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Twenty years of BPS history

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 parents debated school re-opening, Exam School admissions, and elementary Advanced Work Programs on social media (and, of course, as I prepared to send my son into the free pre-kindergarten year BPS lottery. Probably more on this later too...)

School reform and change is incredibly complicated (which is probably why a lot of education writers focus on one school at a time). Every time I talked to BPS parents, I felt at sea in an ocean of facts, dates, events and school names. I wanted to get a handle on this history before showing off my ignorance (and what do I love more than a new research project), so I decided to try to make a timeline of the last twenty years in Boston. I was also in search of narrative. Without exception, every single parent I talked to harbored enormous amounts of frustration towards the Boston Public Schools (even if they liked their kid's school). I also knew that our budgeting process left some schools underfunded, underfilled, and labeled "underperforming" (or in the opposite order). So what was going on? Why did we have disparities between schools? Why did some schools have such low scores? Were we failing our kids - and if so, how, or which ones? 

In any event... here is my work in progress: 20+ years in BPS. To be totally honest, this is a slant view. I don't catalogue the schools that were built or opened as carefully as I counted the ones that closed. I don't chart our increasing graduation rates, or, I suppose, test scores. But what I did find was a system that was obsessed with the idea that some schools were failing - and that those "failing schools" became the enemy. Turned around, shut down, taken over, reconfigured, renamed, reopened as pilots, charters, in-district charters, innovation schools, small academies - the churn and change was constant. But was the view worth the climb? Was the disruption worth it? I'm not sure anyone has really answered these questions yet. But I think it's worth asking. Check out what I've got so far on the last twenty years of BPS history (stay tuned - if I get more energy I may add school openings, new buildings, etc.)

20 Years in BPS Timeline





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