All Together Now

 Apparently, the city of Boston is getting $400 million in federal relief for its schools in the near future. Debate rages among parents - should we spend it on art programs? Middle school sports? How can we plan for such a large amount of spending?  I, of course, think we should spend it on equity. Here's an idea: $150 million for funding long-term positions where they are most needed: teachers in inclusion classrooms and AP classes in non-exam high schools, librarians, counselors, etc. And let's fund them for 10-20 years, not just one year.  $100 million for deferred maintenance. Let's fix up our buildings today so that we can pay for teachers, books and innovative programs tomorrow. Fix leaky roofs, rebuild when needed - let's not lose any more buildings because we failed to take care of them! $25 million split among all Boston schools. Or divided on a per-pupil basis. Either way, give some "play money" equally to each school to decide what they want to do...

Image source:  MPCA photos     Honestly, I don't know. Ok, OK, I know a few things.... We need to be truthful about standardized tests. We need to talk often and publicly about their limitations, their built-in discrimination against poor kids, and what they can and can't measure.  We need to stop using standardized tests as the primary way we measure, and talk about, the quality of teaching and learning in schools.  We need to get serious about equity. Whether or not a school gets resources should not be left up to haphazard grant-writing, parent contributions, or a "market-driven" funding formula. We need a new way to budget money for schools - one that provides at the very least a baseline budget for every school - but more likely we need to let go of market-driven approaches. Equity doesn't mean that everyone gets the same, it means that everyone gets what they need. Kids are not a product and schools are not a business - as long as there are kids in th...

 In the first two posts in this series, we talked about about two factors that might influence student scores: school resources and student family income . Now we're going to tackle a key cornerstone of modern school reform: standardized testing.  If you recall, the theory of the case of school reformers is that standardized tests will provide parents with a way to compare schools, and then make an informed decision about where to send their kids. In this post we're going to look at standardized testing.  A lot of the complaints about standardized testing are about its effects on teaching and learning. Opponents of high-stakes standardized testing will argue that it only measures a limited range of skills, in a way that doesn't necessarily reflect a student's true talents. They may argue that it doesn't measure crucial skills like creativity, problem-solving or leadership, that resources devoted to ELA/math test prep crowd out other subjects like science or social ...

This is the second article in a series. See Part I . I think the next question we need to ask ourselves is: is there something about poverty itself that interferes with learning?  There are many pop-psychology explanations of why poor kids do worse in school: poor kids don't do as well as rich kids because their parents are too busy to help them (or not well-educated enough), or that  they don't have access to enrichment activities . These are the more generous ones. Others simply lean on negative stereotypes about low-income families: they don't value education, they are trapped in a culture of poverty, or, my personal favorite, the debunked theory that they simply don't talk to their kids enough (the "word gap theory" [insert eye roll here].  So let's unpack some of these a little. First off, let's just knock off the beating up on families of low-income kids. Yes, parents may be busy but poor and/or marginalized families care just as much, if not mo...

 I think one of the biggest takeaways from making the BPS timeline is how much test scores matter. Our state test - the MCAS - plays a majority role in a school's ranking (Tier 1, 2, 3, or 4),  or if it is turned over to state receivership (State level 5). It determines if a school is labeled "underperforming," which, given our current budget allocation where money follows students , can mean decreased funding if parents choose to send their students elsewhere (which, of course, can mean decreased resources for the remaining students, which can mean decreased scores, lower ratings, fewer students, etc., etc. etc. until it closes or is put in receivership).  At the very least, it can lead to parents typing away in frustration on social media, "These schools are failing our students!" Some would say they have led to over 70% of BPS schools being moved, closed, reformulated or otherwise disrupted in the past 20 years . I think it's worth it to ask: given all th...

It started out as an innocent question on Twitter...I was talking to BPS teacher Neema Avashia about her role in getting her middle school moved (and not closed). She mentioned that the district had just announced that another middle school was closing (scattering the students and staff). So I mentioned that I was having trouble finding closed BPS schools. Well, with a big network of OG educators, they fixed that...Check out the ensuing Twitter conversation  (also below)...anyhoo, it resulted in Boston Latin Academy teacher José Valenzuela putting the information into a spreadsheet, where he found that 70% of BPS schools had been closed, moved, merged, etc. since '02.  Years ago I'd heard that closings had disproportionately affected Boston's poor neighborhoods. I needed to see if this was true, so I made a copy of the spreadsheet and added dates and neighborhood to the closures (still trying to get a handle on the history). I added the dates to the timeline, but t...

This spring I read  Eve Ewing's Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side , and became curious about Boston's history in terms of school closures - or as Ewing describes it, of the impacts of neoliberal education policies. I had known about McCormack Middle School and the valiant students and teachers there that fought their school closure, but I figured there must be more (spoiler alert: there were . Many, many more).  So why was I reading Ghosts in the Schoolyard? In the summer of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I listened to Chana Jaffe-Walt's Nice White Parent's podcast. Her thesis? That the single biggest barrier to school equity was the hurricane force she called  "Nice White Parents."  Plenty to say about that, but for now let's just say it drove me to want to figure out how to take a different, less destructive route. I started trying to learn what I could about Boston Public Schools - especially as paren...

  Hi y'all. Welcome to the All Together Now Blog. I am a mom, former UMass Boston critical reading and writing instructor and executive function coach, currently an instructional designer and online learning coach, White, queer lady, lover of fantasy and YA fiction, gardening, the great outdoors, and all around teaching and learning nerd. I like to ask big questions and then try to figure out the answers - sometimes with semi-obsessive deep dives. These last few years I've dug in deep on educational equity. As a teacher I was enthralled by trying to figure out how to support my students, almost all of whom fell into at least one of these categories: immigrants, first generation college students, English language learners, students with disabilities, low-income students, or students who  struggled with academic reading and writing. I found Universal Design for Learning   to be an amazing addition to my practice.  In 2018 I left teaching for MIT's Teaching Systems Lab ...