MALDEN— After more than four decades as an educator, state Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll will retire with a legacy of increased standardized testing and more stringent requirements for graduation.

Driscoll’s announcement yesterday that he will retire next August comes at a critical time for education reform — a week before a gubernatorial election that will guide the direction of public education in Massachusetts and the same month the state Board of Education voted to toughen graduation requirements on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.

Three other members of the board — including Chairman James A. Peyser — are leaving. Gov. Mitt Romney plans to make at least two appointments and to designate a new chairman next month, said his spokesman, Eric P. Fehrnstrom. The next governor would inherit the nine-member board, with a majority of members appointed by Romney.

Driscoll has served under several Republican governors since becoming interim commissioner in 1998. He and Romney are both champions of MCAS tests and charter schools.

State Board of Education member Roberta R. Schaefer of Worcester said of Driscoll, “Dave, because of his 40 years of experience working in public education, as a teacher, as a principal, superintendent, and then being an administrator at the department even before becoming commissioner, had a real feel for what public education was like and a vision of what it should be ... He would build a consensus on the board, try to build a consensus in the education community, and I think was very successful in terms of implementing the Education Reform Act of 1993, and I think he leaves a tremendous legacy. He deserves a lot of praise.”

Critics of Driscoll’s support for MCAS as a graduation requirement said they hope the new governor and the new education commissioner will put more emphasis on other forms of measuring student achievement.

“I’m hoping that the educational climate in this state will be somewhat different,” said Judy Meyers, chairwoman of the Brookline School Committee.

“The world of assessment and testing is not going to go away ... but I am hoping that it will change in a more positive way in Massachusetts and that we will be looking more broadly than just strictly at standardized testing, especially for children with special needs,” Meyers said.

“Massachusetts certainly has made a number of achievements from an education standpoint under the leadership of David Driscoll, and yet at the same time there are persistent achievement gaps that need to be closed,” said S. Paul Reville, who is president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, a Cambridge-based think tank.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval L. Patrick, who holds a double-digit lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey in recent polls, said he has some candidates in mind for the commissioner’s job.

“I want people who understand the dynamic of the classroom because they’ve been in it and understand that data is not the only indication of a classroom,” Patrick said during a campaign stop in Franklin.

In replacing Driscoll, Kerry Healey said she would look for “someone who was not going to give in to pressure from the teachers union to walk away from our commitment to MCAS” and someone who would share a similar commitment to charter schools.

Driscoll, 64, said his decision had nothing to do with politics. He said he and his wife, Kathy, a teacher, decided to retire so they could spend more time with their family.

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