difficult while 83% of students do not think MCAS is useful to their general education.
