MCAS ballot question campaign delivers highest signature collection of year to advance to November ballot
by Grace Zokovich 27 June 2024
MCAS opponents delivered another around 135,000 signatures to the Secretary of State on Thursday, advancing the ballot question to nix the standardized testing graduation requirement closer to the November ballot.
“The fact that in just eight weeks in the fall, and four weeks in the spring, we gathered 170,000 signatures is testament to how much support there is out there among the voters in Massachusetts and why we will win on November 5,” said Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page on Thursday.
Educators with the MTA — a primary backer of the initiative — local families and elected officials gathered on the steps of the State House Thursday morning to herald the nearly 170,000 total signatures collected during the ballot question campaign — the most signatures collected by any campaign so far this election cycle.
The ballot question proposes getting rid of the high school graduation requirement to pass MCAS test, instead allowing individual districts to set graduation standards based on academic performance. Students would continue to take the MCAS as a diagnostic tool.
The MTA initially announced the campaign had doubled the number of signatures needed to clear the hurdle at the end of May.
Ballot initiatives that passed through the first rounds of signature collection and certification this year were tasked in May with collecting 12,429 new signatures from registered voters and submitting them for authorization by local election officials and the Secretary of State. If the signatures are authorized, the questions may appear on the Nov. 5 general election ballot.
In May, the union said, they were gathering 1,000 signatures a day, “a demonstration of the public’s widespread concern about the harm that this over-emphasis on a single test causes children of all ages.
Groups including the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment and the Massachusetts School Counselors Association have endorsed the campaign, the MTA said.
Opponents of the initiative have expressed concerns over the lack of a uniform alternative to the test included in the proposal, claiming it would lower Massachusetts’s rigorous academic standards.
MTA officials noted that only eight states use standardized testing as a graduation requirement, with New York becoming the most recent state to ditch the practice in June.
Advocates for the several other ballot question campaigns, including those seeking to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, allow the state auditor to audit the Legislature and decriminalize some psychedelic substances, have until July 3 to submit enough voter signatures to advance towards the November ballot.
