Issues of academic rigor and student success dominated the Cambridge School Committee’s summer meeting, with discussion Aug. 4 of elementary literacy standards, eighth grade algebra and high school graduation requirements – namely whether years of effort to expunge one standardized test would be undone by subbing in another.
A narrative of district failure in reintroducing middle school algebra – including from a Boston Globe report saying more than 60 percent of Cambridge ninth graders had to “retake Algebra 1” – was rejected forcefully by superintendent David Murphy.
“We have doubled the number of ninth grade students taking a more advanced class than algebra,” Murphy said. “At no time over the course of the previous two years have we explicitly stated as a goal that all students should be done with Algebra 1 before they come to high school.”
Cambridge offered Algebra 1 for eighth graders in the 2025-2026 school year after removing it post-Covid. There was concern this could create a problematic “tracking,” which can change students’ lives by basing educational paths on early assessment of their abilities. Tracking was phased out by the district in 2019 amid controversy about classes being segregated by race and household income.
Improving student literacy
The committee returned to the issue of student literacy from March, when a motion was introduced to hold back third graders who did not meet state standards on the English-language arts portion of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test. About 60 percent of third graders met or exceeded expectations on the 2025 test, and only 34 percent of Black third graders and 17 percent of low-income third graders met or exceeded expectations.
Discussion by Murphy and committee members looked at ways to improve literacy as early as possible in a child’s education, including increased use of interventionists and out-of-school opportunities.
“The thing that all second and third graders have in common is they were at one point or another kindergarten students and pre-K students,” Murphy said. “What we are looking at are various ways in which we can continue to strengthen that foundation amongst our earliest learners.”
Committee member Arjun Jaikumar urged the superintendent to consider that focusing on elementary literacy did nothing to help students in middle and high school who are already behind.
No specific actions were taken on algebra or literacy, but committee members voted to signal resistance to an overly regimented application of statewide graduation standards to replace the MCAS as a graduation requirement.
Standardized testing
Many Cantabrigians opposed the MCAS since it became a graduation requirement in 2003, but it took more than two decades of debate and a $15 million campaign by the Massachusetts Teachers Association to place ending the requirement as an initiative on the 2024 state ballot. More than 2 million people, for 59 percent of cast ballots, voted down the requirement.
Just over a year later, a K-12 Statewide Graduation Council proposed a “demonstration of mastery” that included exams to show readiness for college, to be overseen at the state level, and capstone projects or portfolios with standards set and judged locally.
The committee on Aug. 4 passed a motion 5-2 that questioned the logic of replacing one standardized test with another. It called on the state to pay for any new graduation requirements “while respecting the Massachusetts tradition of local flexibility.”
Members Elizabeth Hudson and Richard Harding were the votes against, with Harding arguing “it’s ridiculous and beyond the pale that we would make a statement as a School Committee that embraces lower expectations than we already have.”
The committee also discussed a developing strategic plan to inform the next four years of district goals, noting areas of strength and areas for improvement; and a report on academic screen time in the district. The next committee meeting is Sept. 1.
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