Assault on standards would leave many students behind

MAYOR SCOTT W. Lang of New Bedford continues his assault on statewide graduation standards in his Sept. 28 op-ed "A diploma for every student." Lang's bottom line is that local communities should have the right to establish their own graduation requirements and that the state should only be able to confer honors degrees based on MCAS performance.

This tiered system used to be in place in neighboring New York State, but it was abandoned for good reason. First, graduation standards varied greatly from one place to the next, thereby negating the state's constitutional obligation to ensure a "meaningful" education for all children. Second, locally determined graduation criteria were inevitably lower than the state's Regents standard, and certain classes of students were routinely tracked toward the local diploma without ever getting the chance to reach for the higher degree. It should be no surprise which communities and students were most often left behind: low-income students of color from inner-city neighborhoods.

Lang thinks he's standing up for the disenfranchised. Unfortunately, his proposal would only serve to condemn another generation of young people to low expectations and benign neglect.

JAMES A. PEYSER, Boston
The writer is a partner with the NewSchools Venture Fund, and was chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1999 to 2006.