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School Committee approves historic changes to exam-school admissions, aimed at giving more of a shot to poorer kids

School Committee members

School Committee members discussing the new plan.

The Boston School Committee today unanimously approved a new policy for admissions to the city's three exam schools that relies less on a test and more on grades - and on socioeconomic data that will benefit students in public housing, are homeless or attend schools with a high number of poor families.

School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said that the new policy will maintain academic rigor at the three schools while opening opportunity to poor Black and Brown students. She said students will have to have at least a B average to be considered for Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O'Bryant School. She added that students will also get to take the new exam twice, with the higher score used - and that the exam will be "aligned" with Massachusetts curricula standards, unlike the previous ISEE test, which included topics Boston students were not necessarily taught.

The vote was a rejection of an alternate plan that would have assigned 20% of the seats to the top scoring and test-taking students. Some officials at City Hall threatened to withhold approval of the BPS budget if that plan were not adopted.

Cassellius told the School Committee - down to just five members due to resignations by three members over racist comments related to the exam schools - the new plan is a key step on the way to making BPS an "anti-racist school district" in which all students have equal opportunity to advance.

Under the plan approved tonight, students will first be ranked according to their grades, which will count towards 70% of their exam-school ranking, and a new entrance exam, in English and math, which will count for 30% - at least starting with the 2023-24 school year. For 2022-2023, BPS would use just grades, as it did for the coming school year.

Students who live in public housing, are homeless or who are in DCF care or who attend a school where at least 40% of their families are "economically disadvantaged" will then get more points added to their scores - either 15 for students in public housing or who are homeless or in the care of DCF or 10 points for students at schools with high poverty levels. Students will get the higher adjustment that applies to them, but not both.

Once BPS has a list of students ranked by all those criteria, students will be filtered according to which of eight neighborhood economic "tiers," based on a series of socio-economic criteria, including family income, private homes, single-parent families, educational attainment and households in which a language other than English is used. BPS will then offer admission from the lowest to the highest tier, with each tier getting an equal number of slots - a system BPS adopted from the system that Chicago uses for admission to its exam schools. The system will repeat until all the possible seats are filled.

Map of the eight tiers

Along with this, BPS will provide extensive outreach to let kids and their parents know they can apply to the exam schools, followed by test prep classes, officials said.

"It's a huge step forward for our students, especially for our students who have not been able to access our exam schools through no fault of their own," Cassellius said.

"We have come to a place where we are ready to move this district forward," Committee Chairwoman Jeri Robinson said. She added it was just a first step, though. "We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."

"This is an important moment for the city," committee member Michael O'Neill said. "It moves us forward in a positive way."

Tanisha Sullivan, who co-chaired the task force that developed the new policy - along with former Superintendent and Boston Latin School Headmaster Michael Contompasis, agreed the new policy is really only a first step. Now, she said, BPS needs to pay particular attention to bolstering K-5 education.

In 3 1/2 hours of public testimony, parents, educators and residents on both sides of the issue gave impassioned pleas on how the committee should vote.

Supporters said the vote, by helping poorer Black and Brown students at least get a chance at the exam schools is the first step in undoing decades of discrimination against them.

Several white parents from Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and West Roxbury said their kids are already growing up with advantages and that they want schools where all kids can attend.

"i want my children to be participants in a public education system that is fair, that prioritizes equity," Sharon Kunz of Roslindale, who has two young children in BPS, said.

Jadon Berkson, who lives in the South End and goes to BLS, praised the proposal. "This is the Boston I want to live in and grow in," he said.

Also supporting it: Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teachers Union, who criticized people who said Black and Hispanic students would lower the standards at the exam schools, and that not all Asian-American families can afford the sort of test-prep programs that promise better entrance-exam scores.

Opponents said the School Committee, after five months of hearings, was rushing to vote on a plan that most people hadn't seen, and warned they are destroying not just the exam schools, but the very city of Boston. Some said BPS should leave the exam schools alone and use the $400 million it's getting from the federal government to fix the city's other schools.

Nancy Minucci said the plan means that kids who know go to the Dante Alighieri, Eliot, Manning, Kilmer and Lyndon schools, as well as students in Metco and at private and parochial schools, now have "zero chance" of getting into an exam school.

"You're opening yourself to huge lawsuits," she said.

Darragh Murphy of Dorchester, who is part of the parents group that sued to block the admissions system BPS used for the upcoming school year, blasted the committee for the "crude and cruel way" three members referred to White and Asian-American students - without noting that the three have since resigned. She charged the only reason the committee was voting tonight was to ensure a policy is in place before a new mayor and several new city councilors are elected in November.

City Councilors Julia Mejia (at large) and Ricardo Arroyo (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan), though, supported the proposal.

"It's the first step to dismantle an oppressive structure, inequities that continue to exist decade after decades here in Boston public schools," Mejia said. Arroyo said he was particularly glad to see the ISEE test dispatched, calling it a fundamentally racist test.

State Rep. Russell Holmes, who represents Mattapan and part of Roslindale, said he was angered by supporters of the 20/80 plan, who claimed anything else would discriminate against kids who had worked hard to get into an exam school. "All those kids who are not part of that 20% are working hard as well," but unlike the students in the 20%, also have to deal with issues like housing, just getting enough to eat and gun violence, he said. "So many of us achieve in spite of, not because of. "

But Jenny Xie of Brighton, said she wants a return to a system that only looks at students' grades and exam scores. She wondered why her kids shouldn't get extra points, too, because they are hard workers - and have to overcome the disadvantage of growing up speaking a language other than English. The new system "is very unfair to bilingual students," she said.

Steve Yang, who opposed the plan, said exam schools are just not for everybody and that the exams represent meritocracy in action. "The middle class will be driven out of Boston," he predicted.

Jess Madden-Fuoco of Hyde Park, who has a child at the Hernandez School and who teaches at English High School, objected to "the privileged and the powerful" trying to hold onto what they have.

"English students are as brilliant" as exam-school students, she said. "It's despicable to insinuate they're not as worthy of a seat at an exam school."

Priscilla Rojas of Mattapan, who chairs the BPDA board, acknowledged what she said was the heart-wrenching decision the committee had to make, but urged them to vote for the new policy.

Marie Mercurio of Jamaica Plain blasted the "ideologues with agendas," she said composed the task force and said she opposes the plan as unfair, even though it might personally benefit her because her son goes to a "high-poverty" school.

Peter Piazza, who described himself as a "white parent of two while children," said the vote is only a first step in paying off the "historical debt" Boston owes its poor minority families, one he said accrued over the decades through redlining and 1974 right through this year's back-door maneuvering at City Hall to get the committee to vote differently.

Judith Nee said it was absurd to think people in West Roxbury, Roslindale or Hyde Park are rich. The real rich people are in Manchester by the Sea, Cohasset and Marblehead and "they are laughing at us for eating our young." She blasted the plan for dissing the children of firefighters and police officers, and said the committee should be ashamed of itself for even bringing race into the exam-school discussion. "It's never been about white black or brown. It's about gray matter."

Heshan Berents-Weeramnuni, however, noted that Boston Latin School didn't have exams for most of its centuries-long existence and that they only started in 1963, when racist Louise Day Hicks chaired the School Committee.

Slide presentation on the proposal.

Differences between 2022 and following years
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Comments

Whatever the merits or deficits of this plan, it's a very important step having the exam aligned with the public school curriculum. Even (especially) if they were only using test scores, it's unconscionable to have an entry exam that puts BPS students at a disadvantage because they aren't taught the subject matter.

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But the fact is that in February 2020, BPS had already ditched the ISEE in favor of the currently-adopted MAP exam, by refusing to extend the city's contract with the test vendor.

In other words, this plan is fundamentally not about aligning the exam with the curriculum. Instead, it does several things that significantly change what "exam school" means.

First, it significantly waters down the role of an exam, shifting it from 50% to 30% of an applicant's score. Given that students will have not one, but two, chances to take the exam, with the higher score counted, it seems unclear why the reduction is necessary -- unless, of course, one believes in CRT and anti-racist thought, which argue that standardized exams are fundamentally racist (although, in that case, the very fact that BPS is still calling them "exam schools" and is still administering an entry exam would be racially discriminatory).

Second, it adds points based on seemingly arbitrary indicators. For example, the 40% cut-off for economically-disadvantaged students at the applicant's fifth-grade school was previously presented to the public as 50%, and got changed with little rationale or advance notice. Among others, this change benefited some of the white parents who spoke out in favor of the tiers plan (e.g. the wealthy JP kids attending the Curley are now eligible for the 10-point bonus) -- but where are the accusations of backroom dealing now? Similarly, the 15-point bonus for BHA students may have some merit, but it excludes equally-disadvantaged students living in low-income non-BHA housing, such as Section 8 voucher recipients and tenants of housing that is owned/operated by community-based nonprofits (Mission Park, Castle Square, Villa Victoria, etc).

Finally, and most significantly, it seems to be driven by some desire for racial balancing, judging by the task force's work. As the group worked through different proposals, it constantly reviewed the racial data associated with the projected outcomes, presumably to see if it would be satisfactory. A truly race-neutral group would not give so much explicit attention to race, and would instead use only socioeconomic and geographic data to evaluate whether a proposal would meet the desired outcome of ensuring citywide access. The task force's charge of "increasing racial diversity" is also suspect, given that nationally (e.g. San Francisco's Lowell High, Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson), such language has recently been used to significantly reduce Asian-American representation -- something that is also projected to happen under this plan.

Yes, I agree that it's important to align the exam with the curriculum, but that's simply not what this plan does...

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And I AM the JP parent who will get two advantages. Living in Tier 5 and attending the Curley - we don't need either! The plan is capricious and arbitrary! THANK YOU!

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This actually looks like opportunity!
Good Luck to the Best and Brightest of Boston!

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For gentrification, in which wealthy white parents -- the same demographic that kept praising this tiered plan -- will move into "better" census tracts. They'll also send their children to disadvantaged schools, which is fine and dandy, but they'll do it only for 5th grade to game the system.

For whom does it not look like opportunity? The low-income, first-generation immigrant children of Chinatown, who were systematically oppressed by the racial quota system that BPS previously used for exam-school admissions, but will be seeing a sharp drop in the number of available exam-school seats under this plan. Today, they are also the only children in the entire city to not have a permanent library branch in their neighborhood, in addition to having to go to school next to the Mass Pike and the Commuter Rail (both JQS and JQUS look over the trench) and facing some of the worst pollution in the state...

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Please, finally, all you people sticking around Boston for BLS, hit the bricks! You’re the same people holding West Roxbury back from joining this century. Go, bye bye, let’s see those for sale signs. Medfield is lovely, I hear.

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It is in Medfield, Hingham, Lynnfield, Walpole, Brookline, Newton, and Norwell.

Be careful what you wish for as your too stupid to get into Latin Anon arse wants. Declining property taxes means higher rents for renters and lower city services. I lived through blight and all that "grit" of the 70's and 80's. It sucked.

In the war in Algeria against the French, the FLN went after not only the occupying French, but the Algerian moderates, thereby destroying the middle class. Hence, Algeria consumed itself. That is what this vote does.

In Cuba, the "vanguard elite" went after the rich and the middle class. They went to Florida. Cuba has been a dump, a dump with free health care, but still a dump for 60 years.

I guess you want dump. Don't come calling to my now suburban self for a bailout in 10 years. I'll be funding the music and arts program at my local high school.

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from a decision on exam school admissions to ... the Cuban revolution and somehow managing to disparage the Algerian liberation movement.

okay..

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Will you stop posting on UHub then?

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Go back to Connecticut.

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We are all disappointed. We imagined you'd go crawl up Geoff Diehl's butt and stay there.

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Mine is for a stable middle class in Boston and suburbs to control the Sandalistas and the Trumpies from their extreme ideas.

I guess yours are more loser Nazi sexual fetishes in nature. Seek help.

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Put your real estate equity where your mouth is. Go be a "stable middle class" in some suburb somewhere.

Or are you just flapping your gums? Clinging desperately to your last scraps of privilege? Outside 128, nobody cares if you went to BLS, and that scares you?

I like Boston, I'm here to say, and I think the new plan for assignment to BPS' selective high schools is good.

Next step, in my book, is a hub regional Math/Science magnet. None of BPS' selective high schools is up to that job, and we probably don't even have the student base to support one in just Boston.

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I'll get right on that.

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Nobody wants you here

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Looks like I am living right in your head rent free.

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You can’t move out of your mom’s basement quite yet.

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Reached way back in the cortex for that one, didn't you?

So, did you write for Rickles or Bill Hicks?

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Although it is more commonly the 3rd choice BPS exam school, O'Bryant is ostensibly science/math focused. What makes you think it is not "up to that job," and/or why can't Boston support one? Aren't those two ideas somewhat contradictory?

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This vote only serves to further hollow-out hard working middle class families forcing them to leave Boston Public Schools. The richest will stay and continue to pay for elite private schools. The ranks of parochial schools will swell with kids from White, Asian, Black, and Latino families that have 2-income households and can afford modest tuition. Tripledeckers in nice parts of Dorchester (and elsewhere) will turn into investor-owned rentals for 20-something biotech workers along the Red Line. The tax revenue will remain, but continue to be squandered by an ineffective (and racist) school committee. And the BPS schools will wonder why they no longer have active parent associations and have run out of community-based funding.

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That’s rich, buddy. I’m so glad you brought the ultimate west Roxbury ignorant take. These people, and it sounds like you are one of them, have this idea they’re somehow driving the demand to live in the outer neighborhoods of Boston, and when they pull up stakes it’ll be a blow to the area. The housing market has so very little do with demand for seats at Latin. It probably did in 1997. Today it’s proximity to high paying jobs, nice houses, at prices lower than Newton. Nobody is moving to West Roxbury because of BLS. It’s a nice benefit if your kid gets in, but the people that moved to my street in the last decade want a backyard within range of their biotech or software jobs.
More over, these very smart and successful people mostly send their kids to BPS. Bright, confident people that want to be part of a community, not just suck a seat at Latin off of it. They aren’t scared to send their kids to BPS like so many West Roxbury natives. It’s a bunch of realtors and cops that fill up holy name and st. Theresa’s because they’re scared of the world and don’t know how to navigate it besides clinging to some playbook that’ll get their kid into BLS.
So no, those people leaving won’t hurt West Roxbury. Smarter, less bigoted people will buy their houses. And there is plenty of money in Boston to fund schools. That’s a choice and we need to elect leaders that want to make it. We pay a pittance in real estate taxes with the residential exemption.

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How many Anons are you going to let in?

How many are you going to let in spouting quasi-racist propaganda?

How many are you going to let in that can't capitalize proper nouns?

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what specifically is 'quasi-racist propaganda' about 'mont's comment?

West Roxbury elitist isn't a race, it's a lifestyle choice.

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We need more comments from sensible people to drown out the likes of Johnny C.

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Let the gentrification residential desegregation begin!

I expect many families will find out what tract they are in, and what its tier is, in short order.

I wonder if real estate listings will include tract tier. "Tier 1 fixer-upper with great bones. Bring your contractor and your imagination. Tract 812 is close to good transportation and restaurants."

https://bostonopendata-boston.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/4a8eb4fb3be44...

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If anyone were going to bother to do that, they'd just move to a suburb where they don't have to worry about this

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they want schools where all kids can attend

Ensure educational equity across Boston and do away with the exam schools. Desegregate the education process.

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Look at that tier 2 spot in Allston/Brighton. That would be a good spot for anyone who wants to get into BLS. I am sure you can find some other gems.

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Bounded by Washington St., Cambridge St., Comm Ave., Allston St., and Brighton Ave.
Basically, from St. Elizabeths over to Koreatown.

Not a lot of single-family homes in that census tract.

Includes the lovely Ringer Park.

Gem? You be the judge.

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Imrie Rd. looks like a solid gem. Some "good bones" houses on High Rock Way as well with lots of trees and owner-occupied properties. Wonder if these homeowners know they just hit the lottery? (I bet commercial landlords will raise rents too. No bargains on 3-bed units will be had at 7 High Rock Way.)

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Buy the single-family at 34 Ridgemont. Way underpriced now. Fun parties there back in the day.

http://www.alienlanding.org

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Does alien landing still exist? It looks like it's under new ownership.

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That’s been over for years. But the internet is forever

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Committee Chairwoman Jeri Robinson […] added it was just a first step, though: “We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."

Can’t wait for the board to get to work on this.

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Maybe white parents will finally grow the cajones to send their kids to bps schools that aren't the Dante Alighieri, Eliot, Manning, Kilmer or Lyndon. Hopefully this will help to diversify the entire school system.

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The superintendent's quote about making BPS an "anti-racist school district" is not good for the lawsuit. It publicly acknowledges their focus on race.

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So the school committee and superintendent now admit they have failed the city’s children. Because giving priority to poorer neighborhoods says they have failed to help those kids attain equity with the rest of the city.
The best thing that BPS can do right now is stop busing and return to neighborhood schools.

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One of the biggest factors working in favor of busing is that critics of busing always sound like crotchety old racists. There are never any details besides busing is bad so “end busing” — that’ll apparently fix everything.

Move. To. Hingham.

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The waste of so many millions for non-educational time makes its own argument against busing. That plus the thousands of unsupervised hours for kids.

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ignoring "race" as a concept is a surefire way to perpetuate racism.

but you knew that.

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What happens when all these 'B' average students end up at BLS and find the standards are written to an A-Student expectation. BLS is notoriously hard with lots of homework and exacting expectations. Will teachers be asked to 'dumb-down' the curriculum, or will they stick to their stablished pedagogy? If teachers don't change, its going to be pretty hard to get into Harvard with a C+ GPA, even if you are an economically disadvantaged person of color.

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Kids can't rise to meet expectations, that they are pre-ordained to fail, their lives are failures and they will always be failures.

There's a word for prejudging an entire group like that. I'm sure you can figure it out.

In any case, as the parent of a relatively recent BLS graduate, I know first hand that BLS is no longer The Paper Chase Jr. Yes, it's demanding. But check the calendar: It's not 1985, John Houseman doesn't run the school and there are lots of resources to help kids work through academic problems - it's not the sink-or-swim pool you think it is.

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BLS upper grade parent here- my kid has plenty of anecdotal stories of classmates who don't give a damn about excelling at the school and are there because their parents pushed hard to get them in. Those seats are better filled by someone else.

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When I was at BLA from '84 to '90, the teachers could tell which "sixies" (seventh graders) would stay the entire six years and be excellent students, and which "sixies" would either flunk out and/or transfer because the workload was too much, or worse, get expelled. I ended up being a solid "B" student despite dislike for literature (especially outside and summer reading, where you were asked to read a novel and write essays about it).

The exam schools pride themselves on making work very challenging. I estimate that high rigor will not change as the teachers will stick to the current curriculum and expect students to keep up. Teachers will keep on throwing in pop quizzes, assign three to four hours of homework a day, and will refuse to water down standards to make others feel better.

If this fight to eliminate exams and other radical changes ends up with students attending for a few months, only to tread water and then transfer out to much less rigorous and demanding schools, all of these changes will be for naught.

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"We have 30 high schools, there's no reason that we only have three that people feel that they want to be able to go to."

This sums it up. So much time and money and effort spent on the exam schools, the exam schools, the fucking exam schools, like it's impossible that we could possibly have any other decent high school in this city, so we must continue to tweak the standards for which small percent of the population will receive an education and which will be left out cold.

I remember a couple years ago when the Madison Park students ended up throwing a walkout because they'd gotten two weeks into the school year and didn't have goddamn school schedules. And people threw up their hands and hemmed and hawed and did not spend a tiny fraction of the effort this whole bullshit exam school debacle has taken to do anything about it. Or the violence at/surrounding English despite herculean efforts by the teachers, admins and students to raise their achievement numbers - imagine working so hard to push up two grade levels in 9 months and having to deal with gang violence and drug dealing teachers on your way in/out every day. Or the fact the West Roxbury school (you know, the one that west roxbury kids don't go to) was condemned as unsafe and shut down all of a sudden leaving those kids totally disrupted.

Where were the hours and hours of zoom meetings and votes and plans and shit there. Where were the tearful white hipsters standing up for what's right at the expense of their own kids there. Where was anybody. Should the exam schools be more equitable? Yes. Is this whole plan a fancy, liberal looking, braggable bandaid on a gushing wound? Yes. If there were more "good" schools in this city, nobody would give a fuck about the couple that you have to take a weird test for and also learn latin, because you could go to a good school that looks entirely at grades and focuses on deconstructed learning, or one with a portfolio requirement, or one where you come in and solve science puzzles and math games for a day to qualify and learn coding, or one where maybe you're just generally a B+ student with no particular passion but deserve a quality education at a normal goddamn school because this city has so much money and cannot get this figured the hell out.

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From people on both sides of the issue. And School Committee members seemed to agree, calling on Cassellius to assemble similar task forces on other issues (with Madison Park being mentioned specifically).

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Are basically a way to kick issues down the road and make them someone else's problem.

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The three exam schools get a lot less money per student than the rest of the BPS as a whole. Madison Park gets something like 50% more per student than BLS/BLA/O'Bryant.

The thing is, much of the value of the exam schools lies in the student body itself. A bunch of high-achieving kids tends to push each other to achieve more, and it also creates the demand for advanced courses which can't always be justified if only a few students are interested; i.e. something like AP German. That's a big part of why top-tier colleges are so valuable -- Harvard and MIT give exposure to a lot of other really bright students. The quality of instruction isn't necessarily better than UMass but you might end up doing a research project with a Nobel laureate.

With the exam schools and Metco you're not going to get many more "good" schools unless you can fix all the problems at home and in neighborhoods. The smart kids with engaged parents can all escape the morass that is the rest of BPS.

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Of those running for Mayor, here are there commentaries on the matter from last night into today via Twitter:

Campbell: none. Just jabbing away at Janey on other things.

Wu: none. Talking rent control and environment

Janey: none. She went to the recommissioned fire station.

Essaibi-George: prior to the vote called out the fact that it seemed rushed and said they could wait for those school committee vacancies to be filled and a new mayor.

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She's an Arroyo level hack, no wonder she got Felix's endorsement. I assume Consalvo is fully on board as well to make sure the gravy train keeps flowing.

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From the Globe:

"She [Essaibi-George] called the process hasty, noting that as it unfolded there were School Committee members who were missing, a mayor who was serving in an interim, acting capacity, and a 'school year of chaos and uncertainty.' "

A comment from someone who does not live in Boston, and in fact, lives far at the other end of the Marathon.

The mayor is the mayor, acting or not.

All mayors are "interim" mayors.

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There will be a 2nd collection this weekend at each Holy Scam Mass to benefit the parish school whose side grift has ended.

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Anti-Catholicism presented above.

Gaffin - Are you going to allow this open religious hate?

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Not anti-Catholic hate John.

A religious institution that engages in a long-time scam to benefit itself and a chosen few deserves to be called out.

It would be politically unfathomable but where is the AG's or DA's investigation into this long-time, ongoing scam?

ps. Or maybe the Cardinal.

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You are a hater.

I guess it is open season on anything here.

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Born at St. Margaret's
Baptized at St. Leo's
First Communion St Leo's
Confirmed St Mary's
Married St. Peter's

I am disgusted by the actions of the parish and school leadership.

Is this a scam you approve of John?

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John, I'm not really sure that reaches the level of "hate" but I'm not an expert in these things.

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It's hate.

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John,

So you approve of the school's scam.

Is this what we should be teaching our children?

-Cheat to get ahead.
-It won't matter if you don't get caught.
-Everyone is doing it.

That's not what the nuns taught me.

I didn't go to BLS but I know a fraud when I see one.

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"A new Boston public schools report obtained by WGBH raises questions about kids entering Boston Latin School from private schools, especially Holy Name Parish School.

Last year the Catholic school in West Roxbury sent more students to Latin than any other private school, according to Boston public schools. Out of a class of 405, 43 — or 10 percent — of students came from Holy Name. Those 43 students make up the majority of the graduating class at Holy Name, which last year totaled 51 students.

And here’s the remarkable thing about Holy Name students: They get really good grades.

Sixty-nine percent of the students applying from Holy Name last year had A plus averages, according to the Exam School Enrollment Data Group report.

Compare that to the students applying from public schools with the best track records of getting into Latin. Only 22 percent of those students had those kinds of grades."

https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017/09/05/local-news/boston-public-school-stu...

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A racial breakdown of those Holy Name students who get into BLS?

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for "Timer"

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on that topic, why hire an ASL interpreter for these meetings when Zoom does a decent job of automatic transcription?

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ASL is a different language from written or spoken English, and it's many BPS students', teachers', and parents' primary language.

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contains too many errors to be accurate enough for deaf and hard of hearing users. And also because ASL is a separate language as the other poster mentioned.

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