Education Reform in Massachusetts

Craig Bolon

30 August 2000

 

Education reform in Massachusetts was driven by the McDuffy school finance lawsuit, originally filed in 1978. In its McDuffy decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said that Massachusetts funding disparities harmed the quality of education for some students, denying them education to which they were constitutionally entitled. This June, 1993, decision was widely anticipated, and the Massachusetts Education Reform Act was signed less than a week after the decision was released.

A group called the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, organized in 1988 and led by John C. (Jack) Rennie, then CEO of the former Pacer Infotec, Inc., of Burlington (now the AverStar division of Titan Corp., San Diego, CA), and S. Paul Reville, then director of the Worcester Public Education Fund, wrote the reform bill sponsored by the Education Committee of the legislature. In 1991 the Business Alliance produced a document entitled "Every Child a Winner." A story from the May 2, 1993, Northwest edition of the Boston Globe quoted Rep. Mark Roosevelt as saying that the House education reform bill then pending "is essentially [the Business Alliance document]." In publications of Mass Inc., Rennie is quoted as saying, "We bought change." Most of this work was carried out in secret. As late as December, 1992, then Lt. Gov. Cellucci was calling on the Education Committee chairs, Sen. Thomas Birmingham of Chelsea and Rep. Roosevelt of Beacon Hill, to disclose their bill. Almost all the controversy generated by this legislation focused on its funding formulas. Until 1993, the public had hardly any knowledge of its sweeping changes in school policy and regulation. The following newspaper report was printed December 23, 1992:

"The bill also calls for higher student achievement and curriculum standards."

This was the most thorough description in mainstream news media from 1988 through 1992. The bill was released in an emergency legislative session of January 4-5, 1993, but it failed to pass.

Soon after the bill became public, education and public interest groups began to react. As reported in the Boston Globe on January 26, 1993, a coalition headed by Stephen Bing of the Massachusetts Advocacy Center predicted major problems with the legislation, including these:

	The reform bill will institutionalize unfair teaching practices such as using tests to track students into different ability levels.
	By substituting different certificates in place of the high school diploma, the bill will contribute to the dropout problem rather than ameliorate it.
	The legislation provides no mechanism for meaningful participation by parents or students in the development of a remedial education plan nor any opportunity to contest an inadequate plan.

Such objections were ignored. Neither the mainstream news media nor the Great and General Court gave these or other educationally oriented issues further attention in 1993.

Rep. Thomas Finneran of Mattapan, then chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, secretly inserted anti-abortion provisions in the bill, provoking a storm of protest. Other House controversy centered on a salary cap for teachers, which was removed. Proposals for "school choice," charter schools and gambling revenues became the focus of activity in the Senate. The bill quickly became a hodge-podge of added provisions with no coordination. Many observers became skeptical about overall benefit. Geoffrey Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association was quoted as saying, "It certainly doesn’t appear at this time that this bill will bring about any fundamental reform." In February, 1993, the Supreme Judicial Court heard testimony in the McDuffy case. In March, Rep. Roosevelt began a campaign for Governor. In April, the Edison Project, a business corporation, announced interest in privatizing Massachusetts schools. By May, an impasse over "school choice" had developed, Senate President William Bulger of Boston demanding it and House Speaker Charles Flaherty of Cambridge rejecting it. At the time, the Business Alliance opposed the "school choice" and charter school amendments. However, another business group calling itself "CEOs for Fundamental Change in Education," dominated by banking and large business interests and supported by the Pioneer Institute, had begun actively promoting charter schools and "school choice" through the Mass. Senate. After compromising with limits and delays on "school choice" and charter schools, the House passed the bill through second reading June 2 and the Senate passed it June 3. The Supreme Judicial Court released its McDuffy case decision June 15. Gov. William Weld signed the Education Reform Act on June 18, 1993.

In seven years under the Education Reform Act, state aid to Massachusetts public schools has grown from $1.3 billion to $3.0 billion per year, almost all the increase going to communities with low household incomes. For example, Holyoke now receives over 90 percent of its school funding from the state, while Brookline receives only about 10 percent. In 1992, Holyoke spent less than 75 percent as much per student as Brookline, but now it spends about 95 percent of what Brookline does. Still, the Act has tended to provide more of a windfall for Holyoke’s taxpayers than for its public school students.

Besides setting state commitments to equalize school funding, the Education Reform Act made many changes to Massachusetts education policy and regulations, including the following, as described by the Business Alliance:

	New goals, standards and indicators of performance for schools, students and teachers
	Financial rewards to teachers and schools that excel
	Decentralized authority, limiting school committees to policy-making and oversight, making CEOs of superintendents, and giving hiring and firing power to principals
	Preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds
	Expanded professional development for teachers

Seven years later, some of these changes are only starting to be implemented.

Before 1996, the Massachusetts Board of Education regarded test scores as only one component of school accountability. In a 1993 policy advisory, the Board warned that an accountability system based primarily on test scores would be likely to produce harmful long-term consequences, including:

	Exclusion of weaker students from the assessed pool of students
	Lowered morale among teachers and students
	The loss of experienced educators from schools enrolling many disadvantaged students
	Distortion of instruction and curriculum to reflect test content and format
	Cheating and corruption of test scores

Nevertheless the Board began development of testing programs to satisfy the provisions of the Education Reform Act, which eventually became MCAS. It appointed committees of educators and parents to help insure that tests were meaningful, fair and free from overt forms of bias. From 1993 through 1996, Massachusetts invested more than $2 million to support education reform study groups seeking ways to set high expectations for students.

By March of 1996 the Department of Education had completed a Common Core of Learning, released six of seven planned curriculum frameworks based on it, and begun the development of MCAS based on the frameworks. In addition, it had announced plans to:

	Award grants to school districts for assessment activities such as portfolio development
	Hold statewide conferences on local assessment strategies
	Publish examples of student work that meet the statewide standards so that districts have a model of what to strive for
	Develop a bank of assessment exercises linked to the curriculum frameworks for use by classroom teachers

All of these satisfy or support provisions of the Education Reform Act.

Development of MCAS took a sharp turn away from public participation after the appointment of John Silber as chair of the Massachusetts Board of Education in November, 1995. In August, 1996, Silber, former president of Boston University and an unsuccessful candidate for Governor, working with then Gov. Weld, engineered replacement of the 17-member Board of Education, including four African-Americans and Latinos, with a 9-member board, including several with ties to school privatization and charter schools, only one African-American and no Latinos. At his first meeting with the Board, Silber said the Education Reform Act’s underlying principle that all students are capable of learning at high levels was "rubbish." Responding to a demand for his resignation in 1997 he commented, "Some of the things that pass for learning disabilities used to be called stupidity." Soon after the Board replacement the committees of educators and parents that had been formed to oversee curriculum frameworks, test development and other education reforms were disbanded.

In December, 1996, Silber proposed a two-track system with a general diploma awarded for passing the GED, a test introduced during World War II by Everett F. Lindquist, developer of the Iowa test series, and now administered by the American Council on Education. An honors diploma would be awarded for high scores on the Massachusetts test series. Silber was forced to abandon the plan in January, 1997, when his personally chosen Board of Education refused to support it. However, a legacy of Silber’s proposal remains, the view that MCAS should be aimed at the exceptional student. In August, 1999, the Business Alliance revived the two-track concept with a proposal to award general diplomas to students who satisfy "essential requirements in English and math." The Business Alliance did not specify how this would be administered, and the Department of Education and Board of Education still oppose the concept. What they have done instead is to make a "competency determination" required by the Education Reform Act for a high-school diploma depend on achieving relatively low MCAS test scores, answering about 40 percent of the questions. A "certificate of mastery," as specified by the Act, is to be awarded for much higher scores, answering about 80 percent of the questions to achieve an "advanced" rating on one or more tests.

After the loss of two Education Commissioners in rapid succession, Silber resigned during a struggle over a new Commissioner in March, 1999. The outcome of the controversy was replacement of Silber by James Peyser, head of the reactionary Pioneer Institute, tied to school voucher and privatization movements, and retention of the compliant acting Commissioner David Driscoll. Since the Silber era, MCAS development has been closely monitored by Board of Education member Abigail Thernstrom, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, and hired consultant Sandra Stotsky, a writer for the Fordham Foundation and now an Assistant Commissioner of Education. Both of these right-wing foundations have supported forms of school privatization. Three rounds of MCAS tests have now been administered, in the spring of 1998, 1999 and 2000. The Board of Education has made the questions used in scoring available to the public, although they have not disclosed their standards for evaluating essay questions or all the details of their approach to computing scores. Students in religious-run and other private schools and students being taught at home are not required to take or pass MCAS tests. Bills have been filed but have not been enacted to include private schools in testing and to exclude charter schools. A system of "school accountability" has been defined by the Department of Education. It is based entirely on MCAS scores, a violation of Education Reform Act requirements.

MCAS has been heavily promoted by a business-oriented group organized as Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, Inc., in Boston, founded in 1997 by registered Massachusetts lobbyist William H. Guenther, who is its president. Guenther is also involved with three other public relations organizations, Mass Insight Corp., in Cambridge, Opinion Dynamics Corp., in Cambridge, and New England Economic Project, in Walpole. Mass Insight Education and Research Institute is a non-profit corporation that coordinates several policy groups and has close relationships with business and education executives. Leaders of its "Campaign for Higher Standards" include Gloria Larson, former Mass. Secretary of Economic Affairs, John Rennie, Chairman of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and Vice-Chairman of AverStar, Inc., and Cathy Minehan, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Leaders of its "Coalition for Higher Standards" include James Caradonio, Superintendent of Worcester Public Schools, and Thomas Payzant, Superintendent of Boston Public Schools. Its board of directors includes Maura Banta, Manager for External Programs at IBM Corporation, John Rennie, Abigail Thernstrom, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and Bruce Tobey, Mayor of Gloucester. Financial supporters of Mass Insight Education and Research Institute include BankBoston (now FleetBoston Financial), State Street Corp., Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), Boston Edison, Liberty Mutual Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, AverStar, Inc. (now a division of Titan Corp.), Gorton's Seafoods, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Intel.

Mass Insight publications promoting MCAS have been distributed to public schools through the Massachusetts Board of Education. Mass Insight has been cited in minutes of the Board of Education as a source of policy initiatives, including a proposal to use a score of 220 on tenth grade language arts and mathematics tests as the initial "competency determination" for high-school graduation, which was adopted by the Board in November, 1999. Mass Insight presents a simple but misleading picture of MCAS, saying that it measures “skills that students will need after graduation―at college or on the job.” No such significance has ever been demonstrated for MCAS or for any other state accountability tests.

Massachusetts schools are often castigated by newspapers and politicians as mediocre, but actually they are superior. In the October, 1999, Boston Magazine, Jon Marcus wrote:

"According to assessment tests and other measures, Massachusetts schools are among the nation’s best. Students here rank fourth nationally in reading, sixth in math, and eighth in science on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, administered by the U.S. Department of Education. They scored higher this spring in reading than 69 percent of their peers across the country on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; a third of the state’s third graders were at the advanced level, compared to 19 percent nationwide. A Boston College correlation of NAEP results with international tests found that in eighth-grade science Massachusetts students performed as well as, or better than, their counterparts in 40 out of 41 other countries, including Germany and Japan; only kids in Singapore were rated higher. More students study algebra and upper-level math and science than the national average, and Massachusetts also has the fifth-lowest high school dropout rate, the nation’s highest percentage of graduates who enroll in college, and the third-highest proportion of students who take the SAT. Massachusetts students’ SAT results have risen steadily since 1994; last year, they were the highest in a decade."

Such a contrast between political bombast and educational reality has become common. The long record of declining SAT scores in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, had a straightforward cause, the rapidly expanding number of students taking the tests, including many low-income students and students with lower grades who would not have taken them in prior years. When education researchers looked at comparable groups of students, SAT scores were gradually rising during this period, just as unadjusted averages began to rise once the growth in the number of test takers slowed. With the gratuitous abuse regularly heaped on public schools during this time, few members of the public would have guessed that the real trends in scores were positive. Even now, many politicians and most news media find the actual results inconvenient; they prefer simple, strident bashing of the public schools, uncomplicated by facts.

Many observers and columnists have commented on the complex language, mental tricks and obscure bits of knowledge found in MCAS questions. How elitist are the MCAS tests? One way to look at this is to ask the fraction of questions that must be answered to pass them and the fraction of students who cannot do this. The following table compares the current graduation level tests in Massachusetts (10th grade MCAS) with those in New York (the revised Regents series) and Texas (the TAAS series):

 

Typical percent of Typical percent of

State questions to pass students failing

Texas 70 20

New York 55 20

Massachusetts 40 55

 

Massachusetts, with by far the lowest passing score, has by far the highest rate of failure. Yet year after year, nationwide measures of academic performance rate Massachusetts students well ahead of those in New York and Texas. Passing an MCAS test says little about the education imparted through many years of schooling. On an MCAS test, the difference between passing and failing can be getting 24 questions right rather than 23.

A recent study performed by Catherine Horn and others at Boston College showed that a barely passing score on the tenth grade MCAS math test was approximately equivalent to the 50th percentile score for the PSAT math test. Students taking the PSAT are aiming for college. Many are taking the test as part of applying for National Merit and other scholarships; they tend to be good students. Therefore it should not be surprising when half or more of the general student population may "fail" the current tenth grade MCAS math test.

A large share of MCAS test questions is aimed at students with exceptional skills and knowledge rather than at typical students. If Massachusetts designed tests to measure competence rather than mastery, it would be setting much higher passing percentages. If Massachusetts genuinely cared about assessing student skills and knowledge, it would satisfy Education Reform Act requirements calling for a "variety of assessment instruments," including "consideration of work samples, projects and portfolios," facilitating "authentic and direct gauges of student performance," and it would provide for circumstances of special education students, students entering the public schools from households that speak a first language other than standard English, and students whose immediate aims focus on employment rather than higher education.

The Massachusetts Board of Education has ample access to information of this sort and has received many recommendations to improve its practices and make its system of assessments more realistic and fair. It has had more than $25 million to spend on developing MCAS. It is also well aware that "high stakes" testing systems in other states have sharply narrowed the school curriculum and increased the population of school dropouts, who are likely to be eligible only for the "McJobs" of the future. Thus far, however, the Massachusetts Board of Education remains rigid, programmatic and hostile to the facts. The problem is not lack of information or resources.

A weakness of all current school-based testing programs is lack of proven significance. It is well known that scores on school-based standard tests tend to increase with incomes of student households. It is also known that students from higher-income households tend to achieve higher status in adult life. However, none of the so-called "achievement tests" used in state accountability systems has ever been shown to predict success in adult life significantly beyond what can be associated with incomes of student households. In this respect, MCAS is no better or worse than the testing systems of other states. What is devastating about MCAS is that scores on tests which are clearly income-biased and of no proven practical significance will then be used to deny high-school diplomas to low-scoring students, making it difficult for them to find responsible jobs and other forms of advancement. The students from households that already have the least suffer the most from such a system, tending to widen the economic gap between the haves and have-nots in our society, already among the greatest of the industrial nations.