BPS has sudden need to replace the exam that helps determine who gets into exam schools

This is one of the worst stories to come out of Boston in a long long time. The city knowingly doubled down on its racism. Parents should sue. Every parent who tried to make their way into an exam school believing their child had some measure of a shot should sue.

BPS is trying to adjust results in order to appear WOKE. 2+2= whatever you identify the result as.

Let’s kill the only decent HS’s in Boston in order to pander.

How many schools have closed because of the musical chairs solution a rich judge from the burbs decided was in everyone’s best interest.

Positive note, more rich families will leave Boston and I’m sure BTU will be pumped.

Clearly the two do not get along. Either BPS was firing the testing company or the company felt the heat and dropped BPS.

What doesn't make sense is that BPS was this company's biggest client. It doesn't make sense that a company would drop their biggest client unless they felt that they were going to lose future business.

It's easy to take jabs at BPS but it's classless for the company to email a whole bunch of other people to tell them that they're firing BPS. My guess is they saw the writing on the wall and tried to make BPS look like the bad guy.

in trouble. Let the finger pointing cover up shit show begin.

Are screwed. It is clear that the ISEE will not be administered in November 2020, but yet, BPS has not announced a replacement exam. Even if they announced it tomorrow, there would only be 9 months until the new exam, not to mention the inevitable problems with rolling out anything new.

So much for equal access. Poor kids across the city now have no way to prepare, while the middle class and up can probably afford last-minute cram tutoring. Before this, at least they could have gone to BPL to borrow ISEE prep books (they do exist, and many copies are up-to-date but not used)...

Oh, this is easy to fix, let everyone go to Boston Latin School. Parents happy. Problem solved.

Yet another story where black people are like "ye no s**t we've been saying this for 20 years."

Like the BPD hair drug test thing they had to throw out.

Black people are like "Duh..." and white people are shocked the test was biased and would come to an end.

Literally laughed aloud reading these comment. Such a divided world country/city we live in

No amount of shuffling of test scores will change who can and cannot do advanced classroom work. The kids at the top of the test will be at the top of any reasonable test - all such tests correlate. That's because what's correlating is general intelligence. This is a commonplace in the field of intelligence research. In fact, there is nothing in all of social science that is better replicated and validated than our knowledge of intelligence.

Of course, as a matter of policy, you can choose to jump unprepared/incompetent students up the list and give them seats. Within weeks, they'll be lost in class. So you can give them 'social' passing grades and 'social' promotions.. What you can't do is give them the ability to learn at a rate that high-intelligence classmates find easy.

Boston Latin is not meant to be equitable - it is meant to be for a cognitive elite. Many people who graduated from BL and went on to be leaders of industry and academia came from working class and poor families. Socioeconomic status has noting to do with cognitive ability. A free school with an elite program serves the interests of lower income children more than anyone else. The children of the comfortable classes will just go to a private school if they don't get into BL. The children of low income parents have no where else to go.

Please note: back in the bad old days, a group of classmates and I were discouraged from taking the BL entrance exam by our principal. Apparently, she was judged on the pass rate, so she didn't want us borderline students screwing up her next review. I don't hold it against Boston Latin - I wouldn't have been happy there anyway.

Let's begin with an unchangeable fact:
Boston despite having more residents than in the recent past has fewer students who are enrolled in Boston Public Schools

Now some additional facts:

1. Boston spends more per student than many of the "Cream of the Crop" Suburban School Districts
2. With the exception of the Exam Schools -- Boston's High School Students -- exhibit the same proficiency problems [albeit in a softer form] as do some of the worst School Districts such as Baltimore*1.
3. Boston is much richer per capita today than it was when Boston Schools produced the "Greatest Generation"
   • most of the "Greatest Generation" students today would be classified as having come from underprivileged homes
   • essentially none of these students could afford "tutoring"
   • many of them had to work real-jobs to help with family income

By the way while not Boston specific -- in the late 40's and early 50's Harlem Highschool was perennially on the top 10 list of NYC Highschools

So what happened??
There are many potential factors which need to be considered.

However -- the first thing that needs to be done is to remove all Political Correctness from the discussion. We need to speak honestly and freely about government policies which have destroyed the concept of "family". We need to speak honestly and freely about why we need to have Charter Schools -- what forced even the Teachers Union to admit that ordinary Public Schools were essentially beyond repair.

Full disclosure -- my father taught at the Jr. Highschool, and at the Highschool level in public schools in a rather-less than affluent suburb of Hartford Ct. He was teaching for several decades during which Federal Support and Control and State Funding and Control went from nothing to near totalitarian levels. Near simultaneously to the growth of external funding and control -- the local teachers unions went from being essentially a professional association to the worst kind of adversarial labor union. Subsequent to his retireing from teaching nearly 30 years ago the teachers have become bonded to the political class -- this converted the adversary from the bosses of the teacher to the public paying their salaries.

A lot of things need to change to make the schools in Boston an attractant rather than a repellent to the new crop of people moving into Boston. Many of these are young individuals and families who are attracted by the opportunity of Boston -- one of the World's most important Hubs of the Knowledge-driven economy. Here's a very short list from where we could start:

1. Start to fix the schools in Boston -- restore neighborhood control and patronage [in the good sense] so that local communities will take pride in their local schools.
2. Make Families the most important "Special Interest Group" -- which all politicians will respect and take heed of the importance of acting on their behalf.

*1
Baltimore has more than 10 highschools where students essentially have learned nothing -- with essentially 0% reading, writing and doing math at Grade Level