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BPS looking at changing exam-school entrance requirements; mayor says that's news to him
By adamg on Sat, 07/02/2016 - 10:59am
The Globe reports a BPS committee has been quietly meeting since May on ways to increase black and Hispanic enrollment at the city's exam schools, in particular Boston Latin, without using the sort of quotas that were ruled illegal in the 1990s.
One proposal would be to set aside seats at BLS for students already attending BPS schools, rather than relying strictly on grades and results of the ISEE exam - which private-school students can take as well.
The effort may stem from a letter sent by several groups to Superintendent Tommy Chang on May 18 specifically about Boston Latin.
The committee includes civil-rights lawyers and activists and an elementary-school teacher but nobody from the exam schools themselves.
Mayor Walsh said he didn't know about the study until contacted by a reporter.
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Comments
latin school
The demise of Latin starts now. Its a shame that we consistently and constantly give more reasons not to prepare for life. Could be latin or police or fire promotions. Its all exuses to be lazy
Remind me again...
... what does 'merit' mean?
The effort which Adam describes in the second paragraph may be, among other things, BPS' way of saying that BPS K-6 will never get fixed in any acceptable way.
Sounds like the Boston way of doing things: using the 'back door', illogical, and possibly illegal.
Lots of behind the scenes maneuvering by some political twister
players. Not that anyone is coordinating efforts with "Parents Promoting Equity and Diversity" , who I'm sure never heard of Black@ BLS, and of corse the letter writers would never have to contact the US Attorney since the Globe gets a steady stream of untraceable leaks from her office.
It's not over until the fat lady sings
And I'm looking forward to the aria about how test scores and grades have nothing to do with the business of schools.
The lawyers are overreaching. That's what lawyers do; they want their names on a famous lawsuit. But actually legally forcing BPS to change the admissions criteria for the exam schools on the basis of disparate impact would be more difficult than you imagine, because so much is taken for granted in their arguments, and so much is overstated, which would be knocked down under scrutiny. If they had to actually prove their theories, it would take years, and probably fail. It's really easy to allege "legal violations" in a fundamentally political letter, but it's a different thing entirely to have that allegation stand up in court.
Look in the first paragraph, to see the de-escalation of rhetoric: "African Americans and Latinos comprise, respectively, 18.9% and 25.4% of BLS’s applicant pool." BLS's applicant pool is the exam school applicant pool; the application is for all three at once. And what are the overall attendance stats for the exam schools as a group, for African Americans and Latinos? 19.57% and 19.69%, respectively. So, in fact, African Americans attend Boston exam schools at a higher rate than that at which they apply. In court, the lawyers would have to show how this is "disproportionate exclusion," rather than just making facile statements in the current trial by media, prosecuted by means of personal slurs, sloganeering, and leaked confidential information.
In some other cities with exam schools, a more complicated admissions regime is in place; in some, it's simpler. In Boston, with an existing history of successful litigation against a quota system, any change would have to be lawsuit-proof before it could be implemented. As Chester Finn writes, “A holistic admission approach is also subjective and will be litigated by people who feel like their kid was better qualified and was not taken because of favoritism or race. It’s the problem of basing anything in the public sector on human judgment.” A local judge would likely be disposed to giving an easy stay on any system that resembled the one thrown out in court previously.
It's interesting that One Term Mahty claims he was blindsided by this, and only learned about it in Friday's Globe. Either Chang has been running around behind his back, or he's trying to walk this back, because he realized who votes in this city.
Personally, I'd like to see one of the proposed solutions implemented. Surprise!
I think it would be a good idea to have the top N% (say, N=5?) of students at each school with a sixth grade accepted to the exam schools on the basis of class ranking. It would address several problems simultaneously. First, there's under-representation from certain parts of the city. That a broad swathe of the city sends so few kids to exam schools does not just present an image of unfairness, but it suggests a cultural problem; guaranteeing a certain number or seats to the top kids at each school would increase the visibility of exam schools from the early grades, and encourage students to work harder towards that goal. Maybe part of the reason that so many kids go to BLS from Westie and so few from Roxbury is that the former know about it from Kindergarten and the latter don't. Assuring that each school sends someone each year is a way of better socializing that knowledge. It shouldn't be hard to figure out that such a policy wouldn't really affect those schools that already send N% of their sixth grade class to exam schools, just those which don't.
Class ranking remains an objective measure; kids who got there did so by their own work. This retains exam school admission as a result of accomplishment rather than making it into an entitlement based on identity.
A side effect of such a policy would likely be increased integration of Boston elementary schools. Currently, BPS is far more segregated than it was in the sixties and seventies (with the exam schools being less segregated than the elementary schools, not more). Parents in the know will try to game any system the best they can, and such a change would favor re-integration of many elementary schools. Parents who "lose" the lottery might console themselves that their kids' chances of entry into exam school could be improved at a "bad" school.
An effect of such a policy about which I don't feel so sure is class ranking. Class ranking could not be kept secret from parents and children, lest allegations of corruption and favoritism arise. Class rankings could provide more data for school comparison or effectiveness assessment, such as what is the average ISEE score of the top 5% of students at school X vs school Y. But in our cultural tradition of avowal of egalitarianism, ranking students would inevitably make some people upset.
Except
schools can give whatever grades they want. You could imagine a scenario where kids top-ranked from a BPS school were admitted to Latin School, were very unprepared, and did badly there. I expect the exam schools would be pressured to give those kids good grades anyway. That would undermine the rigor of exam school education. One reason the ISEE is used as an admissions tool is that it's an outside, independent measure of what students know. Same with the AP exam for students taking AP courses--otherwise, teachers would be pressured to give all their AP students good grades, whether the students learned anything or not.
I agree
The scenario is problematic. A concern about the deployment of subjective criteria is the slippery slope. If students gain entry who did not achieve the same grades and test scores as the other students, and they continue not to achieve the same grades and test scores as the other students, will a racial differential be seen? Will that then be unfair? What would be the remedy for that? Would selectively dropping - by racial criteria or by school of origin - entrance criteria result in a disparate impact on the grades of minority students at BLS? As you ask, what would be the remedy then?
That said, many here have already suggested that certain schools already give whatever grades they want.
Yes, but
That is assuming that all of the schools equally prepare their kids for the rigors of the curriculum at an exam school. As great as excellent schools are for students, sending students who are woefully unprepared for an environment where they are set up for failure is worse. It eliminates an opportunity for the student to learn something that they ARE ready to learn, leaving gaps in their knowledge, and damages their self-esteem (cliche, I know, but important here) by making them feel left out and not competent or capable.
A huge problem is that a lot of school reforms work top down: we look at high school and say, "Oh, gee, high school kids aren't doing this, let's change high school!" when really, in many cases, it's too late to do much at that level, becasue the kids who are behind are already really behind. To get results, you have to start implementing changes at kindergarten, and work your way up. And when you get down to the K level, you're looking heavily at "squishy" things like "ability to follow directions" and "paying attention when the teacher is talking" instead of quantitative academic skills like algebra and literacy benchmarks. That gets sticky then, because you're looking at skills that are heavily imparted by family, and discussing family upbringing disparities makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Woefully unprepared
There's a fundamental problem with any plan to loosen the admissions requirements at the toughest school in town: it's hard. And if you didn't meet the requirements as they were, it's likely to be even harder for you.
I'm concerned about the entitlement argument. It's like somebody thinks they're giving out free cake over there. The only two studies performed on the effect of exam schools focused on the marginal students - kids just below and just above the cutoff, and found no long-term benefits for the kids who went to the exam schools compared with the kids who didn't. Make no mistake: when we talk about loosening the requirements, or creating additional paths to admission, it's this group we're talking about - moving a group of students just below the line over to the other side, taking the place of other kids who would have been just above the line. It's not going to be a piece of cake for those kids.
I don't see the virtue of the 'kids from every school' plan being the benefit to that first group of kids. I agree that it will likely be very hard for them, and they will likely not benefit much from the experience. I imagine the benefit being farther down the road. Given the rates of participation at the exam schools as a whole vs. BLS, a lot of kids who could get in to BLS are turning it down. This has happened for generations, because people tend to prefer schools if they know someone who went there. I think it benefits our city if kids from every neighborhood know someone who went to BLS.
People sometimes imagine that education is just something a school does to a kid. But it's also something a kid does for himself. Kids will work harder if they feel like they have a reason to or will see a benefit from it. I can imagine that several years down the road the effect of widening exam school participation to every school in the city would be harder work on the part of kids at schools that didn't use to send anybody to exam schools.
It's interesting that One
Where is Marty's education advisor Rahn Dorsey, the guy the Globe called the "mayor's eyes and ears to city schools"? Whose job "Walsh said he created...to free the superintendent of schools from political battles..."?
Whether Chang told the mayor, I have no idea, but I'd wager that Dorsey knew about it. But he has zero political skills and has been over his head since he started.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/04/one-year-boston-education-c...
Can you let me know before this is implemented?
I need time to build a block of multimillion-dollar townhouses across the street from the worst school in Roxbury.
Long-term thinker
Integration is a good thing for our city.
Oh, so a quota by a different name.
The whole idea about increasing enrollment among specific races is a bit messed up and is at least indicative of the soft bigotry of low expectations if not the out and out racism of those behind the proposal.
For those that have said the politics behind recent BLS
headlines was not about changing exam school requirements I believe this letter states the opposite.This is a longstanding objective of many"activists". Careers ruined, innuendo used as an anvil and decent people labeled as racist in a whatever it takes to win political fight.
Yes, you can change the
Yes, you can change the entrance requirements to get more black students into BL. The Texas plan - top x% of students from each feeder school get in - would do it. But then, of course, admission officers at the universities across the country would all know that the Boston Latin diploma was no longer worth the paper it was printed on. Activists can successfully bully politicians into giving them what they want, but they can't make the rest of us by into their fantasy. But of course, the activists would rather tear down Boston Latin than allow White and Asian kids to benefit. That's what they did to the entire BPS back in the 70s.
Racial breakdown of entire school aged population?
This report takes as its starting point,the racial make-up of the the students enrolled in the Boston Public School system. It does not provide the breakdown for Boston school age children overall (BPS, PLUS everything else). I've looked for a report setting out the racial make-up of school-aged Bostonians, but I've had no success. Anyone else have any idea how to find this out?
American Communities Survey
The most recent ACS data from the US Census Bureau are from 2014. You can probably find it mapped by tract if you hunt around, but these are the overall numbers:
So, if you take 40% of that under 5 group and reduce the 15-19 group by 40% (reflects change in kids aging into and out of the group from 2014 to 2016), we get:
13,578 + 27,886 + 26,843 + 29,825 = 98,132 children of school age in Boston
data are here:
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/c...
And here: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/j...
I have yet to find crosstabulation of race and age, but some digging around might find something more recent than 2010.
But wait, there's more
2014 ACS 1 year gives the following numbers for Bostonians aged 5 to 17 (or as I call it, school age)-
White, non-Hispanic 16,481 (total white is 24,520, but let's not go there)
Black 27,401
Hispanic, all races 22,894
Asian 5,963.
Note that this does not include multiracial kids or the groups that really are not found in numbers in the city. Working on a total of 72,739, that leaves
White (non-Hispanic) 22.6%
Black 37.7%
Hispanic 31.5%
Asian 8.2%
These numbers, obviously, are very rough.
Let's go there
These numbers need a little work. First, didn't your source table have a total? There's some double-counting going on here, and it's skewing the numbers. Second, if one is going to count black Hispanics as Black, one should count white Hispanics as White. Otherwise the numbers are not comparable.
Here is another table from the ACS 2014, showing total number of children six to seventeen as 65,844. It lists Boston kids (0-17, for a total of 105,689) as 35.9% white, 37.5% black, 7% Asian, with 30.2% Hispanic (of any race).
The population isn't divided quite right for the relevant analysis (it would be nice to see a racial breakdown of just kids 12-18), but it's a little bit better.
Not one table
I did a query for Boston, ACS 2014 1 year, and specific racial/ethnic group. Then, I took the age/sex table and totaled the age groups for both sexes (they don't put that in the table for some reason). I ran it 4 times for the 4 main groups.
You do know that your numbers add up to 110.2%, right? You might want to run the "white not Hispanic" option to get the number most people look at. Again, my numbers are not perfect (no option for black not Hispanic, as you note) but they are numbers with something behind them.
U R doing it wrong
You shouldn't add up Hispanic, black, and white unless they are mutually exclusive categories, which in this data set they are not.
The numbers collected for race are for white, black, Asian, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawiian/Pacific Islander, some other race, and two or more races.
In the Children Characteristics 2010-2014 table, that's 35.9% for white, 37.5% for black, and 7% for Asian, 0.7% AI/AN, 0% NH/PI, 11.2% some other race, and 7.7% two or more races. These numbers add up to 100%, and they're the only numbers that should. Hispanic or Latino origin is a second question.
Adding up 'white, not Hispanic' together with Hispanic, from the second question, and then adding them together with black (including Hispanic) from the first question, is fundamentally incorrect, as it counts the same people (black & Hispanic - as well as some smaller number of Asian & Hispanic, and "some other race" & Hispanic) twice. The resulting total is then off by whatever that overlap is. Then dividing by the wrong total to get percentages is doubly flawed.
White Hispanics account for more than 10% of the kids in Boston (subtract 'white alone, not Hispanic or Latino' from white). If you count them only once in your total, in the Hispanic category from question 2, while double-counting black Hispanics in (counted as part of the Hispanic group from question 2 and the black group from question 1), you're significantly skewing your stats. Given that more than half of Hispanics in Boston are of Puerto Rican or Dominican origin, it may be larger than the 10% overlap of white and Hispanic (though we have no way of knowing). You're comparing apples and oranges, and reaching bad conclusions.
Although whites comprise a plurality of Boston's population, blacks form a plurality of Boston's under-18 population. I suspect if you restricted the query to kids aged from 12 to 17, you'd find that whites are still a plurality of that age group.
I'm not doing it wrong
Either the Census Bureau or society as a whole are doing it wrong.
Even with the caveat at the end of my post, my numbers equal 100% without me fudging things (I was expecting my totals to be below 100%, but no lower than 98%)
Kerpan wanted numbers. I can up with a close, though imperfect, number.
Pure fudge
You made up numbers, and they happened to add up to 1. That's not proof of methodological correctness. It's just happenstance.
11.2% answered 'some other race,' and 7.7 percent answered 'two or more races.' You left out almost 1/5 of the population. Convenient, because otherwise your invented percentages would not add up to 1.
The Census Bureau did it they way they did it, which might not be perfect but is at least fairly consistent.
You loused it up by adding things from different categories together, leaving 1/5 of the population out from one of the categories, and declaring it complete when your concoction reached the right level.
If Kerpan wants numbers, he shouldn't ask Waquiot.
Seriously, the numbers are already right there - I linked them. Kerpan can just read the Census data himself, he doesn't have to take my word (much less yours) for it.
I didn't leave 11% out
I just put them in the category they put themselves in with the pervious question (are you Hispanic). That said, those 7.7% that are multiracial were indeed left out, along with Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Again, I didn't link because I was dealing with 4 different versions of the same table.
If you want to pretend that Hispanics don't exist, have at it. Until either other Americans agree with you (they don't) or the Census Bureau clears this up, your numbers should be taken with the same caution mine should be, if not more.
I'm willing to bet Kerpan gets my logic better than yours.
I know Kerpan is wicked smart
He can see perfectly well that the 11.2% answered the question of race with the answer that they considered themselves to belong to one race, but that it was 'some other race,' besides the races listed. I'm sure he also knows that Hispanic is not just some statistical trash basket in which Waquiot can put his leftover fudge, by assuming that every person who picked 'some other race' must just be Hispanic. Sure, some of such respondents were likely Hispanic, but you cannot demonstrate it was all or even most of them.
Besides your difficulty with juggling statistics, W, I can see you still don't understand what it means to be Hispanic. Let me make it clearer to you: Hispanic is not a race. Really.
The idea that there was a Hispanic race, or a Mexican race, went out of fashion decades ago. Of course, race itself is entirely a myth, but the consideration of "Hispanic," or "Mexican" as a race in and of itself has faded away already, whereas the idea that white and black describe races persists - here and in other countries.
Hispanics come from, or descend from people who came from, countries where Spanish is spoken, or Spanish-speaking parts of this country - places where people are of different races and mixtures thereof. In Mexico, Jorge Ramos is white, as he is here, and in the Dominican Republic, David Ortiz is black, just like he is here. You imagining that they are the same race, a Hispanic race, distinct from yours, is both fascinating and idiosyncratic.
This reality is reflected in OMB guidelines: "federal standards mandate that race and Hispanic origin (ethnicity) are separate and distinct concepts and … when collecting these data via self-identification, two different questions must be used (emphasis added).” There is a statement on the census that states explicitly that "Hispanic origins are not races."
That is why there are two different questions on the census, and why a fellow cannot take numbers from people answering the question of whether or not they are Hispanic and try to squeeze them in somehow along with answers from people answering the question of what race they belong to, and then have people not try to correct him.
I agree with the census approach, and believe it reflects the standard view of our society today. It is you who seem not to agree with this approach, Waquiot. I suspect that your lack of understanding of the view guiding the data collection of the census lead to your abuse of the statistics.
I know Hispanics are not a race
But I also know that they are not quite accepted as "white" in some parts of society and that they often don't want to fit in the silos typically used in America. That said, the people whose numbers are cited in this article count Hispanics in one silo and whites in another, so the best thing to do is to look at them separately. If Hispanic community leaders want to make the argument that they are underrepresented at BLS, you better believe they'll not be using your numbers.
Lastly, I do take offense with your claim that I put the Hispanic count in "some statistical trash basket". I put my data out there with caveats in place, caveats you pounced upon. I counted Hispanics while you tried to dilute them. Just because my data doesn't forward your agenda doesn't make the figures less valid.
I take offense
At your race-baiting. It's dishonest of you. You screwed up, lost an argument, and now you want to call me names. Grow up.
I do not have "my" numbers; I only cite the actual census numbers. You are the only one here who made up his own numbers. I linked to, and cited, the actual census numbers, which you seem motivated to fudge around with in pursuit of a strange political agenda of turning Hispanics into a race.
Hispanics are counted by the census, but not as a race. You seem hell-bent to 'correct' that. It is unbecoming.
It is furthermore a shameful lie on your part that I am doing anything on the order of under-counting Hispanics. According to the census data, which I cited in my first post here, Hispanics are 30.2% of Boston's children. That includes Hispanics of all races - black, white, Asian, and other. You were double-counting and fudging because you didn't understand the data. I corrected you. Then you got weird.
I think the leaders of Boston's Hispanic community are more numerate than you are, and won't make your mistakes. If Boston's Hispanic community leaders want to make the argument that Hispanics are under-represented at Boston's exam schools, I expect they will use BPS enrollment data first, census data second, and the numbers some rando from Roslindale made up ... never.
Whatever
First, no race baiting. I just gave the numbers. Your numbers, on the other hand, if put in pie chart form would be laughable.
As for my data, I've been using a mobile device all day, and I don't like running queries on the American Factfinder on it (nor do I like hyperlinking), but I am back on the desktop, so here are the numbers for white, non-Hispanic, black, Asian, and Hispanic residents of Boston. If you want to check my work, you'll see that my numbers are accurate within the purview of the categories most people look at. For the sake of argument, the total population aged 5 to 17 in Boston is 73,516, less than a thousand more than my numbers or 32,173 less than your much superior total.
But hey, you must just know a whole lot more about census statistics than I do. For example, you probably could tell everyone why, in 1850, the Census Bureau suddenly decided to ask the place of birth of every person. And why they decided in 1890 to start asking about the place of birth of the parents of every person. And you would also know about the conundrum of suddenly asking people about their Hispanic heritage when they didn't do it before 1970 and how placing it aside the race question was the way to solve the issue.
I just gave Kerpan some numbers for the city as a whole and noted that they were imperfect. You blew smoke and cannot accept that my numbers reflect the way policymakers look at things. Whatever. Take your 110% of the population and put it somewhere where it might make sense.
EDIT- my links have been changed. They were, as noted below, bad before, but I insist that the data is good. In the end, I want to make sure I can link these properly.
I find it impossible....
... to be sure what the available numbers mean. I don't think they are clear enough. Thanks to both of you for trying to decipher the available info....
There you go again
You are so close to understanding this, Waquiot. A little more of a mental push, and you may succeed.
Yes, the census numbers for the two different questions cannot be put in a single pie chart. That's true! You cannot put the answers to the census question about race in a pie chart, and then squish into that pie chart the answers to the census question about Hispanic origin. It would be a non-sensical chart. That is the chart you tried to make by squeezing disparate data together and then fudging them until they added up to 1.
This is because the data is not parallel but overlapping. The 30.2% of Boston children who are Hispanic, according to the census, are of all different races. Some of those 30.2% of Boston children are white, some are black, some are Asian, some are two or more races, some are 'some other race.'
If you were to visualize pie charts, it would be two pie charts, one for the answers to the question about race, and one for the answers to the question about origin. They would not line up.
The only category in which the census provided numbers that can indicate the overlap of race and hispanic origin is white Hispanics. 11.3% of total respondents, indicating they were of Hispanic origin, also indicated they were white. That means that 18.9% of total respondents indicated they were of Hispanic origin and also indicated they were a different race - black, Asian, 'some other race,' or 'two or more races.' One should not assume, invent, or just ignore the proportions in which they did so. It would be helpful if the census provided this data, but one should not just ignore the existence of these people in the absence of the data about them.
I can see why you don't like hyperlinking - most of your links fail to go where you think they do. If you want to make a stable link to the census data, you have to use the bookmark button.
Try here. This census table shows five year average numbers for Boston. "Children under 18 years in households: 105,689" (followed by the breakdown by age, race, origin...) The table here, based on the same data set, shows that Boston's under 5 years population is 5.3% of the total city population, or 33,898. Subtracting that from the under-18 total on the first chart shows 71,791 for children 5-17 for the five year average estimate (compared to the 73,516 for the one-year estimate your last link went to). The one-year number is higher because Boston's population is growing. One could use either number, as long as all other data came from the same respective set (one-year vs five-year average).
Thanks for the link
Since it validates my numbers.
How does one defend themselves when they are labeled a racist
The mayor is facing a political backlash in the wards of West Roxbury and in Roxbury he is being labeled a racist. He can't win so his best course of action is imitate to Claude Reins and act shocked at the latest news from BLS.
The feds are getting ready to ask the tough questions of teachers "Have you now or have you ever hear a joke or slur that could offend a protected class "If you refuse to answer your fired.
BLS, et. al.
Why bother having standards if at the sound of dissatisfaction they will be 'relaxed?'
Defining Education
I think some of the pearl-clutching around recent developments at BLS is overblown. The school has existed and excelled for many many years and those tolling the bell for it now are a bit short-sighted.
But the main point I'm curious to discuss is the value of a social education as well as an academic one. Having personally attended a large, urban, majority-minority high school as a white male, there were experiences and values I encountered that I never would have if I'd gone to school in the suburbs or private high school.
I think when we look at our current political and social climate in this country, the deficit of empathy is one of the most glaring problems we face. Going to school with, befriending, and learning about people who are from different walks of life can only help bridge divides in our society.
Well said!
Well said!
I went to Boston Latin School while there was a quota system and it still was the hardest six years of my life--much harder than college or graduate school. I learned a lot from my classmates (I'm still friends with many of them) and I learned to be sensitive about differences but also not to pre-judge anyone. After I've left BLS, I was shocked by how dismissive people were of other people they knew nothing about.
The authors of the letter to
The authors of the letter to Supt. Chang seem to be more interested in a quick fix than in truly helping the black and Hispanic community. Why are they blaming Latin School for society's and BPS's failures? Sure, it would be easy to change the admission process to the exam schools but that really does nothing to improve the overall educational experience of the black and Hispanic community as a whole. If the authors of the letter really care about improving things for black and Hispanic students, they need to start with encouraging families to support their children and make education a priority in the home. If education is not a priority at home, it is unlikely that it will be a priority to the child in school. BPS then needs to do all it can to support those students while they are young. Yes, it will cost more money, but wouldn't it be worth it? If those students have not been truly encouraged and properly supported by the time they get to sixth grade, it will be too late to then start pushing a rigorous curriculum on them.
"In Chaos lies Opppotunity"
This situation that we are facing at the prestigious Boston Latin School is not going away. We must look at the situation and develop a comprehensive diversity plan for the entire BPS and Boston's pre-school to college age students. First lets get the elephant out of the room, plenty of money is available, student tracking system programs are available and work effectively. Every student can and should be tracked to keep them learning with an eye towards success. But let's make it a fair level playing field for every student regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. We can do this-we need good will and need to block out the self interested groups, (some dependent on BPS money/others playing to the lowest levels of political theatre.
First, lets recognize that Boston has a disparate number of different types of schools: BPS, Charter, Parochial, Private, METCO, University and I am sure many more. A NEW comprehensive process would require ALL 6th graders from every one of these types of schools to require all their students to take the "All Inclusive Knowledge Aptitude Test (AIKAT)" or placement into any schools starting in the 7th grade. The "AIKAT" should be kept at the highest standards that currently make up the BLS 6th Grade Test. We must have high standards to challenge our children.
Strictly, going by the testing marks, 90% of the BLS spots should immidietlly be filled. The other 10% of the spots should filled by the top two testers from each other school. The 10% of the persons not being placed in BLS immediately should be allowed to fill spots not accepted by the top testers and be put on a waiting list to fill spots that may open up over the next few years.
One of the major problems that everyone know happens is that Non-Bostonians use fake addresses or move into the City just prior to test/entry to take spots that should be for long term Boston kids--(This is a scam) to get into the Prestigious BLS. A proven/investigated 5-10 year Boston residency should be required. The other issue that frustrates many is the METCO programs almost exclusive ability to send almost exclusively political/public officials black kids ( a few Asians & Hispanics) to the suburbs to get high quality educations to the exclusion of City of Boston caucasian kids (this is a scam). These actions undermine the trust needed to be fair to everyone. The required test should fill all these positions at all these schools based on testing marks only.
With the closing of underperforming/unusable schools, savings from discharged teachers, less busing costs, and the building of modern state of the art efficient schools will all allow these changes to take place. Mayor Walsh take on the challenge! You will be vilified by the bottom feeders but the Children and City will be the winners from your virtue!
Good Luck to Mayor Walsh and your team.