Over the last decade, the Massachusetts Teachers Association has turned itself into a formidable and divisive force: crushing a ballot question to expand charter schools, helping to pass a new school funding law and a so-called millionaires tax, and hijacking the state’s plan to reopen classrooms in the fall of 2020, which prolonged remote learning.
The state’s largest teachers union in recent years also has loomed large over nearly a dozen illegal work stoppages — including the recent Newton teachers strike — as it lobbied Beacon Hill to legalize such job actions. Now, the MTA is gearing up to kill the MCAS graduation requirement at the ballot box in November.