Incoming school superintendent announces transition team; includes charter advocates

Don't get me started on schools, I don't even have kids.

I couldn't find it to cite, but I've read reports in the past showing where the most open seats are and where the demand is. Generalizing again, the open seats are largely in the neighborhoods kids are being bussed out of. This was before the assignment reform process which may have changed things, but I don't think it would be a total 180.

If you want to discuss how the school system needs to improve, great, but the reason kids are bussed around has to do with school quality not location or seats. This is also why the number of applicants for top charter school seats are insanely high- they are city wide vs. a West Rox k-8 which is largely slated for local kids.

So in this magic level playing field where all schools are equal, we have largely enough seats for the kids we have, outside of k1, which is optional. The exception is that you'll never see a new large school building built in the Parkway because it would have serious political headwinds which no-one wants to deal with, so I think demand will always outstrip supply down there.

If someone has some real data, I'd love to see it.

We have a lot of kids in BPS whose families live in poverty. We also have a lot students who are learning English and whose parents are English language learners. And we have a lot of kids who grow up in middle class households with two college-educated parents.

Children who grow up families living in poverty hear 30,000,000 fewer words before they reach school age than kids growing up in middle class families. It turns out that is a significant developmental advantage becuase language acquisition and brain development are related.

Kids living in poverty arrive in Kindergarten less prepared to learn grade-level skills than their more developmentally advanced counter parts. The 'achievement gap'-- the deficit of grade-level skills as measured through standardized tests -- seems to persist without significant intervention but it's not inevitable.

One mitigation is early ed but it's expensive and the economics are such that city and towns can spend a little on it but also must look to the state to help finance it, which is a problem becuase of sustainability. Another is extended school day depending on the use of the time. Students also improve when the move into a more challenging school environment and get the support they need to succeed. From the beginning the difference is resources. The mitigation to close the gap requires resources.

We call the schools that have a lot of kids who test poorly on grade-level skills 'failing schools.' And we call the schools that have a lot of kids who score high on standardized tests 'successful schools,' like BLS and BLA where students take a standardized test to win admission. We're proud of these schools and we should be. But we also have to recognize that we've screened for good test takers who know the grade-level competencies.

The model Mass. has used if to score student achievement (as well as school, teacher and district "success") is the standardized test which measures grade-level competencies. State Education folks think that when judging a schools success it'd be a more appropriate to measure progress over the course of the year, not just an absolute score of grade-level competency at the end.

The model of measuring grade-level competencies with MCAS (or PARCC/Common Core) seems to work very well as a part of preparing students for higher ed. We do it exceptionally well in Mass. in communities full of middle class and upper middle class families. In Boston and gateway cities where we educate kids living in poverty and English language learners, in addition to middle class families, there is a consensus that how we are doing it isn't producing the outcomes we want for more of the students.