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Boston public-school students do better on national test than students in other large cities
By adamg on Wed, 10/28/2015 - 10:59am
Via BPS.
BPS reports Boston fourth and eighth graders now score near the national average in reading and math on the National Assessment for Educational Progress test - and at or near the top of the rankings for their peers in large cities.
BPS students scored on average 219 points on the NAEP assessment, placing them in a statistical tie with the national average of 221, and well above the 214 average for large city schools.
In particular, BPS's eighth-grade math scores are higher than those of any other large city.
BPS said that while this is wicked cool and all, there's still room for improvement.
For example, for Grade 8 Math, Asian students scored 318; white students scored 311; Hispanic students scored 271; and black students scored 269.
Also, eighth-grade math scores in Boston dropped between 2013 and 2015 - although national scores dropped even more.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
I bet they come in dead last
I bet they come in dead last in ethics and being polite. Have you taking the MBTA lately with these Public School Kids on it?
Feh
It's not that they're Boston public-school students, it's that they're teenagers. It's what they do, whether it's here, or New York or anyplace else that has a transit system that students use (and here I speak as somebody who had a student transit pass in a certain large city to our south, granted, eons ago, but some things don't change).
B___S____
When i leave work early and take the commuter rail packed with BC High kids, it not the same as being on the orange line packed with BPS kids.
How do you know they aren't BPS?
"When I leave work early and take the commuter rail packed with High School kids" might be more accurate. Where do you board? A lot of BPS kids take the Needham line from Ruggles, for example, and my observation is that they behave pretty well. The commuter rail is a different environment from the Orange Line, it's just possible that kids take contextual clues which inform their behavior. But I'm sure you wouldn't credit them with such an ability, just like you are certain that the well behaved kids can't possibly be from BPS.
Uniforms
n/t
No uniforms at BC High
Just a very weak dress code that somehow I violated back in the day. We didn't even have to wear ties (which the tech kids at Bosco had to.)
That's a BS comparison
Try riding the Red Line to Quincy after B.C.High lets out. In general, the commuter rail brings a very different type of rider, and that would be the same regardless of age.
I cannot do the straight comparison, but when the students were my classmates, riding the 16 from campus to Andrew (it was before they rebuilt Columbia as JFK/UMass and added the platform) was a complete zoo. Andrew to Forest Hills, on the other hand, was a quiet experience.
High school kids are high school kids. Hormonal Latin kids are no different than hormonal B.C. High kids and no different than English kids. It's gonna get a bit crazy when there is a concentration of them.
The girls who took the 51 bus to St. Joes back in 1985
were lousy rotten little d-bags who made all sorts of noise and commotion on the bus. (They were also mean to me.)
I don't think people are that much more respectful today, but there are some cultural differences in how we deal with each other (when someone might bump into you).
a bus full of girls going to the Mount?
Sure, my inner 15 year old might be into that, but my outer 45 year old winces at the idea of high pitched mean girls, and we cannot forget the hair spray. Oh, the hair spray.
They didn't swear like they
They didn't swear like they do today or act like they belong in the Franklin Park Zoo. They didn't pull knives and guns either. Times have changed. Just 20 years ago I used to see kids give up their seats for the elderly now they just laugh at them. It's because they are not brought up right by the schools and the parents. This city is getting worse and is going right down the toilet.
just 20 years ago when the
just 20 years ago when the crime rates across the city and the state were TWICE what they are now? oh ok
Oh, please!
Can you hear my eyeroll from where you are sitting? I went to high school over 30 years ago, but I can still remember it well enough -- bullying, swearing, drugs, violence, being mean to old people -- all the societal scourges that you're wringing your hands about at the moment. I can't prove that absolutely nothing has changed, but this narrative about how kids today are animals while we all lived in Bedford Falls is just ridiculous.
I'm with you
One classmate was put into traction for the crime of accidentally stepping on a kid's sneaker at Ashmont. Then, there was the classic BCHigh kids from Quincy vs Don Bosco kids from Dorchester/Southie battles at Andrew.
In the morning, the kids going to St. Williams (a 1-8 school, mind you) were pretty quiet. Of course, judging by the subtext of the commenters here, they wouldn't believe that kids living so close to Franklin Park would be so nice, but they were.
Just 20 years ago I used to
Ah, yes, the mid-90s, when youth had some respect.
AMEN
I took my little ones to the Newton fireworks last summer (Boston is just too late a start for young kids), and I can attest to the fact that high school kids are just as insufferable there as they are on the T coming from Boston schools. Just as loud, just as self-absorbed.
I don't know how we all made it past that age, in retrospect. Still have 8 or 9 years before I have to face it with my own kids...
Have they been getting on your lawn?
.
Yes and I love their energy
and exuberance. Those could be my kids you are talking about.
piffle
The worst and rudest people on the T are middle-aged white people with a stank-ass 'tude. I wish Hannibal Lecter were real, so he could teach them some manners.
i never had any trouble with
i never had any trouble with kids on the orange line in 5 years living near ruggles and forest hills taking the t from one to the other on a consistent basis at any time of day.
the worst experiences i've had at the stations were with loud, drugged out middle aged men shouting and holding court in and around the FH station early on Saturday mornings and those really weren't very bad.
guys!
we're ALMOST average, we can do this!!
Give these kids some credit
They have to ride the MBTA a couple of hours each day and have to dodge bullets at Forest Hills, bullies at Broadway, gropers on the Green Line and zombies and drug dealers on all lines. They have got to be exhausted and traumatized after a long day of travelling on the T. Their parents should be proud they did so well.
Oh, please
As bad as the T is, it is not an Escape from New York hellhole (and, yes, my daughter ride the T to and from school).
Wicked Pissah!
This proves Bahston kids ah supah smaht.
It seems like people here in
It seems like people here in Boston are pleased with these results.
I think the most telling part of the stats is this little nugget at the bottom:
"Also, eighth-grade math scores in Boston dropped between 2013 and 2015 - although national scores dropped even more."
USA! USA!
It's nice they report the
It's nice they report the significance, but I would be interested in the effect too. With sample sizes this big, it's not hard to find a statistically significant difference. Nevertheless, nice work Boston kiddos.
Yes,
they absolutely are worse today compared to, from my experience, 20 years ago. FH, for example, becomes nightmarish, weekday mid-morning, early afternoon onwards to at least 4PM. I'd suggest some people who are interested in experiencing this phenomena in person take an Allston bus or the B line down Comm Ave when kids from Brighton High and other public schools (the vast bulk whom don't live in Allston/Brighton) start leaving school for the day.
And this:
When you have a group of black kids, EVERY other word out of their mouths is the N word,no exaggeration. And they usually say it and talk LOUDLY, on crowded trains and buses.
And the language and attitudes are very aggressive, in your face, lots of very lewd language and swear words.
No, it certainly is not pleasant. Thank God I no longer deal with it.
I once
saw a (black) Green Line operator chew out a (black) high school student for using the N-word, among other words.
"YOU DO NOT USE THAT LANGUAGE ON MY TRAIN THERE ARE CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY HERE!"
Kid shut up pretty quick.
Important message, ignored and missed
In all the zeal to manufacture a pseudocrisis necessary for union busting and charter flinging, this is a very key message that gets missed:
MASSACHUSETTS HAS THE STRONGEST SCHOOLS IN THE NATION
There, I said it. And while there will be attempts to minimize that to invent a crisis, that is the reality.
Part of that reality is the high quality of teaching, and part of that high quality of teaching is HIGH PAY RATES FOR PEOPLE WITH MASTERS DEGREES.
If you think that pay can be cut without sacrificing quality, I advise you to move to Oklahoma, Kansas, or Wisconsin with your children - that's your utopia.
Reducing inequities is important, and tinkering toward that end should continue. Advocating for a massive overhaul of a system that IS NOT BROKEN under the pretense that it somehow is broken and charters and unionbusting will fix that is the height of disingenuous propaganda and foolishness.
Remember this: a teacher who is qualified in MA is also a teacher qualified to teach in Canada (with province-paid Canadian history courses) and much of the world.
Best Post of the Day!
And I couldn't agree more. More of us with skin in the game need to celebrate and advocate this fact and dirmly put our foot down to say "no!" when people talk of throwing it away.
Good job. Let's hope we don
Good job. Let's hope we don't lose them as they get older and in high school. I'm praying for these kids. They are our future.
We're the best
of the worst. Thats something to be proud of.
To be honest?
I'd put BPS up against any school system in Alabama or Mississippi or Arkansas or North Dakota any day.