Thinking Citizen Blog — “A Dismal Report on Boston School Inequity” (Boston Globe)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: “A Dismal Report on Boston School Inequity” (Boston Globe)
We are coming around to the 50th anniversary of desegregation of Boston schools on the orders of Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. of the US District Court. The order was pursuant to the 1965 “Racial Imbalance Act” passed by the Massachusetts legislature. Are Boston schools actually more or less segregated in 2024 than in 1974?
Today, some excerpts from a Boston Globe article on the subject. But the deeper question is: is segregation really the issue? How about low standards and low expectations in both academics and behavior and the stranglehold of unions which logically put teacher tenure over the interests of students?
There is a conversational chasm on this issue that needs to be bridged. Suggestions?
If you haven’t seen the film “Waiting for Superman,” please do. If you haven’t read the book, “There Are No Shortcuts,” please do. Educational achievement gaps across racial and ethnic lines are bridgeable. We have decades of data. What is lacking is the courage to face the hard facts of why the hard work that must be done isn’t being done. The political power of teacher’s unions is the reason President Obama failed to fulfil his campaign promise of 2008 to roll out the Harlem Children Zone model across the country. The persistent denial of the role played by culture and family structure in driving performance differentials is terribly disheartening and a major obstacle on the path to a world where every child born reaches their full potential for joy, productivity, and responsibility.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“MORE THAN 10% OF SCHOOLS ARE 90% NONWHITE, FIVE PER CENT ARE 90% WHITE” — is it all about the money?
1. “Latino students were the only group other than white students to hold 90 percent or more of seats at a school, 34 in total statewide.”
2. “Three quarters of those schools were in Lawrence; the rest were in Boston, Chelsea, and Holyoke.”
3. “Students of color make up the majority of enrollment in all those districts.”
NB: “The Lawrence and Holyoke districts also are under state receivership, while Boston is working under a state-imposed district improvement plan.”
“MORE THAN 225,00 STUDENTS ACROSS MASSACHUSETTS ATTEND SEGREGATED PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MOSTLY WITH WITH LOW GRADUATION RATES AND STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES” (below the iconic photograph from the Boston busing crisis of 1974–5)
1. “65% of the students in substandard segregated schools are Latino and a quarter are black.”
2. “The graduation rate at schools where al most all students are white was 93 percent, while the rate at schools where students of color compose more than 90% of enrolment was 72 percent.”
3. “On the third-grade English Language Arts MCAS exam, 54 percent of students at schools with nearly all white students met or exceeded expectations, compared to 22 percent of test-takers at schools with almost all students of color.”
PERFORMANCE DIFFERENTIALS SHRINK WHEN SCHOOLS HAVE HIGH STANDARDS OF DISCIPLINE AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE — below Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone
1. Case of the KIPP charter schools across the country. Founded by David Levin and Mike Feinberg in 1994. The story told by Washington Post education columnist Jay Matthews in his 2009 book, “Work Hard. Be Nice.” (2009) Highly recommended.
2. The case of the Harlem Children’s Zone of Geoffrey Canada, told in the film, “Waiting for Superman” (2010) as well in two works of Canada himself as in: “Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun” (1995) and “Reaching up for Manhood” (1998)
3. Case of Jaime Escalante, the math teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. memorably portrayed by Edward James Olmos in the film “Stand and Deliver.”
NB: Case of Rafe Esquith, fifth grade teacher at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles, author of “There Are No Shortcuts” (2003), “Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire,” (2007) and “ Light Their Fires” (2009).
Boston’s schools are becoming resegregated — The Boston Globe
Boston desegregation busing crisis — Wikipedia
Report notes segregation patterns in Massachusetts schools
Success Academy Charter Schools
Success Academy Charter Schools — Wikipedia
Opinion | Harlem Lessons in Elementary Education
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
