Rating and testing Part I: "failing schools"

 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 the tumult and educational disruption caused by these tests, are they helping us educate our kids better? Are our kids actually failing?

And while we may want some way of evaluating our schools, are MCAS scores the best way to find out? 

One thing that remains incredibly consistent in the research on standardized testing is that low-income students score lower on them. In fact, there's research that has found that income can predict a test-taker's level of performance with 70% accuracy. A question that is more hotly debated is why.

For at least the last twenty years, the thesis of many prominent education reformers like Bill Gates has been that this reflect schools, and more specifically, teachers. This impact of this reform has been an enormous push to rank and sort schools, create a market-based school choice system where parents can "vote with their feet," and close "underperforming" schools, and strategies to undercut teachers unions to fire what are termed as "underperforming" teachers. While it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to assess what is going on at a school and how well it is serving students, it also seems important to point out the amount of upheaval and educational disruption this has caused for decades of students. Disbanding communities of teachers, closing schools, pulling funding away from "low-performing" schools and the students they contain - we should all be asking - is there a net benefit to this? Was the view worth the climb? 

In the context of looking at costs and benefits, it's also important to ask a more fundamental question: Is this thesis correct - that some schools are "underperforming" and teachers and schools to blame? That standardized tests are the best way to give parents an "apples to apples" way to learn how well schools are educating their children?  And, of course, that getting rid of teachers/schools with low scores is the best way to improve education. In this series of blog posts, I'm going to try to tackle these questions one at at time. 

Let's start out by giving part of this thesis its due by looking at some data. Could it be that low-income students are doing poorly because of the schools they are in? 

We're going to leave aside the question of the quality of instruction for the moment, because that is complex and hard to measure. We'll get there, but for now let's look at something more concrete: resources and facilities. On this, we do have some numbers: we've already seen that school closures have disproportionately impacted the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. A rough crowdsourced estimate found that 40% of BPS students lacked access to libraries, and over half of all BPS K-8 students don't have a science lab. This is especially troubling in the high schools, where all of our selective, disproportionately white exam schools have libraries and library staff, but "one-third of the students in other BPS high schools do not have library staff" (Schoolyard News). This is not a great way to put all of our students on equal footing. 

Race and income certainly don't always mean the same thing, but in this country poor students are disproportionately Black, and Black students are disproportionately poor in a city where the racial wealth gap is $247,00 to $8 between Whites and Blacks. Racial disparities and income-based disparities will mirror each other here. So when the Boston Teachers Union's survey from March this year finds that inclusion classrooms for special needs students are more likely to have the suggested two specialists the more white students they have, you can imagine that will also track with student income. 

Finally, some schools - particularly those with wealthier parent populations - benefit from parents' private donations to the school. Sometimes this amounts to thousands of dollars per pupil more per year. But about 50% of BPS students attend schools where there is $100 or less of private fundraising.

Nationwide, disadvantaged students are more likely to be in underfunded schools, to have less access to AP courses and less experienced and less qualified teachers, and less likely to be offered challenging, grade-appropriate work in their classes. These dynamics are certainly at play in Boston as well. 

So, could it be that differences in funding and resources are impacting students' ability to learn? Absolutely. Does this support what I'll call for shorthand the Bill Gates theory of school change? Eh, no, because it asks us to look beyond management at the material resources a school has.  Should we talk about resolving disparities in resources before we talk about comparing schools? Absolutely. Should we immediately end any system whose impact is to pull resources away from low-income students? Yes, yes, and yes. 

 But... are school resources the thing we should be looking at to answer the question of why low-income kids score lower? Read on to find out.

Next up: Scores, rating and testing Part II: Could it be poverty itself? 

Sources: 

• A Billion in the Bank, Cuts in our Schools: BPS Funding Explained (Schoolyard News)
• BuildBPS Stakeholders find gaping holes in the BPS budget (Schoolyard News)
• That was no typo: The median net worth of black Bostonians really is $8 (The Boston Globe)
• QUEST documents huge inequities in private donations to BPS schools (Schoolyard News)
• Twenty years of disruption in Boston's public schools (The Bay State Banner)
• Opportunity Gap - Overview (the Schott Foundation)
• Increasing Diversity in Boston’s Exam Schools

• The Predictive Influence of Family and Community Demographic Variables on Grade 7 Student Achievement in Language Arts and Mathematics
• The Influence of Socioeconomic, Parental and District Factors on the 2013 MCAS Grade 4 Language Arts and Mathematics Scores