Skip to main content

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





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rating and Testing Part II: Could it Be Poverty Itself?

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rating and testing Part III: So....what about those test scores?

 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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more