BOSTON – Now that Question 2 has passed, removing MCAS as a graduation requirement in Massachusetts schools, are standards for high school graduation in the state practically nonexistent? One civic activist thinks so.

Will Massachusetts backslide without MCAS requirement?

“It is absolutely back to the future,” said Eastern Bank Executive Chairman Bob Rivers. “The only standard we will have left is four years attending, four years of gym and four years of civics.”

Rivers was one of a group of local business executives who joined with Gov. Maura Healey, Secretary of Education Pat Tutwiler and others in opposition to ending the MCAS standard. In an interview with WBZ-TV, he said that as a result of the 59%-41% approval of Question Two, “You’re just not going to know where your kids sit in an individual school in any particular way. There will still be an MCAS that’ll be administered, but it will become increasingly irrelevant because people won’t pay attention to it. They won’t study it. There’s already ways to opt out of it anyway.”

Campaign ads sponsored by the state’s largest teacher union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, offered a vision of graduation standards tailored to individual students by teachers and, presumably, local school districts. But Rivers – and even some Beacon Hill supporters of Question Two – see a need for some form of statewide standards. 

Will there be new statewide education standards?

Rivers noted that one of the driving forces behind the 1993 Education Reform Act that led to the MCAS standard was concern among employers that a high-school diploma offered no reliable guarantee that the graduate had the basic skills needed in the workplace.

“We see it a lot today now, in many ways, where kids just aren’t prepared for work, the workforce, a career or higher education, and this is only going to make it, make it worse,” he said. “Before the 1993 reform law, we were not number one in the nation in public education. We are today by any particular standard [but scores have been slipping in recent years]. A competitive strength of Massachusetts is the power of our workforce. Unfortunately, by elimination of this standard, that’s been significantly damaged.”

Rivers also discussed his objections to a deal worked out between Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other business leaders that would raise commercial property tax rates in the city above the legal limit temporarily to compensate for an expected drop in revenues due to high office vacancy rates.

U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in education rankings, has released the 2025 Best Middle Schools rankings. The report includes more than 79,000 public schools that are ranked at the state and district level.

The 2025 Best Elementary and Best Middle Schools rankings are based on publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Education. For district-level rankings, at least two of the top performing schools must rank in the top 75% of the overall elementary or middle school rankings to qualify for district-level recognition.
 
“The 2025 Best Elementary and Middle Schools rankings offer parents a way to evaluate how schools are providing a high-quality education and preparing students for future success,” said LaMont Jones, Ed.D., managing editor for Education at U.S. News. “The data empowers families and communities to advocate for their children’s education. Research continues to indicate that how students perform academically at these early grade levels is a big factor in their success in high school and beyond.”
 
The rankings methodology focused on state assessments of students who were proficient or above proficient in mathematics and reading/language arts, while accounting for student background and achievement in core subjects. Student-teacher ratios are applied to break ties in the overall score.

Here is how Fall River middle schools fared in the city and the state, according to U.S. News & World Report:

1. Henry Lord Community School #218 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Henry Lord Community School, 18% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 18% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 60%. The student-teacher ratio is 13:1, which is the same as that of the district. The student population is made up of 48% female students and 52% male students. There are 63 equivalent full-time teachers and 2 full-time school counselors.

2. Matthew J. Kuss Middle #240 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Matthew J Kuss Middle, 20% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 25% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 56%. The student-teacher ratio is 13:1, which is the same as that of the district. The student population is made up of 48% female students and 52% male students. There are 52 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

3. John J Doran #259 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At John J Doran, 19% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 21% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 59%. The student-teacher ratio is 14:1, which is worse than that of the district. The student population is made up of 47% female students and 53% male students. There are 37 equivalent full-time teachers and 2 full-time school counselors.

4. Morton Middle #312 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Morton Middle, 15% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 26% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 46%. The student-teacher ratio is 14:1, which is worse than that of the district. The student population is made up of 46% female students and 54% male students. There are 49 equivalent full-time teachers and 6 full-time school counselors.

5. Talbot Innovation School #365-487 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Talbot Innovation School, 11% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 12% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 60%. The student-teacher ratio is 10:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 51% female students and 49% male students. There are 52 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

Resiliency Preparatory Academy (No ranking)

At Resiliency Preparatory Academy, 10% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 10% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 67%. The student-teacher ratio is 9:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 38% female students and 62% male students. There are 21 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

Stone School (No ranking)

At Stone Pk-12 School, 10% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 10% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 45%. The student-teacher ratio is 4:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 31% female students and 69% male students. There are 17 equivalent full-time teachers and 1 full-time school counselor.

I’ll admit that putting a photo of Tom Brady next to this column is a bit of a bait-and-switch, but the fact is that this story really is about a guy named Tom Brady.

And there is nothing like that name or photograph to drive traffic, or ratings, or eyeballs to the site.

Of course, the subject of this piece is not the #12 you’re most familiar with, but a different Tom Brady GOAT.

For the real Tom Brady, GOAT means Greatest of All Time.

For this Tom Brady, GOAT means Greediest of All Time.

The Greediest of All Time Tom Brady is a hack’s hack from Norfolk County, the Ground Zero of the hackerama in Massachusetts.

Brady is currently jammed up with the State Ethics Commission. He was busted for violating the state’s conflict-of-interest law when he had some of his underlings at the jail do free plumbing work for him, often on county time.

He’s now facing tens of thousands of dollars for acting like every other hack in Norfolk County.

It’s one thing to feed at the trough. Tom Brady has been licking the plate. And it’s not like he’s exactly destitute. He comes from one of the grabbing-est, pocket-stuffing-est hack families in Norfolk County.

Yet somehow Brady considered it his right to commandeer jailhouse plumbers and electricians and order them to go to his house in Norwood to repair his shower head, a basement water heater, a boiler and finally a circulator pump because, sadly, “Brady did not have heat in his bedroom.”

Oh no! After that repair job, #12 spoke to the plumber and “advised him that he did not have to return to the (Norfolk County) Jail to complete his shift.”

In other words, as the jailhouse starting QB, Brady called an audible at the line of scrimmage. At the lock-up, they call that a “no show and go.”

In their day, both Tom Bradys were masters at “managing the clock.” TB from Foxboro managed the clock to beat the other team. TB from the jail managed the clock to beat the taxpayers.

February is Super Bowl month. TB of the jail had his greatest February victory in 2022. That day got off to a bad start — like the Pats’ 28-3 deficit against the Falcons in February 2017 — when the water heater ruptured and flooded his basement.

But GOAT of the hackerama activated a jail plumber off the inactive list. He had him drive out to Norwood and remove the broken heater. He then ordered his lackey to take the broken fixture to the local Home Depot, where it was still under warranty, and pick up a new one.

Then the plumber brought the new water heater back to TB’s mansion and replaced it — all while on the county clock.

Surely, one of the greatest February comebacks of all time!

Brady’s pay as assistant superintendent of operations at the jail is $138,432 a year, plus he works all those paid details.

Tom Brady particularly enjoys clocking in on Pats’ game days in Foxboro, because wouldn’t you? It is after all the scene of some of #12’s greatest triumphs over the decades.

The other Mrs. Tom Brady is not named Gisele. She’s Jennifer Brady, and she has an even softer job as a payroll patriot than GOAT — chief probation officer for $158,993 a year.

Hackerama is contagious, and thus we have Mrs. #12’s brother, Brian K. Walsh. He’s the judge at Stoughton District Court for $207,855 a year.

Judge Walsh has a ringside seat for the clown show that is Norfolk County law enforcement. He’s currently presiding over one of the Rubber Ducky cases, involving a local grandfather who after a six-month, five-search-warrant investigation by the Canton PD, has been charged with, among other heinous crimes, six counts of littering.

If convicted next week, the rubber-ducky kingpin could conceivably end up in the Norfolk County House of Correction where the most infamous inmate right now is named, wait for it, Brian Walshe, charged with murdering and dismembering his wife in Cohasset in January 2023.

Do you begin to detect a pattern here? Everybody seems to have pretty much the same names, whether they’re related or not.

Here’s another funny coincidence of the kind you so often see in Norfolk County.

Brady’s meteoric rise in the hack hierarchy began in 2018, when he slobberingly attached his lips to the backside of a candidate for sheriff named Pat McDermott.

TB, for many years a guard on the graveyard shift, began his courtship slowly, first slipping McDermott $200 in 2018, then $800 in 2019. As McDermott ran in 2020, TB duked him a grand, followed by another $1,000 after his installation as High Sheriff.

In an amazing coincidence, as he funneled McDermott $3,500 in cash, TB’s own salary skyrocketed from $103,000 in 2020 to his current $138,432 (plus all the detail pay).

Of course there was a risk for TB in getting behind a challenger for sheriff when he was already on the jail payroll. The incumbent sheriff was a Republican appointed by Gov. Charlie Baker. His name was Jerry McDermott.

Yes, you read that correctly — J. McDermott was running against P. McDermott.

Yet another pair of guys in Norfolk County with the same name — Sheriff McDermott.

But just as TB of the Pats also had multiple options downfield as he stood in the pocket, so did TB of the jail. As he was passing dough to P. McDermott, his brother-in-law Brian Walsh was duking hundreds more to the incumbent J. McDermott.

It’s called hedging your bets.

Of course Brian Walsh (the judge, not the accused wife-killer) had his own ulterior motives. As a failed lawyer (and all state judges are failed lawyers) he was desperately trying to curry favor with the RINO governor who would soon hand him his own lifetime hack sinecure.

The lesson here is, the corruption in Norfolk County doesn’t just involve trying to frame innocent women and covering up brutal murders committed by crooked pedophile cops.

The hackerama in Norfolk is not just tragedy, it’s farce, to paraphrase Marx (Karl, not Groucho).

Meanwhile, the State Ethics Commission must now hold a hearing on Tom Brady’s misdeeds within 90 days. I would implore them not to schedule anything until after Feb. 9.

That’s Super Bowl Sunday, and seriously, how can you expect anyone named Tom Brady to concentrate on anything until after the big game?

Even if this other Tom Brady from Norwood is a different kind of GOAT — the Greediest of All Time.

Order Howie’s new tee shirt, “Proud to Be Garbage,” at howiecarrshow.com.