Sadly, the MCAS ballot

So far, however, we've seen nothing of the sort. On the contrary, the whole effort has been built on a rickety foundation. Voters should bear in mind that the MTA commenced the legislative prong of its anti-MCAS effort by making monumentally misleading claims about the supposed diploma-denying effects of the graduation exam.

In asserting that the MCAS alone had kept some 50,000 students from receiving a diploma since its inception as a graduation requirement, the MTA was more than tripling the estimated size of that cohort. Let's be charitable and assume that was simply the result of shoddy research. Still, voters should realize that the true figures show a minimal effect: About 1 percent of any given class fails to receive a diploma simply because they couldn't pass the MCAS.

But rather than rethink an anti-MCAS fight begun under mistaken premises, the union has decided to plow forward with its ballot campaign. One person close to the MTA said that though there was discussion about compromise at a recent MTA executive board meeting, the union's firebrands carried the day with the argument that the MTA should use the ballot question to demonstrate the union's power.

Union power rather than sound education policy does indeed seem to be the MTA's primary concern. The union has obviously been frustrated by its failure to persuade Beacon Hill leaders either to nix the MCAS as a graduation requirement or grant teachers the legal right to strike.

A succession of hard-left MTA leaders have portrayed the state's graduation exam as a punitive mechanism that is part of a "corporate education reform" effort driven in part by "racism and greed," even going so far as to contend that "the MCAS has allowed white supremacy to flourish in public schools" and has been used "to label children of color with racist and dehumanizing terms such as 'underperforming.' " Those comments go far beyond the bounds of reasonable commentary. To correct just one of them, students aren't labeled underperforming based on MCAS scores; rather, schools sometimes are.

For all its scornful talk about corporate reform and "the capitalist class and its needs for profits," in its anti-MCAS campaign the MTA is essentially squaring off with a set of Democratic elected leaders who care about public education and are normally friendly to unions. After a careful examination of the matter, liberal Governor Maura Healey has come out against the MTA's ballot question. So, too, has House Speaker Ron Mariano , a former schoolteacher, as well as Senate President Karen Spilka , a onetime social worker. They have all decided the public educational interest dictates their opposition to the MTA's anti-standards crusade.

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With its ballot question, the MTA will be arguing that there's something onerous about a test that requires students to demonstrate a 10th-grade mastery in math, English language arts, and an aspect of science by the time they finish 12th grade.

Students themselves have demonstrated by their performance that that's simply untrue.

An in-depth look at the data for 2015 through 2019, the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, shows that 96 percent of students passed the MCAS, most on their first attempt. Of the 4 percent who didn't, 3 percent also failed to meet their school district's local requirements for graduation. That means they wouldn't have been eligible for a diploma even if they had passed the MCAS. That leaves 1 percent of a given class, or about 700 students, who are kept from receiving a diploma by the MCAS alone.

Nor does the data support the MTA's contention that the MCAS exam takes a significant toll on students of color. Based on the same five-year sample, only 2.1 percent of Black students and 3 percent of Hispanic students were kept from graduating simply because they failed the MCAS. Across all subgroups, a significantly higher percentage failed at both local requirements and the MCAS than were denied a diploma based simply on failing the MCAS.

Now, there's obviously a need to focus on students who fail to graduate, for whatever reason. But it's hard to buy the notion that the appropriate solution is to do away with a graduation test that requires a sophomore-year level of mastery because 1 percent of students finish high school with failure on the MCAS as all that stands between them and a diploma — particularly since they can take the test again after they have left school. In fact, districts are supposed to reach out to those students for the first two years after they leave high school.

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If the MTA's ballot question passes, the state would be left without any uniform system of verifying that a high school diploma in one district means the same as it does in the next district. Or that high school graduates really possess the skills needed to succeed in the workplace. Instead, Massachusetts would have more than 300 different standards, which is to say, the judgment of each school district with a high school or high schools.

The MTA's contention is that citizens should leave it up to local teachers and districts to determine whether students are acquiring the necessary skills. That was the situation before passage of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. Prior to that statute, numerous students were graduating from high school without the skills required for work or college. The landmark 1993 law provided big new infusions of state dollars for education but also established statewide curriculum frameworks and stipulated that there would be a statewide assessment to ensure students were mastering the skills deemed necessary for a high school diploma.

In a memo to members announcing the MTA will go forward with its ballot question, MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy urged MTA members to "start having conversations with your friends and family about why the MCAS-based graduation requirement needs to go" and to tell them "why it is so important to you."

If past is prologue, the MTA's real anti-MCAS effort will be waged over the TV and radio airwaves. Still, the conversation campaign gives voters a chance to push friends who are MTA members on several vital issues.

First, MTA members should be asked to explain how getting rid of the exam as a graduation requirement would be an overall plus, given that almost all high school students pass the MCAS by the end of their time in high school.

Second, they should be asked to spell out how, if the MCAS is eliminated as a graduation requirement, parents, students, employers, and colleges can be confident that students have the skills they need to succeed.

Third, the MTA members should be asked to detail how parents, employers, and colleges can then be confident that a high school diploma awarded in Abington would mean the same as one earned in Adams.

If the MTA can't meet those tests, voters shouldn't support an initiative petition question that would simply be using the ballot as a tool to break the long-honored bargain at the core of this state's bipartisan commitment to well-funded, high-quality public education.