$250,000 ad campaign urges Mass. voters to reject MCAS ballot question

Opponents of a ballot question that would eliminate the use of statewide tests as a high school graduation requirement launched a new ad campaign Monday, less than 100 days before the Nov. 5 election.

Backed by a coalition of community groups, parents and educators that calls itself “Protect Our Kids’ Future: Vote No on Question 2,” the two 30-second spots mark the first swing this election season against an effort led by the state’s largest teachers union to remove a portion of the standardized test known as the MCAS.

Currently, every public high schooler in Massachusetts must get a passing score on the Grade 10 MCAS exams in English, math and science to earn a diploma. The Massachusetts Teachers Association wants to repeal the requirement, arguing it emphasizes test-taking prep over classroom instruction and deters certain students from graduating, estimated at about 700 per year.

The union gathered 170,000 signatures to get the question officially certified on the 2024 ballot. It will appear as Question 2 — one of five measures on the November ballot. It does not propose eliminating the MCAS exam altogether, just the graduation requirement.

The union has poured $1.1 million to advocate on behalf of the measure, based on its most recent disclosures. Meanwhile, the new coalition spent $250,000 on the two new ads, a spokesman for the campaign confirmed.

In one ad, parent Jill Norton says that “standards are especially important for her son,” who has learning challenges, and that “reducing the expectations for him is actually harmful.”

In the other, public school teacher James Conway says “holding high standards is essential to what we do” and that removing the MCAS requirement will lead to an “unlevel playing field.”

The ads will run on digital and social platforms for three weeks, a spokesman said.

The top contributors for this first round of ads include Raymond Stata, businessman and philanthropist; Bob Rivers, chair and CEO of Eastern Bank; Richard Burnes, founding member and general partner of Charles River Ventures; Paul Sagan, tech entrepreneur and managing director of venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners; and the nonprofit, Education Reform Now Advocacy Inc.

Other supporters include the National Parents Union; former chair of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Jim Peyser; former chairs of the state department of education, including Sagan, who served as chair from 2015 to 2019 under the Charlie Baker administration; and several local chambers of commerce.

Current state education officials, including Gov. Maura Healey and Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler, have both said that they support keeping the MCAS as a graduation requirement to "assess" how students are doing and to preserve a “state standard for high school graduation.”

Proponents of the ballot question say a student ought to pass coursework developed by their district that demonstrates "mastery of the competencies contained in the state academic standards in mathematics, science and technology, and English."

Keri Rodrigues, president of National Parents Union and founder of Massachusetts Parents United, who’s involved in the "Vote No" campaign, said the MTA's proposal is “problematic.”

“What the ballot question is doing is not even proposing replacing it with another statewide assessment,” she said in an interview Monday. "What it ends up doing is reducing our high school diplomas to participation trophies and certificates of attendance.”

Opponents of the measure say that removing the graduation requirement will take away a uniform measure of assessing kids’ ability to be proficient in subjects like English, math and science by the time they leave high school and enter the workforce or higher education.

That, argues Rodrigues, will “lead to chaos.”

“You’re going to have every single individual community getting to decide what graduation looks like for kids in that community,” she said.

Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page said the new ad campaign by the coalition amounts to “misinformation and false narratives” and misleadingly casts the MCAS as a “standard.”

“The MCAS is not a standard — it is a test that tries to measure a limited number of our academic standards,” he said.

“We believe in high standards. We are trying to eliminate the high stakes of the MCAS,” Page added. “The MCAS will still be there — we will have that data as a diagnostic tool."

The next financial disclosure deadline for the ballot question is in early September.

The coalition plans to continue with ads and hold roundtables to reach parents and voters in the community while the union said it will be doing a lot of door-knocking and phone calls.