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What if Boston exam schools were limited to BPS students?

Parent Imperfect notes that that recent report on unequal treatment of black and Latino boys in BPS proposes limiting admission to the three exam schools to kids who were in BPS in grades 5 and 6 - which would mean no more students from private or parochial schools or among kids whose parents moved to Boston in the year before the ISEE exams.

The goal would be to make the student composition of the exam schools more closely reflect the composition of the BPS, as a whole. I’ve seen proposals like this before (even made some), but at least in my memory, I’ve not seen a proposal like either of these in a document endorsed by the BPS.

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We can't have people being unequal now, can we? All children must be equally above-average. Therefore, all classes must be Advanced Work Classes. We must not stop until students at Boston Latin are equally above-average with the rest of BPS students.

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Harrison Bergeron indeed. Or, to go a century earlier than Vonnegut, we have Gilbert and Sullivan in The Gondoliers (well, just Gilbert for these words): "When everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody."

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So you think that those who already have an economic advantage and can afford private schools should be able to save money by moving to Boston for a year and putting their kids in a school intended for Boston residents?

If you can afford a private school, you shouldn't take the spot at an exam school from a child who really needs it.

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The main issue this report is trying to address is the fact that that minority boys are a lower proportion of the BLS population than in the rest of BPS. These kids aren't almost making it into BLS and getting bumped by some Newton migrant.

The issue of kids moving into the city for four years is a minor one compared to the overall issues of getting these city kids educated without any real home support. Keeping out 10-20 kids from the burbs isn't going to magically reverse decades of problems caused by societal failures.

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on schools and education, and we do, why are they still so bad, at least at the HS level? Many private, including parochial, schools, spend LESS per student vs BPS.

And some people who think so highly of public schools in Boston should ask themselves why many people, including those who are not 'rich', of all racial / ethnic backgrounds, send their kids to private schools.

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The schools you laud for spending less generally aren't dealing with the same population. Get back to us when those schools have the same proportion of SPED and ESL kids.

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The additional $ BPS spends on sped/ESL does not account for the vast difference between bps and most of its suburban counterparts. 10- 20% premium perhaps but BPS can have a 30-50% spending advantage over many districts.

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At least not until you can post data to back your claim that it is an insignificant issue. You can then look at bussing as another reason for greater per student cost. You can always find a reason to critique one cost or another, but fundamentally, it's a harder and more expensive population to educate than, say Sudbury.

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The state's foundation budget is supposed to do exactly this - determine how expensive it is to educate the students in any given school district, taking into account student need and cost of living (it's more expensive to pay employees in Boston than in many other parts of the state).

Statewide, the per-pupil foundation budget is somewhere around $10,350. In Boston, it's $12,376. To pick a few nearby places (including Sudbury, since HenryAlan mentioned it), we see the following per-pupil foundation budgets:

  • Newton: $9,745
  • Sudbury: $8,837
  • Dedham: $9,930
  • Quincy: $11,575

Last time I checked Boston had the highest per-pupil foundation budget in the state.

So how does Boston's net school spending (the amount of money the city spends on actual education costs, omitting costs like transportation) rank when considered as a percentage of the foundation budget? Boston spends about 18% above its foundation budget, which is right around the statewide average, but well below the median among all cities and towns - going by this metric Boston was 146th out of 231 municipalities that were reported.

If, instead of net school spending, you look at total school spending as a percentage of the foundation budget, Boston jumps above both the statewide median and mean. We're at 62% above foundation, compared to an average of about 45% statewide, putting us 74th out of 231 cities.

In other words, when you take the cost of educating the student population into account, Boston has a healthy budget, but we're still being outspent by a good number of school districts in the state. And, yes, we would do well to reduce BPS's non-educational costs.

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Those who live in Boston and have paid taxes here for decades should not see their qualifying children shut out of the exam schools because they had and chose other options besides the elementary school assigned to them in the lottery. Telling the quarter of the children in Boston who don't attend BPS that they aren't allowed to access the exam schools because they haven't suffered sufficiently is preposterous and counter-productive. Looking at public schools, including exam schools, as if they are something that only poor people should have access to - like welfare - is an even surer way to destroy them than those we've already tried.

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Obviously BC High / St. John's /etc enrollment would probably increase and exam school achievement would probably decrease, per capita income of Boston would probably decrease as well.

History in Boston shows that people aren't realistically going to sacrifice their children's education for anyone else's social goals. If you were an economist, you could probably use some survey of SAT scores, school tuition expenses, commuting expenses and housing expenses to put a dollar figure on how many dollars people believe a point on the SAT is worth.

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When the racial makeup of Boston Latin resembles that of the rest of the system, we'll know we've won.

That's not a moving target at all.

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When the racial makeup of Boston Latin resembles that of the rest of the system, we'll know we've won.

We'll know that who has won what?

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The special prize for being most equal: a complete lack of distinction.

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How about making all the BPS schools good enough to produce students capable of testing into Latin instead? Or making all the BPS schools as good as Latin in the first place?

Nah! That would require firing tons of deadwood administrators and incompetent teachers along with getting rid of feel good policies which allow a small number of disruptive to downright criminal kids dragging down the vast majority of their classmates.

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It's not possible for all schools to be as good as Latin. Not all students are created equal, and that's not just a result of which school they attend or which teacher they have in 4th grade. I agree with the goal of improving schools. But let's not delude ourselves by claiming all are equally suited to achieve at the highest level. At 44 I still maintain meager hopes for a career in major league baseball, but my failure to make it has nothing to do with coaching failures in my youth.

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I think I'll write Marty a letter.

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The only requirement that might stick (and that's a big "might") is to have been enrolled in the city's schools in order to take the exam.

If you're resident in the city, especially if you're a property owner in the city, you have a right to city services, and discriminating against new arrivals -- who will have lawyers -- isn't going to work.

Discriminating against someone who paid Boston property taxes but chose to send their hyperactive kid to private school for grade school isn't going to work either. Discriminating against someone who just moved to Boston from California ain't gonna work. None of this discrimination is going to work, the courts will toss it back to BPS with a "nice try, quit it" opinion.

This is a stupid idea.

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What does this person have against Asians and students whose parents managed to get their children into charter schools?

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Extremely racist! When is the left going to propose limiting ticket sake to Patriot games for whites, so the crowed reflects the racial makeup of the players. Maybe we can even have black only sections too.

Racial quotas are racist.

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Sake should definitly be limited at patriots games.

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the sushi or the rice wine?

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The exam schools used to have a quota system, until a white parent from Hyde Park sued and won.

The exams would still be in place, it's just that only kids whose parents showed a real commitment to a BPS education would be eligible.

There is something a bit arbitrary about the exam-school entry process: Is a kid who misses the cutoff by a few points really less worthy than somebody who passes it by a few points? Should a kid who has stuck with BPS from an early age lose out to some kid whose parents had the money to send them to an expensive prep school for the first five years of his academic life?

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What about people who lived outside Boston and moved to the city when the student's parent found work in Boston or for some other non-school reason. Should these students be blocked from the exam schools?

I agree with the principal of making the exam schools reflect the students who have been in BPS their entire lives. I just don't see how this can be accomplished without blocking other students who's haven't done anything unfair.

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Because it the kids fault his/her parents sent them to private school. Maybe if BPS didn't suck, more parents would be enrolling their kids.

What if every white family (because you are talking about race) in Boston enrolled their kids into BPS next year? What would happen, the school system would be fucked.

You should be happy people in Boston send their kids to private school while still paying their property taxes.

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Families that move to Boston after their child has begun 9th grade are already blocked from Boston Latin. No admission once high school has begun.

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A single mother of two from Dorchester or South Boston who scraped to send her kids to catholic school for elementary (with a partial scholarship), and now wants to send one to BLS?

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It's unclear what your real gripe is. It should either be give BPS kids an edge or not, but your point seems to focus on whether their parents had money for an "exclusive prep school". What's an exclusive prep school - Park School would seem to be, but what about Pope John Paul's st Greg's campus? Is that exclusive? It costs money, but not as much as Park School. Also, PJP serves a much different demographic, and has far less resources than other private schools. Does that factor into your equation?

Also, what about kids on financial aid or full scholarship at private school, or at charters or metco? Many of their parents may have no money at all, but chose an opportunity they thought was too good to pass down. Or a smaller school was better for their child in the formative elementary years.

If you're ok with treating the people above on the same level with BpS kids, then your test only applies to people who pay full freight for their kids' education, which seems unfair and arbitrary.

Full disclosure, I don't live in boston (though my wife and her family grew up in Dorchester and went to bls, some after parochial school and some after public school). We thought about stAying in boston, for the possibility of Latin among other reasons, but moved to Milton where we bought a starter home for the same price as a condo in Southie ( where we were renting).

Obviously this is a complicated issue, but drawing a bps only line is a monumental shift in bps and treating all non-bps kids as a glob of rich, privileged kids with an unfair advantage isn't really accurate.

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What about kids that attend charter schools who test into BLS? They're certainly not rich kids - their only 'sin' is to have won a pure chance* lottery to get into a competitive school.

Of course, the Brooke wants to open a high school somewhere - I bet the demographics of that school would be more to the BLS critics liking.

* Their only 'privilege' is to have parents who take the few minutes to fill out an application form.

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If only charter schools "just" required filling out the forms -- they actually require that parents know about charter schools, have the cognitive skills and mental health to believe that they are public schools they are allowed to apply to, are aware of the application dates, are living in the eligibility zone during those dates, get the form in on time, have a stable address and phone number at which to get their admission letter, and managed all this before their child was 4 or 5, since so few kids get in to most charter schools after they're filled for K1/K2/1.

These are all things that you and I probably take for granted. I'm not strongly pro- or anti-charter school, but as someone who works with families around issues including their children's education, I've encountered all of the above over and over from many of my less-privileged families. Families in which the parent has intellectual disability, is dealing with substance abuse or mental illness, is moving around, is in and out of shelters, child is in and out of foster care, family can't keep the phone bill or the rent paid, etc., are not completing the application process start to finish, even if I essentially do it for them. These are families who are going from wherever they happen to be living that month to the BPS office a few days before school starts and getting assigned whatever spot is left in the least-desired school. Or having DCF or a shelter worker register their kid in October when someone realizes they aren't in school. So, yes, the students attending charter schools do have a certain level of privilege. It just isn't necessarily race or economic privilege.

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And focus on improving the home lives of struggling students instead of pretending schools can fix problems at home?

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Neighborhood schools would be feasible only if the housing (i. e. the neighborhoods themselves) here in Boston were racially integrated, and not so cordoned-off and segregated, as they are here in Boston.

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No, you don't. Boston isn't perfect, but this isn't 1974 anymore, either. There are racially integrated neighborhoods in Boston these days. I live in one. There are others.

You might want to concentrate more on class issues than racial issues when it comes to housing.

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But I liked 1974 , some of it !

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"But I liked 1974 , some of it !"

The music was great.

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...Abba?

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It was also Ara Parseghian's last season as head coach of the University of Notre Dame's football team !

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A) One doesn't have to live in Boston to be aware of went on. I admittedly didn't, and don't, but I met plenty of people who were either students in the Boston Public Schools at the time of mandatory school busing, or were parents whose kids were bused to other schools outside their neighborhoods, so I got to hear plenty of war stories from such people about Boston's mandatory school busing crisis.

B) Secondly, while it's true that some Boston neighborhoods are integrated today, that wasn't the case either prior to busing, or during the busing, either. I also recognize the fact that socioeconomic issues also played a significant part in Boston's busing crisis. In fact, Prior to busing, the housing in Boston wasn't as integrated as are some neighborhoods today, but in fact, was quite segregated, at the time.

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This is a discussion of conditions in 2014 and in your original comment, you said Boston had the same segregated conditions today as it did in 1974. It doesn't, and it's really tiresome for those of us who actually do live in the city to listen to people outside the city bitching about things that no longer exist.

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While it's true that many of Boston's neighborhoods, including Charlestown and East Boston, are more diverse than they were prior to mandatory school busing, it's also true that some neighborhoods, such as Southie and West Roxbury, are still predominantly white.

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So? I never said every single block in Boston was a post-racial nirvana.

At the same time, the fact that there are numerous neighborhoods that are mixed racially and ethnically, if not in terms of class, means Boston has taken great strides since the busing era.

As for West Roxbury, you might want to check into the number of East Asian families that have moved into the neighborhood of late.

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You might want to concentrate more on class issues than racial issues when it comes to housing.

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Boston is SO geographically tiny, and while it's quite segregated, in most parts you literally have a couple blocks of fancy middle-class or upper-class homes, then you cross a street and you have falling-apart homes and slumlords. There just aren't parts of Boston where you're more than a mile from either considerable poverty or considerable wealth, except possibly North End and Beacon Hill, and those areas are still small and have fewer students than other areas. One day at work we doodled on a map of Boston and figured out that you could pretty easily do school assignments by address and still have every school have a decent racial mix and income mix, and could probably even have most students walk to school. BPS would obviously have to do the change to neighborhood schools gradually, and would have to factor in the issue of most wealthy residents not attending public school, but it seems it could be done.

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This:

One day at work we doodled on a map of Boston and figured out that you could pretty easily do school assignments by address and still have every school have a decent racial mix and income mix, and could probably even have most students walk to school. BPS would obviously have to do the change to neighborhood schools gradually, and would have to factor in the issue of most wealthy residents not attending public school, but it seems it could be done

is a very, very good point that's well taken, eeka. Under ordinary circumstances, Boston wouldn't have even needed mandatory school busing in order to racially integrate its public schools, but, since the Boston School Committee back in the 60's and 70's deliberately played dirty pool and kept segregation of Boston's public schools, knowing all the time exactly what they were doing, there was no other choice for Boston's black community, led by the NAACP, to ultimately have the Federal District Court intervene. Inotherwords, Louise Day Hicks and her cronies on the School Committee blew the opportunity for Boston to desegregate peacefully. They came a hair away from avoiding a Federal Court-mandated school busing program by one vote, during the Lee School Fiasco, when one school Committeeman, John Kraven, switched his vote to balance Dorchester's Lee School, saying that busing was necessary, when in fact, it wasn't, because it was only 4/5 of a mile from where most black and white kids resided.

It's really too bad that the School Committee was so highly political and so rife with patronage and opportunism in addition to being racist, that another way, such as what you described, couldn't have been done.

Thanks for letting me express my opinion on this.

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40 years on and Boston still has a huge busing program. But it's not because of race anymore, not in a system that is only, what, 12% white? Now we have busing to try to give parents a shot at getting their kid into either a good school or one that, with some work, could become a good school.

You may recall how, every year in the Menino era, city politicians would call for an end to massive city busing. And you may recall how, every year, busing continued.

This is because for ten years, school planners kept running into the same problem when trying to bust up the school assignment zones that came after race-based busing: No matter how they sliced things up, they were ALWAYS left with at least one Zone of Failure (although they always called it something like a "Circle of Promise" or some other vacuous wording), because the sad fact is, for all the good schools Boston has, it still has a lot that do horribly on standardized tests.

The current system tries to solve that by guaranteeing all students a shot (not a seat, but basically a lottery ticket) at at least one high-scoring school, even if it's not geographically near them. But guess what: That means you still need lots of busing - even without all the required busing for special-needs kids, who might have to go to a program across town, or the charter kids, who, well, ditto.

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the past, in many ways, is still in the present. Inotherwords, the past really does have a certain amount of bearing on how things are today.

Boston is a small enough city so that the idea of assigning kids to schools either within walking distance from their addresses, or at least the ability to take public transportation to and from school and still acquire a decent racial/socioeconomic/ethnic mix of the schools would've been doable if the old Boston School Committee hadn't blown that opportunity with its political posturing, patronage, opportunism and flagrant racism.

As a consequence of the old Boston School Committee, under LDH, John Kerrigan and others on that school Committee, the Federal District Court had to intervene and take much tougher, more costly measures to desegregate Boston's schools than it ordinarily would've, which left the Boston School system scarred, exacerbated already-existing racial tensions in the city of Boston to extremely dangerous levels, and left people scarred. Both non-whites and whites alike were cheated out of a meaningfully integrated and decent education. Had the Boston School Committee back then been more flexible instead of engaging in all that political posturing, the Boston Public school system would be in far better shape than it is today.

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This is not 1969 anymore. A lot has changed since then. I realize past is prologue and all, but 40 years, there is a raft of issues BPS has to deal with that really have little or nothing to do with Louise Day Hicks.

To start with, there are a lot fewer school buildings than there were back then - the city sold off a ton of schools - so the whole idea of neighborhood schools is nowhere near as simple as it was back then. And there are now wide swaths of the city that have NO public elementary schools in them - both old established neighborhoods, such as the Back Bay and new ones, such as downtown.

Yes, I realize many of those schools were sold off because of issues related to busing, but 50 years ago, nobody ever thought people would live downtown or in Fort Point, let alone have kids, and that has nothing to do with busing. Ditto, really, with the musical chairs BPS has played over the past couple of years with schools in the Fenway, Mission Hill and JP.

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and nobody's saying that people moving/living downtown in Fort Point, much less have kids, or whatever, have anything to do with busing, or with Louise Day Hicks.

What I will say, however, is that, especially prior to mandatory school busing, the Boston Public School system had been a system in serious decline, since around the 1920's, and kept getting progressively worse. Louise Day Hicks definitely made already-bad situations worse, by throwing an already-badly crippled school system into an even worse state. LDH was a very smart, well-educated woman, who could've done lots of good, calmed the city at large down (especially Southie) and appealed to people's better instincts, thereby achieving school desegregation without the Federal Court's intervention. Instead, she whipped people (especially Southie) up into a frenzy of rage, fear, hatred and resentment along the lines of race and class, and made it impossible for school desegregation to be achieved any other way than the Federal Court. I'll also add that a good bit of the damage that LDH did to the Boston Public School system is extremely long-lasting, if not permanent, which, I don't see getting undone any time soon.

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When we have school equity. The original court case filed by Dr Paul parks et al was looking for equity not integration which was later imposed on the plaintiffs and the entire city

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Ruth Batson, a life-long Boston resident and then a prominent leader in Boston's black community, stated to the Boston School Committee, at a hearing, that "schools that are/were predominantly negro are harmful to black school children, and that segregation of schools must be eliminated." Louise Day Hicks and her cronies on the Boston School Committee refused to discuss the issue of segregation in the Boston schools, and abruptly ended the hearing.

She was one of the ones who advocated desegregation of Boston's public schools, because she felt that the only way black students could get an equal education was to go to the same schools as white children.

Neighborhood schools are feasible only if neighborhoods are integrated racially, socioeconomically and ethnically, as well.

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Busing actually made Boston's schools more segregated, not less. The "harm… to black school children" from "schools that are/were predominantly negro" has been increased decade by decade.

By 1980, fewer black students went to predominantly white schools than did in 1968, and it's continued to drop; today, no black students go to a predominantly white BPS school, because there are none. Likewise, no BPS school in the fifties, sixties, or seventies approached the 99% black/hispanic population of some of today's BPS schools. The segregation that was so outrageous here in 1968 was less than today's norm. Decade by decade, a higher proportion of black and hispanic students (today, more than a quarter statewide, and a majority in Boston) have gone to a school that is more than 90% black and hispanic. The proportion decades ago was in the single digits. Meanwhile, in the booming area private school market, some schools now have 100% white classes.

Segregation isn't a problem of the past in Boston, it's a problem of the present. Destroying the last public school with a significant white population isn't going to improve the situation.

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The re-segregation of schools that's been happening in Boston has also been happening throughout the United States as a whole.

I also might add that the Boston Public School System was lousy even prior to mandatory school busing. Nobody knows how or why re-segregation is occurring in Boston and throughout the United States as a whole. What's happening in Boston is a microcosm of what's happening in our society.

It makes me wonder if the preference for the familiar, not to mention racial animosity, is so deeply ingrained into the very fabric of our society and culture that nothing short of a really radical change in the whole structure of our society will change that.

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Boston went through a few decades of increasing segregation (1968-1990) while the rest of the country was still desegregating. The northeast was the only region with increasing school segregation at that time, and Boston was leading the charge. Boston is one of the only places where desegregation orders immediately increased segregation.

The greater trend to economic segregation in the last couple of decades has brought with it greater racial segregation as well, in living as well as schooling, and that has hit the whole country. But here that's just the icing on the cake. What happened here is different from what happened in most of the country.

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Are every neighborhood, city, state in this country, or anywhere else in the world, 'racially Integrated' in the manner you mean? 'Minorities' mean just that, they don't comprise the majority of the population. Using black people as an example, they are over-represented among the population of the City of Boston, at around 25% of the population, when the national and state average is around 12-13%.

Wha is this obsession some have with 'race' and quotas? 100% of housing issues revolve around socioeconomics, not 'race'.

Grow up.

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of kids in Boston Public Schools are non-white. There are no dedicated elementary schools for the "white" neighborhoods, either. The kids from the Fenway, Back Bay, and Beacon Hill end up traipsing all over the city, because there literally IS no school in their neighborhood.

I don't see how you can get any more integrated than that.

Finally, neighborhood schools allow the schools to tailor their services to the needs of the neighborhood and the students. If only half the kids in the school need extra services, the school is less likely to provide them.

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What, you're going to block tax payers from accessing services that there paying for?

By proposing this your saying public school are subpar, which I agree. Maybe focus on fixing BPS versus lowering the standards to enering an exam school. Because once you lower the standards your also lowering the benift of attending said school.

This whole aguement boils down to one thing, RACE! And it's raciat to propose this.

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What do you say to the minority parent who has their kid at an elementary school in Hingham or Lynnfield through METCO and wants to send their kid to Latin? No? Too bad. We know you are a taxpayer but no, you cannot go. Some people matter more than your kid and have more rights than your kid.

What do you say to the white parent who decided since they couldn't send their kid to Hingham or Lynnfield through METCO because of the color of their skin, yet wanted to give their kid a religious foundation education say either at Pope John Paul Academy or the Rashi School and now think that their child is ready for the vigor of Latin? Too bad? Some kids have even more rights than your kid.

We are screaming here there and everywhere about the middle class barley hanging on in Boston. You want to give people a better reason to look outside the city for public educational opportunities? Keep pushing proposals like this and it will be childless condos from the Old State House to the Pleasant Café in Roslindale with islands of housing projects and subsidized units in between.

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The goal would be to make the student composition of the exam schools more closely reflect the composition of the BPS, as a whole.

Is it universally (or even broadly) accepted that that's the paramount goal? As opposed to, say, making the opportunity that the exam schools represent, available to every student in Boston, irrespective of where he or she went to grade school?

It seems premature to talk about tactics if the objectives have not yet been agreed upon.

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As noted in a previous thread, I can see the justification if someone wanted to argue that the composition of Latin should match the population of Boston in terms of demographics. I don't agree, but I can see how that might be perceived as 'fair'. However, the argument that the BLS should match the BPS demographics seems suspect to me.

Does anyone have data on where the BLS students come from in terms of neighborhoods? Seems like we are penalizing parents for choosing to not bus their kids to other neighborhoods for school, because BPS can't/won't provide enough seats where the demand is for political reasons. I'd like to be proven wrong with some data though.

Personal disclosure - my kids went to BPS for a while and now attend a charter school and I hope to send them to Latin in 7th grade. Feel free to tell me specifically why my kid shouldn't be allowed to go to BLS if they test in?

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BPS released a lot of data when they updated the school assignment process. When they redid their web site they removed the pages that described the various reports and provided links to them, but you can still find the data on Google Drive. I think the information you want is in there somewhere, but I have no idea how to find it. Back when it was released, though, Josh at bpsworkshop.com created some maps that still work fine. Go to http://bpsworkshop.com/maps, click on "Location of Students by School", and use the menus at the top of the map to select Boston Latin. The circles show the number of students from each of the old geocodes used to determine walk zone eligibility in the old assignment process. I don't really know what kind of conclusions you'll be able to draw from looking at the BLS map, but you can at least see how things were as of a couple of years ago.

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  • Expand the eligibility requirement for exam schools, which is currently based on a test score and fifth- and sixth-grade report cards, to include teacher recommendation and a writing sample or portfolio of work.
  • Continue to provide entrance exam preparation for BPS fifth and sixth graders based on race/ethnicity and eligibility for FRL.
  • Restrict exam school enrollment to students who were enrolled in at least the fifth and sixth grades in BPS elementary schools.
  • Ensure that exam schools enroll and provide adequate services for ELL students and students with disabilities.

You can read the entire report; the exam-school and AWC proposals start on page 215. Yes, it's a long report. Also possibly worth noting: The report's authors make a distinction between minority kids born here and the growing number of minority kids born elsewhere, many of whom will likely have ESL issues.

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Talk about unfair!

So, the idea would be to penalize parents who have actually saved BPS quite a bit of money by sending their children to parochial or private schools for grades 1 - 6?

And exclude their children from BPS for what reason exactly? Because they have gotten better educations by not attending BPS from grades 1 - 6?

What if a child goes to private or parochial school and then wants to go to some other Boston Public School for middle or high school?

BLS and BLA have Boston residency requirements in place. That means parents are paying taxes, and just as in any other city or town, certainly have the right to send their children to the public schools.

How about focusing on improving the public schools instead of this sort of nonsense?

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So, the idea would be to penalize parents who have actually saved BPS quite a bit of money by sending their children to parochial or private schools for grades 1 - 6?

It could be that the idea is to stop well-off parents from helicoptering in from Newton or wherever to establish residency in time for their kids to take the exams. It happens. The idea might also be to increase parents' investment in the public schools, so they are more likely to expend energy improving those schools, rather than spending that energy on private schools. That would benefit everyone, theoretically.

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You're saying with 57000 kids currently attending BPS, the problems with the district need to be solved by forcing parents currently not involved in the system to opt and start contributing. We shouldn't try to get the roughly 30000 families currently in district to do more?

Can you cite any specific data on how many families helicopter in to establish residency to go to BLS? Seems like a bit of an urban legend.

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I have known people who did it. I didn't mention Newton at random. Guy moved into Boston, had his kid go through the Latin, then moved back to the 'burbs.

Parents who actively choose a private or church school obviously care about their kids' education. IF their kids were in BPS, maybe that caring could leverage some improvement in the city schools. With their kids out of the system, what's their incentive to care about it? The proposal does not "force" those parents to opt in; they can continue to send their kids to whatever private school they like.

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Wouldn't it have been cheaper for the guy to just pay private school tuition for his kid?

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Are there really people leaving the Newton school system to come to BPS?

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I am a BLS student, and I know a girl who would have attended Newton North, had her parents not moved to Boston so she could attend BLS.
I also know a girl whose family lived in Boston, moved to State College, Pennsylvania, and then moved back here because they wanted their daughters to attend BLS. Make of that what you will.

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You would find that many more Boston residents attend Newton Public Schools than Newton residents attending Boston Public Schools.

I've never heard of anyone moving to Boston just so their kid could attend BLS, unless they lived somewhere like Chelsea or somewhere like that.

There are some BPS teachers though who will send their kids to BLS even though they don't live in Boston. Many cops in Boston would also try to get their kids in BLS as well, even when they didn't live in Boston.

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You have now heard of two instances of families moving to Boston just so their kid could go to BLS. And these "numbers" you refer to would not include those people, because they would not be Newton residents while their kids were in the Latin.

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About the Newton resident sending a kid to BLS.

But still I know 10 kids by name that live in West Roxbury that go to Brookline or Newton N/S High Schools because one of their parents works in the Brookline or Newton Public Schools.

I've been working in Boston for 30 years and have never heard of anyone moving to Boston so they could send their kid to BLS. I've heard of non residents going to the school, but not people moving back. (Not that it means it doesn't happen)

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I've been working in Boston for 30 years and have never heard of anyone moving to Boston so they could send their kid to BLS.

Yes, you have heard of it. Twice. Right here. If you keep denying it, it will mean you don't hear it because you don't want to, at which point there's not much point in conversing with you.

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One of the families moved to Penn State and then back to Boston, so I don't think that really counts. As for the family that moved from Newton to Boston to attend BLS? I simply don't believe it. I believe that people might move to Boston and then send their kids to whatever school, but if the main reason is to move to go to BLS? I don't believe it. Can you even guarantee a spot in the school if you move back? Wouldn't you have to be a resident to take the test? Doesn't add up.

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A few kids gaming the system isn't the issue being raised by this report. Look at the demo and the goal- BLS has more white and Asian students than the BPS at large. If at the end of the day, the goal is to decrease those numbers and increase minority attendance, that's going to take more than rounding up a few kids from Newton, but rather systematically disqualifying lots of real Boston residents in addition.

2400 students at BLS.

47.5% white = 1140 students
29.2% Asian = 700 students

BPS stats:

13% White = 312 students (800 over 'target')
8% Asian = 192 students (500 over 'target')

We're really proposing to reduce these numbers by over 500 per demographic group? C'mon. A kid or ten from Newton doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things.

If we want to improve BPS so there is more success for all Boston kids across class and ethnic lines, great. Let's just stop wasting time on this particular solution.

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Boston racial demographics, 2000 census:
54.48% White
7.52% Asian
25.33% Black
14.44% Hispanic

BPS demographics:
13% White
9% Asian
35% Black
40% Hispanic

The difference between the Boston racial demographic and the BPS population at large is greater than that between Boston and Boston Latin. Boston Latin School more closely represents the racial demographics of the city as a whole than do other BPS Schools.

If we 'want to improve BPS so there is more success for all Boston kids across class and ethnic lines,' we should be focusing on the non-exam schools, which fail Boston kids across class and ethnic lines more than the exam schools do.

Instead of taking the failure of the BPS system to serve the population of the city as a starting point, and breaking Boston Latin until it fails the population of Boston equally, we should ask what we can do to change other BPS schools until they serve the population of the whole city as well as Boston Latin does.

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I know a kid who moved from Boston to Newton, and a kid who moved from South Boston to West Roxbury. What's the point? Anyone can write anything on an anonymous message board, doesn't make it true. Someone moved to and from State College, PA solely for BLS? Doubtful.

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This:

You would find that many more Boston residents attend Newton Public Schools than Newton residents attending Boston Public Schools.

is ludicrous. How do Boston residents get to attend Newton public schools? I've always been under the impression that the public school systems of various cities and towns here in the Bay State only take in students who already reside in these cities and towns here in the Commonwealth. Inotherwords, for example, that the Newton public school system only takes in public school-age students who reside in Newton, and Boston public schools only take in public school-age students who reside in Boston.

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METCO?

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Newton teachers live in Boston and send their kids to the Newton public schools. It's common in many suburbs where teaches cannot afford to live.

Then there are those kids who live in Boston but use a relatives address in Newton to attend the schools.

Actually, most of these suburban schools let all town employees kids in the school systems. Needham let's employees send their kids for free. Brookline charges a few thousand bucks per kid.

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How about improving the whole school system so parents don't feel the need to take their kids out of the public system through middle school? And/or if there is that much demand for exam school placement, how about adding enough seats to meet that demand?

You know, actually educate the kids rather than treating the schools as little more than free daycare?

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That's a great idea. I can't believe nobody ever thought of it before. Just make sure you don't raise anybody's taxes, though.

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What if parents with children in private schools didn't have to pay for the BPS in their taxes? Fair is fair.

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So instead of working to raise the standards of all BPS schools, the answer is to lower the standards of the exam schools? I don't even have kids but I would pay for the lawyers to fight this nonsense.

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How about having some advanced or honors tracks in regular BPS high schools? That works for most districts. Heck, how about giving parents an option that falls somewhere between Latin and English in terms of culture and rigor? There are plenty of students in the system with incredible potential who are not going to thrive in the hyper competitive exam school environment. Those kids deserve options besides charter, exam or level 4 schools.

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It will never hold up. I propose that parents of children in parochial schools that pay City of Boston property taxes get rebates of the proportion of the tax burden that goes to the school system. The exclusion of any resident to take an exam for these schools is predatory , not equalizing. All it would serve is to dilute the pursuit of excellence that is the standard now accomplished.
I was of the understanding that school busing was to level the playing field , so that each student had access to the same level of education. Guess that didn't happen , so now you just want to paint by colors and make it look good. This idea is bullshit and you all know it.Because when this doesn't work there will be some other delusional scheme concocted.

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You don't get to opt out of paying taxes for a government service you don't use. It doesn't work like that. We're all in the public good together. I don't have children and I'm happy to pay taxes to support public schools because I happen to like to have an educated workforce. I also pay taxes that support infrastructure in a part of the state and city and country that I never visit -- because the collective good is more powerful than the individual.

Now. If you don't like the taxes you're paying, or if you think they're going to the wrong things or if you don't like how the schools are run -- then get involved. Go to meetings. Write letters. Make phone calls. It takes precious little to actually get involved and effect change in your own community -- and yet I rarely see new faces at community events or political organizing rallies. Usually the same folks over and over.

And people wonder why things rarely change.

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Cubie , I was being facetious. But if people don't like how the schools will be run ( see forced busing 1974 ) they will move. If you further the madness by tampering with the exam schools , you will destroy them. I'd like to know why the old Boston Trade school , morphed into the new and improved Roxbury Crossing School imploded. But back to the exam schools , by which I really mean Boston Latin. The parents will lawyer up, and I would like the proponents of this new dilution , who are public servants , be held personally financially accountable in legal actions , instead of hiding behind oops , we did it again , we flucked up , cloak of amnesty, we did it for the children.

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VOID / DUP.

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Have another exam school for BPS students - Charles Yancey is building a school in Mattapan - make that an elite exam school for BPS students and leave BLS as is.

In about 50 years it won't be relevant - at the current rate of attrition, the student population of BPS will be zero anyway.

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Then it will finally be equal.

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The student population will be 0 and the BPS administration will still be employing as many people with a budget well in the red.

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This will never fly as much as it might appeal to me, as a parent of 3 BPS kids, K-12, who all went to BLS.

But, then again, if this policy had been in effect in 1966, I never would have gotten into GLS. Back then, I was just a poor project kid whose parents were guilt-tripped into sending me and my siblings to parochial schools, even though we couldn't afford it.

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See the system worked. you made it to Girls Latin ,poor as you were. You earned the opportunity , along with your family's help.It doesnt matter what your color is.And the opportunity blossomed , 3 more made it !
PS My father came off a farm in Ireland with a 2nd grade education, 3 of us made it , 2 graduated. We were poor but nobody told us , so we didnt know it!

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We live in Hyde Park, have for the past eight years. When our oldest was ready for kindergarten, we did our due diligence - looked at BPS schools we were eligible for via a lottery system and schools we would have to pay for - we were in the enviable position of having a choice. However, when we applied for BPS through the lottery, we were assigned schools that weren't even on our list. (this was in 2007) No charter schools, no lab schools, not even a neighborhood school. We had to make a decision and we chose a local parochial school. Same experience two years later - went through the same process with our younger daughter with similar results. Both attended the same parochial school, worked hard, earned excellent grades - my oldest took the ISEE without the benefit of tutors, special reviews, etc. She is now a seventh grader at Latin. My youngest now wants to go to Latin, and will take the requisite test and submit the requisite grades for review and we will see what happens. Does this report suggest we should have done something different? That we should have settled for the school we were assigned and hope for the best? We went to parent meetings to see the level of involvement, the level of participation - it was practically nil. This is our experience as a family living in Boston and dealing with the BPS - this isn't conjecture or a list of statistics or a pie chart. Instead of restricting access to the exam schools, why not work on the existing elementary schools in order to produce better opportunities for those who DON'T have a choice.

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So very well put, hydeparklady! This is our experience exactly! Very much wanted to give BPS a try for our daughter, but had no success with assignments. So we went the parochial school route for K through 4th, then a charter school for grades 5 and 6. She took the ISEE and was accepted into Latin School and entered in the 7th grade.

What should be looked at are children attending the exam schools who live outside the city, taking slots away from deserving city residents. Don't know what they have for resources within BPS to track these families down...

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we're hoping for one of the three pretty good elementary schools within walking distance of our house - but if that doesn't happen, we're probably doing a nearby private until our kid can test into the exam schools. I think if they really want to solve this issue, there should be a real return to neighborhood schools instead of penalizing parents who don't want to ship their kids halfway across the city. we have a neighbor who tried for K-1 - had something like 6 neighborhood schools on their list but was placed at a "turn-around" almost 4 miles away two neighborhoods over. they stayed in their current private school which is pre-k through 5... will try again next year.

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Ferguson 72 percent Boston 64

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According to the US Census, this is the overall make up of Boston (rounded off somewhat) going back to 2010.

53% White
25% Black
9% Asian
18% Hispanic

I think that it's true that the school aged kid demographic is slightly different with there being a higher percentage of minority kids of school age. I could find anything more specific in terms of racial breakdown. However, the census does give an estimate of 646000 residents with 11% being between 5 and 18. So based on that, there are @ 75000 kids in Boston of some ethnicity or another.

BPS data this year -

57000 kids in school, so 18000 kids could go to BPS but don't, basically 25% of the population. BPS has a budget of @ $1b so if we want to force these kids to participate in the school for K-12, then where are we getting an extra $250m/yr for the budget?

If we aren't willing to put up more money to educate additional kids who might be required to join the BPS sooner, let's say in 4th grade, then this proposal is either nonsense or a systematic attempt to lock out 25% of the school eligible kids from the best free public school option available to them.

This all without even examining what the demographics are of the 25% of kids who could attend BPS but don't. I suspect they lean middle class and white (Parkway residents, etc...)

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here's the breakdown:

links to PDF:

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/aabbe85b-2e0b-...

doesn't show the shift over the past couple decades - but there's been a significant increase in white kids age 0-5 in the city over the past 10 years - it remains to be seen if many of them actually stick around, though). about half the white school age kids in the city go to public school.

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That is very interesting/helpful. The gap between population of adults and population of kids is bigger than I thought in terms of race.

I suppose that makes some sense especially considering that the college students who live off campus presumably count towards the census and are largely white and child-free along with the various DINK professionals out there also tending to be white and of course all the young couples around the city who haven't moved to the 'burbs to have kids yet.

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I guess this it what it has come to. Judge Garrity's order has destroyed the system to the point that now we are looking at taking down the last vestige of requiring anyone to actually being able to qualify for anything.
Just do away with it and descend into mediocrity.

PS I didn't go to any BPS exam school. I am a graduate of the system. Have a nice weekend everyone!

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Let's not pretend that the system Garrity imposed busing on wasn't horribly racist, or that the BSC didn't have multiple opportunities to fix that, and refused to.

No need to rehash the whole busing crisis, but Garrity's order didn't happen in a vacuum. Whatever is wrong with the system now, all these years later, can't be put on him.

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You mean just ignore it , like it didn't happen ? That's convenient , no accountability. Sorry , don't work that way. You all are reaping what the intelligentsia has sown with their infallible social engineering experiment. Just because some now don't like what it was in 1974 , does not give them the right to impose their self righteousness on the people from back then who were just trying to get along and think differently. Busing didn't work , and it fucked up more than the school system. That is the essence of the matter.There may have been other ways to address the educational issue, but even now nobody can figure it out. Now the fucking experts want to dilute the quality of education at the Boston Latin School, so it seems it's not about providing quality education , but lowering the standards, just to deflect the blame for the original grand scheme. But that's the way it is , it's easy to spend other people's money , and tell other people how to think and live their lives.

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Perfect.

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I think you will need to see some radical change in order to see some progress in Boston. BLS is what it is, and it is done in pretty much every other city/town in Massachusetts that has some sort of educational tracking system. At BLS they simply have their own HS.

I think a new HS like Yancey proposes should have a top academic "exam" section, along with spaces for kids who can't pass the exam part by the 7th grade. Have the facilities be top notch, better than BLS or Newton North, and make sure the funding is greater than those schools as well. Maybe one day parents will want to send their kids to this school instead of Boston Latin? Maybe start it as a smaller school?

Just some ideas.

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According to US News, both (along with BLS) are better than Newton North. Boston Preparatory Charter School also bests Newton, though not Brookline.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/massachusetts/rankings...

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But only because BLS has tracked out the lower performing students (which brings down the numbers of the other public high schools who track in-house).

The top students are about equal at all of those schools, if you look at college placements.

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If the BPS couldn't manage to fix its problems in the FORTY YEARS that have passed since the busing order, there's something else going on besides the evil Judge Garrity's decree. Using him as a scapegoat for all the things you find wrong with the system isn't going to do much for any of those things.

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The Boston Public School was a dysfunctional school system that had been failing its white and non-white students alike all along, since around 1920. Regardless of what anybody says or thinks about the mandatory school busing order that took the city of Boston by storm in the mid-1970's, that's a fact. Judge W. Arthur Garrity, to his credit exposed the Boston School System for what it was: A byzantine, dysfunctional school system, on the whole.

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have we seen this story over the last 40 years? Lets recap. Boston schools were knee capped in 1974. No more neighborhood schools, busing for everyone except the exam schools. Well that wouldn't satisfy the elites so they insisted on quota's for the exam schools. That injustice lasted 20 years and was challenged by the heroic McLaughlin family and quotas were killed by the court in the 1990's. Now the elite's are back at it looking to wreck what many see as the finest public school in the nation Boston Latin. I have a proposal that will surely help the diversity police in their quest. Eliminate METCO. Eliminate Charter schools. You will then have the connected and involved families remaining in Boston. You will get the results you see in the suburbs. You know the place half of Boston moved to in 1974.

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there had not been as much emphasis on neighborhood schools for quite some time. The issue of neighborhood and neighborhood schools was "revitalized" by racists and extremists, who, encouraged by an all-white Boston School Committee that was really rife with politics, patronage and opportunism, took the idea of neighborhood pride (which, in itself, isn't necessarily and always a bad thing), and ran with it, taking it to extremely dangerous levels, if one gets the drift.

It's also a fact that, for a very long time, the most academically proficient kids, whose families also had the means and resources to do so had been sending their kids to exam schools in Boston or private or parochial schools in and around Boston as well.

Nobody says that the remedy that was ultimately implemented was the best way to go, but, given the school committee's years and years of intransigence, combined with the disastrous B-BURG program, the implementation of a far-reaching, costly, large-scale, cross-city Federal court-mandated school busing program and all the upheavals that came in its wake, was inevitable.

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and tell me how busing helped Boston's Black students. There is one thing all BPS students of that era shared. The loss of education. That loss snowballed through life for many regardless of race.

http://www.wbur.org/2014/11/19/boston-busing-roundtable

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BPS had a decade to fix it. A decade where other cities were being successfully sued over pouring resources into some schools and screwing over minority kids.

They doubled down on the racism and donned their best white sheets.

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has worked out well.

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Because, for you, racism was working out super well. All that wonderful tax money paid in by "those people" went to you and yours and not them and theirs ... amirite?

Too bad all "those people" complained - they should just have known their inferior place! Right?

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in riddles, not reality. Now move that chip over to the left shoulder you're imbalanced.

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Has been draining BPS of educationally-oriented, middle/upper-middle class families of color for decades. I wish those kids, and their parental resources, had been in class with my white, BPS kids. That would have been a cohort that BPS would have had to pay attention to.

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1. Use 10 years of test scores to create a prediction equation with household income, ethnicity, ESL status, immigration/citizenship status and type of primary school (BPS, parochial, private preparatory, other).

2. For each student, use the prediction equation to find a "predicted" score.

3. Admit those students whose actual test scores outstrip the predicted test scores by the highest margin (with grades and teacher recommendations, of course).

This way, a student's advantages and disadvantages would be reflected in the predicted score, based on the scores of their peers in a 10 year window. Have a rich kid with all the advantages? That would mean a higher predicted score (as that is predictive of performance on standardized instruments), and a better measure of academic potential controlled for those advantages. Recent immigrant scores high but not "high enough"? The margin by which they exceed their predictive score would argue that they had what it takes despite their disadvantages. These are the really talented kids, not the prepped and primped ones.

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I'm a minority who grew up in Boston and graduated from one of the exam schools a few years back. I had a friend whose family moved to Boston just so that she could have the opportunity to attend Latin. For any naysayers out there, it definitely happens more often than you would think!!

I don't think this proposal offers any real solution to the true problem at hand! We need to focus on the subpar quality of the education system in Boston! I had some great teachers over the years but they were few and far inbetween. I think it would be more productive to offer an enhanced curriculum or an afterschool "exam school prep" program for 4th and 5th graders. I had the opportunity to participate in Gear UP in middle/high school and it was a great resource for tutoring and college prep.

Let's not play the blame game people! BPS needs to step up and improve their schools!

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Are my tax dollars different than someone elses? I have lived in this city for 48 years. Attended BPS. I send my kids to parochial. Yes they will take the Latin exam. And if someone says they cannot you can bet I will have a lawsuit. I pay property taxes etc.
A good fix is to offer more seats for all the deserving kids for Latin. This can be done by putting the incoming 7th and 8th graders (who should not be around high school kids) in a completely different building. Now you can offer another 300 seats or so? There are plenty of vacant city of boston school buildings, use one for the lower two grades. Then you can offer more seats. It is a no brainer.

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1. Is this proposal something supported by the School Committee?
2. If it is supported by the School Committee, what are the next steps the committee needs to take to move forward with the proposal?
3. Is there an actual group that is formed/forming in an effort to pool resources, spread the word, and ensure this proposal does not pass?

I believe if parents who oppose this proposal join together and contact the appropriate school committee members/legislatures/mayor/representatives, we can be proactive to ensure this proposal does not pass and ensure our kids have an opportunity to attend these schools.

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