The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (M.A.S.S.) released a position paper today about proposed new statewide graduation requirements. The association, which represents Superintendents and Assistant Superintendents from across the Commonwealth, shared its perspectives on the recommendations presented last month by the Governor’s Statewide K-12 Graduation Council.
The position paper affirms the association’s commitment to a consistent set of standards applied evenly across all Massachusetts school districts but also outlines some of the concerns and objections raised by district leaders about the Council’s recommendations.
“We believe that in order to remain a national leader in public education, it is essential for Massachusetts to establish new statewide graduation standards that uphold high expectations for all students and all school districts across the Commonwealth,” the paper states. “Maintaining a consistent standard for earning a high school diploma across all public high schools helps to ensure equity and excellence.”
Specifically, M.A.S.S. raised concerns that include:
- The accelerated pace and timeline for the design, revision, adoption, and implementation of new graduation requirements;
- The number and breadth of proposed requirements, which M.A.S.S. leaders say will likely create a significant burden on students, families, educators, and administrators;
- The need for flexibility in the requirements to provide some statewide consistency while giving districts the autonomy to innovate and customize to meet the needs and interests of their students;
- The lack of details or implementation plan for the proposed requirements, which limits the ability of Superintendents and other stakeholders to provide meaningful input and feedback;
- The costs associated with any new requirements, and whether the state will provide additional funding to cover them, particularly as school districts face increasingly challenging budgets.
The position paper provides feedback from M.A.S.S. about each of the seven graduation components proposed by the Governor’s Council, stating endorsement of some and the need for adjustment and flexibility on others. In order to ensure equity and accountability across school districts, M.A.S.S. supports the adoption of a limited set of new statewide assessments to measure student mastery. However, rather than end-of-course assessments tied to particular courses, the association recommends exploring the development of tests based on “power standards” – a selected group of learning standards that educators identify as the most important for students to learn in a particular subject area.
M.A.S.S. leaders noted that since the elimination of the MCAS exams as a graduation requirement, after the passage of Question 2 in 2024, Massachusetts has been left with no consistent, reliable measure of students’ readiness to excel after graduation.