The state’s vote to abolish its high-school exit exam keeps us from knowing how well they’re educating students — which is just how teachers’ unions like it.
The state’s vote to abolish its high-school exit exam keeps us from knowing how well they’re educating students — which is just how teachers’ unions like it.
T here were a lot of losers last Tuesday night — Kamala Harris, the media, Democrats in the House and Senate, the narrative that Republicans alienate black and Hispanic voters, and the reputations of pollsters across the country, to name a few. But one of the biggest losers of the election has gone largely overlooked: students in Massachusetts.
The Bay State has rightly long maintained the reputation of having one of the best education systems in the United States. Their success began in 1993 with a slate of education reforms focused on high standards, accountability, and charter schools. One major aspect of the legislation was the establishment of its now renowned high-school exit exam, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).
AEI’s Rick Hess notes that, since 1993, “The share of students proficient in math grew by 33 percent and in English Language Arts by 40 percent,” and by 2005, “Massachusetts became the first state to have its students lead the nation in all four major categories of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”
Despite such successes, on Tuesday night, voters in Massachusetts voted to abolish it. Instead, students must only complete the equivalent coursework, regardless of whether they master the content therein.
Unsurprisingly, the Massachusetts teachers’ union spent millions on the ballot initiative. Criticisms from the union president focused on how the assessment is “outmoded” and has “exacerbated disparities.”
Regarding the first criticism, standardized tests remain one of the best measures of academic ability. Portfolios, essays, and projects are easy to game and allow much space for teachers to inflate grades. When facing a math problem or reading passage on a test, you can either do the problem and read the passage or you can’t.
As for inequities, it’s unclear how a test exacerbates them. It may unearth differences in achievement, but a test is innocent for such disparities. A lead test that detects a toxin in the water isn’t at fault for placing it there. Moreover, it’s a perverse line of reasoning that allowing minority students to graduate without basic academic competencies will somehow advance their interests.
Unfortunately, Massachusetts is not alone in such an initiative. New York will also likely abolish its Regents Exam, and Oregon forewent requirements that students demonstrate competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic for graduation.
Ultimately, such policy changes represent the victory of process over product. Inputs alone now determine the quality of a school. How many hours do students spend at their desks? How many courses must students complete? What online software must students mindlessly click through? How much will taxpayers spend? The output — did students actually learn? — receives no consideration.
Such a system allows for a proliferation of game-playing, excuse-making, and hidden failures. The education-reform movement of the early 2000s shifted the focus to outputs, measuring the academic achievement of students and holding schools accountable for failures. Standardized tests expose the vacuity of our current education system, and so unions and administrators hate them.
Conversely, an exit exam is the ultimate demonstration of a product. Regardless of how many hours a student attended school or what the per pupil funding is, can graduating seniors read, write, complete basic math, and demonstrate mastery of rudimentary history and scientific knowledge?
Not only does this hold schools accountable, but so too when students know that their education career ends with a final measurement of their knowledge and academic skills, it encourages them to learn throughout. If they can get to the end and graduate having learned nothing, why not skip classes, slack off, and light up in the bathroom instead?
In 2019, 13 states still required an exit exam. That number is now down to seven. Sadly, the soft bigotry of low expectations advances ever onward under the guise of “equity.”