Let’s quickly revisit the State Board of Education public meeting where Acting Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan tried to persuade the Board to lower the cut score on the high school-diploma qualifying test from 750, which means “meets expectations,” to 725, which means “partially meets expectations.” Why such a bizarre recommendation from our top education leader? Here’s why: If we lower the score needed to pass the legally-required assessment that covers 10th grade reading and algebra, many more 11th graders would pass the test, thus creating the fake perception that our students are ready for college and careers.

One of the Allen-McMillan’s justifications for demanding the Board choose perception over reality is “mental health challenges among school-age children.”  Her presentation included this:

The impact of the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency greatly impacted mental health and wellness and setting our graduation requirements at the 725-cut score is prudent.

Are concerns about mental health a valid reason to lower standards?

Luckily, two national experts weighed in the day after the State Board meeting.

On PBS Newshour, Amna Nawaz interviewed two former U.S. secretaries of education, Arne Duncan, who was secretary during the Obama administration, and Margaret Spellings who served under President George W. Bush. The bulk of their discussion focused on how parents’ perceptions of how their kids are doing in school, mostly based on report cards, clashes wildly with how much they’re actually learning. Some call this the Honesty Gap:

Research from our friends at Learning Heroes states that 92% of parents believe their children are at grade level. 84% of parents report their children get all Bs or above and rank report card grades as the top measure to know if their child is on grade level. Yet only 30% of teachers rate report cards as one of the important ways to gauge student achievement.

Report cards wallow in the Honesty Gap, effectively lying to parents and students, which is one reason why objective standardized tests are so important. As education leaders address the devastating learning loss in the wake of Covid school closures and remote learning, Duncan and Spellings reiterate the damage done by exactly the sort of feel-good politics that Murphy’s Department of Education is championing. This undermines what should be a “massive sense of urgency” to drill down on high-dosage tutoring after school, on weekends, or summer school. 

But what about the trauma that Allen-McMillan references as a reason to lower standards?  Nawaz asks, “shouldn’t we be focusing on that equally or even more than test scores now? 

Here’s Duncan:

For me, this is not focused on test scores. This is focused on the ability to read and to do math, to do arithmetic, to do algebra. But, again, given the massive, unprecedented influx of resources into districts from the federal level, we can absolutely help kids learn and take care of the fear and trauma and socioemotional challenges they are facing. We need that both for students and for teachers and for other adults and principals working in schools.

This is not an either-or matter, protestations from the Murphy Administration’s Education Department aside. We can be urgently focused on catching kids up while simultaneously helping students recover from whatever trauma they suffered during Covid. 

The academic and social-emotional needs of our children demand our leaders walk and chew gum at the same time.