Boston Parents Schoolyard News
4 min read Jul 24, 2018By Alain Jehlen
When Dan O’Brien of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) presented the group’s report on the Home-Based Assignment Plan to the School Committee on July 16 (read about it here), he included three suggestions for making school assignment more equitable. They ranged from obvious to expensive.
One problem BARI discovered was that the sixth-grade algorithm doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. The plan was to offer each child at least four schools in MCAS tier 1 and 2, including at least two in tier 1. But the algorithm selects those schools from all schools with kindergartens. Some of those don’t have sixth grades. Many students had no MCAS tier 1 schools in their choice baskets.
Fixing that glitch was O’Brien’s first recommendation.
The second was a bigger problem, predicted by many people before the system went into effect: The system offers at least four tier 1 and 2 schools (except for the sixth-grade bug), but it pays no attention to how many seats are available in those schools or how many other children are being offered the same seats.
There are lots of children but very few open seats in high-MCAS schools in or near predominantly African-American neighborhoods, so African-American children faced much longer odds of getting a seat in such a school. Latinx children had a somewhat better chance. White and Asian children had the best chance of a high-MCAS school placement.
O’Brien suggested the algorithm be changed so that all children have a fair chance of getting into high-MCAS schools.
Fixing those problems, however, still wouldn’t provide equity for all children, he said.
“It’s very hard to provide students with high-quality schools close to home if there are no high-quality schools close to their homes,” he said. The only solution is to improve schools in all neighborhoods.
That led to a short but sharp debate over the future of BPS between School Committee Chair Michael Loconto and Committee member Miren Uriarte.
“If we want to increase more seats around the district that are of high quality,” said Loconto, “we have to pay for it.”
State and federal dollars have been cut, he said. “Charlie Baker’s not walking through that door with a bag of money.”
The city government is already contributing a lot, said Loconto, so cutting bus costs is a must. He also suggested that changing grade configurations could help.
“We have to think about how this system radically looks different going forward,” he said.
But Uriarte responded, “What you’re suggesting is a move toward more neighborhood schools. And that means there are going to be more and more segregated schools.”
“If we’re willing to live with that, then we go in your direction. I’m not willing to live with that. I’m really not,” she said, to applause from the audience.
Loconto said that wasn’t his intent, and Uriarte agreed: “I know that’s not the intent, but the unintended consequence.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” said Loconto. One way to cut busing costs, he said, is to get families that are eligible for busing but don’t actually use it to opt out, so the district doesn’t have to send buses to stops with no pick-ups.
But Loconto also said that since BPS is 87 percent non-white, “you’re going to have segregation to some degree.”
He added, “We have people traveling across the city right now in search of quality, and they’re not finding it.”
Those two points of view seem likely to define the debate for months to come.
Meanwhile representatives of civil rights and education justice organizations pushed back strongly against the idea that Boston’s segregated housing makes it impossible for the city to integrate its schools.
They listed a half-dozen strategies that would give low-income African-American and Latinx children a more equal opportunity to go to the schools they choose.
Those strategies include reserving seats for low-income children at schools that are in high demand. The United States Supreme Court has banned the use of racial quotas for integrating schools, but rules based on family income are allowed.
“We’ll be watching to judge how thoughtful and how urgent not only our School Committee but our district, our interim superintendent, and our mayor act to make right on the wrongs that we all agree are in this document,” said Matt Cregor of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice.
“Separate will never be equal,” said José Lopez, education chair of the NAACP Boston Branch.
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