Cambridge Teachers, Students Call for End to MCAS Graduation Requirement

Cambridge teachers, parents, and students called for an end to requiring high school students to pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System during an online forum hosted by local education groups on Thursday.

More than 60 people attended the forum, which comes as state legislators consider a bill to eliminate the current requirement that all Massachusetts public high school students pass the standardized test in order to graduate from high school. The Massachusetts Teachers Association has sponsored a ballot question to eliminate the MCAS graduation requirement in the November election.

On Tuesday, Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 said she opposed removing the graduation requirement, telling WBUR that she does not support “getting rid of MCAS.” She added that she hopes to find ways to “take care of” students who do not pass the MCAS and “see them through.”

During the 90-minute Zoom event — sponsored by a range of local organizations including the Cambridge Education Association, which represents Cambridge educators — Lisa Guisbond, executive director of Citizens for Public Schools, urged listeners to support the bill, called the Thrive Act.

Several teachers said the MCAS has had detrimental effects on their classroom environment, especially for students with higher-needs.

“What this has done to curriculum is it has pushed pacing, it has pushed breadth more than depth. What is gone now is project based learning, deep inquiry thinking, critical reasoning,” said Betsy Preval, an English teacher at Cambridge Street Upper School

Because schools do not receive MCAS results until the following academic year, Chris Montero, a history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School said the test fails to provide educators with any “pedagogical value,” like measuring mastery of concepts taught in class.

“We are not able to address in our instruction what it is that the test is showing us. It is useless,” he said.

Montero also said the exams were a faulty metric for evaluating school performance and instead reflected pre-existing racial and economic disparities. MCAS results in Cambridge have consistently shown a wide achievement gap between Black and white students.

“It shows if you get high scores, that chances are, it’s a district that is predominantly white and wealthy,” Montero said. “If you see predominantly low scores, what you know is that it tends to be a community of color, it tends to be working class, and it’s phenomenally underfunded.”

“You don’t need to administer a test to know those things,” he added.

He said that MCAS is not built to adequately measure student growth and proficiency, specifically pointing to his experience teaching multi-language learners and students who have experienced significant interruptions in their education.

“They managed to pass classes that they struggled to pass previously, they managed to get the credits that they need to get, they managed to fulfill all the requirements needed for a high school diploma,” he said. “The one thing that keeps them from getting that diploma is the MCAS.”

Samantha Rosenberg, a junior at CRLS, said that when she had to take the MCAS for her graduation requirement in 10th grade, she could not sleep the night before.

“I don’t have anxiety. But the night before, I was so nervous. I couldn’t fall asleep. I felt nauseous,” Rosenberg said. “Maybe subconsciously, I realized that my graduation was depending on this test, and I’m not a good test taker.”

Sam Cohen, a Cambridge parent and a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, said high-stress tests like the MCAS harm both students’ physical and mental health.

“These tests create a stressor without the payoff for growth. Layering that on an already fragile population contributes to poor mental health of young folks in our communities,” Cohen said.

Preval said that the MCAS only served to exacerbate existing inequalities within the school system.

“If you are marginalized in multiple facets of your identity, the system is literally designed to not see you be successful,” Preval said.

“It is time for the MCAS to go,” she added.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.