As a lifelong progressive, career educator, and someone who believes we need to keep the MCAS as a high school graduation requirement, I am worried that the viewpoints of people like me might be getting lost or muted in the debate about the Question 2 ballot measure in the upcoming election. Indeed, in my mind, there’s a clear set of progressive values that align with voting “No” on Question 2.

Before progressives set out to solve a problem for the betterment of society, we need to know the facts. In this case, let’s make sure we’re getting our information about the MCAS from somewhere other than special interest groups that have made misleading claims about the number of students who’ve been denied diplomas due to failing the 10th grade MCAS, as well as mischaracterizing the exam as a “one time” test.

There’s also some notion that the MCAS is written by “corporatists” from a company called Pearson. In fact, the questions are largely developed by Massachusetts educators.

I know multiple teachers who’ve lauded their service on MCAS development teams. It pushed them to intellectually grapple with the most essential content from the state standards; identify the kinds of misconceptions that students might express; and determine the best ways to know what students know. 

This is the same thoughtful approach that educators use for creating and analyzing their own assessments. That’s quite a contrast from fellow progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren’s argument that MCAS forces teachers to just focus on “test taking skills.”

Many progressives would agree that the spread of misinformation is the biggest threat to democracy. Thus, we likely also agree that literacy – i.e., the ability to read, think and argue critically, as well as the ability to interrogate and understand data – might be our last line of defense. If that’s true, it seems pretty important that we progressives know with as much accuracy as possible who is and is not literate. How do we propose that we do that without some common assessment of literacy? 

If you’re answering that question by saying that abolishing MCAS as a graduation requirement doesn’t preclude us from administering the assessment, please do the following. Ask some 15-year-olds if they’re going to take the test seriously if it doesn’t count for anything. 

Now imagine the first administration of the MCAS when it’s no longer a graduation requirement. Schools that see a decline in their results may reflexively respond that “the kids didn’t try that hard on the test this year.” We’ll be flying blind. 

I’ve worked for 30 years in schools that serve kids who have academic deficits. The work to close these deficits is both urgent and important. It requires us to have accurate information about what our students know and can do, where the gaps are, and whether our efforts are having any impact on closing them. 

It also relies on us learning from schools that are having success at closing those gaps. Schools like Edward Brooke Charter School, to which we should all be sending instructional leaders to learn how it is that they single-handedly had more Black students in grades 3-8 exceed expectations on the ELA, Math and Science MCAS last year than all of Boston Public Schools combined. 

If we undermine the importance of MCAS, how are we supposed to know who is doing the work that’s successfully advancing equity? And if we don’t know who is succeeding, how can we possibly replicate success? 

I’ve also heard arguments from fellow progressives that MCAS has done little to eliminate racial achievement gaps in Massachusetts. They are not wrong to be deeply concerned about these outcomes – but is it possible they’d be even worse without it? 

Sometimes effective, progressive social policy is as much about preventing bad as it is about accomplishing good. Unfortunately, there are still far too many schools that would be willing to allow students of color to fall even further behind their peers academically if there were no common assessments against which to measure everyone’s progress. 

Yet there has been little discussion about what would replace MCAS if it’s removed as a graduation requirement. We progressives were outraged when Donald Trump talked about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act with “concepts of a plan.” Let’s apply the same rigor and logic in the case of Question 2. 

I might even be able to get behind “Yes on 2” if it was truly “Yes on Something Better.”

Orin Gutlerner is the executive director of Bridge Boston Charter School in Roxbury and a long-time resident of the Ashmont-Adams neighborhood in Dorchester.