I previously posted the decision by the Boston School Committee to change the requirements for admission to its elite examination schools. What I didn’t know was that there was a minority report from the school committee’s Task Force that was voted down.
Since then, I learned that there was a minority report by two Task Force members who offered a different approach (actually there were two minority reports). Rosann Tung and Simon Chernow wrote a dissent, printed here in part:
…By dissenting, Simon and I urge Boston Public Schools to go further and faster. BPS will not achieve justice until we eliminate the structures that uphold White supremacy and capitalism — structures like the tracking that is the accelerated grades 4–6 Advanced Work program in some schools and like the three tiers that our high schools still represent (exam, application, and open enrollment). Permanent ranking and sorting are a major root cause of the fact that 40 percent of our schools require assistance or intervention for poor outcomes. Many scholars have shown that children who attend truly diverse schools benefit both academically and socio-emotionally. The segregation of students by race, socioeconomic status, learning style, language, and special needs leads to our most vulnerable students receiving inadequate resources and support.
Another structure that upholds power and privilege is standardized testing. Every standardized test ever created shows group mean differences, because standardized tests measure more than just academic content; in fact, they cement unequal opportunities.
An oft-leveled critique has been that the human, financial, and political capital poured into this admissions process is misguided and should be put into improving the other 120-plus BPS schools. Actually, we believe that when the admissions of the three schools become test-blind and lottery-based, and when all of the students who test well attend more than just three schools, system-wide improvement will accelerate…
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for sharing, this is important! FYI, it is Rosann with no e
@RosannTung
Just get on with it and eliminate all selective public schools, eliminate public school zones, and assign students to schools by lottery with mandatory demographic targets that ensure that public schools are sufficiently diverse.
Yes.
But keep the zones to reduce traffic and air pollution, and just get rid of housing discrimination instead. So, just get rid of selective schools. And charters.
If you want to get rid of what’s called “segregation” (and thus “white supremacy”) these days, you need to abolish local school zones. It’s the only way to do it.
Sorry Mr. Pinder…
I woke up today, I was sighing
Lost in a score world
‘Cause so many people are lying
Lost in a score world
Some of them are living an illusion
Bounded by the darkness of their scores
In their eyes it’s standardized tests against tests,
against obviation
of their score based pride
Sad hearts they hide
Thinking only of their scores
They shun the light
They think they’re right
Living in their score shells
Oh, can you see the scores are crashing
Crashing down around their feet
Angry people in the street
Are telling them they’ve had their fill
Of scores that wound and kill
Grow the seeds of solution
Separation never won
It’s just another form of gun
To do again what scores have done
With all our parents’ youngest ones
Everywhere you go you see them searching
Everywhere you turn you feel the pain
Everyone is looking for the answers
Well, look again
Buck the trend
Scores just blind in the end…
John Oliver talked about Housing Discrimination on Last Week Tonight recently. The reason I mention this and provide the link is that discrimination has been and still is across the board for all children, women, and adults that are not white and at least in the middle class.
Discrimination exists at all levels in the schools, in jobs, pay, and in buying houses.
Thank you.
Did he yell at the camera and repeatedly use the F word as a gratuitous adjective?
Why would he yell Flerp as a gratuitous adjective?
Heh heh.
Tracking is the effect of bigotry, plain and simple. It is systemic racism. Devising separate schools into which families can “escape” from their neighbors to “meet the students’ needs” is just as base as reserving the seats in the front of the bus. Standardized tests are the tools used by the mechanics of hate. Tracking is built by the obnoxiously selfish and myopically self-defeating. Shame on the bigots.
For the vast majority of the population that exists outside the world of education, the proposals to eliminate selective schools and advanced courses for motivated students confirms their perception of K-12 as largely a system that now favors radical egalitarianism. If you want to further lower the general public’s esteem for public schools, implement those proposals and witness the backlash. For a perspective that is sorely lacking on this blog, read the linked essay by a highly informed person – a Black man – who doesn’t at all agree with what this blog relentlessly promotes. He writes about college admissions, but his thinking also applies to K-12.
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/racist-antiracism-at-the-university
The backlash against abolitionism was powerful. There was a war. The backlash against the 14th amendment was strong. Violent, too. The backlash against Brown v Board continues today. Ooooh, I’m sooooo afraid of backlashes. No. The purpose of democratic government is to provide fairness and justice. It’s in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. If we tax the billionaires, they threaten to leave the country. They are welcome to go. If we eliminate selective schools, some people threaten to leave the schools. They are welcome to go, as long as they don’t ask for vouchers to pay for their private prejudices.
Everybody’s always trying to tell me I have to do mindless test prep. They always use school choice as a threat to get me to fall in line. I don’t fall for it.
I think the issues are somewhat more complicated in the reality than “children who attend truly diverse schools benefit both academically and socio-emotionally.” Clearly, having elementary schools that are diverse is beneficial.
However, what I have seen in reality in large diverse public high schools (and sometimes in middle schools) is that there is a divide anyway when students elect to take so-called honors or accelerated classes, especially in math but also in other academic classes. It’s not good to associate those classes with higher income students and other classes with lower income students, which doesn’t happen in the same way if the entire school is tracked but diverse, so that a very diverse group of students who are all motivated and academically capable are learning together.
Tracking by motivation is different than tracking by some supposed measure of “giftedness” that can supposedly be measured by a single exam.
I am sympathetic to much of what you say but don’t know that I would track students “by motivation.”
Also, that a student is (or appears) unmotivated is, of course, the beginning of the story, not the end. Students who aren’t trying hard often have good reasons not to, for example, a learning disability that isn’t being addressed. Discerning the underlying reasons for what seems to be just “poor effort” is essential.
In Boston, the debate over what some call the “zip code plan,” which is intended to increase diversity at Boston Latin and the other two exam schools, has been heated. While it troubles me that children of color are underrepresented at Boston Latin, it is not obvious to me that having a few elite public schools is a good thing in the first place. If we have elite public schools, what does that make all the other Boston public schools?
The problem is that the only way to provide and appropriate curriculum to all students is to gather students that require very advanced curriculum into a small number of high schools. It is not practical for every high school in Boston to offer vector calculus and differential equations, and even if they did the students would be robbed of the important experience of taking the classes with classroom full of peers.
Why not shut them down? If parents want an elite school, let them send their kids to private school.
“Appropriate curriculum” is a dog whistle.
LeftCoastTeacher,
How are vector calculus and differential equations a dog whistle?
LeftCoastTeacher,
To give you and other folks here a better idea of what an appropriate math curriculum looks like for some students, here is the math curriculum at Thomas Jefferson High School
Research Statistics 1
Research Statistics 2 (this is AP statistics)
Research Statistics 3 (post AP stats)
AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus BC
Multivariable Calculus (AP Calculus BC is a prerequisite)
Linear Algebra (AP Calculus BC is a prerequisite)
Advanced Math Techniques (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Concrete Math (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Complex Analysis (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Differential Equations (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite, Advanced Math Techniques or Linear Algebra recommended)
The math curriculum at your local high school probably looks something like this:
Research Statistics 1
Research Statistics 2 (AP Statistics)
AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus BC
For students who thrive at TJ High School, the math curriculum at your local high school is inappropriate.
Vector calculus and differential equations are the new Jim Crow voting literacy tests. Calculus is just algebra with an added dimension. It’s not that complicated. Don’t be so pretentious. If it’s worth teaching, it’s worth teaching to all.
Teachingeconomist,
I have to admire your belief that students who don’t take two of the following classes at TJHS do not belong there and should be expelled:
Multivariable Calculus (AP Calculus BC is a prerequisite)
Linear Algebra (AP Calculus BC is a prerequisite)
Advanced Math Techniques (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Concrete Math (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Complex Analysis (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite)
Differential Equations (Multivariable Calculus is a prerequisite, Advanced Math Techniques or Linear Algebra recommended)
So since that probably leaves only a class that is 1/4 of the current size, what happens?
Also, when you tell their parents that they are not allowed to graduate and should never have been allowed anywhere near that school in the first place, do you think the parents of the perhaps 75% other students will mind?
I don’t have any idea how many students at Thomas Jefferson High School take those advanced math classes mentioned above, but Gary Rubinstein, a math teacher at Stuyvesant, has been posting about specialized high schools in NYC and it appears that the most advanced math class that 50% or more of the students at Stuyvesant take is AP Calculus AB. Not even BC. You seem to be saying those students should not be there. You certainly keep implying that they are not the students who “thrive”.
Wow. I have never been more pessimistic about the future of public education than I am right now. There is NO PLACE for unusually advanced students in public education. The relatively wealthy advanced students might find refuge in private education, but the relatively poor advanced students have just been given a giant middle finger.
Teachingeconomist,
I called your bluff. You strongly believe that Thomas Jefferson High School must be limited only to students who take and do well in at least two of those advanced math classes. Any student who doesn’t do well in AP Calculus BC by the end of 11th grade is summarily expelled, and those who can easily handle AP Calculus BC by the end of their junior year must have taken at least 2 of those advanced math classes in order to graduate – otherwise they do not receive a diploma from Thomas Jefferson HS and all colleges they were admitted to are informed that the student did not fulfill the requirements to graduate from Thomas Jefferson and they will not be receiving a diploma.
Do you agree? Just calling your bluff to see if you believe that the vast majority of students who are admitted to Thomas Jefferson take those math classes beyond Calc BC.
You bemoan students not having that opportunity, so no seat is allowed to be filled by any student who isn’t taking those classes. Students from other public schools will be welcome to transfer in junior or senior year to take those advanced math classes.
There might not even have to be an admissions exam if students understood that attending TJHS means that they will not graduate without doing well in those math classes beyond Calc BC. More likely, even without any admissions exam, the knowledge that they will not receive a diploma until they complete two of those advanced math classes will lead to a self-selected group of students that is quite diverse.
Economist hates public education and wants it privatized, so renewed pessimism about public education falls on deaf ears among people who care about the students in public schools. There is no place for elitism in public anything. The young of people with privilege should take shop and art classes with everyone else. The young of people who, well, everyone should have access to math at every level. I went to a regular old, non-selective, actually public school. I took calculus in that public high school (which turned out to be a mistake because AP classes don’t teach calculus well, and it would have been better for me if I had taken calculus only in the university.)
Advanced coursework is inequitable if the students who take advanced coursework are disproportionately non-BIPOC. If advanced coursework can’t be offered to everyone, it should be eliminated. Parents who want advanced coursework for their children can pay for private school.
Impressive thinking.
There should be no “elite” schools, and there should be no “advanced” coursework. “Advanced” is a dog-whistle.
FLERP!,
Are you one of those white folks that believes there are so few non-white, non-Asian students who can handle advanced work, that making any attempt to diversify highly selective high schools is impossible?
Because everything you post certainly suggests that is your point of view. I truly will never understand the parents who believe that their own child is superior to all of the students that scored lower than them on the SHSAT (including students in the same high school) but their child is inferior to all the students who had a higher SHSAT score than their child (including in the same high school). If those parents aren’t hypocrites, I assume they believe that the complicated college application process is bad, and instead colleges should just admit the specialized high school seniors who had the highest SHSAT scores and be done with it, since they are clearly superior to the others in their specialized high school.
I’ve seen the light. Specialized high schools should be abolished. Advanced coursework should be available to all students, but just a select number who are admitted to a so-called “elite” school. If parents want to segregate their children, they should pay for private school.
FLERP!,
Maybe some people believe you have “seen the light” and now are a strong advocate for abolishing all specialized high schools. But whether you believe that or not has no relation to my question.
I did not ask you whether you believed specialized high schools should be abolished (although I appreciate your willingness to answer a question I didn’t ask.)
I asked whether you believe that there are so few non-white, non-Asian students who can handle advanced work, that making any attempt to diversify specialized high schools would be impossible, except by drastically lowering standards and admitting sub-par students who would struggle far more than all the students currently at those schools.
That false narrative – that diversifying specialized high schools is impossible without admitting lots of unqualified students – is heard a lot. But some people believe it. Do you?
It’s a simple question.
In truth, my eyes glazed over when I read the opening words “Are you one of those white folks that . . . “
In truth, I suspected you would avoid answering and try to change the subject to insulting me. I doubt you are fooling anyone.
I am especially amused that you think anyone believes your eyes glazed over so much that you decided to take the time to write a completely non-responsive comment about how you have “seen the light” and now believe specialized high schools should be abolished.
If you do believe that there aren’t enough high performing Black and Latinx students to diversify specialized high schools a lot more than they currently are, you really should just admit that. Or admit that you don’t know if there are enough. I can’t understand why you think changing the subject and insulting me instead is fooling anyone.
The schools should be abolished. No student should receive an “elite” public education. “Elite” public schools shouldn’t exist. Every single public school student should be able to take the same curriculum. Not sure how I can make it any clearer. To the extent you feel I’m being non-responsive, I suggest you ask the court to direct the witness to answer in the manner you want.
FLERP!,
Thank you for answering the question I didn’t ask for the 2nd time. And you threw in a word – “elite” – that was never part of my question.
The thing that makes me respect Dr Ravitch above all other things is that she used to support standardized education, was deeply connected among other supporters, and was able to change her mind and change her world. That is no small feat. It is the greatest, most laudable, most important quality of Diane, the ability to transform. I aspire to be as able. FLERP!, I am beyond pleased that you were able to see the light. I am so impressed! So impressed.
Thank you, LCT.
IF we are responding to the same comment by FLERP, I thought he was being sarcastic.
LeftCoastTeacher,
I agree with everything you said above. It is no small feat to make that kind of change in one’s thinking.
Maybe I am way too cynical because I didn’t read FLERP!’s comments as reflecting a genuine change of heart the way Diane Ravitch had. I read it as “if we can’t have the admissions policy that currently exists, then we should just abolish all specialized high schools.”
Maybe my hackles just rose after reading this comment: “If advanced coursework can’t be offered to everyone, it should be eliminated. Parents who want advanced coursework for their children can pay for private school.”
It’s presenting this as a false choice in which one choice is expanding access and the only other choice is abolishing all specialized high schools schools and perhaps even all advanced classes in any high school, and those who want them should pay for private school.
If FLERP! now truly believes the the current admissions policies of specialized high schools are so flawed that he wants specialized high schools to be abolished instead of keeping them as they currently are, then my cynicism is misplaced. I apologize, FLERP! I did not realize how strongly you oppose SHSAT-only admissions.
I am grateful for having been segregated into honors classes in my public high school. The general ed classes were often disorderly.
My favorite classes are disorderly. They are downright profound.
Since It seems to have come up in this discussion, I would like to address the issue of advanced math classes in HS. I would argue that for most students going beyond the equivalent of a first semester calculus course in HS is probably inappropriate. It has been my experience that most of the students who have taken these so called advanced courses in HS school have received a course far inferior to that which they would have had in college. Unfortunately, they arrive at college with credit for these courses. These students may be quite bright but not only often lack the preparation, they lack the maturity to take the sophomore or junior level purses they are supposedly ready for. As a result , they often crash and burn their first semester. For those rare and unique individuals who have the emotional and intellectual maturity for advanced level work early on, perhaps early college admission might be appropriate–although, frankly, this is not something I would have wanted for my child. For the record, I think that by offering college credit for courses taken in HS we do students a huge disservice.
C,
I agree for most students, but there are some students for whole it is very appropriate and the goal of this blog is a better education for all students. Many of my better students felt their senior year of high school to be a waste of a year because they had already completed all of the academic courses available to them.
My middle child was extremely frustrated with the science and math courses available to him in high school. Luckily the school district’s graduation requirements were minimal enough that he could take classes at the local university for part of the day that did not count for high school graduation and still have enough units to graduate. He went well beyond a one semester calculus course in mathematics and by the time he graduated from high school he had also completed a graduate course in abstract algebra along with two semesters of physical chemistry. I think that confining students like him to the typical high school curriculum ia a great disservice.
“I would argue that for most students going beyond the equivalent of a first semester calculus course in HS is probably inappropriate.”
The specialized high schools themselves agree with you. As far as I can see, most students currently in specialized high schools never go beyond the equivalent of a first semester calculus course in high school. But those advanced math courses are always trotted out — by other people — as a way to justify why those high schools are excluding Black and Latino students who are high performing. The false narrative is that all students go to specialized high schools to take those super advanced math classes, when the true reality is that the majority of students are not taking them.
It’s perfectly acceptable for a student in a specialized high school to take the same level calculus offered at most decent public high schools — Calclus AB. Not only is that acceptable, but that is what the majority of students do!