The MCAS graduation requirement debate may be coming up as a 2024 ballot question, the Massachusetts Teachers Association indicated, releasing poll results showing significant support for the idea.

“We are exploring two questions — one eliminating the graduation requirement on MCAS and replacing it with a much better assessment system,” MTA President Max Page hold the Herald  Sunday.  “There’s a deadline for submitting proposals for 2024 ballot initiatives this August, and so we’ll be making our final decision whether to move forward on gathering signatures, which is the first big step.”

The union released results from a Echo Cove Research poll of 800 registered voters aged 21 and older at the end of June showing 73% support for eliminating the MCAS as a graduation requirement.

The potential ballot initiative effort would join the union and many legislators’ efforts to remove the graduation requirement through the proposed Thrive Act, which has been filed in the state House and Senate in the current session.

Among several other education issues, the poll also found 81% of those surveyed would support a ballot measure establishing debt-free higher education, called the Cherish Act. That proposal, Page said, is “more important than ever” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decisions to nix federal student loan relief and affirmative action programs.

The measure would allow all students who graduate from a Massachusetts high school to attend public colleges and universities in the state at a cost “that is affordable without going into debt.”

Page said the union is evaluating what it would take to get the ballot questions done.

The questins would have to be filed filed in August and pass muster in a review conducted by the Attorney General’s office. After that, Massachusetts ballot initiatives require nearly 75,000 signatures by around mid-November.

“It’s just a lot of things that go into making a final decision, but we were very pleased about how much the public is with us on these key issues,” said Page.

Massachusetts is one of eight states that use standardized testing as a graduation requirement, along with New York, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Virginia and Wyoming.

The teachers union has long been critical of the test, referring to it as a “punitive” standard that disproportionately hurts students of color, students with IEPs and other historically marginalized groups.

“The graduation requirement has been in place now for 20 years, and it’s been proven to not narrow the gaps in terms of different demographic groups, classes and races,” said Page. “And it has for everyone kind of narrowed the curriculum in our schools by focusing the attention on a few subject areas and not the full range of goals that we have for our school.”

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler was also asked about the future of the test during a WCVB interview aired Sunday morning, saying the state wants to take a “close look” at the graduation requirement but insisting that “assessment does matter.”

“I deeply believe that every student is capable of passing MCAS,” Tutwiler said. “You shouldn’t be an educator or person who works in the space of education if you don’t believe that every student is capable of getting over that hump. But sometimes the hump is wrong, and you need to take a look at it to decide what changes need to be made.”

Tutwiler said the requirement “absolutely” could change, but he “wouldn’t say soon.”