A federal appeals court today upheld a judge's decision to let Boston Public Schools use a combination of pre-Covid GPAs and Zip codes to determine who is offered admission to the city's three exam schools for the coming school year, saying the plan is fair and the parents who sued waited so long that a ruling in their favor would have caused "chaos" that would disrupt the lives of thousands of Boston families. Read more.
A group of White and Asian-American parents are appealing a judge's decision that the Boston School Committee did nothing wrong in the way it came up with a non-exam way to admit students to Boston's three exam schools for the coming school year. Read more.
A federal judge ruled today that the Boston School Committee can proceed with selecting students for the city's three exam schools via a formula based on grade point average and Zip codes, rather than using GPAs and the traditional entrance exams. Read more.
The parent group Quality Education for Every Student today released data and charts showing the differences between different BPS schools when it comes to private fundraising. One school obviously stands out.
Rachel Skerrit, head of school at Boston Latin School, explains why she feels Tom Keane doesn't know what he's talking about in calling for the elimination of the city's three exam schools.
In a message to BLS parents yesterday, Skerritt, herself a BLS graduate, writes: Read more.
A federal judge today held off any action on a bid by a group of White and Asian-American parents to block the way the Boston school system plans to enroll students in the three exam schools until at least March 16 to give the two sides - and lawyers for groups representing Black, Latino and other Asian-American parents - time to try to agree on the basic facts of the case. Read more.
A group of parents sued Boston Public Schools today over its decision to replace exam-school exams for one year with a system that uses pre-Covid GPAs and Zip codes to select students for Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O'Bryant School. Read more.
Boston Parents Schoolyard News posts a copy of the essay Khymani James wrote as part of his application to Columbia. James is a Boston Latin Academy senior and the student representative on the School Committee, which voted in October to eliminate the exam-school exam for one year due to Covid-19.
Shown today during an MLK commemoration.
Note the final shot inside the BLS auditorium scans across some of the hundreds of years of white male headmasters before the camera focuses on current Head of School Rachel Skerrit.
Eric Tran Thai, 36, pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography yesterday for incidents in which he would sit in a stall in boys' rooms at Boston Latin School and surreptitiously video students in 2017, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Student member Khymani James speaks during School Committee discusion early this morning.
Update: School Committee chairman resigns over "hot-mic" comments.
The Boston School Committee voted unanimously early this morning to suspend the use of an exam to decide who gets into the city's three exam schools for the next year because of a raft of problems brought up by the Covid-19 pandemic, in a meeting that lasted more than 8 1/2 hours. Read more.
About 70 people rallied this morning on the steps of Boston Latin School in support of keeping an exam to help determine who gets into Boston's three exam schools next year, while across Avenue Louis Pasteur, about 20 people held a counter-protest saying it's time to ditch the test as a legacy of Boston's racist past. Read more.
There are currently a couple of Boston-specific petitions circulating online: Read more.
WBUR reports BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius is proposing a one-year change for Boston's three exam schools: 20% of next year's seats would go to students with the city's top grades, while the rest would be awarded based on students' ranks in each city Zip code - with students in lower-income Zip codes getting first crack.
The Globe reports all of them students incorrectly denied admission last year and this year have been offered seats at the schools they were eligible for, that the error cascaded down to affect other kids denied entrance to non-exam schools they had requested and that none of the students who were given seats who shouldn't have gotten them will have their seats taken away.
The Hollywood Reporter reports the death of the West End native, who took his father's chain of Dedham-based movie theaters and turned it into a media empire - after graduating Boston Latin School, Harvard and Harvard Law School, with a break during World War II to help decode Japanese military messages.
In 1979, he narrowly escaped death during a stay at the Copley Plaza when it caught fire.
The Bay State Banner reports the BPS's Opportunity and Achievement Gap Task Force unanimously urged a one-year halt on exams because of Covid-19 - just as some colleges are doing with SATs, two days before BPS announced it would be using a test from a non-profit testing concern.
BPS today issued an RFP for a company that can write exam questions that will both ensure potential students are ready for the "rigorous" exam schools while also "furthering equitable access to the exam schools, particularly for Black and Latinx students who have historically been underrepresented." Read more.
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