Eliot School parents fit to be tied, this time over what they say is a penalty for exam-school admission

Get nothing.

This year, a student's standing on the 100-point scale is determined solely by their GPA, so how is adding the 10 points not adding directly to a student's GPA?

For example: two students each receive a 90 on the 100-point scale, based on their GPA. One student attends a qualifying school, and the other doesn't. The first student will be at 100 points, and the second will be at 90. If this is not called "adding", please let me know so that I can re-enroll in BPS ESL.

Even in future years, where an exam will be administered, each student's standing on the 100-point scale will be determined by a 70% GPA, 30% exam formula. This means that the 10-point bonus will still be added on top of a score that is largely determined by their GPA.

Ten points are added to the GPA of students in a BPS school where 40% or more of the students come from families who are economically disadvantaged. This is the majority of BPS schools! Eleven BPS schools in total will not get the extra points.

So if a student as a 99 GPA and they are in a school that qualifies for bonus points, they will now have a 109 GPA. In order to get into the pool students must have a B GPA. Effectively nearly all BPS students in the pool will have an A with the 10 points added to their GPA.

If a students lives in public housing they get an extra 15 points added to their score, so a 99 GPA becomes a 114 GPA.

Then students are assigned tiers based on their economic situation. There are 8 tiers and about 125 seats to allocate in each tier across the 3 exam schools. The tiers include families from across the city, not just in a specific neighborhood.

Students who do not get the bonus points, and are assigned to the higher tiers will have a very hard time getting a seat at the exam schools. This includes students from the BPS schools who are not allotted extra points, students in charter schools, METCO, parochial schools and private schools.

A test is coming back this year for applicants this fall, and it will count 30% towards the admissions formula. Everything else with bonus point and tiers will remain the same. The tests will be administered this spring and this fall.

Many parents do not understand the new system and they will be very surprised in May when the exam school results come out this year. There are very few options available for students in a K-6 school if they do not have a seat elsewhere by May of the 6th grade.

BPS has information on their web site about how the process will work this year.

https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/site/default.a...

There is a map on the web site where families can enter their address and see what tier they will fall into.

How is this news? And it's confusing. Is this about the CTown Innovation proposal or exam schools. If exam schools, this has been going on since July since SJW supporters (all applying to exam schools right now. You know who you are) endorsed a small group of CRT experts to create this mess and let's face it, racially balance BLS. And you forgot the Alighieri and Manning - not getting bonus points.

-Manning
-Alighieri
-Lyndon
-Kilmer
-BTU
-Elliott

Rich kids go to bonus point schools and poor kids go to non-bonus point schools. Don't forget the 8 socioeconomic tiers. Rich kids live in poor socioeconomic tiers and poor kids like in rich socioeconmic tiers. Advantages given to rich kids and disadvantages given to poor kids arbitrarilty and capriciously.

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-wu-no-10-point-pena...

1. So because the number of kids applying is small at the Aleghieri, it doesn’t matter?
2. No. 5th graders at the Manning do not have a guaranteed pathway to BTU because they added a 6th grade two years ago. Definitely not one and the same. Your info is behind the times.
3. It counts what school the students is at in 5th grade so any guaranteed 6th grade pathways wouldn’t matter anyhow.

Kinda like those same parents that get better schools just b/c of where they live...that's not unfair at all.

The plan doesn’t help disadvantaged students. All schools have some disadvantaged students. If you go to a West Roxbury school and you are low income you get zero extra points. The only thing that this plan accomplishes is eliminating students from certain neighborhoods.

Giving 10 bonus points to all “disadvantaged” schools does not help the students, it just eliminates the students who get no points.

opponents, they're students in elementary, what the hell are you talking about?

The reasons the superintendent cited for the points was (1) to correct for the historical overrepresentation of invitations at 7 BPS schools and (2) to prevent the exclusion of 10 sending schools that have historically received <5 invitations.

On the first point, 3 of the 7 schools deemed overrepresented (the Quincy, the Murphy and the Ohrenberger) actually receive bonus points and will see no change or an increase in their admission rates.

On the second point, of the ten schools that historically received <5 invitations, five schools will still receive <5 invitations. The net gain for the other schools as a result of the 10 points is just 4 seats this year. That’s 4 seats for 854 6th graders. The reason the 10 points do not work for these schools is (1) most of the students at these schools do not earn the minimum B GPA required to apply and (2) because almost everyone gets points, no one really benefits from the points - least of all the most disadvantaged students. These students are still competing with almost everyone.

That is why the 10 points should be viewed as a penalty. The only thing they accomplish is to penalize 4 of the 7 “overrepresented” schools (the Lyndon, the Kilmer, the Eliot and BTU Pilot) and the 5th school, the Alighieri, gets hit in the crossfire. They also penalize most non-BPS schools which is obviously the intent.

When my child was in 2nd grade in 2007, the Eliot was slated to be closed. Abysmal enrollment + even more abysmal performance.

Then a new principal was hired, Traci Walker Griffith. She spent the first couple of years - and many hours - getting the school on track, and enlisting staff, parent, and community support. It was a ridiculous amount of work (that should have been done by ‘Court Street’) but we were all-in.

And then the real work began - many more hours (and years) dedicated to improving the course curriculum and learning experience.

The Eliot had very few students accepted to exam school before Mrs. Griffith arrived. There were no ‘privileged’ families when my children attended the Eliot.

My husband and I have often said BPS should replicate the work and focus Mrs. Griffith and her team have put in place.

This needs to be in place for ALL BPS students. The Eliot should not be penalized for working hard and committing to the success of its students.