On January 16, 2025, Governor Maura Healey signed Executive Order 639 to establish a Massachusetts K-12 Statewide Graduation Council to be led by the Secretary of Education and Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education. The Council will include a broad range of stakeholders, including students, parents/caregivers, educators, school counselors, labor, education advocacy organizations, higher education representatives, legislators, and the business community. The Council is tasked with making recommendations on how Massachusetts can ensure that all students graduate with the skills necessary to succeed in college, careers, and civic life, regardless of their background or location, and demonstrate these qualities through a consistent statewide set of expectations. More specifically, the Council is charged with studying and making recommendations on a new statewide graduation requirement, including but not limited to the role of assessment, the potential for differentiated pathways to earning the competency determination, and the completion of additional experiences that demonstrate civic, college, and career readiness. The Executive Order calls for an interim report to be delivered to the Governor and Legislature by December 1, 2025, and a full final report to be completed no later than July 16, 2026. The selected vendor will provide project management, facilitation, multi-lingual simultaneous translation services, and report drafting support to advance these four objective areas set forth in the Executive Order: • Engage in regional listening sessions to gather feedback from across the state directly from various stakeholders including students, families, educators, administrators, school support staff, higher education experts, the business community, and the general public; • Conduct a literature review of research and a landscape analysis of emerging and best policy practices in other states and other countries; • Conduct an assessment of local graduation requirements across the state to determine the current levels of variation; and • Consider key questions such as what Massachusetts students should know and be able to do before they graduate, including through potential course requirements and/or examinations, and how students should demonstrate their achievements in ways that accurately reflect their skills and knowledge.
