Education Week - February 6, 2013 - 7

EDUCATION WEEK

By Lesli A. Maxwell
In Boston, a city where the
struggle to desegregate public education through large-scale busing
has left deep scars, school leaders
are, once again, grappling with
new ways of assigning students
to schools that are closer to home.
At the same time, Mayor
Thomas M. Menino, who controls
Boston’s 57,000-student school
system, is pushing a slate of state
legislative changes he says are
necessary to ensure that every
neighborhood in the city can offer
enough viable schooling options
for families under a new studentassignment plan.
Among those changes: expanding the intervention authority currently reserved for the state’s lowest-performing schools to include
other struggling schools and lifting a cap on the number of charter
schools that report directly to district leaders. If approved by state
lawmakers, the mayor’s legislation
would affect districts and charter
schools across Massachusetts.
Twenty years after court-ordered desegregation ended in Boston, the city’s current initiative to
change the student-assignment
process in a district that is nearly
90 percent minority is raising cautious hopes among supporters that
the district can finally craft a plan
that will end the busing of nearly
65 percent of kindergartners
through 8th graders to schools
outside their neighborhoods.
The Boston effort—unfolding
since Mr. Menino’s call for an overhaul more than a year ago—also
underscores how the tough questions some urban districts faced
for decades in trying to achieve
racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic
balance in schools have shifted to
equally vexing ones around how to
provide high-performing schools
in every neighborhood.
“We’ve always said, ‘Forget
about drawing lines until you deal
with the quality issue,’ ” said Myriam Ortiz, the executive director
of the Boston Parent Organizing
Network, a nonprofit group that
organizes city parents to advocate
for change in the public schools.
“I think we may finally be at that
point.”

Zones vs. Distance
Under Boston’s current assignment process—nearly a decade
old—the city is divided into three
sprawling geographic zones that
offer as many as 20 choices each
for K-8 schooling to families that
live within those zones, said Matthew Wilder, a district spokesman.
The district uses a race-blind algorithm to assign students within
their zones but keeps socioeconomic factors in the mix. Nearly
three-quarters of students qualify
for federally subsidized meals.
>>

Students can attend high school
anywhere in the city and that
would not change under three
new assignment scenarios being
considered by an advisory panel
overseeing the process.
“We think there’s a way to make
the assignment process less complex and more predictable for parents,” Mr. Wilder said of the current assignment system.
One model would set up 10 assignment zones that would offer
most families between three to
14 choices of elementary and K-8
schools.
There would be no zones at all
under the other two scenarios.
Parents would apply to schools
that fell within a prescribed distance from their homes. One plan
would offer at least six choices,
and the other, at least nine.
None of the plans would markedly change the racial and ethnic
composition of schools, and families who wanted their children to
stay in their current school assignments would be allowed to do so.
There are also two “overlay”
assignment plan proposals for
English-language learners and
special education students to address what have been shortages
of programs for such students in
schools across the city.
City and school leaders working
to revamp pupil assignment said
that, after analyzing the data,
they were surprised at the extent to which students were being
bused to low-performing schools
across town under the current
system.

No Caps, More Rules
But the proposal also seeks
to impose new prescriptions on
charter schools, such as requiring
them to reserve seats for English-

language learners and special
education students. It would also
give district leaders more say in
the grade configurations and locations of new charters in their
jurisdictions and would incorporate a weighted-student-funding
formula for charter school funding.
Kevin Andrews, the headmaster
of the Neighborhood House Charter School in the Dorchester section of Boston and the chairman
of the Boston Alliance of Charter
Schools, said charter operators are
concerned about a number of the
mayor’s proposals.
Mr. Andrews is also the co-chairman of a special compact between
the city’s charter school leaders
and the district, which aims to
bring more collaboration between
the two sectors on matters such as
facilities and transportation.
He said charters in the city are
already working to expand their
capacity to serve English-language learners and special education students, though he questions

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To provide more equitable access
to good schools, Mayor Menino
and Boston schools Superintendent Carol Johnson are pushing a
legislative package they say would
accelerate their efforts to improve
schooling all over the city.
Under a state law passed in
2010, Ms. Johnson and other local
superintendents in the state have
used special turnaround authority—such as extending the school
day and replacing underperforming teachers—to intervene in some
of the worst-achieving schools.
At the heart of the mayor’s plan
is a proposal to extend that turnaround authority to schools that
have not yet been declared underperforming by the state, but are
teetering on the edge—a change
that would affect dozens of schools
in Boston, Mr. Wilder said.
But the head of the Boston
Teachers’ Union, which just last
September wrapped up more than
two years of contentious negotiations with the district on a new
contract, said such an extension
would be an end-run around the
collective-bargaining agreement.
“We negotiated a contract that
the mayor was happy with, that

assertions that charters, overall,
are that far behind the city’s regular schools in serving students
with special needs.
His school is in the midst of an
outreach effort in Dorchester’s
growing immigrant communities,
which include families from Cape
Verde and Haiti.
“We as a charter community
know that we have to do better to
serve the growing number of ells
in our communities,” Mr. Andrews
said. “But this is something that
should be voluntary and not legislated.”
Despite some major disagreements with the mayor’s legislation, Mr. Andrews said he welcomes Mr. Menino’s willingness
to make education reform a highprofile priority.
“When the mayor puts something out, it means people are
going to pay attention to it,” Mr.
Andrews said. “This will give us
more legs to do the work that we
want to do.”

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Expanding Turnarounds

DISTRICT DOSSIER tracks news and trends on this issue.

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the district was happy with, and
that we were happy with,” said
Richard Stutman, the president of
the teachers’ union. “No sooner did
we sign the agreement than the
mayor is going to the legislature
now to get around it.”
Mr. Stutman said the proposal
would impose “turnaround powers without any of the resources to
pay teachers for their extra time.”
Much of the mayor’s proposed
legislation also focuses on changes
to state charter school law. Mainly,
the plan would end a cap on the
number of charters that districts
can run. Those “in district” charters have unionized teachers but
operate under fewer contract rules.
Boston has five such charters, Mr.
Wilder said.

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

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Boston Reconsidering
Student Assignments

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AT HARVARD
WOMEN
IN EDUCATION
LEADERSHIP
March 6-8

3-DAY LEARNING
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April 24-26

LEADERSHIP:
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July 7-13

For a complete list of 2013 programs, visit
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Education Week - February 6, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 6, 2013