In 1991, a scathing report from the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education found that Massachusetts’ youth—the benefactors of the oldest American public schools—were remarkably under-educated, to the point of being unprepared even for entry-level jobs. It concluded, “The bill for those ‘lost’ children comes due everyday…a staggering cost in lost talent, lost ambition, lost creativity, and, too often, lost lives.”
In 1993, a concerned Governor William Weld set his sights on a different kind of “bill”. Weld, senator Tom Birmingham, and representative Mark Roosevelt brought the Massachusetts’ education establishment and teachers’ unions to the negotiating table; they traded a billion dollars—nearly doubling funding—in exchange for rigorous curriculum, high standards, and accountability. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) increased funding, but schools needed something to show for it.
In 2000, the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability (EQA) was established as an independent sister agency to the Department of Education; wisely, the education bureaucrats were not allowed to create their own report cards. The EQA, based loosely on the British Office for Standards in Education, was charged with conducting rigorous audits of 50 school districts per year, documenting—for everyone to see—the schools that were, and weren’t, effectively implementing reforms. Audits culminated in 130 pages of unsparing data and research conducted by government sponsored, but autonomous auditors. The independence of these auditors, and the public nature of their audits, meant that low-performers had nowhere to hide.
Their findings? An almost perfect correlation between under-achievement and improper alignment of curriculum with state standards. Massachusetts’ new curricula, standards, and tests worked—but only if they were properly implemented. The EQA informed the government, and citizens, when they were not.
This was not just a matter of naming and shaming obstinate school districts—it came with real benefits. If an audit revealed multiple areas of unsatisfactory performance, the district was placed in “Watch” status and an experienced examiner mentored the district. Action correction plans were prescribed, re-examinations were scheduled, and, within two years, every district placed on Watch status improved. A former Blue Hills Regional Voc-Tech superintendent noted that superintendents routinely “used the audits to drive improvements in student achievement.”
The architects of the 1993 MERA engineered a highly successful and mutually beneficial deal with schools. When schools upheld their end of it, students thrived. When they did not, and when achievement faltered, the EQA came knocking—and districts instantly improved. Indeed, from 2002, when EQA audits began, to 2007, Massachusetts witnessed a steady rise in MCAS performance and claimed first-place in all four National Assessment of Educational Progress exams.
The Commonwealth’s historically underperforming schools continuously improved under this model—until they didn’t. Governor Deval Patrick, upon taking office in 2007, embraced a radically different vision for accountability. One that seemed to say, as Pioneer’s Jamie Gass quipped in Education Next, “if it ain’t broke, break it.” Patrick campaigned with strong backing from teachers’ unions and urban school leaders, who were openly hostile towards accountability. Immediately following Patrick’s inauguration, they urged him to “eliminate the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability,” and forgo all “district accountability.” Patrick feigned financial reasons for closure, despite the EQA making up less than 0.05 percent of K-12 spending. The real reasons—the school superintendents, committees, and teachers’ union’s reasons—were plain to see. The EQA ultimately suffered from success. These stakeholders and special interests were on the receiving end of the EQA’s unyielding accountability; they “disliked the agency because it did its job so well,” Gass remarked.
Still, Patrick denied ditching accountability—it was simply under new “leadership.” Whose “leadership”? The EQA’s replacement, a 13-member Advisory Council on District Accountability and Assistance, was stacked with representatives from the very groups being audited. By moving accountability in-house, within the Department of Education, district evaluations would be overseen by those with a vested interest in minimizing bad news. Effectively, the fox was appointed to guard the educational henhouse.
Governor Patrick’s foxes were not fond of the volume and scope of audits. Audits fell from 50 a year, to 15. They also assumed a narrower, less thorough methodology—for instance, conducting “targeted” mini-reviews rather than comprehensive audits. The remaining audits are not widely publicized or even known to many stakeholders, and their content is couched in diplomatic language. After all, who wants to publish criticism of themselves? The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), understandably, does not, and the ramifications are dramatic. Without the EQA to ring the alarm bells, several Massachusetts districts—namely Holyoke, Southbridge, and Lawrence—quietly slid into academic crisis in the 2010s.
Moreover, when EQA existed, no district, not even an affluent suburban one, was spared auditing. The DESE’s limited audits focus on chronic underperformers, allowing sub-par districts with flat performance to escape scrutiny. Unsurprisingly, as of 2019, half of Massachusetts schools were not meeting growth targets. In a state whose goal was once, under MERA, to “set high standards—the highest standards,” such pockets of mediocrity persist utterly unaddressed.
The Commonwealth’s enormous investments in its schools—over 100 billion dollars since MERA was enacted—have continued to this day, but basic accountability has not. It is time to honor the original bargain. Massachusetts must once again couple its record-high investments with the same uncompromising scrutiny that made our schools the envy of the nation. That means prying accountability out of the foxes’ paws and restoring it to a truly independent watchdog—an EQA reborn.
Sam Davis is a Roger Perry Education Intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is a rising sophomore at the University of Chicago, with a double major in Political Science and Philosophy.
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