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Governor Marua Healey's administration recently announced the grant recipients for the Massachusetts 250 Grant Program.
The program aims to celebrate the state's role in the American Revolution as the country prepares for its 250th anniversary in 2025.
Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has taken a stance on Ballot Question 2.
DiZoglio recently endorsed the Yes on 2 campaign, which seeks to eliminate passing the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (widely knonw as MCAS) for math, science, and English as a high school graduation requirement.
DiZoglio said she doesn't see standardized testing as the best way to track student competency.
"We absolutely need to track progress, but high-stakes standardized tests like MCAS are not the only way to measure how students are measuring up," DiZoglio said in a press release from The Committee for High Standards not High Stakes. "Growing up in Greater Lawrence, I witnessed firsthand how the MCAS graduation requirement disproportionately impacts students from marginalized communities and English language learners. We should not be letting a single test determine whether a student is allowed to graduate. By voting Yes on 2, we will keep MCAS as one data point among many, ensuring accountability while giving all students a fair shot at success."
The Massachusetts Teachers Association is leading the initiative to remove this uniform standard for graduating high school.
Its president, Max Page, praised DiZoglio for her stance.
"We stand with our students and teachers in maintaining high standards for education, not high-stakes testing," Page said in the press release. "We are thrilled to have Auditor DiZoglio join our diverse coalition. Together, we can ensure that all Massachusetts students have the opportunity to succeed, without being unfairly held back by a standardized test."
The stance from DiZoglio is similar to that of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Cambridge), who also endorsed the Yes side last week.
"I believe in public schools all the way down to my toes. I believe they are the places where we build opportunity for all our children and the places where we strengthen our democracy," Warren said in a press release from the same committee. "So I will always stand by our public school teachers, including on Question 2 this November. We need to make sure that Massachusetts schools continue to be the best in the nation, and that means elected officials and teachers working hand in hand to come up with sensible ways to assess our students."
However, supporters of the MCAS argue that without it, the value of a high school diploma could be questioned, suggesting that standardized tests provide necessary benchmarks for student learning and school accountability.
That's the stance that former governor Jane Swift takes.
"While there are innovative improvements to testing that the Commonwealth should consider, such as utilizing more formative assessments to target necessary and personalized interventions for students sooner in their learning journey, wholesale elimination of any accountability will exacerbate the already unacceptable gaps in student achievement between students," Swift told NewBostonPost in a September 2023 email message.
A WBUR/CommonWealth Beacon poll last month said that 51 percent of Bay Staters support Ballot Question 2, while 34 percent oppose it, and 15 percent either did not know or refused to answer.
Rich Parr, research director for MassInc Polling Group, which conducted this poll on behalf of Commonwealth Beacon and WBUR, thinks the Yes side is in a "precarious position," meaning the question's passage is no guarantee.
"At this stage of the campaign, the 'Yes' side would hope to have a solid majority of support, because late deciders often break towards the 'No," Parr told Commonwealth Beacon last month.