CPS Students Question Future Without MCAS Requirements

In the run-up to November’s election, Ballot Question 2 — which sought to eliminate the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System as a high school graduation requirement — garnered national attention. Out-of-state celebrities voiced their opinions, while the measure accrued more than $21 million in donations from business groups and teachers' unions.

Massachusetts voters ultimately supported the measure, delegating graduation requirement decisions to individual districts.

But some of the people most impacted by this decision — students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School — were mostly unfazed by this change.

Arsema S. Sifu, a sophomore at CRLS, said she was “relieved” the graduation requirement had been lifted.

“I’m personally a little bit relieved, like it’s one less thing to think about. As high schoolers, we already have lots of other things to think about,” she said. “This was a nice burden to lift.”

Though she personally did not feel “stressed by the graduation requirement,” Hermela Shimelis — a senior and student representative to the School Committee — said she heard from other students concerned in the days leading up to the exam, especially those who were not “confident enough to know if they’ll be able to pass the test.”

“Even if I wasn’t feeling that stress initially, I think that you’re able to gain it from the environment around you,” she said.

She said she knows of several students who did not pass on their first try.

For the past 20 years, students took the MCAS in 10th grade but were allotted four additional chances to pass the test. Under the new stipulations, students will still take the MCAS, but without graduation on the line.

Other students said that the main sources of stress came from other standardized tests, like Advanced Placement exams, the SAT, and the PSAT, rather than the MCAS itself.

“I didn’t really think of MCAS of that level, like SAT or pre-SAT level,” Sifu said. “So I didn’t really start preparing for it, because I was thinking about other things.”

It was the act of sitting for the test — and the months it took to see test results — that were stressful for some students, like sophomore Rediet Shimelis, Hermela Shimelis’ younger sister.

Conversely, Urbana Barua — a senior at CRLS and a Cambridge School Committee student representative — said the 10th-grade exam was “really chill,” and that she felt well-prepared by her classes and her teachers.

“There was a lot of support for us to take the test,” she said.

Ballot Question 2 lacked an alternative statewide graduation requirement, leaving individual districts to determine their own standards. Barua said she didn’t support the measure to eliminate the requirement because it did not mention a “clear alternative” option.

Maia P. Shen — a sophomore at CRLS — expressed both relief and confusion at the new high school graduation requirements.

“I hear all of these different voices. I hear my friends saying, ‘Phew, MCAS is gone, it’s not a graduation requirement,’” she said. “But then I also hear people, like ‘What is the standard for graduating high school?’”

Currently, CRLS requires students to take 224 credits worth of classes, distributed across English, math, social sciences, science, foreign language, fine and performing arts, and wellness subjects.

Proponents of the measure, like Cambridge Educators Association president Dan Monahan, support adoption of Common Core State Standards to replace the MCAS requirement. The standards currently operate as a nationwide curriculum recommended by the Massachusetts Department of Education.

But in an interview with The Crimson, Paul Reville, former Massachusetts Secretary of Education and Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, said this curriculum framework will not take the place of standards, because districts, schools, and teachers are still left to grade how they see fit.

“There’s no common instrument that everybody takes,” he said. “It’s all kind of subjective judgment."

With graduation requirements in the hands of individual districts, school committee members discussed how — and whether — to update Cambridge’s high school graduation requirements at this week’s meeting.

The committee passed a recommendation with a 6-1 vote to review the district’s graduation requirements, with a deadline for February.

As students await direction from their local elected officials, who themselves await guidance from the state’s Department of Education, Shen wondered whose decision it is to make.

“I feel like this was a question that really affected educators and caregivers of students, and I feel like a lot of people who were voting for this measure, I don’t know if it directly affected them,” she said. “Is this more like a school policy question or like a School Council question? I’m also confused there.”

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com.