Battle lines continue to form around a ballot question to change a key component of the education reform law that some say made Massachusetts the best educated state in the country, separating politicians who are used to standing on the same side of most issues, and simultaneously creating strange allies.

The day after U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, declared during a televised debate against Republican John Deaton that she would be voting in favor of Question 2 to eliminate the requirement that students pass the MCAS exam to graduate from a Massachusetts public high school, a triumvirate of constitutional office holders from her party planted their flags firmly in the camp against the measure.

Gov. Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Campbell headlined a press conference hosted by the “No on 2” campaign on Oct. 16 in Roxbury.

Campbell had only publicly stated her position on the question for the first time the day before, as a guest on GBH’s Boston Public Radio. Healey had previously said she did not believe in removing the requirement when asked but speaking at Wednesday’s rally seems like a shift in tone for the governor to perhaps a more proactive role against the initiative.

At the press conference, Healey attributed the state’s standing as the oft-ranked best public education system in the country to its teachers and to its statewide standards.

“A way to assess performance and how kids are doing, that is through the MCAS exam,” she said. “Massachusetts has the best public schools in the country because of our high standards, not in spite of them, and Question 2, in our view, would eliminate a tool that we know works in terms of our ability to assess how our young people are doing.”

Question 2 supporters say scrapping the standardized MCAS exam’s use as a high school graduation requirement would allow educators to stop “teaching to the test” and instead focus on student needs. Districts would gain more autonomy over establishing graduation requirements that reflect students who have mastered competencies in the state’s academic standards, proponents say.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association and other supporters say the measure would bolster equity among students from marginalized communities, and they often point to 700 students each year who are unable to graduate because they failed MCAS but met all other requirements.

Critics warn the measure’s passage could lead to a patchwork of education standards and ultimately harm the state’s future workforce. “We’ll have different standards in Randolph than we will in Reading, and that’s a system that I don’t believe sets us up for success,” Healey said.

Last week, the “Yes on 2” campaign released a statement from MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy on Healey’s comments. “It’s disappointing that Gov. Healey has chosen to side with the few corporate donors opposing Question 2 and against Massachusetts educators, parents and students,” the statement says.

A new UMass Amherst and WCVB poll suggests that 53 percent of respondents support Question 2, while 36 percent oppose it and 11 percent are unsure.

In addition to Healey, Driscoll and Campbell, House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka – the two most powerful people in the Legislature – have also come out against Question 2.

“I, too, have real concerns about Question 2 because it would not just remove our only statewide graduation standard, it would remove the state standard and offer no replacement,” Campbell said. “This would result in over 300 different and unequal standards for high school graduation across the commonwealth and potentially lead to haphazard assessments of student readiness for college and careers, and even wider inequities in student achievement and, of course, opportunities.”

As more electeds take official positions as the election inches closer, another line has been drawn — former Education Chair Rep. Alice Peisch has declared for “No on 2” while current Education Chair Sen. Jason Lewis has declared in favor of the question. Neither campaign has claimed the endorsement of House chair of the Education Committee, Rep. Denise Garlick.

The initiative puts some top Democrats at home in Massachusetts at odds with a Bay State Democrat in Washington and in line with the state’s Republican party on the issue. The MassGOP has said they recommend voting against the question, and last Tuesday night the GOP challenger for Warren’s Senate seat also said he’s casting a “no” vote.

“We can’t have 351 standards,” Deaton said during the debate hosted by WBZ and The Boston Globe on Oct. 15. “Our school system is still recovering from Covid. There are statistics of fifth graders can’t even read. And there’s people being graduated, if you don’t have the MCAS and you have no standards, you’re going to get people graduating from high school that can’t fully speak English now in the state. And that puts them at a disadvantage.”

English language learners are disproportionately represented in the roughly one percent of students who do not graduate due to the MCAS exam.

In 2019, of 702 students who did not earn a diploma due to the exam, 281 were English language learners, according to data provided to the News Service by Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Vice Chair Matt Hills.

However, of those 281 students, fewer than 30 failed the exam due to a language barrier alone and not other academic challenges, according to Hills’s analysis of the data, which considers that the math and science sections of the test are available in Spanish at the high school level.

Warren, leaning on her past experience as a special education teacher, said a single test is not a good measure for every child’s ability. She said that the yes campaign is being driven by the state’s teachers, and the voters should listen to those who are in classrooms with kids. The campaign is being bankrolled by teachers’ unions, who also wrote the ballot question and have been knocking doors and collecting signatures for the initiative.

“Our teachers are telling us that the consequence of this test is actually to teach our kids less, because we’re teaching them more about test-taking skills, taking them out of the classroom. They want an opportunity to help shape a broader view of which children get a high school diploma, and that’s something that we should support our teachers who have helped us build the number one education system in the country,” Warren said.

At the press conference, Campbell said that voting no on Question 2 does not equate to not supporting educators. “Parents and students don’t have unions, which sadly can leave their voice and perspective out of some of the most important policy discussions and decision making,” she said.

During a radio debate last Wednesday on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, co-host Jim Braude asked MTA Vice President McCarthy why Healey, whom the MTA endorsed for governor, is at odds with the teachers’ union over the future of MCAS.

McCarthy said Healey is not standing with educators and labor, including the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the Massachusetts Parent Teacher Association, and Massachusetts AFL-CIO, who have all voiced support for the question.

“This ballot measure is being supported by parents, educators, community activists, and students,” McCarthy said. “We met for more than seven weeks with Patrick Tutwiler, and we came pretty close to almost having a legislative solution. And there was a lot of alignment and agreement that we are not doing things right.”

Sam Drysdale, Alison Kuznitz, and Colin A. Young coombined to write this story.