testing

National SAT scores have dropped to their lowest levels in years, and Massachusetts has also faced a moderate decline in scores. With fewer students in Massachusetts opting to take standardized tests, data from US Data Labs illustrates a complicated picture of academic performance and recovery in the state. 

Over the past 30 years, rigorous standards, assessments, and accountability for outcomes have propelled Massachusetts public schools to become the nation’s best. Taking away the high-stakes component of MCAS would weaken the accountability system and lead stakeholders to de-emphasize the assessment data that drives high-quality instruction, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

Massachusetts — home to so much history, including seminal events such as the Boston Tea Party — has much to be proud of in its own students’ history and civics performance. Even as policymakers have supplanted typical curricular standards with “engagement” mandates that students participate in progressive activism, national attitudes towards Massachusetts’ civic education have remained envious.

MTA campaign against graduation test takes their stand to ‘farcical extremes’ Originally appeared in CommonWealth magazine on April 25, 2023 The Massachusetts Teachers Asasociation is calling on its members to be “conscientious objectors” by refusing to administer MCAS and not let their...

As it does each year, Pioneer shares the resolutions it hopes state leaders will adopt to bring government actions into better focus and invigorate our democracy with heightened public engagement. As the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Now, in addition to maps and tables regarding the number of cases and case rates across the state, “Mapping COVID-19” also includes information regarding the testing efforts in the Commonwealth.

By Jamie Gass & Charles Chieppo Read this op-ed in The American Conservative We are now nearly four decades beyond the publication of A Nation at Risk, a federal report that indicted the “rising tide of mediocrity” and initiated a well-deserved period...

By Tom Birmingham   APRIL 13, 2017 Massachusetts’ story is well known in the education world. In the wake of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, student achievement shot up, and the Commonwealth’s students became the nation’s best performers. The law worked...