Massachusetts undertook sweeping education reforms in 1993 that linked funding increases to comprehensive reforms, ranging from curriculum and accountability changes to a new three-part teacher licensure test whose pass rate was initially just 41 percent.
Massachusetts has put greater emphasis than New York on high-quality curriculum. In fact, the standards and curriculum frameworks developed by Massachusetts in the late 1990s and early 2000s have been praised as the nation’s best. When those standards go unmet, Massachusetts officials appear to intervene more aggressively in underperforming school districts than their New York counterparts do. The Commonwealth follows a specific set of interventions and monitoring protocols.
Teacher education programs in Massachusetts are accredited directly by BESE, while New York’s Regents rely on outside accrediting agencies.
Policymakers in Albany might better meet their obligations, both to students and to taxpayers, by closely studying the reasons why Massachusetts consistently produces better outcomes than New York at a significantly lower cost. This report recommends several key changes:
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Massachusetts owes much of its high student performance today to its 1990s ed reforms which included an overhaul of the teacher pipeline (accreditation and licensure). Roberta Schaefer (fmr MA school board member) did a good analysis a few years ago.
Related:
Foundations of Reading, Wisconsin’s one attempt at teacher content knowledge requirements – often waived by Tony Evers and others.