Education reform in Massachusetts has reflected two main policy goals over the past 30 years: improving observable measures of educational achievement, and reducing disparities in achievement between students based on their race, income-level, and English-language proficiency. To achieve these twin-goals, the state has – with the passage of the 1993 act and subsequent legislation – radically reshaped how education is funded, what gets taught in classrooms, and how teachers, schools, and students are assessed.[1] These dramatic changes to its education system are widely attributed with catapulting Massachusetts to the top of national and international school system rankings by 2012, and with improving educational outcomes for students from all ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds.[2]
However, since 2012, progress on both goals of the education reform “movement” have stalled: overall student achievement appears to have stopped improving or even declined, and the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students has similarly persisted or become larger.[3] To address both problems, Governor Baker signed “The Student Opportunity Act” – which continues a tradition of increasing state funding to schools in exchange for more accountability – into law in 2019. Unlike previous legislation in the reform movement, which sought to narrow the achievement gap and improve overall student achievement through uniform state standards and more state involvement in funding decisions, the 2019 bill gives individual school districts broad leeway on how to close the achievement gaps in their schools. The only state requirement is that all districts must make plans to reduce the achievement gap that are “evidence-based”.
An important question for school administrators, teachers, and concerned parents then is: what practices and policies have proven to be effective in closing an achievement gap that is observed across often overlapping dimensions of race, socioeconomics, and immigration status? And among school-based “interventions” that have closed the achievement gap, which ones might make sense to implement in their districts? Answering this question is of utmost importance, as schools in Massachusetts continue to become more racially, economically, and linguistically more diverse, and educational outcomes continue to shape many important life-outcomes.
In the face of this complex and consequential question, the goals of this paper are modest – it mainly seeks to evaluate recent efforts to close the achievement gap in Massachusetts in the context of the broader national reform movement and recent academic research.[4] To that end, the paper is divided into four sections. To set the stage, the first section reviews some of the academic literature on the causes, consequences, and proposed solutions to the achievement gap. The second section then connects the achievement gap to the education reform movement, both nationally and in Massachusetts. The third section shifts focus to evaluating how education reform in Massachusetts impacted the statewide achievement gap, and highlights some of the complexity involved in drawing policy conclusions from statewide standardized test scores. The final section concludes that recent legislation that gives school districts in Massachusetts more control over how to address the achievement gap is likely a step in the right direction, but is probably not sufficient to significantly change the gap by itself.
What is The Achievement Gap, Why Does it Exist, and What Might Reduce it?
For much of human history, schooling had been reserved for the “elite,” but in the U.S., the idea that every child should have access to education appears to have taken root before the declaration of independence.[5] More recently, the definition of the educational “achievement gap” can be traced back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when Congress commissioned a report to investigate “the lack of availability of equal educational opportunity for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin in public institutions at all levels in the United States…”[6] The resulting report, named after its author, James Coleman, was groundbreaking at the time because it provided the first nationally representative picture of differences in educational inputs and outcomes between students from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. This basic definition of the achievement gap – as differences in standard, observable measures between members of different socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial groups – has been debated, refined, and expanded over the years, but is essentially the same today as it was 50 years ago.[7] For example, in Massachusetts, the achievement gap is mainly talked about in terms of differences in performance on the state’s standardized test (MCAS) between middle-class white students and students who are Latino, Black, economically disadvantaged, or English Learners. While a broader set of measures – such as grade point average, high school completion rates, advanced-course completion, and college attainment, are also used by researchers and policymakers to document the educational achievement gap, evidence suggests that these additional measures are highly correlated with performance on standardized tests.[8]
Although researchers have largely agreed on the general parameters of defining the achievement gap, they continue to debate the causes underlying it. The answer appears to depend on whether one asks a sociologist, economist, or educational psychologist this question. Sociologists tend to explain the gap in terms of schools reproducing or offsetting broader socio-cultural dynamics that favor a dominant group (at the expense of others).[9] This view was reinforced by Coleman’s report five decades ago, which found that the socioeconomic background of students – i.e. their parents’ income and education level – had far more influence on test results than any school-based factors (such as the quality of school facilities or teachers).[10] While Coleman’s report was cross-sectional and limited in its ability to establish a causal relationship between social factors and educational outcomes, research published since then strongly supports the idea that social/cultural factors – like parental education level and expectations – interacts with a school system designed to sort and track student to determine a significant share of the variation in educational outcomes.[11] A logical implication of this perspective is that schools must find ways to counteract deeply ingrained social forces to reduce the achievement gap.
Unlike sociologists, economists tend to view the achievement gap as rooted in unequal access to economic resources. From their standpoint, middle-class students (who happen to be mostly white) are more likely to succeed simply because their parents could afford to spend more time and money on their education. Unsurprisingly, their proposals for reducing the achievement gap have focused on reducing funding disparities between schools in wealthy and poor districts. Using recently available data and newer statistical techniques, they have made a convincing case that school funding does affect achievement and can help close the achievement gap, especially in places where wealthy and poor students are highly segregated by school district.[12]
Of the three main disciplines that have studied the achievement gap, studies by educational psychologists are arguably the most focused on school-based interventions. These studies typically accept that economic and social factors both influence the achievement gap and instead focus on specific educational practices – such as pre-school availability and culturally responsive pedagogy – that could reduce it. Their work so far suggest that no “silver bullet” exists, but a wide range of school and community-based efforts – to increase the resources available to schools as well as direct those resources in a way that overcomes sociocultural barriers to learning – can reduce the achievement gap. A partial list of effective policies/practices include early interventions like head start, culturally responsive pedagogy, small group instruction, increased parental involvement, and increased teacher/student racial congruence. [13] It is important to note that this research has shown little evidence that some of the key features of neoclassical education reform (discussed in the next section) – like uniform curriculum standards – actually reduce the achievement gap.[14]
How Did the Achievement Gap Influence Education Reform in Massachusetts?
Recent efforts to reduce the achievement gap in Massachusetts have been heavily influenced by the neoclassical education reform movement that started with a “paradigm shift” in education policy that occurred in the mid-1980s.[15] Closely linked to the release of the influential report “A Nation at Risk” in 1984, this paradigm shift reframed the purpose of education in stark economic terms: without reforming its education system, the U.S. would lose its standing in the world to adversaries like the U.S.S.R and emerging rivals in Asia. Redefining the purpose of education in such existential terms catapulted education to a top political priority in Federal and State government, and united Democrats and Republicans around a set of policies that would have been impossible to enact before the shift. These policies included: 1) increased federal and state funding for education; 2) state and national curriculum standards and assessments; and 3) an accountability system to reward school success (and punish failure). The policies also embodied implicit beliefs about education that were not widely accepted prior to 1980, including a belief that schooling was the primary determinant of educational outcomes, learning could be accurately measured by standardized tests, and that spending more money on education would raise achievement scores.
One outcome of this shift in thinking about education was that differences in funding, curricula, and achievement between native-born middle-class white students and students from other racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds became increasingly evident, and triggered legal action.[16] In 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in favor of urban school children in Abbot vs. Burke, holding the state responsible for ensuring that “all children – regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or national origin – (have) access to education that would allow them to be successful in life.” This was the first of many rulings in New Jersey and other states that 1) Increased support for state-wide curriculum standards, standardized assessments, and teacher certification; and 2) focused funding and assessment on both increasing overall achievement and on reducing disparities in educational outcomes (the “achievement gap”).[17]
In Massachusetts, the education reform movement made its way into legislation in 1993 with the passage of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA). While wide-ranging in scope the Act serves as a foundation for several key features of the state’s current educational system, including:[18]
- Education finance: in exchange for more control over the curriculum, the state increased funding (“chapter 70”) and developed a progressive formula to allocate funding to districts with different levels of local tax revenue. The state also established minimum spending levels (foundational spending).[19]
- Curriculum standards: the first frameworks for English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics were introduced in 1996-1997, expanded in 1999, 2003, and 2006, and integrated with national common core standards in 2010.
- Standardized tests: the state student achievement tests (MCAS) were implemented in 2008, along with the MTEL teacher certification tests. The next generation of these tests, which emphasize “higher order thinking skills” were piloted in 2017.
- Accountability: school report cards were created to hold schools accountable for outcomes, and in 2010, the state received authority to take over “failing” schools.
- Charter schools: the 1993 bill authorized charter schools to operate in the state, with an annual cap. The cap was removed for districts with “failing” schools in 2010.
In addition to these reforms that built on the 1993 act, Massachusetts has also passed other legislation that could affect the achievement gap. For example, in 2002, voters passed a ballot initiative to force all students to learn in English only, which restricted teachers form using students’ native languages to teach them academic content while they acquired English.[20] The question is, what, if any impact did all of these reforms have on the achievement gap?
How did Education Reform in Massachusetts Affect the Achievement Gap?
The early years of education reform in Massachusetts – from around 1998, when standardized curricula and assessments had been fully rolled out, to around 2012, when national common core standards were fully adopted – are widely considered to be a success in the popular media today. The main reason for this perception appears to be the fact that average student performance on state, national and international tests dramatically improved during this period. For example, the percent of Massachusetts 8th graders achieving a proficient or higher score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) doubled during this period and catapulted the state to the top of national and international rankings of education systems.[21] Mirroring national trends, college entry and completion rates also increased significantly during this period.[22] Taken together, evidence points to broad increases in academic achievement during this period.
However, reports published since 2012 have been much more critical of the reforms, particularly those related to standardized curricula and assessments.[23] Pointing to plateauing or declining performance on tests, as well as an emerging divergence between national, international, and state-MCAS tests, three main arguments against the reforms have emerged. One argument is that teachers in Massachusetts have started to “teach to the test” by narrowing their curriculum, and prioritizing test performance over their students’ overall cognitive growth. A second argument against the reforms is that non-cognitive skills – such as behavioral regulation and social skills – which are learned in school and are important to life outcomes, are not measured by standardized tests (thus more likely to be neglected). Last (but not least) it has become increasingly clear that education reform has failed to close the achievement gap. Figures 1 through 7 in the appendix use NAEP 8th grade math achievement scores for students in Massachusetts to highlight how, despite some initial gains in reducing the share of failing students among disadvantaged groups, educational outcomes were just as (or more) unequal in 2019 as they were in 1992 (the year before the education reform movement was launched in MA. These dismal results suggest that education policy needs to reduce its reliance on standards to boost achievement. The question is, what should policymakers shift their focus to?
Recent studies have built support for a renewed emphasis on school-quality to raise achievement among students from disadvantaged groups. An important factor driving this research is the fact that a many school districts and individual schools bucked broader trends and narrowed the achievement gap (see figure 8 for an example with school districts in Massachusetts).[24] In addition to the factors listed in the prior section – such as high-quality preschool, parental involvement, and culturally responsive pedagogy – school and district leadership, academic expectations, teacher relationships, and teacher experience have also been linked to lowering the achievement gap.[25] A growing consensus also appears to be emerging that the efficacy of interventions are often sensitive to context, and that lasting changes to achievement levels requires providing continuous support to disadvantaged students’ as they move through disconnected school systems.[26]
Where Do We Go From Here?
Many Americans believe that education is a “great equalizer,” capable of lifting any hardworking child, regardless of his race, gender, or socioeconomic status, out of poverty.[27] Yet, for the last 50 years, an increasingly visible, persistent, and consequential “achievement gap” in educational outcomes between middle-class whites and economically-disadvantaged students – who tend to be black, Hispanic, and/or a recent immigrant – has belied these expectations across the nation, including in Massachusetts. Growing awareness and discomfort with this achievement gap has coincided with a nationwide movement towards standards-based reform, which, with its emphasis on measuring performance on standardized tests, has made it impossible to ignore the magnitude of the gap and its long-term impact on students. Because of concrete evidence of its impact, and pressure from courts on the basis of this evidence, a quest to reduce the achievement gap has become an integral part of the education reform movement in Massachusetts and across the country. However, despite radical changes to school funding, curriculum, and assessment, the achievement gap has stubbornly persisted, leading some to wonder: are schools destined to serve as mechanisms for reproducing and magnifying broader societal inequality, or can they counter these forces and be the vehicles for social mobility that they are advertised to be?[28]
The experience of Massachusetts suggests that standards-based reform, coupled with modest increases to funding, might have reached its limits. While early neoclassical education reform in the state can be reasonably attributed with improving educational outcomes on average, the gap in achievement between middle-class whites and students from disadvantaged groups remains intact. Even more worrying, in recent years even average academic performance appears to have declined as the achievement gap has begun to widen. However, the story is not all “gloom and doom”. A growing body of research suggests that schools can counter the achievement gap by developing culturally responsive practices that combine excellent teaching with community engagement and continuous support for students from preschool through college. Even more positive is the fact that the recent bill signed by Governor Baker relies on school districts, rather than the states, to address the gap. Unlike the state-wide standards that preceded this bill, providing school districts with control and resources could give them the flexibility they need to develop practices that work in the contexts that they operate in. But this initial step is unlikely to alter the trajectory of the achievement gap in Massachusetts on its own. For lasting change, the state should scale back the scope of its standards-based reforms to allow schools to promote student growth across a broader range of disciplines and developmental domains. The state should also focus on helping students make transitions – for example from high school to college – where many are falling through the cracks. Even better, the state could do more to reverse the increasing economic and social inequality that feeds the achievement gap instead of putting the onus on schools alone.
References
Alexander, K., & Morgan, S. L. (2016). The Coleman Report at fifty: Its legacy and implications for future research on equality of opportunity. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(5), 1-16.
Chester, M. D. (2014). Building on 20 years of Massachusetts education reform. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Darder, A. (2003). The critical pedagogy reader. Psychology Press.
Dietrichson, J., Bøg, M., Filges, T., & Klint Jørgensen, A. M. (2017). Academic interventions for elementary and middle school students with low socioeconomic status: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 87(2), 243-282.
Downey, D. B., & Condron, D. J. (2016). Fifty years since the Coleman Report: Rethinking the relationship between schools and inequality. Sociology of Education, 89(3), 207-220.
Duncan, G., & Murnane, R.J. (2014). Restoring opportunity: The crisis of inequality and the challenge for American education, pp. 35-52. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.
edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html
Hanushek, E. A., & Rivkin, S. G. (2006). School quality and the black-white achievement gap (No. w12651). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hanushek, E. A., Peterson, P. E., Talpey, L. M., & Woessmann, L. (2019). The unwavering SES achievement gap: Trends in US student performance (No. w25648). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Henry, D. A., Votruba-Drzal, E., & Miller, P. (2019). Child development at the intersection of race and SES: An overview. Advances in child development and behavior, 57, 1-25.
Jackson, C. K., Johnson, R. C., & Persico, C. (2016). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from school finance reforms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(1), 157-218.
Jackson, C.K. (2018). What do test scores miss? The importance of teacher effects on non-test score outcomes. Journal of Political Economy, 126(5), 2072-2107.
Jeynes, W. (2019). Eliminating the Achievement Gap. Rowman & Littlefield.
Kraft, M. A., Marinell, W. H., & Shen-Wei Yee, D. (2016). School organizational contexts, teacher turnover, and student achievement: Evidence from panel data. American Educational Research Journal, 53(5), 1411-1449.
Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., & Schanzenbach, D. W. (2018). School finance reform and the distribution of student achievement. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(2), 1-26.
Loveless, T. (2012). The 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning? With Sections on Predicting the Effect of the Common Core State Standards, Achievement Gaps on the Two NAEP Tests, and Misinterpreting International Test Scores. Volume III, Number 1. Brookings Institution.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Statewide Data Reports. 2021. Available at: https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/
Moore, A. B., MacGregor, C., & Cornelius-White, J. (2017). School personnel-student racial congruence and the achievement gap. Journal for Multicultural Education.
National Assessment of Educational Progress Data Explorer, 2021. Available at: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
OECD Country Note. Programme for international student assessment (PISA) results from PISA 2015: Massachusetts. 2015. Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. Available at www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf
Papay, J. P., Mantil, A., Murnane, R. J., An, L. I. L. Y., Donohue, K. A. T. E., & McDonough, A. U. B. R. E. Y. (2020). Lifting all boats. Accomplishments and challenges from, 20.
Sentance, M., & Chieppo, C. (2018). Is Two-Tiered Public Education on the Rise in Massachusetts? Policy Brief. Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research.
Tough, P. (2009). Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada’s quest to change Harlem and America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
www.wbur.org/edify/2017/11/15/teaching-english-legislation
Appendix
Figure 1. Scaled score of MA students on NAEP 8th grade math test 1992 – 2019, by school-reported race.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 2. Percent of MA students rated proficient or advanced on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by school-reported race.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 3. Percent of MA students rated below basic on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by school-reported race.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 4. Percent of MA students rated proficient or advanced on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by free or reduced lunch eligibility.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 5. Percent of MA students rated below basic on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by free or reduced lunch eligibility.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 6. Percent of MA students rated proficient or advanced on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by ELL status.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 7. Percent of MA students rated below basic on NAEP math test 1992 – 2019, by ELL status.
Source: NAEP Data explorer: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/xplore/NDE
Figure 8: Frequency of Changes in 10th Grade Mathematics Score Gap (2008 to 2018) Between White Students and Students Who Were Ever an English Learner, By School District
Source: Author’s calculations from https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/
[1] Chester, 2014.
[2] OECD, 2015
[3] See subsequent analysis in this paper.
[4] The practical function of this paper is to serve as a learning tool, not to create new knowledge on this topic.
[5] Jeynes, 2019 argues that the idea of providing equal access to education originated early in the spread of Christianity, and took hold in Massachusetts when the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Quackers established schools.
[6] Alexander and Morgan, 2016. P1.
[7] Scholars have typically extended this basic model since then, keeping the essential elements intact. For example, Portez, 2005, p17 lays out a strong case for categories that are based on both sociocultural and economic disadvantages rather than grouping together different people simply on the basis of race or ethnicity.
[8] For example, Papay et al shows that 10th grade MCAS score results predict a wide variety of educational and life outcomes even controlling for race and socioeconomic background. It is important to note that non-cognitive scores learned in schools might also be important and not measured by cognitive measures like GPA, test scores, and college attainment (Jackson, 2018).
[9] For example, Darder, 2003.
[10] Alexander and Morgan, 2016.
[11] See Downey and Condron, 2016; Henry and Miller, (2019) and Hung et al, 2020 for examples.
[12] For example, Jackson, Johnson, and Persico, 2016 and Lafortune and Schanzenbach, 2018.
[13] Dietrichson et al, 2017; Jeynes, W. 2019; Moore, MacGregor, C., and Cornelius-White, 2017
[14] This is based on an admittedly shallow reading of the literature by a novice in this field.
[15] This paragraph summarizes an argument made in Mehta (2014)
[16] While Abbot vs. Burke was filed before “A nation at risk” was published, the rulings associated with the case occurred between 1984 and 1998. edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html
[17] Alexander and Morgan, 2016.
[18] See Chester 2014. These changes also required teachers to get certified in Sheltered English Instruction to renew their licenses after 2006.
[19] While total state funding levels (in real dollars) have fluctuated since the reform act, the process used to allocate state funding has remained relatively stable.
[20] In 2017, the legislature voted to allow other languages to be used once again for instruction (When It Comes To Teaching English, Beacon Hill Says One Size Doesn’t Fit All | Edify (wbur.org)).
[21] See OECD, 2015 for PISA rankings, and Sentence and Chieppo, 2018 for a comparative analysis of MCAS and NAEP test results.
[22] Chester, 2014.
[23] See Papay, 2020 for more details on the summary presented in this paragraph.
[24] Hanushek and Rivkin 2006.
[25] For example, Hanushek and Rivkin, 2006, and Kraft, Marinell, and Shen-Wei Yee, 2016.
[26] Portes, 2005, and Tough, 2009 provide examples of context-specific plans that cover a broad swath of the educational experience across transitions.
[27] Even 200 years ago, Horace Mann is attributed with the following quote: “Education, then, beyond all over devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of man – the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” Portez, 2005, p169.
[28] For example, Duncan and Murnane (2004) and more recently Hanushek et al 2019 make strong cases that the achievement gap is just as large today as it was 60 years ago, when efforts to reduce it began.
