WE’VE LEARNED a lot since this state made passing the MCAS exams a high-school graduation requirement - a lot about our students and a lot about our teachers.
The most encouraging lesson has been about our kids. If you set reasonable standards, most students will meet them. Yes, there will be some grousing, but in the end, they’ll buckle down and do what needs to be done to earn a high school diploma.
Teachers, too, have stepped up. Many don’t particularly like the MCAS, but overall they’ve done a good job helping students master the required material.
So we now know that a concerted focus on higher standards leads to better performance.
All that seems obvious. But it wasn’t always. There were times when it got a little lonely being an MCAS supporter. In the early part of the decade, before the exams became a graduation requirement, there were widespread predictions of disaster because so many students were failing the no-consequence MCAS tests.
Parents were genuinely alarmed. Politicians who had backed the theoretical notion of standards started to go wobbly, fearing that those standards were simply unreachable in real life.
That’s why I’ve always admired the determination that Jane Swift, then the acting governor, showed. Had she grown faint of heart about the MCAS, the state’s education reform effort might have died aborning.
Swift stood firm, however. And when the MCAS actually started to count, the passing rates went up dramatically.
This year, 83 percent of the class of 2011 passed their MCAS requirement on the first try. What’s more, the percentage who scored proficient or higher on their first taking of the math test - 75 percent - is equal to the total percentage of those in the class of 2003 who passed the test at all the first time around. The percentage who scored proficient or higher on the English Language Arts exam - 79 percent - is almost as high as the 82 percent of the class of 2003 who passed at any level on their first try.
No, the MCAS exams aren’t perfect. But nationally, they are recognized as quality tests that have catalyzed real educational gains. Since we’ve implemented high standards here, Massachusetts students, who always scored reasonably well on national and international assessments, have been turning in top-notch performances. That’s just more evidence of the value of strong curriculum frameworks and standards.
I say all this because we’re seeing a bit of a replay of past worries. The MCAS science exam is now a graduation requirement, effective with the class of 2010. Some 6,000 high school seniors have not yet passed that test.
To some, that may mean delaying or lowering the new standard. That, however, would be precisely the wrong reaction.
“If we don’t prepare students well for the world after high school by including a strong grounding in science, then we have done them a disservice,’’ says Mitchell Chester, the state education commissioner, who notes that the educational system has responded well to high expectations before.
But we’ve also learned some lessons about diehard MCAS opponents. Thus it’s no surprise that, over at Citizens for Public Schools, Marilyn Segal warns that the test could dampen students’ interest in science.
Here’s a prediction: If and when performance on the science MCAS exam improves, inveterate MCAS foes will assert that schools are simply teaching to the test. And if there’s an outbreak of measles? Well, the MCAS will be blamed for that, too.
What’s heartening, however, is that these days, that kind of defeatism isn’t finding much of an audience.
But just in case, it’s important to realize that seniors who have yet to pass science will have two more bites at the MCAS apple before graduation - and that with previous retests, the failure rate has already been halved.
So relax, everybody. We’ve been here before, and our students have shown that they can rise to the challenge. They will again. Have some faith in them.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 
