Into the Fog of Student Assignments

If there’s anything clear about changing student assignments in the Boston Public Schools, it’s that two key political figures—Mayor Thomas Menino and the chair of the City Council committee on Education John Connolly—want to see more children going to school in their own neighborhood. And Boston still has plenty of parents dissatisfied with the current system of school assignments.

But, as parents, advocates, and elected officials at a new round of meetings look at five possible new plans, with more details and overlays, the nature of assignment policy becomes more complex and elusive.

Officials made their first presentation of alternative plans Monday night in Dorchester, at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School. Despite several pages of maps and information about school performance and popularity, people in the audience, along with members of the advisory council appointed by the mayor, asked for even more information.

Since any new assignment plan is supposed to ensure access to quality schools from any subdivision of Boston, there is concern over measures of performance. Maps provided at the meeting referred to MCAS scores at each school, but BPS Superintendent Carol Johnson noted it would also be important to see a measure of school improvement.

There have been some examples recent dramatic improvements, whether at the Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury or the Henderson Inclusion School in Dorchester. MCAS scores were also much improved at a new in-district charter school, UP Academy in South Boston, compared with results from the middle school it replaced in the same building.

In his presentation of the five options at the meeting, Deputy Superintendent Michael Goar said schools throughout the city “have improved tremendously” since the last significant change in assignment policy was considered five years ago. But one of the maps handed out showed that, regardless of student performance, schools had different levels of popularity, with many of the least chosen schools in neighborhoods that are home to the most BPS students.

The co-chair of the advisory committee, Hardin Coleman, Dean of the Boston University School of Education, said any of the new options would still pose “some big challenges,” including access to quality schools for students from the poorest families.

One remedy to help improve access would be to change the schools themselves. This has already begun with recent school turnarounds and the expansion of popular and high-performing schools. Officials argue there’s potential for more improvement, thanks to provisions in the new contract with the Boston Teachers Union. And, following outside legal pressure, the BPS has taken steps to strengthen programs for students with learning disabilities and English language learners. Speaking Monday night, Goar said there are also plans to increase another popular choice—dual language schools, even combining English with Vietnamese and Haitian Creole.

 “Quality must be dealt with, no matter what,” he said.

 Another way to improve quality would be to spend money saved on busing on improvements such as extended learning time, a system-wide goal the new teachers contract failed to achieve. But that only raises more questions: how much money each assignment option would save, and whether it could be guaranteed that savings would go back to the schools.

Charter schools also provide options in some of the poorest neighborhoods, and their supply is growing. Despite some strong performance, they still lag behind the BPS when it comes to share of enrollment consisting of students with disabilities and English language learners.

Though they are public schools that accept students by lottery, the charters operate on a different standard. Their enrollment is citywide, and any busing needed for students in the primary grades is protected by state law and—if the school is in Boston—paid for by the city (along with transportation for parochial and private schools). It can also be argued the two kinds of public schools are judged by different standards: if racial diversity and inclusion are a prime goal in discussion about assignments for the BPS, the focus for charter schools in Boston is more on getting strong performance with a high percentage of students of color.

For all the uneven competition they might offer, charters are part of the assignment equation in the minds of parents. And that equation could change with any new expansion of charter school supply, or any accommodation that might potentially develop around transportation or enrollment.

For the BPS schools, Goar argued the points on a fixed map were less important than an annual “execution plan,” that is, adjusting the educational content to fit the needs of a given zone.

Advisory board member John Nucci, a former member of the School Committee and City Council, said any of the options would be better than the three zones in the current plan. But one Boston parent of a two year-old child, Meghan Doran, said, “If I look at all these maps and where I live, I see that my options are limited.”

Even with the best possible boundaries, overlays, and improvements, officials also spoke of the options as a choice among trade-offs. Increasing the number of zones would mean more access to a neighborhood school and more predictability, but also fewer schools to choose from and less racial or socio-economic diversity. And there could also be trade-offs concerning convenience and safety.

A long-time education advocate, John Mudd acknowledged that trade-offs had to be considered in deciding on a plan, but only if enough facts can be made available. “Do people understand and are personally empowered to give feedback?” he asked. “Or are they confused?”

Kim Janey, Senior Program Director for the Boston School Reform Project at Mass. Advocates for Children, also said there was a need to know more. “So, here we are again,” she said. “We have a bunch of maps and we have no idea what access to quality is for parents.”

For information on the schedule of community meetings on the assignment plan: http://bostonschoolchoice.org/

Kevin White: A Neighborhood Perspective

Kevin White reached the end of his tenure as Mayor of Boston in 1984, and the last 28 years have done little to change the thumbnail biography. Widely hailed as a visionary who did so much to reshape and revitalize downtown Boston, he inspires admiration, sympathy--and no small measure of criticism--for his dealings with the surrounding neighborhoods in the grip of polarization and dramatic change.

But White's reputation as the downtown innovator who often clashed with Boston's sometimes contentious grassroots elements overshadows the way he reshaped Boston's neighborhoods. Even when the results were unsatisfactory, similar ideas would re-emerge later, sometimes applied more successfully with a different cast of leaders and political climate.

When White won his first term in 1967, the city's racial divide was already sharply defined. The city's economy and population were still in decline. Though two previous mayors--John Hynes and John Collins--were pushing the city toward a "New Boston," the side-effects on surrounding neighborhoods were sometimes neglect, disruption, or displacement.

With the renewal of Quincy Market in the 1970's and developments along the Boston Waterfront, White helped redefine the city as a new, post-industrial hub for a knowledge and visitor economy.

"The thing that people forget is that Boston was really on its knees," said Larry DiCara, an attorney who served on the Boston City Council from 1972 to 1981.

"He refused to accept that and looked beyond where we were to where we could be," said DiCara. "And made a lot of people mad in the process."

DiCara says White's refashioning of Quincy Market as a visitor portal helped lay groundwork for other changes in the Boston landscape, from the depression of the Central Artery to the creation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

For White's predecessor John Collins, the vision of a "New Boston" also included an express route between downtown and the suburbs--the multi-lane extension of Route I-95 that was supposed to cut all the way from Readville to Lower Roxbury. The extension was later dropped by Governor Francis Sargent, partly because of grassroots opposition.

Sargent took a stand against the highway in 1970, when he and Kevin White were running for governor. The former state representative from the South End, Mel King, credits the decision to the power of community action, but he also credits White for joining ranks against the highway.

By April of 1987, more than three years after White had left office, the path of the highway would be the new route for a depressed Orange Line. Though commuters from Dudley Square lost a quick ride to downtown Boston, the relocation had some advantages--from more sunlight on Washington Street to the creation of a new Southwest Corridor Park, joining neighborhoods that used to be divided by two sets of rail lines above street level.

Said Fred Salvucci, White's transportation advisor and later architect of the Big Dig, "It's a major achievement of Kevin's that continues to benefit the city, in my view."



White's tenure overlapped with the development of community health centers in medically under-served neighborhoods. These were also products of community action, but their incubation required help from City Hall. During the same time, there were also grassroots initiatives coming from non-profits in social services, from the earliest versions of community development organizations, and from neighborhood leaders at community centers, launched by White as community schools.

The most crucial problems with city leadership were in the Boston Public Schools. White correctly insisted that his control over education was limited by powers of the Boston School Committee, which had resisted pressures for voluntary desegregation. But King says White should have done more about concerns over education being raised by parents and leaders in the black community. As the city went down the path to desegregation under a federal court order, there would also be friction between the mayor's office and predominantly white neighborhoods.

Boston election results show signs of friction between the city's white majority and its mayor. Though a Republican, Sargent won his election for governor by carrying Boston and its heavily Democratic electorate. White enjoyed more solid backing--if with lower turnouts--from Boston's black and liberal voters, and he is remembered for a cast of appointments that was markedly more diverse than its predecessors. But the racial split among voters would register dramatically once again in the 1976 presidential primary, when the top vote-getter among Democrats in Boston was the notorious foe of desegregation, former Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Later in the same year, two years into the turbulence of court-ordered desegregation, White tried to increase his leverage over the school system through a proposal for charter reform that was placed before the City Council in December. By including district seats, the reforms were advanced as a way to allow more diversity among city office-olders on the School Committee and City Council. At the time, both bodies were all-white, until the election of 1977. But, with scant backing from any community, White's modified version of the recommendations from a charter reform commission was widely denounced as a power grab.

As it turned out, some of the ideas in charter reform would be adopted within little more than a decade. Voters approved a mostly district-seat City Council and School Committee in 1981. The elected School Committee would finally be abolished, in a campaign led by White's avowedly populist successor, Ray Flynn.

The turbulence around the schools overshadowed other areas where Boston's elected officials had to be pushed by grassroots pressure or legal challenges. One was example was public housing. A law suit by tenants over deplorable conditions resulted in the Boston Housing Authority being placed in receivership. There was also a lawsuit over alleged racial bias in the distribution of community development money from the federal government.

Another area that required court intervention was the city's assessing of property values. White did mitigate the burden on homeowners throughout the city, thanks to his 1978 referendum campaign to allow higher tax rates on commercial property. But, before the tax classification campaign, the city lagged in reflecting the loss of values in neighborhoods the most severely affected by disinivestment and abrupt racial turnover. In response, Fair Share organized tax abatement campaigns and staged confrontational actions, including a bus trip to the home of a deputy mayor in the suburbs.

Even when the intent was to benefit the neighborhoods--through Infill Housing or access to mortgages for people of color under the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (BBURG), the results were often blighted properties or vacant lots. Years later, some of the same affordable housing goals would be approached more effectively through cooperation between City Hall and non-profit developers more attuned to their neighborhoods.

Though White is lauded as a neighborhood ally against Logan Airport expansion and the aborted plan for I-95, his administration was also criticized when urban renewal plans went too far as a force of displacement. In the South End, renewal meant a new infusion of investment and neighborhood pride in 19th century brownstones, but there would have been even more displacement of black and Latino residents if not for grassroots campaigns leading to affordable housing at Villa Victoria and Tent City.

It can said that there were similar struggles at the time in other cities. And White's task was sometimes made more difficult by a climate of distrust and polarization at the grassroots level. Making the job even more difficult was statewide referendum that imposed a cap on property taxes in 1980--only a few years after a spike in taxes in response to a budget shortfall caused largely in connection with desegregation. And before the vote on Proposition 2½, taxpayers also became rate-payers, funding a new agency doing a sorely needed upgrade of the city's water and sewer system.

When former Governor Michael Dukakis tried to head off the voter rebellion by tapping the state surplus for aid to cities and towns, White absorbed the allotment for Boston without passing on savings to the taxpayers. It's impossible to say whether acting differently would have kept "Proposition 2½" from passing. But, when the necessary budget cuts took effect the following year, the closings of police stations, fire stations, and schools meant even more strains in White's relationship with the neighborhoods.

By White's last term, there was a noticeable fall-off in the quality of some appointees at Little City Halls. His earliest ambassadors to the neighborhoods included Fred Salvucci and Kirk O'Donnell, who later became a top aide to former US Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill. In White's last term, there was Jack Williams, the city's neighborhood liaison for development, caught in a shake-down over a proposed project in Dorchester's Upahms Corner.

Between the top-down flow of money from Washington, and the norms of governance at the time, White may have decided the best way to be more effective was to increase leverage for his agenda was by building a machine. If the current mayor, Thomas Menino, credits results to partnerships--often developed over long periods of time--White's tenure was more characterized by crises and pressures for swift action.

But there were times when White tapped connections and showed openness to ideas of other people--as when he followed up on the suggestion by City Councilor Tom Atkins to minimize violence after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The city's relative calm, in contrast with other cities around the country, has been widely credited to White's managing to have a Boston Garden performance by James Brown telecast live on WGHB-TV.

In his last term, White did turn attention to neighborhood regeneration in parts of his "Plan for Boston" and through a new effort to combat hate crimes. He also gave approval to an early version of a policy for more residents, women and people of color to get jobs on major development projects in the city.  City officials would be prodded for many years to put more teeth in a policy that originated in grassroots activism and gained momentum in Mel King's first run for mayor in 1979.

If White failed to meet the goals of his neighborhood vision, he did lay a path for development with more results under the next two mayors, as was the case with Blue Hill Avenue. Even when pursuing goals of their own--Flynn along Dudley Street and Codman Square, Menino in Dudley Square and the South Boston waterfont--the parallel with White is hard to miss.

In judging White's performance and legacy, it would be a mistake to overlook the role of Boston's grassroots leaders as agents vision and power. There were times when White showed his respect for that role. And that may have been done in grandest fashion at White's last inauguration, when he took the oath of office with  city councilors on the stage of the Strand Theater, an old movie palace trying to make a comeback in Uphams Corner.

MBTA Tries to Improve Bus Route 23

The No. 23 bus became notorious in March, 2007, when an 18 year-old passenger was fatally shot. But the route between Ashmont Station and Ruggles Station has long been a source of complaints from riders. The complaints are mostly about service being slow or erratic—long gaps between buses alternating with buses in rapid succession.

The route’s one of 15 the MBTA plans for improvements to be funded by federal stimulus money. But changes aimed at speeding up the service--such as consolidating or relocating stops-- can either help or hurt, depending on the location. And, if slowing down can contribute to tensions or provide more opportunities for violence, having one more stop—for example, near Jeremiah Burke High School—can help students avoid walking through hostile gang territory.

In contrast with service on rapid transit, buses involve more improvisations. At one stop, a driver might save time by not pulling all the way over to the curb. There might also be an extra stop for that stooped elderly woman with a cane.

It’s also not unusual for a No. 23 bus to have some of its passengers standing all the way from Ashmont at least as far as Dudley Square. That can be a problem even for riders capable of standing up and keeping their balance: just watch the scramble along the crowded aisle when someone tries to get off. Or watch the slow influx of riders trying to sidestep a stroller parked near the front door.

For more on the process for planning improvements, see the Dorchester Reporter.

A look at School Assignment Questions

A series of neighborhood meetings will take place in May on possible changes in the student assignment plan for the Boston Public Schools. The meetings will follow presentation of a revised proposal from the Boston School Dept. A final plan, taking effect in 2010-2011, would be considered by the School Committee in June. Tighter budgets will probably make access to quality more difficult. Officials working on the plan have to find a way between or around two entrenched ideas about school assignments: a preference for schools close to home, especially through grade 8; and a belief that more options, requiring more transportation, means more access to quality. Would more walking assignments, for example, for families in Hyde Park and West Roxbury, necessarily mean less access to quality for students in Roxbury and Dorchester? Would more neighborhood assignments necessarily increase access to the full-day benefits in a "community of learning?" And what about needs of English Language Learners and students in Special Education? See article in Dorchester Reporter.

School Updates: Dropouts, Assignment Plan

The Mass. Department of Education reports an improvement in the annual dropout rate for Boston schools. The latest figures are for the school year 2007-2008, when the annual dropout rate was 7.6 percent. That's the lowest figure in six years. In the two years before the most recent figures, the dropout rate was almost 8.9%, and the year before that it was 9.9 percent.

But the Boston figures for 2007-2008 still had racial gaps. The highest rate was for Hispanic students, at 10.2 percent. The next highest figures were for black students (7.4%) and white students (5.3%), with the lowest figure for Asian students (2.5%). There was also a gender gap, with the rate for male students at 8.2%, and the rate for female students at 6.9 percent.

The annual rate is used less often for measuring the dropout problem than the rate that tracks students throughout high school. The increase in the annual rate for Boston began its last increase in 2003-2003, around the time of cutbacks following an economic slowdown. The high dropout rate for Hispanic students may reflect some of the problems with English Language Learners discussed in a recent report by the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy and the Center for Collaborative Education.

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A series of public meetings will take place about possible changes in the student assignment plan for the Boston Public Schools. As a way to reduce transportation costs, officials have been considering a possible increase in the number of school assignment zones. Boston currently has three zones. More zones would mean that parents would have to make choices from fewer schools, though officials say there has been a general preference among parents for schools that are close to home. Officials say they hope a new plan will have four kinds of benefits: lower transportation costs, more walkable communities, a range of school choice, and continuity of educational experience.

The series of meetings will begin Wednesday, April 29, with the presentation of a revised assignment plan with five zones. The meeting will take place at 26 Court Street in downtown Boston, in the Winter Chambers. All meetings will begin at 6 p.m. The remaining meetings are as follows:

Thursday, May 7. Umana Middle School Academy. 312 Border Street, East Boston
Tuesday, May 12. Edison Middle School. 60 Glenmount Road, Brighton
Monday, May 18. Lewis Middle School. 131 Walnut Avenue, Roxbury
Wednesday, May 20. McCormack Middle School. 315 Mt. Vernon Street, Dorchester
Tuesday, May 26. Irving Middle School. 105 Cummins Highway, Roslindale
Wednesday, June 3. Boston School Dept. 26 Court Street,Winter Chambers (recommendations by superintendent)
Wednesday, June 24. Boston School Dept. 26 Court Street,Winter Chambers (vote by School Committee)