State Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Pedro Martinez speaks during a December 2025 press conference. Yawu Miller photo
In January 2025, when the Southbridge Town Council delivered a vote of no confidence in Southbridge Public Schools receiver Jeffrey Villar, the move was largely symbolic. After the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) put the town’s school district in receivership in 2016, local elected officials lost control over the administration of their K-12 system.
Southbridge, Lawrence and Holyoke were taken over by the state as part of DESE’s accountability regime, based largely on students’ scores on the MCAS exam. But after years of receivership — 9 for Southbridge now — all three districts remained in the bottom rankings of the states’ accountability system leading many to question the efficacy of such interventions.
According to current DESE Commissioner Pedro Martinez, state officials, too, are rethinking state takeovers.
“We want to do what I call a third way,” Marinez said in a meeting of state education officials and reporters at the State House last week.
Martinez said the state pursued school and district takeovers — which he acknowledged had “mixed results” — before pulling back from such interventions and then, “did nothing.” While he didn’t outline exactly what his third way would entail, he said he would make an announcement in the next few months.
“The third way is truly looking at schools across the Commonwealth, that are really struggling [and] partnering with superintendents, and so we’re in the process of beginning of rolling out this initiative,” he said.
Martinez’s announcement comes as a bill that would end the practice of putting schools and districts in receivership is making its way through the State House. The Thrive Act would require the state to partner with teachers, parents and district leaders to devise a comprehensive support and improvement plan to help struggling districts and schools. It would also require the state to provide schools and districts currently in receivership with a one-year path to independence from state intervention.
“It’s very much a move away from the top-down approach to school receivership, said Lisa Guisbond, executive director of Citizens for Public Schools.
The Thrive Act would also require that the state rely more heavily on growth scores to assess schools and districts. Under the current system, MCAS exam scores provide a snapshot of where a student is at.
Critics say DESE’s current system fails to take into account how much a student is learning in its assessment of schools and districts. For instance, if a student has just arrived to the United States from a country where English is not their first language, they’re still required to take the exam in English. While their scores in subsequent years may show growth in their learning of English and the subject matter they’re being taught, that change in the scores is not heavily weighted in the state’s assessment system. In effect, schools and districts with English language learners can be penalized for the student’s initial inability to test in English.
The Thrive Act would also require the state to establish a commission to create a new assessment system. As the words “Comprehensive Assessment System” in its name imply, the MCAS exam was meant to be a part of an array of assessments. In practice, however, the state’s assessment of districts has largely revolved around the use of the single test.
“There are so many times when we’re making decisions based on scores without looking at other factors,” said state Sen. Liz Miranda, a co-sponsor of the Thrive Act.
The state’s approach to receivership was rooted in the corporate education reform movement of the early 2000s that sought to lessen the influence of teachers and teachers unions on education policy. In Massachusetts, the thinking was that students in under-resourced districts such as Lawrence and Holyoke would perform better on the MCAS exam if their schools and school districts were better managed.
Under receivership, state-appointed receivers were given the power to change the length of the school day, school curricula and how teachers are assigned to schools. In most cases, the wide latitude given receivers produced little in the way of results. The Dever School in Dorchester was placed in receivership in 2013. The Boston School Committee voted last year to close the school after 12 years of state control which saw little in the way of improvement at the school.
“We’ve had more than 20 years doing this and it hasn’t worked,” said Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page.
Commissioner Martinez acknowledged that schools and districts that have been placed in receivership have served predominantly low-income communities and communities with large populations of English language learners, but he also noted that not all low-income communities have experienced receivership. Struggling districts could learn lessons from those that are doing better, he told reporters last week.
“The work we’re going to be doing is partnering with those districts — really going deep, and [examining] what is actually happening at the school level,” he said. “What is happening in terms of structures, in terms of practices, figuring out how do we align resources.”
Page said the correlation between MCAS exam scores and poverty in school districts is hard to ignore.
“The link is so tight,” he said. “People want to avoid it because it’s so difficult to take on.”
School funding
Districts across the state have been pressing the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Maura Healey for a change to the state’s funding formula. The state’s Chapter 70 education funding, which provides the majority of school funding in most low-income districts, has not kept pace with inflation.
State officials at last week’s press briefing touted investments in preschool as well as in higher education. Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said those investments should have an impact on low-income districts.
“The research is overwhelming when it talks about the impact of early education on any student, but particularly those who are English as a second language, economically disadvantaged, black,” he said. “Any experience of results in a stronger transition to kindergarten, less need for intervention around literacy when they’re in kindergarten. These are things that are going to have impact down the line as we think about performance in elementary school, for sure, but absolutely high school.”
