10.09.2024

End times for MCAS? | AG Campbell’s strange priorities | Education in Massachusetts at a perilous crossroads | Globe’s eyebrow raising puff piece on the owner of the Celtics | Quick hits |

News tips? Story ideas? Email us at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com

Down but not out: Business-backed coalition battling to save the MCAS vows to overcome gap in the polls

Is it finally curtains for MCAS, the test that local teachers unions love to hate and have spent decades trying to kill?

After all, two new polls show majority support among state voters for a ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement.

“Mass overwhelmingly back Harris over Trump, eliminating MCAS graduation requirement,” reads The Boston Globe’s headline on a story about its own joint poll with Suffolk University.

Not by a long shot, says Dom Slowey, a spokesperson for No on 2, a coalition of business and education groups fighting to save the three-decades-old test, which backers say played a key role catapulting our state’s once mediocre schools to the best in the nation.

Despite the concerning numbers, the battle is far from over, with the No on 2 campaign preparing to release a new round of online ads in a bid to sway voters as the clock ticks down to election day.

The campaign, which has raised and spent $1 million so far, is also eyeing plans for another round of TV ads as well, Slowey said.

Dom Slowey

“We have 28 days left,” Slowey said. “There will be a sprint to the finish.”

Still, they will need all that and more, with the Massachusetts Teachers Association having pledged to spend upwards of $5 million to pass the ballot question and remove a key piece of the state’s MCAS testing system.

The union boasts it has employed a small army of teachers and other volunteers to knock on doors and talk to voters.

“The Massachusetts Teachers Association and the other supporters of Question 2 were certainly pleased to see polling indicative of strong public support,” said MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy in a statement provided to Contrarian Boston.

MTA President Max Page

“One standardized test should not have such an outsized impact on our state’s entire public education system,” the MTA chiefs said.

We’ll grant there are some major philosophical differences here about the purpose of schools and education, with Page blasting the the state’s educational system as being some sort of capitalist handmaiden in a now infamous diatribe before the state ed board.

Yet maybe it is also the accountability the test forces that also made it a target of the teachers union, making it harder for not so great teachers and shambolically run districts to stay under the radar.

Still, the level of support for gutting the MCAS may not be as overwhelming as that Globe headline suggests.

While the Globe/Suffolk poll pegs support for removing the MCAS graduation requirement at 58 percent, an earlier MassINC poll, and the No on 2 campaign’s own internal polling, puts that number at a significantly lower 51 percent, Slowey said.

The percentage of voters who have yet to make up their mind on the ballot question is in the double digits. And that is significant since most undecided voters end up voting no on ballot questions, opting for the status quo on issues they may not be following that closely.

Meanwhile, key players in the campaign to defeat Question 2, like Ed Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, are out almost every night speaking to business and civic groups.

“This is the kind of issue that when you have a chance to have more than 30 seconds to get into the details, it can change minds,” Lambert told Contrarian Boston. “I think people will start to move more as they start to pay attention.”

A curious focus: Discussion of antisemitic bullying in schools triggers months-long probe by state AG of state ed board

You would think that state Attorney General Andrea Campbell would have better things to do than waste taxpayer dollars investigating the complaints of activist cranks.

After all, it’s not as if the Massachusetts State Police isn’t a corrupt, radioactive mess, from overtime fraud scandals to the abuse of cadets.