The Patriot-Bridge in Charlestown, home to Charlestown High School, which Eliot School parents want to remake as an innovation school reports that parents are now upset because of a BPS plan to penalize their kids 10 points on their GPAs to try to level exam-school admissions across the entire BPS district. Read more.
School Committee members discussing the new plan.
The Boston School Committee today unanimously approved a new policy for admissions to the city's three exam schools that relies less on a test and more on grades - and on socioeconomic data that will benefit students in public housing, are homeless or attend schools with a high number of poor families. Read more.
A School Committee lawyer argued today that leaving out the "Westie whites" exchange from text messages handed over to the Globe and a woman who turned out to be a secret member of the parents group suing over exam-school admissions was an innocent mistake, not part of some nefarious scheme to hide racial hatred by School Committee members. Read more.
The group representing mainly West Roxbury parents that sought to put the exam back in exam schools for the coming school year is asking a federal judge to reopen its case because of "clear racial motivation and anti-White racism" on the part of two School Committee members in text messages exchanged over the course of a nine-hour meeting on what to do about the Covid-19-forced cancellation of exams. Read more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The company that writes the ISEE exam that BPS has long used to help figure out who to invite to attend exam schools and BPS administrators are exchanging exclamations of "You can't quit me! I quit you first!" today. Read more.
City Councilors Andrea Campbell (Dorchester) and Kim Janey (Roxbury) want to look at ways to increase black and Latino enrollment at the city's three exam schools - including possibly replacing scores from the ISEE exam now used to help determine entrance with results from MCAS tests. Read more.
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