Massachusetts News
By E. R. Cancell

February 1-- Back in August, the Massachusetts Business Alliance floated an ill-conceived solution for the large numbers of students who are scoring poorly on the MCAS. Their proposed two-tiered solution suggested that students who fail the MCAS should receive a basic diploma while their high-scoring counterparts should receive an honors diploma. 

With the latest round of MCAS scores, there will be more calls for a two-tiered scheme. For most Boston students, the basic diploma option would represent a return to the grossly inequitable educational system that we have only recently seriously challenged.

When education reform came to Massachusetts, the state and education community responded by establishing a strong set of educational standards. At the core of this effort was the MCAS, an unprecedented accountability requirement that held districts, schools, principals, teachers and students accountable for student performance. This system offered real hope for meaningful reform because it required that all students in the system be accountable to this high standard of academic achievement.

By establishing universal standards and accountability, Massachusetts challenged two widely held myths: 1) that there is a race of gold, a race of silver, and one of bronze and 2) the myth of normal distribution of intelligence. 

The ancient Greeks who cherished the former myth believed in the superiority of certain people and the inferiority of others. According to their conception, each group has a place and function in society and the gods want it so. The supporters of basic diplomas believe in the second myth which rests on the hoary concept of fixed intelligence. In simple terms, the bell curve crowd believe that there are smart kids, average kids, and not-so-smart kids (they take pride in having learned not to say "dumb"). Adherents to this dogma believe that it is cruel to expect dumb kids to do what smart kids can do because they might, after all, get frustrated having realized their innate academic inferiority and drop out of school. Why a student doesn’t feel frustrated knowing that they are in a non-MCAS, non-academic school, the anti-MCASers cannot answer.

Fortunately, substantial research opposes these harebrained myths. Cognitive and developmental psychologists have compiled a mountain of research suggesting that intelligence is not fixed and that people can become more intelligent depending on effort and exposure to certain experiences. This research exposes the flaw in the theory of basic diploma supporters. If people can become more intelligent and if intelligence is not solely fixed by nature, then the idea that a tiny percentage of Boston Public School students are equipped to pass the MCAS appears ludicrous. If practically all students posses the ability to pass the MCAS, they should be afforded the education to do so.

The basic diploma advocates’ move to adopt a two tiered system also ignores one of the most important lessons from the budding, standards-based reform movement. States, including Texas, Maryland, and North Carolina, that have adopted standards-based reform and have stuck with the program have shown steady progress as measured by criterion-based exams. While scores in these states started out at low levels, over time they have shown steady improvement.

Furthermore, the knee-jerk, anti-standards-based-reform fears of huge dropout rates caused by students striving to reach the standards has not materialized in these states. The preliminary empirical evidence suggests that establishing a standards-based reform, attaching stakes to performance, and then committing resources to developing the capacity of all groups of teachers and students within the system results in increased performance.

Presently, the vast majority of students populating the district schools are students of color, and the vast majority of Boston’s high school students failed the MCAS. Except for the students at the schools which require an exam for entrance and a handful of honors classes, the majority of Boston students will be seen as non-MCAS material, a fallacy that cannot be allowed to exist. The basic diploma option, therefore, articulates the expectation that the majority of these students are not capable of receiving an MCAS education. Without the accountability of passing the MCAS to receive a high school diploma, the majority of students will not receive an MCAS education. A system that institutionally structures different expectations that are so highly associated with race and socioeconomic status is an unjust system.

Tossing out the accountability mechanism which requires that all students learn to Massachusetts’s rigorous standards allows educators and students to slip back to a non-academic education. Those who require the least amount of remediation will earn an honors diploma and the rest, who are mostly students of color and the economically disadvantaged, will receive the no-standards-sit-in school-and-get-a-meaningless-degree basic diploma. Without external pressure to achieve at high levels, what will push the educators, parents, and students in the non-MCAS track to receive a strong education? Past history indicates that nothing will.

A two-tiered diploma system will take the pressure off the system to apply the enormous expertise and intellectual capacity of well-trained teachers and specialists to find a way to educate all students at high levels. The system would then go back to its equilibrium of systematically disadvantaging many while rewarding some. Doesn’t our pledge proclaim, "with liberty and justice for all?"

E. R. Cancell was a high school English teacher for four years and is presently a doctoral candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, where he is focusing on education policy in the area of standards and accountability.

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