US Attorney Carmen Ortiz announced today her office will investigate allegations of civil-rights violations at Boston Latin School. In a statement, she said:
We will conduct a thorough investigation into the recent complaints about racism at BLS and will go where the facts lead us. Once our investigation is complete, we will share our findings at the appropriate time. I want to thank Mayor Walsh and Superintendent Chang who have pledged their full cooperation in this independent investigation.
The investigation will focus on charges by several groups, including the ACLU, the Boston chapter of the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice about racial harassment and discrimination, which the groups say include, but also go beyond, the allegations reviewed by BPS.
School Superintendent Tommy Chang, meanwhile, told WGBH - in an interview conducted before Ortiz's statement - that he has begun looking at ways to increase black and Latino enrollment at the nation's oldest public school without reinstituting the quotas ended after a white father sued.
Chang said one possibility is to expand the entrance criteria to include such factors as community service and entrance interviews, rather than relying solely on a student's elementary-school grades and results on the ISEE tests.
However, he added he is also looking at a dramatic increase in the number of "advanced work" classes in fourth and fifth grades as a way of preparing more students for the test; the current AWC program is often seen as a conduit to BLS and the city's other two exam schools.
He told WGBH that since the end of quotas, enrollment of blacks and Latinos at BLS has gone down, even as their percentage of the overall BPS and city populations have increased.
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Comments
D you are not naive here ,
By kvn
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 12:55pm
D you are not naive here , the n word situation is very perplexing. You acted respectfully telling your lad to just dont use the word ever anywhere.
But what happens if a kid's
By mariac
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 10:01am
But what happens if a kid's grades aren't that great but they get accepted in to the school because they volunteered at a homeless shelter? Will they be sitting in a classroom feeling ashamed because their grades are lower than others? I'm Latino, and personally, I find that to be embarrassing. I'd rather be accepted in for my brain and not my looks and bad grades!!! Why don't we help elementary school aged Black and Latino children to excel and get smarter so they won't have to be "categorized" as the stupid minority kid with bad grades?
So?
By adamg
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 10:47am
First, I don't know why Chang brought up community service, because we're talking fourth and fifth-graders here: I hope he's not seriously considering making 11 year-olds go out and do volunteer work (as they will have to do at BLS). But that aside:
Not every kid learns the same way and a kid who does relatively poorly on a standardized test is not necessarily any less smart or worthy than a kid who does. High school can be a place where a kid really blossoms and if BPS can figure out a new way to ensure kids who want and deserve to be at an exam school but who maybe didn't do as well on the ISEE or in some classes can get there, I'm all for it.
As for categorizing minority kids as "stupid," sorry, you're really insulting those kids. Yes, perhaps, some day, we will have lower-grade schools all across this city that are consistently great; until then, I'm not seeing why kids who have been held back through no fault of their own should not be given the same chance as kids who are in what are basically exam-school prep schools. And BLS is not for everybody - it is grueling and demanding and no, not every kid is ready for that or does well in a setting like that, and hopefully whatever screening BPS adds to the admission process will help pick the kids who are (yes, we also deserve a BPS where all high schools give kids a chance to excel, too).
The last point is the big one
By anon
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:03am
BLS should be a good, challenging environment for anyone regardless of ethnicity, orientation, etc... However, I can't get past the feeling that the biggest issue BPS faces is providing a good education for kids, largely minority, who aren't going to exam schools for whatever reason. A kid who gets into Latin is likely on a good trajectory but a kid who's going to English or Madison, etc... is entering the world in a much worse starting point and needs the support more. Both are issues, but the one getting the press is not the biggest problem with BPS.
Yep
By adamg
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:13am
To its credit, the Globe has covered not just the BLS issue, but the overall BPS budget issue, which is disproportionately hitting high schools, because they have a lot more "optional' stuff that can be cut, like libraries (or in the case of BLS, a Latin AP class, which is kind of sad). But, yes, this BLS thing seems to be getting way more attention than an issue that affects thousands more students.
But do you just discard the
By kvn
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:09am
But do you just discard the notion of test? The entrance exam is just one of many tests to be encountered. Now do you have to tailor fashion each class subject test as well? And you seem to have something about tax paying residents sending their children to '' exam-school prep schools " , which I perceive to be Parochial Schools . And there is no guarantee that if you gain admittance to BLS you are going to stay there. Do you tinker with that as well?
No, no and no
By adamg
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:19am
Go back and read the transcript of Chang's interview with WGBH. He's not saying we should drop ISEE, but that we should supplement it with other criteria.
As for "exam-school prep schools," no, I didn't mean parochial schools - although, yes, there is a possible issue of private schools giving kids higher grades than they would get at a BPS school, which gives them a head start on exam-school admission.
I was thinking of certain schools across the city - some private, some public - that, for whatever reason, do a better job with their kids and get more of them accepted into one of the exam schools.
Our daughter went to a BPS school we thought was doing a good enough job of educating her that we decided against transferring her to an AWC program when she got accepted into AWC (despite arguments from the then head of the AWC system that, basically, she'd wind up living in a cardboard box under an overpass if she didn't transfer). Not all families are so lucky.
'' giving kids higher grades
By kvn
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:29am
'' giving kids higher grades than they would get at a BPS school, which gives them a head start on exam-school admission ''
I am not buying that for a second. These kids still have to pass the test. Do you suggest that they are marginal students that need the boost? Do you really think parents would spend their hard earned money for inferior schooling just so they can gain a place in a superior schooling situation? And the Chang thing is just machination for meddling and posturing away from the exam by lowering its value. I saw this bullshit with the busing , you can fool some of the people some of the time , you can't fool all of the people all of the time. I know nothing of AWC so you're off the hook there. But seriously , just take the fucken test already , and stop the rest of the conjuring. Shalom to you , with respect !
lots of parent shenanigans to get into BLS
By EM Painter
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 1:56pm
I know people have gone into their private school and said my kid is getting A's in 5th and 6th grade or we're leaving.
I know people who have kept their kid back a year when they didn't get the right grades in 5th grade.
Haley?
By anon
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:34am
It was the Haley, right? Some schools are more equal than others seems to be their motto.
But there's no $$ to pay for new "supplements"
By Iresd
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 12:18pm
How can Supt Chang possibly talk about any new supplement? How, with a straight face, can he suggest expanding AWC when BPS isn't currently fully funded? Yep, this is coming from a BPS parent, who loves her daughter's K-8 which got a $200K cut.
She's not insulting those kids.
By Sally
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 12:38pm
Reread her comment--she's referring to kids being categorized as "stupid" not calling them stupid herself. As difficult as it is to parse these issues, it's impossible to ignore them completely as part of the discussion. Part of the inevitable backlash of any attempt to level the playing field is accusations, even sometimes just the silent implication that black and Latino kids somehow need extra help because they're not as smart, don't study as hard, etc. I've heard enough of this over the years in a hundred different forms and ways, from people of every age and shade and it's much more nuanced and trickier to combat than say, a Louise Day Hicks.
And that's what the kids in the school will say
By EM Painter
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 1:57pm
.
I do wonder how these
By anon
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:38am
I do wonder how these accusations of a racist administration and racist students is impacting ALL students at BLS. This kind of negative national attention directed at kids who are already under an enormous amount of academic pressure must be overwhelming. Will the student who made the disgusting lynching comment be expelled? And if not, then why the hell not? Will his/her parents be held accountable? A racist out-of-state tweeter and a racist student and an unacceptable response to this racist student is certainly giving a bad reputation to a public school and its students which I thought were supposed to represent the best and brightest that Boston had to offer.
METCO & non-white enrollment at BLS
By Anonyme
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 12:44pm
Perhaps Metco is attracting students who might otherwise go to BLS. White students don't have that option, so it makes getting into the exam school even more important for many.
A friend of my dad's attended BLS in the late 1940's. Then, it was as much as FIVE hours of homework per night. His graduating class was over 50% Jewish, which did not reflect either the freshman class or the city's demographics. According to him, Jewish families were just very insistent that their boys stay there, and wouldn't let them transfer out because they didn't like the workload.
I think that the exam and charter schools, and the Metco program, attract the kids of the most involved, motivated parents. Which may explain a good deal of their success relative to the other schools.
It seems there ought to be something short of a federal investigation to look into this, maybe at the state level?
Sibiling considerations, too
By anon
Thu, 03/03/2016 - 3:44pm
My family moved from the NYC Public Schools to the suburbs when I was in middle school, as did a high number of my classmates in the honors/AP program path.
The reason was, while the oldest children in many of these families were solid candidates for getting into and thriving in a competitive exam school, the younger siblings were not showing a similar inclination or Type A personality. So rather than sort out 2-4 different schooling tracks for 2-4 children, they moved to a school district where the kids would just go to their local elementary/middle/high and that would be that. No thinking.
I suspect many parents opt to simplify logistics when picking schools.
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