BOSTON (SHNS) – Massachusetts school districts have to come up with new processes before the end of the school year to determine if a student has shown competency over state academic standards, as state officials face an onslaught of questions raised by the passage of a new voter law.
Voters in November passed Question 2, an initiative petition that removed the requirement that students pass the MCAS exam to graduate. The new law also delegated the power to determine if a student met statewide standards to individual school districts.
Rob Curtin, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s chief data and accountability officer, said students on track to graduate in the spring who passed the MCAS exam prior to November are still considered to have passed the “competency determination” (CD) — the term that means they proved they have skills and knowledge that meet the statewide standards.
Some students, however, still have not passed the test. The most immediate question the department and local districts have to answer, Curtin said, is how to create new, local CDs to ensure that these students still have the opportunity to graduate.