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School superintendent candidate saddened by what he sees in Boston

Martinez

Pedro Martinez, currently a state education administrator in Nevada, said he was initially reluctant to apply for the superintendent's job in Boston because the city's school system has such a good reputation nationally that he didn't know what he could really add to it.

He recalled going to educational seminars at Harvard in the early part of the 2000s and being so impressed by BPS under then Superintendent Thomas Payzant. "God, this is such a cool district," he recalled thinking.

But then, he told School Committee members today, he started looking at BPS's current systemwide and school-by-school numbers. And he said he was shocked to find that for all its resources, its funding, its talented staff, Boston was in many ways significantly behind the districts he had led in Nevada.

And that, he said, is why he decided to apply for the job - he realized he could make a difference here. "I see the potential," he said. "I see what Boston should be. I don't even want to say 'could be,' but 'should be.' ... If Boston can't do it, I don't know who could."

Martinez is one of four finalists for the position. The School Committee decides Tuesday whom to pick.

At his public interview with School Committee members, Martinez detailed the problems he sees in Boston: A graduation rate recently trumpeted by city officials as the best in history is still too low and increasing far too slowly; too many black and Latino males are being shunted into special-education tracks from which they never escape; 80% of the AP test takers come from just the three exam schools. And, he added, "I'm worried about the morale of the staff," he said.

Martinez said the issues even extend to the BPS Web site. He said when he began to research Boston schools, he got most of his information from the state Department of Education site. "I had a very difficult time finding information on your district Web site."

Combine all that and "that is not an excellent district," he said. "It is, with all due respect, very different than what I expected." He said he didn't think Reno schools "could outperform Boston with half the [per-capita] spending, but, sadly, we are."

In many ways, he said, Boston's actual situation reminds him of what he found when he moved to Reno, NV from the Chicago school system; where, he said, he helped drive up not just graduation rates, but the percentages of students going to "tier 1" universities. "Many of the same challenges Boston is going through right now, I found them in Nevada five years ago."

BPS, he continued, has all the keys for success, starting with many amazing educators. "There's a lot of talent in this district. There is definitely a lot of passion." What is lacking, he said, was a clear vision on how to get to the next step, or even an idea of just what that next step is.

He said he would want to see BPS's 67% graduation rate increase to at least 85% over the next four years. "I don't want to see a 1% gain in graduation for the class of 2015," he said. "That's unacceptable to me."

All studente, he said, should leave school with a post-secondary plan in place - kids with a vocational bent should be able to graduate into a program at a local community college for a technical certificate if they do not want to go to a four-year school. "In today's world, the majority of future jobs are going to require some sort of post secondary education," he said.

And he said he would start work immediately figuring out how to get students out of "self-contained" special-education programs. "What chance do they have, frankly?" he asked of such students, adding, "I think it's a pipeline to prison, I really do."

"We expect too little from our children," he said. "Our children are very, very smart, they're very, very capable."

Longer term, Martinez said he would also work to get middle- and upper-income families from simply moving out of the city when their kids are ready for school. "Our district has to be a district of choice," he said, adding he would start with his own four-year-old son: If he is hired in Boston, his son will attend a Boston public school. He said BPS needs to pay more attention to gifted students - and not just at the exam schools.

Once the goals are set, he said, he would step back and "empower our schools and support our schools" to let them figure out the best way to meet those goals.

Martinez said he would spent most of his first 100 days "listening and learning." The data obviously show the problems, but people actually in the system would know the reasons for them and would likely have answers. "I approach this work in a very humble way," he said.

He added that, personally, "Boston's the right size." With 57,000 students, "it's a manageable size - I can have a conversation with my high-school principals and make a change right away." Plus, Boston in general "is an amazing city," definitely in his list of the top three.

Along among the four candidates, Martinez has never actually taught. The son of poor immigrants from Mexico, he was the first in his family to go to college and became an accountant at national accounting firms, before detouring to the Archdioscese of Chicago and, from there, to the Chicago school system, where he said he found a passion for helping disadvantaged kids get ahead.

Also see:
Martinez's Boston application.
School superintendent candidate says Boston just too good an opportunity to pass up.
Superintendent candidate would decentralize Boston schools.
Superintendent candidate knows Boston challenges first hand.

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Comments

Someone who understands the great potential we have here. Boston is tiny enough (57K students or so) and rich enough with nearly unrivaled resources that if we can't do it, can it be done anywhere in America. He recognizes the talent in the schools and realizes we need to let those skills go to work. Read between the lines: get the administration streamlined.

He also understands that 1 percent a year improvement is just a statistic, not real improvement and certainly not something to trumpet. I'm impressed by his direct words.

I'm impressed by all of these candidates and thanks to Adam for really giving a nice summary of each of them.

Let's sign Pedro Martinez to a guaranteed contract in time for Red Sox season!

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Sure he'll fast realize we wast million on playing musical chair with student and have allowed the BTU to become fare to powerful. The Average cost per/ pupil is equivalent to some of the best private school in MA. Yet our infrastructure is dated, and we have possibly one of the worst athletic programs in the state.

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Not to mention barely any technology. There are 8th graders that have not been taught how to correctly set up a simple essay in Word.

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....Until I read the part where he'd never taught before. As an ex-teacher, he would be able to relate to the actual teachers, and he might even earn their respect. He would understand on a visceral level about being overworked, underpaid, and blamed for everything.

Otherwise, he's yet another status-seeking administrator looking to vault himself to some cushy policy-making waste of a think tank in DC.

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If districts want to make a joint leadership structure (business manager & instructional leader), fine--they're very different skill sets and it's hard to find someone equally good at both, but classroom learning suffers when every single decision is about lowering costs at the expense of educational experiences. Quality learning environments (hands-on project-based learning, up-to-date facilities, services for ELL and SPED students, food for hungry students, counseling for troubled students) are not cost effective this fiscal year, but they pay dividends to society down the line.

And then you add in that you simply can NOT understand what teachers face in today's schools unless you've been there yourself within the past 10 years at least. You can come close to it if you're living with a teacher and see it all first hand.

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That last paragraph is key. I'm married to a BPS teacher, and the last 10 years (especially the last 3 years) have been intolerable from an instructional perspective. I'm not saying I'm remotely qualified to be Superintendent, but having some idea of what teachers face in the classroom is key to bridging the divide between the administration and the faculty.

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My father was a teacher for decades in the City of Boston and I like the idea of having a complete outsider come in and not be ruled by the ugly beast of the Boston Teachers Union.

I would much rather see a former accountant take over than a former teacher. I like his ideas about trade school and not letting kids languish away in Special Ed.

I'm an outsider looking in and I don't see a lot of effectiveness in Boston these days other than two of the three exam schools. There is no reason why The O'Byrant School can't and shouldn't be the Boston equivalent of Bronx Science.

As for Voc-Tech, I forget - is Madison Park still open? If it is, why isn't it one of the premier Voc-Tech school in the country?

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is a big deal. Although he isn't a teacher, he does seem to understand the need to support teachers in and out of the classroom.

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