‘In every difficulty, there’s an opportunity,’ Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler says about developing a post-MCAS high school graduation requirement

 

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‘In every difficulty, there’s an opportunity,’ Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler says about developing a post-MCAS high school graduation requirement   December 22, 2025 By CommonWealth Beacon Staff

Patrick Tutwiler, Gov. Maura Healey’s secretary of education, is a forward-looking guy.

While he and Healey both opposed the 2024 ballot question that did away with the requirement that students pass the 10th grade MCAS exam in math and English to graduate from high school, Tutwiler says the council he now co-chairs to figure out what to put in its place has a chance to rethink high school in ways that will enrich the experience and help set students up for success after it.

“Gov. Healey really saw this as an opportunity, as did I, and the former history teacher in me would sort of lift up the well-known saying that in every difficulty there's an opportunity. And so we've wrapped our arms around that,” Tutwiler told CommonWealth Beacon’s Michael Jonas on a new episode of The Codcast. That reimaging of the high school experience, he said, was already underway before the MCAS ballot question emerged.

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Earlier this month, the 32-member council that Tutwiler co-chairs issued an interim report that begins to outline what a new graduation requirement will look like. It starts with embracing a course sequence that students will have to follow – something Massachusetts has not required of all districts. The council is considering requiring that students follow MassCore, the state’s recommended – but currently not mandated – high school course sequence, which includes four years of math, four years of English, three years of lab science, three years of social studies, and two years of a world language.

In terms of an assessment of student performance, the report anticipates a hybrid system of standardized tests required at the end of certain courses along with portfolios that show a range of a student’s work or a capstone project they complete at the end of high school. The report also anticipates having all students map out their post-high school plans and requiring them to complete the federal or state applications for financial aid in higher ed.

Lots of details remain to be spelled out. The report has not homed in on exactly how the end-of-course assessments would figure into meeting a new graduation requirement.

The council has been clear, Tutwiler said, that “no single assessment will prevent a student from graduating.” At the same time, he said, “They do need to matter.” Whether based on the 15 years he spent as an educator in Massachusetts high schools or as the parent of a 16-year-old, Tutwiler said, “I'll tell you definitively, if it doesn't matter or it doesn't count in some way, [there’s] a strong unlikelihood that the students are going take it seriously.”

He said we saw that clearly with the dip in last spring’s 10th grade MCAS results, the first time the assessment was given since the ballot question removed passing as a requirement to graduate.

Unlike research on MCAS scores, there is no clear evidence that performance on end-of-course assessments or portfolio or capstone projects predicts longer-term outcomes like degree completion in higher ed or earnings in the labor market. Tutwiler said there is evidence, however, that the MassCore course sequence is associated with higher rates of matriculation in higher education and persistence once there.

The state’s commitment to student success in high school and beyond, Tutwiler said, starts with the administration’s focus on universal access to pre-K seats across the Commonwealth, starting in Gateway Cities. (He said they’ve hit that mark in 19 of 26 Gateway communities so far.) He also voiced strong support for ensuring that schools are employing evidence-based approaches to reading instruction in early grades, a contentious issue that has drawn pushback from those who question whether the research on the issue is fully settled.

“We really know what to do,” said Tutwiler, arguing that research going back decades has shown that “the most impactful strategy is anchored in phonics-based instruction.”

As for the rethinking of high school, the graduation council has “heard substantively from students. They want more relevance, they want more engagement, they want a stronger connection between what they're learning and whatever it is they want to pursue when they leave high school,” said Tutwiler. “So when I say this is an opportunity, this is a grand opportunity, part and parcel of an existing effort to reimagine high school.”

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