It was wonderful to see the Gazette’s editorial page recently filled with support for the Thrive Act. This important piece of state legislation would eliminate passing the MCAS as a graduation requirement and establish a commission to recommend “a more authentic and accurate system for assessing students, schools, and school districts.” As the Gazette contributors noted, standardized tests tell more about out-of-school factors than in-school factors, and they don’t capture most of what people care about in public education.

Right now, the MCAS measures student learning in English, math, and science. The tests that determine eligibility for graduation are taken in 9th or tenth grade. A more authentic system for evaluating student learning could include real world performance assessments, hands-on projects, and comprehensive portfolios. It would capture student performance across a much broader array of coursework: art and music, social studies and foreign language, vocational shops and physical education. A better system would also reflect student achievement beyond the first two years of high school.

Student MCAS scores play another role in K-12 education. They are the most important part of the statewide accountability system that assigns schools to performance categories, which can lead to state intervention. A more accurate system for gauging the quality of schools and districts should be based on an expansive range of indicators beyond MCAS scores. It must also be less tied to student demography. School culture, resource availability, the professional environment, and student wellbeing are just some of the areas that could be assessed in addition to academic learning.

The exciting news is that school and district leaders don’t have to wait for the Thrive Act to become law to take a better approach to assessing student learning and school quality. They can begin right now. The Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) is part of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Its mission is to challenge the existing assessment system with an approach that is more equitable and democratic. Thanks to funding from the state Legislature, ECP supports schools and communities with free tools in two main program areas: performance assessments and school quality measures.

For people interested in authentic evaluation of student learning, ECP provides resources and training in the development of performance assessments. These are teacher-generated, curriculum-embedded, real world learning tasks. They are scored using a double-blind process to guard against grading subjectivity. Senator Jo Comerford’s advocacy will allow ECP to offer a four-day Performance Assessment Institute to teams from 10 schools in her Senate district in the next school year. There is funding available for districts to pay teacher stipends and to cover the cost of substitutes.

Anyone seeking to reimagine how school quality is understood and assessed can explore ECP’s suite of innovative tools in this arena. The School Quality Measures holistic framework captures the full range of what schools do. It draws from several sources, including student and teacher surveys, and its five categories of data are clearly visualized on a dashboard. ECP’s partner districts have access to free resources and coaching to help them analyze their dashboard and create school improvement action plans.

To join the movement away from MCAS at the school and district level, visit ECP at edcommonwealth.org.

Julie Spencer-Robinson is a strategy and operations consultant with the Education Commonwealth Project. She has a Ph.D. in education policy from UMass Amherst and was an educator in the Northampton Public Schools for 27 years.

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