BPS too complex for parents to navigate; new group says it will help solve that

Currently waiting on my son's K1 assignment. My wife and I both have PhDs and we still found the whole thing to be remarkably difficult to understand, not to mention extremely time-consuming between registration, school visits, and application. Anything to make it smoother is worthwhile.

What about the 90% plus of Bostonians that don't have kids in the schools. Shouldn't some of them be included on this board?

I'm wary of any group that says they have the facts. Especially groups with the actual word "Facts" in their name. It's like a certain news program touting that they're "fair and balanced." If you have to say it so blatantly, maybe it's not really true at all.

What facts are they talking about? Student population at a school, after school programs, school location? Those sound like real facts and it would be good if there was an easy to use hub to find them. Aside from that, there are only opinions and data that people can massage to create so called facts. I hope that they don't start posting test scores as a "fact" for how good a school is. Test scores aren't designed to determine school quality, they are only designed to determine what students know and can do within a certain margin of error. That's it. Anything else is an abuse of that data.

Also, there is this from their website- "SchoolFacts Boston is committed to transparency." And yet they post nothing about their family advisory board besides the name and neighborhood of the folks on it and nothing about where they get their money. Hopefully, they prove me wrong and become an actual transparent org that sticks to the real facts. So far, I'm not impressed.

Kids go to nearest school. Schools at which 50 percent or more of student pop has one mother without a college degree get 50 percent extra funding for support services and enrichment. Tell me why I am wrong.

What (rather, who) is the Barr Foundation, and what is this really about? The Barr Foundation is Amos Hostetter, Cablevision mogul and mega-philanthropist/policy-driver for city services. His money has elevated his acolytes and protégés to public "service" (I use that term loosely), and has given him enormous power in the public arena. Talk about a seat at the table! Amos Hostetter IS the table. Boston Magazine published an excellent article about this unelected mayor of Boston at https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2016/01/31/barr-foundation-boston/

Amos Barr Hostetter (hiding modestly behind his middle name) is a major charter school supporter.

Barr has been generous to several charters, making public education advocates fear that the foundation is on the same path as such charities as the Gates and the Walton foundations, which have poured huge amounts of money into charter schools and are pushing a drive for public policy to support them.

Members of the Citywide Parent Council and Quality Education for Every Student (QUEST)—two groups staunchly opposed to charters—are wary of Barr and its grant-making. They are highly critical of the Boston Compact, a coalition of charter, district, and parochial schools that is funded by Gates. Barr has paid out $150,000 to Boston Public Schools and Wheelock College to help establish the Compact here. The Compact is the driving force behind Boston’s “unified enrollment” plan, which will change the way students are assigned to schools. Barr is also investing $5 million in the Fort Point–based Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), which runs a nationally recognized teacher-training program as well as a charter school. These connections—combined with Barr’s enormous wealth, influence, and political clout—raise fear and suspicion among parents and advocates who adamantly support public education over privatization. “A small group with a great deal of power and influence is shaping a plan with little input,” says Mary Battenfeld, a member of QUEST and the Citywide Parent Council, and it “will radically restructure and possibly destroy Boston Public Schools.”

John Connolly is a well-qualified "smiley face" front for Hostetter's plan to control and privatize public education via charterization. His mayoral campaign was chosen for backing, to the tune of $500,000, by the discredited and traitorous Stand for Children, a parent group that was hijacked and turned into a charter lobby (https://www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/for-or-against-children). When that intended contribution became public (https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/08/21/connolly-rejects-outside-money), he knew enough to vociferously refuse their money. He hoped to bury the political controversy, but the exposé revealed his true colors. Since his electoral defeat, he has been assisting "turnaround" (read: charterized) schools in Lawrence (https://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/connolly-named-chair-new-lawr...) and Salem (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/01/06/year-after-mayor-race-john-...).

Now, this story indicates, he's got a grant (although he's disguised inconspicuously, on the website, as just one of the board members) to run SchoolFacts Boston (https://schoolfactsboston.org), a new organization purporting to be

founded and run by Boston families... to work together on Boston education issues. Our Family Advisory Board (FAB) is made up of parents, alumni, students, teachers, and other Bostonians who are committed to creating schools and school systems that create opportunity for all of Boston’s children and families. The FAB meets quarterly to discuss Boston education issues, and to determine the priority areas for SchoolFacts Boston to focus its work.

"Creating schools and school systems that create opportunity for all of Boston's children"? Not exactly just helping confused parents with the BPS school sign-up process, as adamg's headline implies. More like a shadow School Committee, appointed by a multi-billionaire scheming to replace BPS with BPS, Inc.

The home page says:

Fact-based information on our schools.
By Boston families.
For Boston families.

SchoolFacts Boston is committed to transparency. SchoolFacts Boston will disclose all of its donors.

But nowhere on the website is there mention of the Barr Foundation, which founded and funds the organization. Of course, that would impede their ability to lure in earnest parents, teachers, and education advocates, who must be groomed as the grass-roots front for the group.

Stevil, rest easy! SchoolFacts Boston is an organization created not to take public money to throw at the problem, but to put private money to use in expanding the charter market in this city (the public money grab comes later, by others).

And you, a vocal advocate of charters, express agreement with that goal:

"Why do people believe they provide a better education? The results speak for themselves (if you get through - and the dropout rate and funding formulas are a legit beef with charters)"

But it's not a "dropout" rate. It's a "throw-out" rate. The results speak exactly for that: charters throw out (or push or drive or coerce or threaten or intimidate or whatever you want to call it) students who threaten their stellar aggregate test scores, and thus their fat contracts (and the hedge fund investors behind them). That's why they appear to provide a better education -- they can start with a hundred kids (chosen from a group of already screened and self-selected applicants) and every year eject the bottom-scoring layer; then they boast high scores, and high graduation rates for the couple of dozen students who make it till then; the more grades in a charter, the fewer survive the winnowing process. (http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/10/more-about-attrition-rates-in-...)

If the BPS schools could choose their students, they'd look much better-performing, too. As Mayor Tom Menino said, back when he still told the truth about charters (before Obama paid the states to charterize), “In Boston Public Schools, we take every kid. We don’t discriminate. We take special education, we take English-language learners,” he said. “Some other schools? ‘Oh, no. We don’t want those kids.’ They dump those kids into the Boston Public Schools. They want 100 percent graduation rates.” Yes, the "dropout" rates sure are a legit beef.

And even with the advantage of a cherry-picked student body, charters don't do well. Just one example: A charter-advocating Boston Foundation report, "Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston’s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice" (http://economics.mit.edu/files/9799) states:

Does charter attendance also increase high school graduation rates? Perhaps surprisingly given the gains in test score graduation requirements reported in Table 4, the estimates in Table 7 suggest not. In fact, charter attendance reduces the likelihood a student graduates on time by 12.5 percentage points, a statistically significant effect.

See the website of the National Education Policy Center (https://nepc.colorado.edu) if you really want fact-based information on charter quality nationwide.

And two excellent blogs: https://dianeravitch.net and https://haveyouheardblog.com and

Beware the Trojan Horse called SchoolFacts Boston! It is here to begin the undoing of the popular vote against Question 2, which would have allowed unfettered proliferation of charter schools. (https://www.wbur.org/edify/2016/11/08/charter-school-ballot-question-res...)

I'm assuming our excellent Boston public school citizen watchdogs are on it!