Citizens for Public Schools — an education advocacy organization working with the Massachusetts Teachers Association and other local groups — conducted a series of nine People’s Forums over the past several months focused on gathering the public together to have conversations about the schools we want. Voters clearly rejected the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as a graduation requirement in 2024, which has given us the opportunity to take a fresh look at the education we are offering to our students in 2026 and beyond.
These are crucial conversations to be having at this time, for many reasons. We know that too many schools and districts cannot provide the services and support that many of their students need, and that the current funding formula is nowhere near adequate to meet the actual costs of educating all of our children. This is especially true here in western Massachusetts.
The high-stakes testing regime (MCAS) has been a two-decades-plus failure, particularly for students with special needs, students who are English language learners and students whose strengths do not align with high-stakes testing. We are having a hard time finding and keeping teachers and staff, because we can’t pay them enough, because we are pressuring them to offer an education that they know is harmful to many of our most vulnerable students, and because they are too often blamed for the failures of the system. And Gov. Maura Healey is pushing for more of the same. We need to have more conversations about public education.
It’s important to understand that discussions about graduation requirements are really conversations about what we want for our children’s education. The MCAS-dominated education system turned our curriculum into test preparation. The goal of school was to score well in those high-stakes tests and it became the only thing that mattered. Anything that was not focused on test preparation was eliminated or reduced. Our children lost electives, lost arts classes, lost hands-on science classes, lost recess, lost physical education classes, lost hands-on projects, lost field trips and they lost much of the joy that comes through learning and discovery. This was all because they took time away from test prep. To reiterate, this struggle is not just about what will replace the MCAS; it’s about what kind of education we want for our children.
The forums
Each of the nine forums held across the state was organized around the same format. Participants were invited to have conversations together focused on three inter-related questions: What do we want our students to know and be able to do by the time they graduate? How can we assess their learning and readiness to graduate? How can we structure our schools, from pre-school through 12th-grade to support those learning goals? There were facilitators and note takers at each table and the data was collected at each site, then sent to Citizens for Public Schools for compiling. CPS has just released a summary report of those forums, and I will share some of what we have learned.
What we learned from our forums
Forum participants strongly reject a one-size-fits-all approach that creates winners and losers. We want a system that recognizes and values the diversity of our students and looks to create a learning environment that supports the most successful approach to teaching and learning for all of them. That means offering multiple ways for students to learn and to demonstrate their learning, skills and knowledge. It means understanding that our learning goals include academic excellence but they go well beyond that narrow category.
We also want students who care about others and their communities, who are critical thinkers, and who are able to analyze and critique data and information. We want students who are creative, flexible and good listeners. We want our children to be skilled researchers, able to dig deeply into topics that interest them, that concern them, and that enable them to take action in support of their own learning goals and for the benefit of others.
We want an educational system that encourages our students to continue learning, and to develop the skills that enable them to do so, not because there is an upcoming test but because what they are learning about has meaning for them, is important to them. We want students who are self-starters, able to initiate and carry out projects and who are also able to work well with others for a common purpose. Finally, we heard loudly and clearly from our forum participants that the purpose of education was to lift up all of our students, to help them gain the skills, knowledge and disposition that will help them live healthy, successful and joyful lives as part of healthy, supportive and welcoming communities.
The current situation
Gov. Healey, who supported maintaining the MCAS as a graduation requirement, is moving as rapidly as she can to replace it with another set of high-stakes tests prepared by and scored by the state, with no local input. These tests would be administered to all students, essentially replicating the failed high-stakes system that voters decisively voted out in 2024. We held these forums in hopes that actually hearing from the public about what we wanted for our children might slow down her push for more testing, and we still hope that sharing testimony with legislators, with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, with school committees around the state, with various media, and with various education focused organizations might help to at least generate public awareness of what the governor and her administration are planning for public education in the state.
What can we do
Question three in our forum series was focused on what changes were needed in schools to support the goals we identified in questions one and two, and few, if any, groups were able to give serious attention to it, given the limited amount of time they had. Thinking through the changes we really need if we are going to make changes to public education that better serve all of our students is an incredibly complex and complicated question, and we need to take time to make these decisions.
Our New York neighbors took several years to do the necessary research before they began moving forward with their post-Regents assessment system. Other states have also taken years to research and redesign their post high-stakes systems. At one time, there were 27 states with high-stakes graduation exams; now there are eight, so there is much we can learn from those who have moved away from high-stakes testing systems. We need to slow down the process. One step you can take is to contact the governor’s office, Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler, your local legislators, your local school committee members, and/or your neighbors and community members, requesting/demanding that they slow the process down.
Another conclusion that came out of the forums regards saying no to unfunded mandates. We cannot keep demanding more and more from our school districts, educators and school personnel without adequately funding what we are requiring. The current foundation formula does not come close to funding the actual cost of education, and as costs continue to rise, districts all over the state are falling farther and farther behind.
Write to the governor and demand that she include reopening a foundation review commission in House 2, the budget she will be putting out in just a few days. We can’t keep criminally underfunding our schools and then blaming them and our children for the results. We are among the very richest states in the country and there is no excuse for our not adequately funding our schools; we need to demand better. That starts with the foundation review commission; contact the governor and your legislators, and demand that we look deeply into a funding formula that has rewarded a few districts while punishing the rest. And do that soon.
This column is a summary of a summary report on the forums conducted by Citizens for Public Schools, the MTA and other groups. You can read the summary on the CPS website at https://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/peoples-forums-revealed-expansive-vision-of-what-high-school-grads-should-know-state-leaders-must-listen-and-respond/
I encourage you to do that and to get involved.
Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.