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More black, Hispanic kids took summer exam-school prep classes this year
By adamg on Wed, 09/07/2016 - 6:33pm
School Superintendent Tommy Chang said outreach efforts by BPS and the Boston Latin School Association to get more minority students into prep classes for the ISEE class worked.
Chang told the School Committee tonight that the number of fifth graders who signed up for the prep course - which gets them ready for the test that is a key part of the entrance evaluation for the city's three exam schools - rose from 400 to 425 students to 646. And the percentage of those students who were black or Hispanic rose from 24% to 50%, he said.
School officials had pledged to try to convince more minority kids to take the classes as a way of boosting minority enrollment at Boston Latin School, where their percentage of the student body are far lower than in BPS as a whole.
Chang said there is room to increase the percentage even higher, because the program had space for up to 750 students.
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Comments
One of my kids
Is in advance work classes in his school, No one informed him or me about these prep classes.
He isn't a minority though.
Oy
My daughter was NOT in AWC and yet we were informed about the classes when she was in fifth grade.
BPS just sucks at communications, sometimes.
The BPS administrative side
The BPS administrative side is caught between cultures now - Chang's wunderkinds with all of their edu-babble and the old Court St hacks who actually operate the ground level machinery. Whatever comes out of the gleaming Bolling building has to be carried out by people who toil in dreary places like the Campbell Resource Center. You can have all the initiatives you want, but at the end of the day it's still the same guy running the ISEE prep as it was 10 years ago.
What you describe is what the late mayor realized after
charging the windmill in his first few terms. The black hole of Court Street is one NASA telescopes can't find.
What a stupid thing to say
I understand now why your child probably missed this opportunity. what a stupid thing to say, it leaves me to ask this one question; did you even do your homework or research to find out if these classes were available.
I am sure these classes were made available to everybody. There is no Reverse Racism here. I do wish your child his or her best academically and all the endeavors.
Do you have or have you had a kid in BPS?
As I mentioned earlier, BPS communications can really suck. If you're not aware BPS offers test prep classes, how are you supposed to know to ask about them?
I think A Hurt One is countering the implication
that the poster didn't learn about the classes because he/she isn't a minority. I'm not sure if that's how it was intended but that was my take-away, like the teacher whispered to all of the non-white kids "hey! There are ISEE prep classes!" I agree with the fact that communications on these things can be pretty lax.
Yeah, I get what he or she was saying
I just don't think it rises to the level of insult hurling. BPS can be incredibly frustrating.
One thing that came up during the School Committee meeting last night that I didn't write about, but maybe should have, was the whole lead-in-drinking-water issue. One member, Miren Uriarte, said she keeps hearing concerns because some parents just don't trust BPS to tell them the truth (probably because over the months the number of schools with water exceeding BPS guidelines kept growing, plus, you know, the whole staffers put on leave thing). That's a problem, and indicative of the trust issues BPS still has to overcome.
As to why I didn't write about it: She and School Committee Chairman Michael O'Neil had, what seemed to me, a really frustrating and kind of stupid exchange - and then I got word of the murder in Dorchester, so went to that.
In any case, Uriarte seemed to be saying she wanted BPS to take a more active role in keeping elementary-school kids in affected schools from drinking out of the faucets in bathrooms - which are still operational, so kids can, well, wash their hands. But when O'Neil pressed her on whether this was what she really wanted, she retreated and started talking about the trust issues again. They repeated this verbal dance several times and never seemed to come to any resolution, but ultimately, Chang and his deputies in charge of the whole water issue said they'd look at doing more to make kids realize they shouldn't be sucking water out of bathroom faucets - and look at installing filters on the lines to those faucets, although they said that would be kind of expensive.
It's not stupid
I'm the original poster and I was not saying my kid or I didn't know because there was an effort to keep non minorities from having access to the classes, I was merely stating that we did not know...period.
If we did not know than lots of people did not know, of any race.
BPS offers these classes yet someone who could benefit isn't informed, it's typical for the BPS, one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.
So why mention the 'not a
So why mention the 'not a minority bit'?
There is a concerted effort to minimize acess
For free ISEE prep for white students.
"Operating through the lens of equity is at the core of what we do in Boston Public Schools," said Boston School Committee Chairperson Michael O'Neill. "We know that an important aspect to closing the opportunity and achievement gaps is providing students of color access to programs with strong academic rigor like the Exam School Initiative. I am proud of our work and thankful of the support of Mayor Walsh and the Boston Latin School Association in this tremendous effort."
http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID...
Also, just look where the class are located.
Aw, don't get your undies in a bunch
It's not a zero-sum game here. BPS and the BLSA increased the total number of seats available in the classes this year, and will do so again next year. No white kids were turned away.
Just looking
What's wrong with having the ISEE prep class at Boston Latin School? I don't get it.
If that school is so difficult to get to that a kid can't do test prep there, then why would it matter if he can't get in?
"2014 enrollment data shows that 44% of the participants were White; 28% were Asian; 14% were Hispanic; and 10% were Black." That tracks very closely to actual BLS enrollment. If the goal is to push BLS enrollment towards convergence with BPS enrollment, without adding racial fiddling to student selection, trying to push the prep class to a greater cross-section of students seems like a fair and above-board way to do that.
An absence of privilege
Isn't the same thing as discrimination.
white persecution complex much?
Literally nothing in what you quoted nor bolded has anything to do with some conspiracy to limit white kids from free prep classes.
The fact that you read the words "equity" and "providing students of color access" and somehow took away from that an anti-white agenda really says alot about you, though.
Bates AWC
I know the Bates AWC kids knew about it. Which AWC class is your kid in?
I understand the desire for anonymity generally. However, it's nonsense to not even anonymously state which school you are referring to if this is a real complaint.
AWC
The Condon in south boston
Another anecdata point
Our daughter was at the Bates for AWC (now a Junior at BLS) and we didn't hear about the class from the school, we heard it from other parents. It was next to impossible to get any information about the program, even something as simple as the dates it would be held.
I hope they are more transparent and get the info out there in a more systematic way. At the time I got the impression it was more an issue of an overworked person doing her best but with no time/support to make it better.
There's still no concrete info on the BPS website.
test prep
Kids who score highly enough on the Terra Nova test in fifth grade are invited to the free test prep. It's not automatic if the student is in AWC, though most AWC students probably do end up being invited to the test prep. Sometimes parents don't hear about it or find out too late to have their kids participate, and that seems to be a communication issue.
Exam School Prep
The previous poster is correct. BPS does not have enough spaces for every grade 5 student to enroll in the two week exam school prep program it offers every year. Traditionally, students were chosen and invited into the program based on Terra-Nova test scores during their 5th grade year, whether they were in AWC or not in AWC. The program never went through the schools but went directly to parents and families. This past year was the first year that principals got a memo about this program and about adding students of color who they felt would benefit from the program. So, if your kid was white or asian and didn't get into the exam prep program, the principal couldn't nominate you. If you were black or hispanic your principal had the opportunity to nominate you. Why not have enough seats for every 5th grader from BPS schools that want to enroll? Oh, and by the way, if your kid went to a private school or charter school in grade 5 but took the Terra-Nova test through BPS and scored high enough, they were also invited to attend. I don't think BPS should be offering free exam prep to non-BPS students. Let the charter schools and private schools do that. They won't however because just like regular BPS schools they don't like losing their top students (of any color) to a batch of schools which happens every year from grade 6 to 7.