Whatever the merits or deficits of this plan, it's a very important step having the exam aligned with the public school curriculum. Even (especially) if they were only using test scores, it's unconscionable to have an entry exam that puts BPS students at a disadvantage because they aren't taught the subject matter.
But the fact is that in February 2020, BPS had already ditched the ISEE in favor of the currently-adopted MAP exam, by refusing to extend the city's contract with the test vendor.
In other words, this plan is fundamentally not about aligning the exam with the curriculum. Instead, it does several things that significantly change what "exam school" means.
First, it significantly waters down the role of an exam, shifting it from 50% to 30% of an applicant's score. Given that students will have not one, but two, chances to take the exam, with the higher score counted, it seems unclear why the reduction is necessary -- unless, of course, one believes in CRT and anti-racist thought, which argue that standardized exams are fundamentally racist (although, in that case, the very fact that BPS is still calling them "exam schools" and is still administering an entry exam would be racially discriminatory).
Second, it adds points based on seemingly arbitrary indicators. For example, the 40% cut-off for economically-disadvantaged students at the applicant's fifth-grade school was previously presented to the public as 50%, and got changed with little rationale or advance notice. Among others, this change benefited some of the white parents who spoke out in favor of the tiers plan (e.g. the wealthy JP kids attending the Curley are now eligible for the 10-point bonus) -- but where are the accusations of backroom dealing now? Similarly, the 15-point bonus for BHA students may have some merit, but it excludes equally-disadvantaged students living in low-income non-BHA housing, such as Section 8 voucher recipients and tenants of housing that is owned/operated by community-based nonprofits (Mission Park, Castle Square, Villa Victoria, etc).
Finally, and most significantly, it seems to be driven by some desire for racial balancing, judging by the task force's work. As the group worked through different proposals, it constantly reviewed the racial data associated with the projected outcomes, presumably to see if it would be satisfactory. A truly race-neutral group would not give so much explicit attention to race, and would instead use only socioeconomic and geographic data to evaluate whether a proposal would meet the desired outcome of ensuring citywide access. The task force's charge of "increasing racial diversity" is also suspect, given that nationally (e.g. San Francisco's Lowell High, Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson), such language has recently been used to significantly reduce Asian-American representation -- something that is also projected to happen under this plan.
Yes, I agree that it's important to align the exam with the curriculum, but that's simply not what this plan does...
And I AM the JP parent who will get two advantages. Living in Tier 5 and attending the Curley - we don't need either! The plan is capricious and arbitrary! THANK YOU!
For gentrification, in which wealthy white parents -- the same demographic that kept praising this tiered plan -- will move into "better" census tracts. They'll also send their children to disadvantaged schools, which is fine and dandy, but they'll do it only for 5th grade to game the system.
For whom does it not look like opportunity? The low-income, first-generation immigrant children of Chinatown, who were systematically oppressed by the racial quota system that BPS previously used for exam-school admissions, but will be seeing a sharp drop in the number of available exam-school seats under this plan. Today, they are also the only children in the entire city to not have a permanent library branch in their neighborhood, in addition to having to go to school next to the Mass Pike and the Commuter Rail (both JQS and JQUS look over the trench) and facing some of the worst pollution in the state...
Please, finally, all you people sticking around Boston for BLS, hit the bricks! You’re the same people holding West Roxbury back from joining this century. Go, bye bye, let’s see those for sale signs. Medfield is lovely, I hear.
It is in Medfield, Hingham, Lynnfield, Walpole, Brookline, Newton, and Norwell.
Be careful what you wish for as your too stupid to get into Latin Anon arse wants. Declining property taxes means higher rents for renters and lower city services. I lived through blight and all that "grit" of the 70's and 80's. It sucked.
In the war in Algeria against the French, the FLN went after not only the occupying French, but the Algerian moderates, thereby destroying the middle class. Hence, Algeria consumed itself. That is what this vote does.
In Cuba, the "vanguard elite" went after the rich and the middle class. They went to Florida. Cuba has been a dump, a dump with free health care, but still a dump for 60 years.
I guess you want dump. Don't come calling to my now suburban self for a bailout in 10 years. I'll be funding the music and arts program at my local high school.
Put your real estate equity where your mouth is. Go be a "stable middle class" in some suburb somewhere.
Or are you just flapping your gums? Clinging desperately to your last scraps of privilege? Outside 128, nobody cares if you went to BLS, and that scares you?
I like Boston, I'm here to say, and I think the new plan for assignment to BPS' selective high schools is good.
Next step, in my book, is a hub regional Math/Science magnet. None of BPS' selective high schools is up to that job, and we probably don't even have the student base to support one in just Boston.
Although it is more commonly the 3rd choice BPS exam school, O'Bryant is ostensibly science/math focused. What makes you think it is not "up to that job," and/or why can't Boston support one? Aren't those two ideas somewhat contradictory?
This vote only serves to further hollow-out hard working middle class families forcing them to leave Boston Public Schools. The richest will stay and continue to pay for elite private schools. The ranks of parochial schools will swell with kids from White, Asian, Black, and Latino families that have 2-income households and can afford modest tuition. Tripledeckers in nice parts of Dorchester (and elsewhere) will turn into investor-owned rentals for 20-something biotech workers along the Red Line. The tax revenue will remain, but continue to be squandered by an ineffective (and racist) school committee. And the BPS schools will wonder why they no longer have active parent associations and have run out of community-based funding.
That’s rich, buddy. I’m so glad you brought the ultimate west Roxbury ignorant take. These people, and it sounds like you are one of them, have this idea they’re somehow driving the demand to live in the outer neighborhoods of Boston, and when they pull up stakes it’ll be a blow to the area. The housing market has so very little do with demand for seats at Latin. It probably did in 1997. Today it’s proximity to high paying jobs, nice houses, at prices lower than Newton. Nobody is moving to West Roxbury because of BLS. It’s a nice benefit if your kid gets in, but the people that moved to my street in the last decade want a backyard within range of their biotech or software jobs.
More over, these very smart and successful people mostly send their kids to BPS. Bright, confident people that want to be part of a community, not just suck a seat at Latin off of it. They aren’t scared to send their kids to BPS like so many West Roxbury natives. It’s a bunch of realtors and cops that fill up holy name and st. Theresa’s because they’re scared of the world and don’t know how to navigate it besides clinging to some playbook that’ll get their kid into BLS.
So no, those people leaving won’t hurt West Roxbury. Smarter, less bigoted people will buy their houses. And there is plenty of money in Boston to fund schools. That’s a choice and we need to elect leaders that want to make it. We pay a pittance in real estate taxes with the residential exemption.
Let the gentrification residential desegregation begin!
I expect many families will find out what tract they are in, and what its tier is, in short order.
I wonder if real estate listings will include tract tier. "Tier 1 fixer-upper with great bones. Bring your contractor and your imagination. Tract 812 is close to good transportation and restaurants."
Imrie Rd. looks like a solid gem. Some "good bones" houses on High Rock Way as well with lots of trees and owner-occupied properties. Wonder if these homeowners know they just hit the lottery? (I bet commercial landlords will raise rents too. No bargains on 3-bed units will be had at 7 High Rock Way.)
Committee Chairwoman Jeri Robinson […] added it was just a first step, though: “We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."
Maybe white parents will finally grow the cajones to send their kids to bps schools that aren't the Dante Alighieri, Eliot, Manning, Kilmer or Lyndon. Hopefully this will help to diversify the entire school system.
The superintendent's quote about making BPS an "anti-racist school district" is not good for the lawsuit. It publicly acknowledges their focus on race.
So the school committee and superintendent now admit they have failed the city’s children. Because giving priority to poorer neighborhoods says they have failed to help those kids attain equity with the rest of the city.
The best thing that BPS can do right now is stop busing and return to neighborhood schools.
One of the biggest factors working in favor of busing is that critics of busing always sound like crotchety old racists. There are never any details besides busing is bad so “end busing” — that’ll apparently fix everything.
What happens when all these 'B' average students end up at BLS and find the standards are written to an A-Student expectation. BLS is notoriously hard with lots of homework and exacting expectations. Will teachers be asked to 'dumb-down' the curriculum, or will they stick to their stablished pedagogy? If teachers don't change, its going to be pretty hard to get into Harvard with a C+ GPA, even if you are an economically disadvantaged person of color.
Kids can't rise to meet expectations, that they are pre-ordained to fail, their lives are failures and they will always be failures.
There's a word for prejudging an entire group like that. I'm sure you can figure it out.
In any case, as the parent of a relatively recent BLS graduate, I know first hand that BLS is no longer The Paper Chase Jr. Yes, it's demanding. But check the calendar: It's not 1985, John Houseman doesn't run the school and there are lots of resources to help kids work through academic problems - it's not the sink-or-swim pool you think it is.
BLS upper grade parent here- my kid has plenty of anecdotal stories of classmates who don't give a damn about excelling at the school and are there because their parents pushed hard to get them in. Those seats are better filled by someone else.
When I was at BLA from '84 to '90, the teachers could tell which "sixies" (seventh graders) would stay the entire six years and be excellent students, and which "sixies" would either flunk out and/or transfer because the workload was too much, or worse, get expelled. I ended up being a solid "B" student despite dislike for literature (especially outside and summer reading, where you were asked to read a novel and write essays about it).
The exam schools pride themselves on making work very challenging. I estimate that high rigor will not change as the teachers will stick to the current curriculum and expect students to keep up. Teachers will keep on throwing in pop quizzes, assign three to four hours of homework a day, and will refuse to water down standards to make others feel better.
If this fight to eliminate exams and other radical changes ends up with students attending for a few months, only to tread water and then transfer out to much less rigorous and demanding schools, all of these changes will be for naught.
"We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."
This sums it up. So much time and money and effort spent on the exam schools, the exam schools, the fucking exam schools, like it's impossible that we could possibly have any other decent high school in this city, so we must continue to tweak the standards for which small percent of the population will receive an education and which will be left out cold.
I remember a couple years ago when the Madison Park students ended up throwing a walkout because they'd gotten two weeks into the school year and didn't have goddamn school schedules. And people threw up their hands and hemmed and hawed and did not spend a tiny fraction of the effort this whole bullshit exam school debacle has taken to do anything about it. Or the violence at/surrounding English despite herculean efforts by the teachers, admins and students to raise their achievement numbers - imagine working so hard to push up two grade levels in 9 months and having to deal with gang violence and drug dealing teachers on your way in/out every day. Or the fact the West Roxbury school (you know, the one that west roxbury kids don't go to) was condemned as unsafe and shut down all of a sudden leaving those kids totally disrupted.
Where were the hours and hours of zoom meetings and votes and plans and shit there. Where were the tearful white hipsters standing up for what's right at the expense of their own kids there. Where was anybody. Should the exam schools be more equitable? Yes. Is this whole plan a fancy, liberal looking, braggable bandaid on a gushing wound? Yes. If there were more "good" schools in this city, nobody would give a fuck about the couple that you have to take a weird test for and also learn latin, because you could go to a good school that looks entirely at grades and focuses on deconstructed learning, or one with a portfolio requirement, or one where you come in and solve science puzzles and math games for a day to qualify and learn coding, or one where maybe you're just generally a B+ student with no particular passion but deserve a quality education at a normal goddamn school because this city has so much money and cannot get this figured the hell out.
From people on both sides of the issue. And School Committee members seemed to agree, calling on Cassellius to assemble similar task forces on other issues (with Madison Park being mentioned specifically).
The three exam schools get a lot less money per student than the rest of the BPS as a whole. Madison Park gets something like 50% more per student than BLS/BLA/O'Bryant.
The thing is, much of the value of the exam schools lies in the student body itself. A bunch of high-achieving kids tends to push each other to achieve more, and it also creates the demand for advanced courses which can't always be justified if only a few students are interested; i.e. something like AP German. That's a big part of why top-tier colleges are so valuable -- Harvard and MIT give exposure to a lot of other really bright students. The quality of instruction isn't necessarily better than UMass but you might end up doing a research project with a Nobel laureate.
With the exam schools and Metco you're not going to get many more "good" schools unless you can fix all the problems at home and in neighborhoods. The smart kids with engaged parents can all escape the morass that is the rest of BPS.
Of those running for Mayor, here are there commentaries on the matter from last night into today via Twitter:
Campbell: none. Just jabbing away at Janey on other things.
Wu: none. Talking rent control and environment
Janey: none. She went to the recommissioned fire station.
Essaibi-George: prior to the vote called out the fact that it seemed rushed and said they could wait for those school committee vacancies to be filled and a new mayor.
She's an Arroyo level hack, no wonder she got Felix's endorsement. I assume Consalvo is fully on board as well to make sure the gravy train keeps flowing.
"She [Essaibi-George] called the process hasty, noting that as it unfolded there were School Committee members who were missing, a mayor who was serving in an interim, acting capacity, and a 'school year of chaos and uncertainty.' "
A comment from someone who does not live in Boston, and in fact, lives far at the other end of the Marathon.
"A new Boston public schools report obtained by WGBH raises questions about kids entering Boston Latin School from private schools, especially Holy Name Parish School.
Last year the Catholic school in West Roxbury sent more students to Latin than any other private school, according to Boston public schools. Out of a class of 405, 43 — or 10 percent — of students came from Holy Name. Those 43 students make up the majority of the graduating class at Holy Name, which last year totaled 51 students.
And here’s the remarkable thing about Holy Name students: They get really good grades.
Sixty-nine percent of the students applying from Holy Name last year had A plus averages, according to the Exam School Enrollment Data Group report.
Compare that to the students applying from public schools with the best track records of getting into Latin. Only 22 percent of those students had those kinds of grades."
contains too many errors to be accurate enough for deaf and hard of hearing users. And also because ASL is a separate language as the other poster mentioned.
Comments
Important that test is aligned with curriculum
Whatever the merits or deficits of this plan, it's a very important step having the exam aligned with the public school curriculum. Even (especially) if they were only using test scores, it's unconscionable to have an entry exam that puts BPS students at a disadvantage because they aren't taught the subject matter.
Agreed...
But the fact is that in February 2020, BPS had already ditched the ISEE in favor of the currently-adopted MAP exam, by refusing to extend the city's contract with the test vendor.
In other words, this plan is fundamentally not about aligning the exam with the curriculum. Instead, it does several things that significantly change what "exam school" means.
First, it significantly waters down the role of an exam, shifting it from 50% to 30% of an applicant's score. Given that students will have not one, but two, chances to take the exam, with the higher score counted, it seems unclear why the reduction is necessary -- unless, of course, one believes in CRT and anti-racist thought, which argue that standardized exams are fundamentally racist (although, in that case, the very fact that BPS is still calling them "exam schools" and is still administering an entry exam would be racially discriminatory).
Second, it adds points based on seemingly arbitrary indicators. For example, the 40% cut-off for economically-disadvantaged students at the applicant's fifth-grade school was previously presented to the public as 50%, and got changed with little rationale or advance notice. Among others, this change benefited some of the white parents who spoke out in favor of the tiers plan (e.g. the wealthy JP kids attending the Curley are now eligible for the 10-point bonus) -- but where are the accusations of backroom dealing now? Similarly, the 15-point bonus for BHA students may have some merit, but it excludes equally-disadvantaged students living in low-income non-BHA housing, such as Section 8 voucher recipients and tenants of housing that is owned/operated by community-based nonprofits (Mission Park, Castle Square, Villa Victoria, etc).
Finally, and most significantly, it seems to be driven by some desire for racial balancing, judging by the task force's work. As the group worked through different proposals, it constantly reviewed the racial data associated with the projected outcomes, presumably to see if it would be satisfactory. A truly race-neutral group would not give so much explicit attention to race, and would instead use only socioeconomic and geographic data to evaluate whether a proposal would meet the desired outcome of ensuring citywide access. The task force's charge of "increasing racial diversity" is also suspect, given that nationally (e.g. San Francisco's Lowell High, Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson), such language has recently been used to significantly reduce Asian-American representation -- something that is also projected to happen under this plan.
Yes, I agree that it's important to align the exam with the curriculum, but that's simply not what this plan does...
I Could Not Have Said That Better
And I AM the JP parent who will get two advantages. Living in Tier 5 and attending the Curley - we don't need either! The plan is capricious and arbitrary! THANK YOU!
This actually looks like
This actually looks like opportunity!
Good Luck to the Best and Brightest of Boston!
Yes, an opportunity...
For gentrification, in which wealthy white parents -- the same demographic that kept praising this tiered plan -- will move into "better" census tracts. They'll also send their children to disadvantaged schools, which is fine and dandy, but they'll do it only for 5th grade to game the system.
For whom does it not look like opportunity? The low-income, first-generation immigrant children of Chinatown, who were systematically oppressed by the racial quota system that BPS previously used for exam-school admissions, but will be seeing a sharp drop in the number of available exam-school seats under this plan. Today, they are also the only children in the entire city to not have a permanent library branch in their neighborhood, in addition to having to go to school next to the Mass Pike and the Commuter Rail (both JQS and JQUS look over the trench) and facing some of the worst pollution in the state...
Home values are sky high!
Please, finally, all you people sticking around Boston for BLS, hit the bricks! You’re the same people holding West Roxbury back from joining this century. Go, bye bye, let’s see those for sale signs. Medfield is lovely, I hear.
As Heard In 2027 - Where's The Tax Revenue For the Schools?
It is in Medfield, Hingham, Lynnfield, Walpole, Brookline, Newton, and Norwell.
Be careful what you wish for as your too stupid to get into Latin Anon arse wants. Declining property taxes means higher rents for renters and lower city services. I lived through blight and all that "grit" of the 70's and 80's. It sucked.
In the war in Algeria against the French, the FLN went after not only the occupying French, but the Algerian moderates, thereby destroying the middle class. Hence, Algeria consumed itself. That is what this vote does.
In Cuba, the "vanguard elite" went after the rich and the middle class. They went to Florida. Cuba has been a dump, a dump with free health care, but still a dump for 60 years.
I guess you want dump. Don't come calling to my now suburban self for a bailout in 10 years. I'll be funding the music and arts program at my local high school.
what. just happened here..
from a decision on exam school admissions to ... the Cuban revolution and somehow managing to disparage the Algerian liberation movement.
okay..
Cool story bro
Will you stop posting on UHub then?
No
Go back to Connecticut.
Awww
We are all disappointed. We imagined you'd go crawl up Geoff Diehl's butt and stay there.
That's Your Fantasy For Yourself I Guess
Mine is for a stable middle class in Boston and suburbs to control the Sandalistas and the Trumpies from their extreme ideas.
I guess yours are more loser Nazi sexual fetishes in nature. Seek help.
Just go
Put your real estate equity where your mouth is. Go be a "stable middle class" in some suburb somewhere.
Or are you just flapping your gums? Clinging desperately to your last scraps of privilege? Outside 128, nobody cares if you went to BLS, and that scares you?
I like Boston, I'm here to say, and I think the new plan for assignment to BPS' selective high schools is good.
Next step, in my book, is a hub regional Math/Science magnet. None of BPS' selective high schools is up to that job, and we probably don't even have the student base to support one in just Boston.
Sure Thing Geoff Diehl Sexual Fantasy Loser
I'll get right on that.
Go away
Nobody wants you here
Speaking Of Rent
Looks like I am living right in your head rent free.
Don’t jump the gun
You can’t move out of your mom’s basement quite yet.
Wow
Reached way back in the cortex for that one, didn't you?
So, did you write for Rickles or Bill Hicks?
O'Bryant?
Although it is more commonly the 3rd choice BPS exam school, O'Bryant is ostensibly science/math focused. What makes you think it is not "up to that job," and/or why can't Boston support one? Aren't those two ideas somewhat contradictory?
Spot on - Watch the working middle-class flee
This vote only serves to further hollow-out hard working middle class families forcing them to leave Boston Public Schools. The richest will stay and continue to pay for elite private schools. The ranks of parochial schools will swell with kids from White, Asian, Black, and Latino families that have 2-income households and can afford modest tuition. Tripledeckers in nice parts of Dorchester (and elsewhere) will turn into investor-owned rentals for 20-something biotech workers along the Red Line. The tax revenue will remain, but continue to be squandered by an ineffective (and racist) school committee. And the BPS schools will wonder why they no longer have active parent associations and have run out of community-based funding.
Declining property taxes
That’s rich, buddy. I’m so glad you brought the ultimate west Roxbury ignorant take. These people, and it sounds like you are one of them, have this idea they’re somehow driving the demand to live in the outer neighborhoods of Boston, and when they pull up stakes it’ll be a blow to the area. The housing market has so very little do with demand for seats at Latin. It probably did in 1997. Today it’s proximity to high paying jobs, nice houses, at prices lower than Newton. Nobody is moving to West Roxbury because of BLS. It’s a nice benefit if your kid gets in, but the people that moved to my street in the last decade want a backyard within range of their biotech or software jobs.
More over, these very smart and successful people mostly send their kids to BPS. Bright, confident people that want to be part of a community, not just suck a seat at Latin off of it. They aren’t scared to send their kids to BPS like so many West Roxbury natives. It’s a bunch of realtors and cops that fill up holy name and st. Theresa’s because they’re scared of the world and don’t know how to navigate it besides clinging to some playbook that’ll get their kid into BLS.
So no, those people leaving won’t hurt West Roxbury. Smarter, less bigoted people will buy their houses. And there is plenty of money in Boston to fund schools. That’s a choice and we need to elect leaders that want to make it. We pay a pittance in real estate taxes with the residential exemption.
Hey Gaffin
How many Anons are you going to let in?
How many are you going to let in spouting quasi-racist propaganda?
How many are you going to let in that can't capitalize proper nouns?
OK, I'll bite
what specifically is 'quasi-racist propaganda' about 'mont's comment?
West Roxbury elitist isn't a race, it's a lifestyle choice.
Thanks, Mont
We need more comments from sensible people to drown out the likes of Johnny C.
Census tracts
Let the
gentrificationresidential desegregation begin!I expect many families will find out what tract they are in, and what its tier is, in short order.
I wonder if real estate listings will include tract tier. "Tier 1 fixer-upper with great bones. Bring your contractor and your imagination. Tract 812 is close to good transportation and restaurants."
https://bostonopendata-boston.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/4a8eb4fb3be44...
No one will do that
If anyone were going to bother to do that, they'd just move to a suburb where they don't have to worry about this
they want schools where all
Ensure educational equity across Boston and do away with the exam schools. Desegregate the education process.
Sooooo
Look at that tier 2 spot in Allston/Brighton. That would be a good spot for anyone who wants to get into BLS. I am sure you can find some other gems.
Census Tract 6.02
Bounded by Washington St., Cambridge St., Comm Ave., Allston St., and Brighton Ave.
Basically, from St. Elizabeths over to Koreatown.
Not a lot of single-family homes in that census tract.
Includes the lovely Ringer Park.
Gem? You be the judge.
Imrie Rd.
Imrie Rd. looks like a solid gem. Some "good bones" houses on High Rock Way as well with lots of trees and owner-occupied properties. Wonder if these homeowners know they just hit the lottery? (I bet commercial landlords will raise rents too. No bargains on 3-bed units will be had at 7 High Rock Way.)
Naw man
Buy the single-family at 34 Ridgemont. Way underpriced now. Fun parties there back in the day.
http://www.alienlanding.org
Does alien landing still
Does alien landing still exist? It looks like it's under new ownership.
Naw
That’s been over for years. But the internet is forever
This quote
Committee Chairwoman Jeri Robinson […] added it was just a first step, though: “We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."
Can’t wait for the board to get to work on this.
Maybe white parents will
Maybe white parents will finally grow the cajones to send their kids to bps schools that aren't the Dante Alighieri, Eliot, Manning, Kilmer or Lyndon. Hopefully this will help to diversify the entire school system.
The superintendent's quote
The superintendent's quote about making BPS an "anti-racist school district" is not good for the lawsuit. It publicly acknowledges their focus on race.
BPS failure
So the school committee and superintendent now admit they have failed the city’s children. Because giving priority to poorer neighborhoods says they have failed to help those kids attain equity with the rest of the city.
The best thing that BPS can do right now is stop busing and return to neighborhood schools.
Score one for busing
One of the biggest factors working in favor of busing is that critics of busing always sound like crotchety old racists. There are never any details besides busing is bad so “end busing” — that’ll apparently fix everything.
Move. To. Hingham.
Busing is 10% of our $1.3B + budget.
The waste of so many millions for non-educational time makes its own argument against busing. That plus the thousands of unsupervised hours for kids.
because
ignoring "race" as a concept is a surefire way to perpetuate racism.
but you knew that.
Are teachers on board?
What happens when all these 'B' average students end up at BLS and find the standards are written to an A-Student expectation. BLS is notoriously hard with lots of homework and exacting expectations. Will teachers be asked to 'dumb-down' the curriculum, or will they stick to their stablished pedagogy? If teachers don't change, its going to be pretty hard to get into Harvard with a C+ GPA, even if you are an economically disadvantaged person of color.
So what you're saying is ...
Kids can't rise to meet expectations, that they are pre-ordained to fail, their lives are failures and they will always be failures.
There's a word for prejudging an entire group like that. I'm sure you can figure it out.
In any case, as the parent of a relatively recent BLS graduate, I know first hand that BLS is no longer The Paper Chase Jr. Yes, it's demanding. But check the calendar: It's not 1985, John Houseman doesn't run the school and there are lots of resources to help kids work through academic problems - it's not the sink-or-swim pool you think it is.
Co-sign
BLS upper grade parent here- my kid has plenty of anecdotal stories of classmates who don't give a damn about excelling at the school and are there because their parents pushed hard to get them in. Those seats are better filled by someone else.
Maybe, maybe not
When I was at BLA from '84 to '90, the teachers could tell which "sixies" (seventh graders) would stay the entire six years and be excellent students, and which "sixies" would either flunk out and/or transfer because the workload was too much, or worse, get expelled. I ended up being a solid "B" student despite dislike for literature (especially outside and summer reading, where you were asked to read a novel and write essays about it).
The exam schools pride themselves on making work very challenging. I estimate that high rigor will not change as the teachers will stick to the current curriculum and expect students to keep up. Teachers will keep on throwing in pop quizzes, assign three to four hours of homework a day, and will refuse to water down standards to make others feel better.
If this fight to eliminate exams and other radical changes ends up with students attending for a few months, only to tread water and then transfer out to much less rigorous and demanding schools, all of these changes will be for naught.
Titanic Deckchairs
"We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."
This sums it up. So much time and money and effort spent on the exam schools, the exam schools, the fucking exam schools, like it's impossible that we could possibly have any other decent high school in this city, so we must continue to tweak the standards for which small percent of the population will receive an education and which will be left out cold.
I remember a couple years ago when the Madison Park students ended up throwing a walkout because they'd gotten two weeks into the school year and didn't have goddamn school schedules. And people threw up their hands and hemmed and hawed and did not spend a tiny fraction of the effort this whole bullshit exam school debacle has taken to do anything about it. Or the violence at/surrounding English despite herculean efforts by the teachers, admins and students to raise their achievement numbers - imagine working so hard to push up two grade levels in 9 months and having to deal with gang violence and drug dealing teachers on your way in/out every day. Or the fact the West Roxbury school (you know, the one that west roxbury kids don't go to) was condemned as unsafe and shut down all of a sudden leaving those kids totally disrupted.
Where were the hours and hours of zoom meetings and votes and plans and shit there. Where were the tearful white hipsters standing up for what's right at the expense of their own kids there. Where was anybody. Should the exam schools be more equitable? Yes. Is this whole plan a fancy, liberal looking, braggable bandaid on a gushing wound? Yes. If there were more "good" schools in this city, nobody would give a fuck about the couple that you have to take a weird test for and also learn latin, because you could go to a good school that looks entirely at grades and focuses on deconstructed learning, or one with a portfolio requirement, or one where you come in and solve science puzzles and math games for a day to qualify and learn coding, or one where maybe you're just generally a B+ student with no particular passion but deserve a quality education at a normal goddamn school because this city has so much money and cannot get this figured the hell out.
And that came up repeatedly last night
From people on both sides of the issue. And School Committee members seemed to agree, calling on Cassellius to assemble similar task forces on other issues (with Madison Park being mentioned specifically).
Task forces
Are basically a way to kick issues down the road and make them someone else's problem.
The exam schools don't get much money
The three exam schools get a lot less money per student than the rest of the BPS as a whole. Madison Park gets something like 50% more per student than BLS/BLA/O'Bryant.
The thing is, much of the value of the exam schools lies in the student body itself. A bunch of high-achieving kids tends to push each other to achieve more, and it also creates the demand for advanced courses which can't always be justified if only a few students are interested; i.e. something like AP German. That's a big part of why top-tier colleges are so valuable -- Harvard and MIT give exposure to a lot of other really bright students. The quality of instruction isn't necessarily better than UMass but you might end up doing a research project with a Nobel laureate.
With the exam schools and Metco you're not going to get many more "good" schools unless you can fix all the problems at home and in neighborhoods. The smart kids with engaged parents can all escape the morass that is the rest of BPS.
But the most intriguing part
Of those running for Mayor, here are there commentaries on the matter from last night into today via Twitter:
Campbell: none. Just jabbing away at Janey on other things.
Wu: none. Talking rent control and environment
Janey: none. She went to the recommissioned fire station.
Essaibi-George: prior to the vote called out the fact that it seemed rushed and said they could wait for those school committee vacancies to be filled and a new mayor.
Janey was too busy getting her swag shop running
She's an Arroyo level hack, no wonder she got Felix's endorsement. I assume Consalvo is fully on board as well to make sure the gravy train keeps flowing.
Essaibi-George quote
From the Globe:
"She [Essaibi-George] called the process hasty, noting that as it unfolded there were School Committee members who were missing, a mayor who was serving in an interim, acting capacity, and a 'school year of chaos and uncertainty.' "
A comment from someone who does not live in Boston, and in fact, lives far at the other end of the Marathon.
The mayor is the mayor, acting or not.
All mayors are "interim" mayors.
There will be a 2nd
There will be a 2nd collection this weekend at each Holy Scam Mass to benefit the parish school whose side grift has ended.
Ah Yes!
Anti-Catholicism presented above.
Gaffin - Are you going to allow this open religious hate?
Untwist your panties John
Not anti-Catholic hate John.
A religious institution that engages in a long-time scam to benefit itself and a chosen few deserves to be called out.
It would be politically unfathomable but where is the AG's or DA's investigation into this long-time, ongoing scam?
ps. Or maybe the Cardinal.
You Are Mocking Religious Rituals and Their Operations
You are a hater.
I guess it is open season on anything here.
Stow it loser.
Born at St. Margaret's
Baptized at St. Leo's
First Communion St Leo's
Confirmed St Mary's
Married St. Peter's
I am disgusted by the actions of the parish and school leadership.
Is this a scam you approve of John?
John, I'm not really sure
John, I'm not really sure that reaches the level of "hate" but I'm not an expert in these things.
Holy Scam Mass?
It's hate.
So you approve of the scam
John,
So you approve of the school's scam.
Is this what we should be teaching our children?
-Cheat to get ahead.
-It won't matter if you don't get caught.
-Everyone is doing it.
That's not what the nuns taught me.
I didn't go to BLS but I know a fraud when I see one.
"A new Boston public schools
"A new Boston public schools report obtained by WGBH raises questions about kids entering Boston Latin School from private schools, especially Holy Name Parish School.
Last year the Catholic school in West Roxbury sent more students to Latin than any other private school, according to Boston public schools. Out of a class of 405, 43 — or 10 percent — of students came from Holy Name. Those 43 students make up the majority of the graduating class at Holy Name, which last year totaled 51 students.
And here’s the remarkable thing about Holy Name students: They get really good grades.
Sixty-nine percent of the students applying from Holy Name last year had A plus averages, according to the Exam School Enrollment Data Group report.
Compare that to the students applying from public schools with the best track records of getting into Latin. Only 22 percent of those students had those kinds of grades."
https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017/09/05/local-news/boston-public-school-stu...
Anyone ever find….
A racial breakdown of those Holy Name students who get into BLS?
OK but can we get some love
for "Timer"
on that topic, why hire an
on that topic, why hire an ASL interpreter for these meetings when Zoom does a decent job of automatic transcription?
Because
ASL is a different language from written or spoken English, and it's many BPS students', teachers', and parents' primary language.
Because automatic captioning
contains too many errors to be accurate enough for deaf and hard of hearing users. And also because ASL is a separate language as the other poster mentioned.