Boston Mayor Marty Walsh gave no indication in 2013 when he ran for office that he was a supporter of school privatization; his opponent John Connolly clearly was. Walsh accused Connolly–a charter school supporter of wanting to “blow up” the school system. Yet now Walsh is working closely with the Gates Foundation and the far-right, union-busting Walton Family Foundation to close 36 public schools and replace them with privately managed charter schools. In 2012, Boston was one of seven cities that signed a “Gates Compact,” agreeing to treat public schools and charter schools as equals. Boston received $3.25 million to sell out public education to the Gates Foundation and the billionaire-backed charter movement.
If you live in or near Boston, show up for the meetings of the “Boston Compact” committee listed below. Don’t let them steal our democracy!
Blogger Public School Mama used the Freedom of Information Act to discover the sneaky backdoor deal that the mayor is hammering out with the billionaire boys to shutter 1/4 of Boston’s public schools.
She writes:
“This proposal is not being driven by the wishes of Mayor Walsh’s constituents. These plans are not being hammered out in open meetings where the citizens of Boston can hold policy makers accountable. These decisions are being made in closed meetings with the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation where Mayor Walsh is hoping to receive funding for his education agenda….
“I think everyone can agree that our education policy should be driven by the people of Boston and not outside foundations.
“On October the 14th, the unelected Boston School Committee voted unanimously to renew the Boston Compact.
“Here are the last Boston Compact meetings:
“Here are the last meetings:
“Thursday, November 12
6:30 – 9:00 pm
1st Church of Jamaica Plain
“Tuesday, November 17
5:30 – 8:00 pm
West End Boys and Girls Club”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mayors have no business being a part of education decisions.
When the Boston School system recently chose to hire Tommy Chang, lately released by LAUSD after participating in the Eli Broad/John Deasy privatization push, and the $1.3 Billion iPad scandal, the hand writing was on the wall. The Boston power brokers were obviously about to follow LA and charterize their public schools using their new Broad Academy-trained Superintendent as the point person.
Investor-oriented mayors nationwide are jumping of this hedge fund led band wagon. From Bloomberg on the east coast to Villaraigosa on the west coast, these money-motivated legislators are in sync with the wealthiest people in the US including the Waltons, Gates, Broad, Murdoch, Koch, Anshutz, Petersen, Wasserman, etc. in turning all democratic public agencies such as America’s schools, into free market investment opportunities….all based on the greed of, and blind loyalty to, the Wall Street marketplace.
excuse the typo..
mayors are jumping ON the hedge fund band wagon
BREAKING….
“It’s not true! It’s not true!”..
or so says Mayor Walsh in a press release from a half-hour agao:
Statement from Chief Communications Officer, Laura Oggeri
For Immediate Release
November 09, 2015
Released By:
Mayor’s Office
For More Information Contact:
Mayor’s Press Office
617.635.4461
Below is a statement from Laura Oggeri, Chief Communications Officer for the City of Boston:
“The Mayor has never said, nor does he have a plan to close 36 schools. Mayor Walsh has proven his dedication to Boston Public Schools by, in the past year alone, providing unprecedented budgetary support, extending learning time for students, adding 200 pre-kindergarten seats to the district, and hiring a first-class Superintendent. The Mayor also launched a multi-year Educational and Facilities Master Plan this fall to guide smart investments in Boston’s schools with the goal of providing all students with a high-quality, 21st-century education.
The Esquire article is untrue and unsourced, and references meetings that the Mayor has never had. We are extremely disappointed at the spread of misinformation.”
Same exact thing happened in Philly. Is there a way for the people to get minutes from those meetings?
DFER and Gates and Walton pulled the wool over the eyes of the people of Boston. The people voted for what they thought was the anti-charter candidate. And they get privatization anyway.
Thanks for clarifying, Diane. They sure did pull the woll over people’s eyes with their twisted lies.
I have come to the conclusion that when there is any words used by the DEFORMERS, turn it around and you will find the truth.
Walsh didn’t pull the wool, he outright lied. He told me, to my face, that Boston was not going to be another Chicago or Philadelphia. He bald face lied.
Blogs and academic articles that described the purpose and effect of GatesCompact in Philly and Chicago, along with a public records request filed by a public school parent, helped Boston Public School parents and City of Boston taxpayers suss out what their Mayor was up to.
Walsh still hasn’t responded to acknowledge his goals although he did testify to raise the cap on charters from 18% of district budget to 100% in 1 out of every 4 Massachusetts school districts, the so-called “under-peforming districts.” The districts with lots of kids who live in poverty, are learning English, require special education, are black and brown in skin color. Also in the district is Boston Latin School, an “over-performing” exam school. No word if the Mayor intends to privatize BLS but honestly it’s a bad bet. We reserve privatization for the poor, ELL, sped, and people of color.
The appointed, not elected, school committee rests in a deep slumber.
Massachusetts has excellent public schools. Boston is the best urban school district in the United States. What “under-performing” schools need is equity not privatization. Last spring, 19 of 41 Boston public high school class valedictorians were English second language. Still, over half of BPS students live on a family income <200% of federal poverty level.
The MA legislature's Joint Committee on Education presented it's Foundation Budget Review Commission report last Tuesday. This is the state's funding formula for K-12. It says the Commonwealth is underfunding public ed, it explains why, how much, and what funding the gap could do for kids in schools where test scores fall well below 100% proficient.
We also have a battle about testing and whether Mass public schools educators can be given agency to define standards for K-12 in the Commonwealth and assessments. The Sec of Ed is on the Board of PARCC. He recently decided we won't stick w/MCAS or move to PARCC but instead chose a 3rd way. We want democratic public education where educators not bureaucrats decide what standards and assessments we want for Mass.
Walsh is the Mayor who, instead of sniffing out an $800,000,000+ taxpayer liability of bringing the Olympics to town in 2024, mustered all of his political resources to sell it "as awesome" to the people of Boston from January through July. Our Mayor's enthusiasms outpace better judgement.
On the privatization of the Boston Public Schools (the first public schools in the nation) we can use all the help we can get putting this boondoggle to bed.
This is just one more facet of a renewed, but more covert effort to push privately managed charters.
We’re seeing it elsewhere as the oust for Achievement School Districts.
There are a lot of investors trying to protect their investments.
It’s real and it’s in a district near you.
Yes, Peter…it in now a pandemic for privatization of all public agencies, with our great American public schools being first to go. But this same takeover is happening in Britain and other nations.
These billionaires in tandem with wealth/power-oriented legislators, operate on the theory that if they have most of the wealth of the world, they must be the smartest in the world and therefore should lead in all aspects of life.
The TPP agreement would allow these oligarchs to work toward privatizing everything including schools, health care, Social Security, Medicare….and to do away with all unions. Read the TPP online and you will find this wording. This is now a word wide scheme. In the US, doing away with Glass Steagall, instituting NAFTA and GATT, and all of the national and international cooperation for the past 30 years has led to this point. It in not new, but has been the plan for many decades. Papa Bush called it the New World Order.
Yes, Peter and Ellen it is a huge conspiracy…. the triple ts… if you think the top is bad, wait until you here about the hidden TTIP
I think the focus should be on honesty. Point to the recent editorials written by pro-charter advocates financially supported by Gates and Walton, who are NOW saying that charter schools should be free to get rid of as many 5 and 6 year old children as they want if they don’t meet their standards. Make sure that the politicians are FORCED to admit that they want charter schools to be quasi-privatte schools where any child who can’t shape up is shipped out as soon as possible. Make sure that politicians go on record as saying they SUPPORT making a 7 year old child feel misery if he isn’t understanding the material and continuing that misery until he leaves because he should not be in the charter school and needs to go back to the underfunded public school.
If charters are going to proliferate, they darn well should be made to be HONEST about their practices. The low-income parents in the neighborhood should understand that there is a 50% chance that their child won’t be able to stay if he wins the lottery, and if not, he doesn’t deserve anything but the most underfunded public school because at 6, he is no longer worthy of a good education.
It is a Hobson’s choice. Hope that your child is, at age 5, able to learn quickly, sit quietly for long hours, and if there is any doubt of his abilities, it is always fine for the charter school to target him so he can be made so miserable that he acts or worse, hurts himself and you will pull him out. And if he isn’t “worthy”, be satisfied with a public school where the same people supporting charter schools want your child to go — with large class sizes and falling apart buildings and no supplies and every child who can’t sit still or struggles to learn at age 5 and 6 is warehoused in that public school.
Don’t forget to point out that if you are middle class, you get to stay at charter schools since you can privately hire all the services the charter schools won’t provide. But if you are poor, back to the underfunded public schools.
The charter schools are FINALLY being honest about their desire to warehouse all the troublesome 5 and 6 year olds in poorly funded public schools in exchange for most resources going to private groups running charter schools for the most well-behaved and high scoring kids (most of whom happen to be middle class). Let’s make the politicians go on record as supporting this policy. And then ask why we are giving money to private organizations to do this easy job when public schools could simply open the same schools for well-behaved children who can score well on tests without needing much support? If the politicians believe in this, why are they giving the franchise for these schools to charter schools so the profit can be used too pay the CEOs high salaries?
NYC public school parent: your first sentence—
Yes! The shot callers in the charterite/privatization movement and their political enablers should make explicit, take credit for, and run on their actual deeds and practices.
Honesty is the best policy? That, for the worst practices crowd aka rheephormistas, is their worst nightmare.
😏
And I am sure you have noticed, as have other regular visitors to this blog, that the defenders and promoters and enforcers of the rheephorm establishment rarely (if ever) utter a peep in threads like this. Any fault, real or imagined, large or small, of public schools is a target for their withering contempt, but when it comes to taking umbrage at even the most outrageous beams in their own eyes—
The silence is deafening. And silence, in situations like this, means compliance.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Cross-posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Outrage-Boston-Mayor-Plan-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-Schools_Far-right_Funding_Lies-151109-516.html#comment571121
with this comment which,at the above address, has embedded links(which do not reproduce here ) to all the articled from this Blog where Diane nails the tragedy. (or just put charter schools in the search field here, and read the chronicle of charter school fraud!
This article explains the financial shenanigans of unscrupulous charter operators. Not every charter founder rips off taxpayers, but the public needs to know when charter schools are set up to benefit greedy investors, not children.
CMD Publishes Full List of 2,500 Closed Charter Schools (with Interactive Map) The Center for Media and Democracy released a state-by-state list of the failed charter schools since 2000, revealing the millions of federal tax dollars went to “ghost” schools that never even opened to students.
* Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy released a detailed (though not complete) list of financial scandals in the charter industry.
*And here, Alan Singer reviews some of the many charter school scandals, some of which were reported here. But he has some new ones that you should know about.
*And here is one about Ohio:Bill Bush and Catherine Candisky of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch raise important questions about whether Ohio Department of Education officials lied when preparing the state’s application for federal charter funds.
* And here is what happens to Chicago charters once they steal the public funding:UNO was once Chicago’s most powerful Hispanic organization. It launched six charter schools and won a grant of $98 million from the state legislature to add more. Its leader, Juan Rangel, was the co-chair of Rahm Emanuel’s election campaign. Everything went well until it was discovered that UNO was giving contracts for the new building to family members, friends, and lobbyists. Then its leader stepped down. Now its financial straits are such that it may have to declare bankruptcy, and 4,000 students will have to find schools.
* And here is Louisiana — and a look at how the EIC (EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX of billionaires) Why is a California businessman and a pair of Arkansas billionaires dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race for the state board of education in Louisiana?
* and here is DC, and astudy funded by the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation recommends more charters for the District of Columbia.
* and Here is OHIO You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! Manipulator of Charter Data Wins Big Federal Grants for Ohio
Are you like Patrick Kerkstra, who writes that he was always skeptical when anyone suggested that charters (at least some of them) were seeking profits? Now, having read about what is happening in Philadelphia, he is not so sure.
Welcome to Chicago. Rahm closed 50 schools and got re-elected. Wishing you better luck in Boston.
The way charters infiltrate a locality is sneaky and underhanded. The way Gates uses his money to influence the local outcome is no better than bribery. Of course, ALEC is just as guilty through buying local elections to put key players in decision making positions. Even the president is no better in his actions toward public education. He uses his power to extort allegiance to unreasonable, unscientific practice like VAM and ad nauseam testing. These politicians and billionaires are no better than the thugs and pirates that operate in the shadows and fill our prisons. This is just legal plunder. They have yet to prove they offer a better education. Education is not at the core of the invasion. It’s about markets and money, and the students, their families and teachers are just collateral damage.
Every President we have had in the US going back to at least Reagan, both Dem and Rep) has been part of this drive to privatize public schools (and other agencies such as the post office and health care…e.g. Obama and big Pharma and Big Insurance, and ‘Billary’ killing Glass Steagall). Many have shown their support for takeover of public pensions (as with teachers and PERS) for free market, stock market investments. Baby Bush did not get away with this, but Hillary or a Repub president will probably work with their supporters on Wall Street to privatize all public education for profiteering.
Short-sighted budget solution, in my view.
“Dirty Paws”
The dirty paws of Billy Gates
Subvert the laws and seal our fates
An end-run ’round the people’s will
With piles of dollars from the Bill
SomeDAM Poet:
TAGO!
😎
Slight editing suggestion Poet, “with our last dollars we’ll pay the Bill.
I read the post but don’t have time to examine all of the supporting documents: is the trajectory of enrollment in BPS a factor? 98,000 kids in 1970, 63,000 in 2000, 56,000 today.
Child population in Boston has declined dramatically both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total city population since the 1970s. San Francisco is the only major US city where children are a smaller portion of total population than Boston. The extreme price of real estate per sq. ft. in desirable areas and even in not so desirable areas prices many families out of the city. It’s not the only factor but it has a lot to do with declining enrollment in city schools.
Is the public system designated as the back-up system for the private/charter schools in this plan?
If not, why not? That’s the role those schools will be serving, correct? The least they could is let the parents and students in public schools know that’s the plan.
All part of the Obama/Duncan/Tucker/Hillary/Sanders/Bush/Kasich plan
Abolish the U.S. Dept of Ed. Stop the madness!
ie…vote for someone willing to take the power BACK from the Feds!
“Make way for Charters”
Make way for charters
With Walton guardin’
Ducklings are parters
From Boston Garden
They’ll have to make a new statue for Boston Public Garden
Well, it was a mayoral race between TWO pro-privatization candidates: One who wanted to RUN towards total privatization of Boston’s school system, and one who just wanted to WALK towards it.
The latter (Walsh) won, but he was far from a privatization opponent, as indicated in the article that Diane referenced: “But if Walsh’s signature proposals are more traditional in bent, he lays some claim to the education reform movement. Walsh serves on the board of a charter school in Dorchester and says the state-imposed cap on charter schools should be lifted.”
We’ve had success in OPENLY and POINTEDLY confronting candidates with the Privatization Issue in many places—here in Seattle people RUN from any pro-charter accusations.
Such actions bring about a change in the parameters of future debate; it educates the voters and eventually gets the candidates to pull back and reassess their words and their stances.
What Boston needs—and what all communities need, everywhere in all 50 states—are candidates that are aggressively anti-privatization, anti-charter, anti-ultra testing and unafraid to point out the right-wing dollars behind such sleazy efforts.
Unfortunately, Boston had a choice between two bad candidates on education. But that can and will change in the future, IF candidates of courage and candor are brought forward to educate the public and make a Real Change in our public schools, for the better.
Overdue for another tea party?
“performing what we like to refer to around the shebeen as a “full Scott Walker”—namely, pulling a fast one once you’re elected that you never made a part of your campaign. It’s not breaking a campaign promise. It’s breaking a campaign presumption, which is supposed to make a difference. Anyway, Walsh beat John Connolly at least partly by accusing Connolly, who is an open ally of the education “reform” grifters, of trying to destroy the public school system in the city where public schools were invented in this country. Now, it appears that Mayor Walsh has broken up with Candidate Walsh. He’s cut a deal with some of the most odious practitioners of the school “reform” grift, including the Walton Family of Wingnuts, and he did so under the radar.”
They just blatantly lie to tens of thousands of voters and there’s absolutely no accountability, shame or even embarrassment for doing that. Why bother to vote? We get the same 15 billionaires running everything no matter what we do.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39565/boston-mayor-charter-schools/
Teachers Latin America would be happy to help anyone that will lose their employment from this. If you write to us directly and say that you are from Boston and this is affecting you, we will waive your fees to enter our Teachers Latin America Hiring Fair in Houston on January 29th and 30th. Otherwise check out our regular website where our placement services for educators are free year round.
http://hiringfair.teachers-latin-america.com/index.html
http://m.cityofboston.gov/news/Default.aspx?id=20423
If it can happen in Boston, it will happen everywhere and anywhere, and this is the absolute proof that the corporate education demolition derby is nothing about education, teaching or learning. It is ALL about the money and power and nothing else.
“The best showing by Massachusetts 15-year-olds on the Program for International Student Assessment tests came in reading, where only three other participants scored higher: Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
“In science, Massachusetts was topped by just six educational systems, including Finland and Estonia; and in math, Massachusetts trailed only nine participants, such as Korea, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/03/mass-scores-high-marks-international-test/kK0GesOEWGhseEwrnay09L/story.html
And once we weed out the cities (Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai) and the countries or city states (Singapore) that don’t have any poverty (Liechtenstein with its might population of almost 37 thousand), then Boston and Massachusetts will rank even higher.
It is absolutely ridiculous to rank the United States with more than 316 million people and a childhood poverty rate of almost 24% against countries, cites and city states that have a lot less people and sometimes little or no poverty to deal with.
For instance, Switzerland has a population of 8 million with a child poverty rate of 6.8%—three times higher then Denmark (Did you know that the United States outranked Denmark on the latest PISA test? The reason might be the fact that education reform is alive and well in Denmark where there is a tradition of private schools with a substantial government subsidy.)
Click to access CO2_2_ChildPoverty_Jan2014.pdf
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26249042
Diane, what is your source for the statement that Walsh is working “to close 36 public schools and replace them with privately managed charter schools”. I’ve now read all of the documents that Blogger Public School Mama retrieved via an FOIA request https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cqq7ejimaprg675/AADaZ3notXfzIzpM4P26TJ8Ra?dl=0 and I did not find anything in any of them that would support that allegation. Did I miss something there? Or is there another different source? Thanks..
Stephen,
My source was the blogger “Public School Mama,” who filed a FOIA request for official documents. I trust her conclusion because Boston signed the Gates Compact, in which Gates gave Boston $3.25 million in exchange for a promise to put charter schools on an equal footing with public schools. And as you may have noted in a post on this blog, Mayor Walsh said in September that he would “consolidate schools.” Consolidate means some schools merge with others and cease to exist. That means closing schools. Did Mayor Walsh say in his latest statement that he would not close any schools? Or did he imply that he would not close 36 schools? Will he close 32? or 34? Why didn’t he make clear his intentions? Those cities that have signed the Gates Compact have closed public schools and increased charters. Will Boston be different?
Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification, Diane. Trusting a conclusion founded on an anonymous blogger’s claim that unnamed officials in off-the-record discussions had “intimated” it seems a tad hasty.
A number of us imagined that the documents retrieved via the FOIA perhaps supported that conclusion. They don’t.
Why didn’t Walsh make clear his intentions? Perhaps he has at this time no clear intention in respect to any specific number of schools that might best be closed, wishes the situation to be examined carefully before a concrete plan is formulated.
Stephen, it is up to Mayor Walsh to make his plans public. It should not be necessary for citizens to file FOIA to find out what the mayor intends to do with the city’s public schools. I can’t explain his plans. Why doesn’t he say what he plans to do instead of issuing an ambiguous statement about what he won’t do?
What of significance was discovered in the FOIA materials that would otherwise currently be secret? The major recent focus reflected there seemed to be on development of a new student enrollment plan featuring:
“Ease: one application, one timeline, and one offer that prioritizes family choice
Access: Better fulfill the promise of “quality schools close to home”
Equity: All participants embrace the notion of shared responsibility for high-need students (including students with disabilities, English language learners, and latecomers)”
Sounds good to me. Have you addressed that in depth on your blog? Sorry, I’m new to it. Definitely lots of interesting, useful material here.
I am waiting to see how many Boston public schools get consolidated and how many new charter schools open. Gates money and Walton money come with strings. The rhetoric is appealing but look under the hood.
Stephen,
You said this sounds good to you:
“Access: Better fulfill the promise of “quality schools close to home”
Equity: All participants embrace the notion of shared responsibility for high-need students (including students with disabilities, English language learners, and latecomers)”
How do you measure the quality of a school?
A. the quality of the teaching, the curriculum and the support teachers have to do the job they want to do
B. the results on standardized tests
C. the cooperation of children and parents to support learning in the classroom instead of put all the responsibility on teachers for both the teaching and learning as if the children do not have to make any effort to learn.
>>>>>Do you know what happens when children are not held responsible for not learning what teachers teach no matter what the quality of the teaching is, and those children and their parents know that even the President is going to blame their teachers and punish them even when the children don’t cooperate, don’t study, don’t read, don’t do the work and don’t ask for help when they need it?
In fact, what happens to learning when the child is up until midnight or 1 am, or 2 am watching TV, playing video games, etc instead of reading and studying and doing homework?
I know the answers to both of those questions. I’m checking to see if you do.
Thanks for the thought-provoking questions, Lloyd.
My reading of the Compact documents retrieved through the FOIA request is that they reflect a genuine desire to improve the school enrollment process, including reducing any current tendency for students with relatively low scholastic motivation to end up in BPS schools while higher-motivated students go to charter schools. If you read those documents and arrive at a different conclusion, I’d be interested to know.
You didn’t answer the questions. Instead you avoided them and changed the subject. Answer the questions or don’t answer them and I will think you are a shill for the mayor of Boston attempting to do damage control for the corporate education demolition derby fraudsters reform group.
If you think the documents retrieved through that FOIA request reflect a genuine desire to improve the school enrollment process on the part of the Boston mayor, then you have allegedly revealed a fool—or a clever fraud serving his masters—who has fallen for the same lies that the public schools are not doing their jobs and it is the fault of the teachers and the community based, democratic, non-profit transparent public schools.
If the Boston mayor was genuine he would have been transparent with these documents and there would have never been a need to file an FOIA request.
There is always room for improvement but I argue that improvement will not happen unless all the stakeholders are involved from the start and that includes every public school teacher in Boston, every parent and every child who wants to be part of a totally transparent process where the the consensus of the majority is how the decisions will be made and not behind closed doors via mayor control.
But U.S. schools are actually doing better at teaching children that live in poverty compared to almost every country that’s ranked by the international PISA tests.
The Stanford report also found:
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
And from the Washington Post
“Even taking the numbers at face value, the U.S. fares reasonably well. Results will vary depending on the age of the students being tested, the subject matter, which test is involved, and which round of results is being reported. It’s possible to cherry-pick scores to make just about any country look especially good or bad. U.S. performance is more impressive when the focus is on younger students, for example — so, predictably, it’s the high school numbers that are most often cited. When someone reduces our schools to a single number, you can bet it’s the one that casts them in the worst possible light.”
“Rich American kids do fine; poor American kids don’t. It’s ridiculous to offer a summary statistic for all children at a given grade level in light of the enormous variation in scores within this country. To do so is roughly analogous to proposing an average pollution statistic for the United States that tells us the cleanliness of “American air.” Test scores are largely a function of socioeconomic status. Our wealthier students perform very well when compared to other countries; our poorer students do not. And we have a lot more poor children than do other industrialized nations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/03/were-number-umpteenth-the-myth-of-lagging-u-s-schools/
Now, go back to that Stanford report and look at how well our poor kids are doing compared to the other countries taking the PISA test.
Stephen,
Time will tell. In general, I don’t understand why any public official would want to keep secret his plans for changing the public schools that affect so many children. Why not put them out there for public discussion? Why issue a statement about what the mayor won’t do, instead of a statement about what he wants to do?
D.R.: “Why not put them out there for public discussion? Why issue a statement about what the mayor won’t do, instead of a statement about what he wants to do?”
I find that this public document http://www.bostoncompact.org/wp-content/uploads/EnrollBostonProposal.pdf
provides considerably more useful detail regarding the Mayor’s and Compact’s apparent current priority than the FOIA-produced documents; it states in part:
“The Compact partners have discussed whether need and support exist for a unified enrollment system, and have agreed that they do. Sharing the mayor’s vision for a unified enrollment system, the Boston Compact has partnered with his office to develop a core set of principles as the framework of this proposal.
“Now, the Boston Compact turns to the community for guidance shaping its existing set of core principles into a proposal for a unified enrollment system, tentatively called Enroll Boston that works best for families across the city. After incorporating community feedback, Mayor Walsh plans to bring a proposal for unified enrollment before the School Committee and charter boards for approval.
[…]
* Unified enrollment would build on the existing Home-Based enrollment plan, folding charter schools in to provide more options for families and present all the information on district and charter options in one place.
* Currently enrolled students would continue in their present schools and families would continue to receive sibling priority to help keep their children together at school.
* The vast majority (89%) of students, including those with disabilities and English Language Learners, would participate in the general lottery. Students requiring higher levels of support who today are assigned outside the general lottery also would have access to both district and charter schools.
[…]
“As we explore the details of a unified enrollment system with one deadline and one application, we look to families, educators and advocates to help shape the proposal. Here’s a sampling of the questions that remain:
* Who should administer the enrollment system? BPS, the City, a third party?
* What is the most useful format for the list of schools that families will receive?
* What kind of information would families like about school rankings and features?
* We suggest that some schools that offer a unique programming (dual-immersion, arts, etc.) to students could receive an exemption to remain citywide. What should be the criteria for such an exemption?
* Where are there gaps in this proposal? How could they be addressed?
* How can we best ensure mutual accountability?
The Boston Compact encourages families, educators and advocates to participate in our series of citywide meetings. A final community meeting, synthesizing the feedback received at the citywide community meetings will be held in December, date and location to be announced. All meeting dates, information about this proposal and opportunities for feedback are online at http://www.bostoncompact.org.”
I’d be interested to see any responses to those questions.
“Answer the questions or don’t answer them and I will think you are a shill for the mayor of Boston attempting to do damage control for the corporate education demolition derby fraudsters reform group.”
When you say something like that and a young fellow accepts his failing grade and returns to his video games (rolling his eyes just a little), who you going to blame?