EduShyster provides insight and detail on the story of the Boston turnaround school that didn’t get turned around.
Take a low-performing school in an impoverished neighborhood.
Give it to a company that never ran a school before.
Run through five principals in two years.
What could possibly go wrong?
Will anyone be held accountable? Why not Mitchell Chester, the state commissioner who created this fiasco?
This is a stunning, and yet completely predictable, story: The state of Massachusetts took charge of four schools with very low test scores (so-called “failing schools”).
It handed them over to turn-around corporations. So far, turmoil, disruption, and failure. Will anyone be held accountable? Has any state ever taken over a low-scoring school and “turned it around” successfully?
Here is what happened, as reported in the Boston Globe:
The Dever Elementary School in Dorchester has cycled through five principals over the past two school years and is seeking another one. Discipline is a constant problem. Some teachers are fleeing, and many students don’t show up. Most who do perform poorly.
This is not what was supposed to unfold when the state stepped in and took over the school in 2014. Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester had spoken boldly about the need for aggressive change, calling the Dever’s low performance “an injustice” while adding, “I know we can do better.’’
The promised turnaround has not happened — at least not yet — and the troubling picture raises questions about whether state education agencies can do a better job than local districts in lifting up schools stubbornly stuck at the bottom. In the Dever’s case, the state recruited as a receiver a local nonprofit, the Blueprint Schools Network, that had never run a school….
Imagine that! Giving a struggling school to a company that had never run a school. That makes sense (not).
The state education department has paid $1.3 million so far to Blueprint in management fees. In addition, the Boston school system funds Dever’s operating budget, which was $4.6 million this year. The school also received $585,000 in state and federal grants this year.
Blueprint took on a big job two years ago when it stepped inside the Dever, tucked between the University of Massachusetts Boston and a mixed-income housing development. The school had been struggling for more than a decade with low MCAS scores. Nearly 70 percent of students live in homes receiving welfare benefits and almost half lack fluency in English.
Blueprint immediately made waves by asking teachers and staff to reapply for their jobs and dismantling a popular dual-language program, prompting many middle-class families to leave. Only two teachers out of 47 stuck around….
Blueprint’s philosophy is based on five principles that Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. identified in researching New York charter school success: excellence in leadership and instruction; daily tutoring; increased instructional time; setting high expectations; and using data to improve instruction.
Fryer served as Blueprint’s president for a short time when it was founded in 2010, and last year Governor Charlie Baker appointed him to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education….
The current principal–the fifth–lives in Florida. The company pays for her housing and for travel.
Connie Helton, who lives in Florida, is serving as interim principal. In an unusual move, Blueprint is paying her rent at a nearby apartment, totalling $10,000 so far, even though the principal’s job pays $140,000 annually. No other principal in the Boston Public Schools receives a housing allowance.
Blueprint also paid for two trips that Helton made to Florida to visit her family, costing less than $1,000.
Spengler said Helton was best suited to step in because she had been working with the Dever for Blueprint. He said a new leader should be selected soon.
“We know finding a leader is critical to long-term success,” said Spengler, adding, “I can’t say enough about the teachers who have taken this on every day. They are incredibly mission driven, and they are incredibly committed to those students.’’
But many of the teachers Blueprint brought in are leaving, too. Last year, 16 teachers departed, including four let go for performance issues and another four whose positions were cut. More plan to leave this year. Blueprint said it won’t have final numbers until this summer.
Several teachers, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak, described a school skidding off course. Although Blueprint has adopted an online platform to track student behavior, discipline continues to be a problem.
The Boston Globe seems to be the Rip van Winkle of the mainstream media. It recently published an editorial that insists that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Really. Apparently it is still 2010 in the offices of the Globe, when Arne Duncan claimed that this was the very best way to determine which teachers were effective or ineffective.
But it is no longer 2010. The U.S. Departnent of Education handed out $5 billion to states to promote test-based evaluation. The Gates Foundation gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to states to use test scores to evaluate teachers. This method has had negative results everywhere. It has demoralized teachers everywhere. It has contributed to a growing national teacher shortage and declining enrollments in education programs.
Scholarly groups like the American Educational Research Association and the American Statistical Association have warned against using test scores to rate individual teachers. There are too many uncontrolled variables, as well as individual differences among students. The American Statistical Association said that teachers affect 1-14% of test score variation. Surely the Boston Globe editorial board must be aware of that report by an impeccable nonpartisan authoritative source. Surely the Boston Globe editorial board must know that teachers in affluent districts are likely to produce high test scores, while teachers of children with disabilities, English language learners, impoverished children, and homeless children are likely to get low test scores. Even teachers of the gifted will receive low ratings because their students get small test score gains since they are already at the top of the scale.
The Boston Globe editorial board should learn about the disastrous experience with Gates-style test-based evaluation in Hillsborough County, Florida. The district accepted a $100 million award from the Gates Foundation to rate its teachers by test score gains and losses. It was an abject failure. The district drained its reserve funds. It concluded that it would cost the district $52 million a year to sustain the Gates program. The superintendent who led the effort, MaryEllen Elia, was fired. Gates cut its ties to the county and stopped the payout after wasting $80 million.
Should Massachusetts cling to a costly, expensive, failed way to evaluate teachers? Should it ignore evidence and experience?
Common sense and logic say no. Will someone send this post to the editorial board of the Boston Globe?
Here is a report on the Boston student walkout that took place today.
Students protested Mayor Walsh’s budget cuts, which hurt every public school and were especially deep for students with disabilities.
Today the students of BPS chose to walk out again. Edward Tapia of Boston Student Advisory Council said, “The main reason why I am walking out is because I am tired of Marty Walsh playing with us as if we don’t know anything about the budget cuts, and also I want us to prove to the city that having the City Council hearings during school hours will not hold us back from advocating, empowering student voice and fighting for our rights.” Excel High School student Trinity Kelly said, “We’re telling Mayor Walsh we are not misinformed.” BPS student Gabi Pereira wrote, “I have a little brother with an IEP, his education is under attack and so is mine.”
The students are walking out to ask that BPS is fully funded, not only for themselves, but for their younger brothers and sisters, cousins, friends and the future students of BPS. Additionally, they want an end to high stakes testing because they feel that it’s being used against them as a tool to identify which “failing” schools to close. They want restorative justice practices implemented across the district and an end to overly punitive suspensions and expulsions.
The mayor told the media that there must be adults behind these walkouts; the implication was that kids are not smart enough to figure out what he is doing to their schools and that they don’t care.
He is wrong. And the students are proving to him that they know the score and they know they are being cheated.
The link includes a list of the cuts to each school. Gone are librarians; music programs; science classes; music departments; SPED programs.
Here is an example:
Boston Community Leadership Academy
• Losing over $500,000
• 1 Librarian, 1 math teacher, 1 science teacher, 1 history teacher, 1 theater teacher, 1 leadership coordinator
• Losing gym class
• Losing Strategies for Success (9th grade class helps kids get organized, read for meaning)
• Losing Numeracy (10th grade class that works on math problem solving and MCAS skills)
• Losing Writers Workshop (10th grade class that works on writing and MCAS skills)
• Losing SAT prep (11th grade class that works on SAT skills and college readiness)
• Losing AP Biology
• Losing AP World History
• We had to change our schedule from a 6-period day (teachers teach 4 of 6) to a 5-period day (teachers teach 4 of 5), with longer classes, less collaborative time for teachers, and fewer options for students.
• Cuts to autism program
I have said before and I will say it again: Students are powerful, more powerful than they know. Politicians will always claim that the union is behind every protest, but it is not true. The students suffer the cuts. The students feel the loss of teachers and programs. They have a voice, and when they use it, no one accuses them of greed and self-interest. Of course, they are interest in their lives and their futures. They should be. When they protest, politicians quake.
Our reader Christine Langhoff writes about the current crisis in public education in Boston:
To use the common idiom, Boston is “woke”!
Parents, teachers and allies of public education protested on a frigid January night outside the mayor’s State of the City address. A few days earlier, 350 teachers, parents and students attended an informational town hall during the evening, as the issues of the hidden McKinsey report were publicly aired. There was another rally on February 17, during school vacation week.
Some 3400 students walked out of their classes on March 7 and went to City Hall and the State House to demonstrate after rallying on Boston Common. Some of them testified at the State House against the lifting of the charter cap. This was a student led and organized protest, which the mayor tried to dismiss with the classic “outside agitators” line. On March 17th, a group of parents, following the students’ lead, demonstrated outside City Hall, demanding the release of the report.
There have been a series of public hearings on the city’s budget, all of which are very well attended. A coalition of parents, educators and students are all on the same side of this argument, and though progress has been slow, we are not discouraged. Up next is walk-in day on May 7.
Much of this is organized on social media. In addition to the parents’ group QUEST, BEJA, Boston Education Justice Alliance http://bostonedjustice.org and the student groups YOUNG and BSAC http://www.youthonboard.org as well as Citizens for Public Schools are working together to keep our schools. The Boston Teachers Union has taken a page from our fellow unionists at the Chicago Teachers Union, allying with and supporting all these groups.
The question that has not been answered is why cuts to the budget, decreasing services to our SWD, and diminishment of offerings for students (closing high school libraries!) is necessary. Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented building and real estate boom; tax receipts are up by $95 million this year alone. (Massachusetts weathered the 2008 catastrophe pretty well.) We’re ranked number one (for what it’s worth) in urban school systems. What pretext is there for closing 30-50 schools? None.
But here’s the scenario we’re up against:
No elected school board, appointed by the mayor (since 1993)
The mayor founded a charter school
The superintendent is a Broadie
More parasites from TFA, TNTP, StudentsFirst are being hired at the school department
86% of our students aren’t white; most of them are poor and nearly half have English as a second language.
The governor wants more charters
The state board of ed is appointed by the governor
The state board is a cabal of privatizers from HGSE, the Pioneer Institute, New Schools Venture Fund
The former PARCC chairman is the state Commissioner
Walton is pouring money into the city
DFER sponsored successful candidates in the most recent election
Boston is a signatory to the Gates CRPE contract
The mayor and superintendent want One Enrollment
It’s an uphill battle and we can’t afford to lose.
Listen up, friends! Your own school district might hire McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group, and you need to know that they have a template for “right-sizing” the district. The template has nothing to do with improving education. It is all about cutting costs.
Fortunately for us, Peter Greene has read the 200-page document prepared for the Boston Oublic School district by McKinsey. Here are the highlights:
Close 30-40 public schools.
Cut back or eliminate special education by putting more (all?) students in inclusion classes.
Save on transportation costs by having children walk greater distances to catch a bus.
Increase revenues by having more students eat school food.
Centralize school lunches so everything is cooked in one place and delivered to schools.
Slash central office staff.
Outsource as many functions as possible. (This usually causes costs to rise, since private companies that win contracts have to show a profit.)
Here’s a thought. How about if a committee of educators get a $1 million contract to study the operations of McKinsey and suggest ways to save money. No more expense accounts.cNo more private offices. Share secretaries. Cut salaries to match teacher salaries. There must be many more ways to economize at McKinsey.
The Boston Globe reports that Boston gave McKinsey $660,000 to audit the schools. McKinsey proposed that the city could save millions by closing 40% of its public schools.
“A controversial city-ordered audit of Boston Public Schools suggested the district could save up to $85 million a year by closing 40 percent of its schools, according to newly released documents from the study.
“The March 5, 2015, draft by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is much more detailed than a shorter version released to the public in December. The longer draft contains elements that did not appear in the previously released version that will likely be unpopular among parents.”
Last fall, when rumors flew that Mayor Marty Walsh made a secret deal to close 36 public schools—after campaigning against school closings and charter schools–the mayor’s office vehemently denied it.
The McKinsey report was written more than a year ago. It was kept secret. The fix is in.
What else would you expect in a city with mayoral control that hired a Broadie as superintendent? When Briadies arrive, public schools close.
Citizens for Public Schools of Boston invites you to opt out:
Spread the Word About Opting Out!
It will take more than a few parents quietly opting out to stop high-stakes testing. It’s important to spread the word and to join with other parents who are interested in opting their kids out. One way to start is by hosting an opt-out house party. We have lots of other ideas as well.
You can start by checking out our new Action Network Opt Out Page, where you can download our new opt-out toolkit, find opt-out events near you and/or post information about your own opt-out house party or forum.
And don’t forget to visit the Citizens for Public Schools web site to read (and download) the toolkit, read our updated Opt Out Fact Sheet and find more information about fighting high-stakes testing from the Less Testing, More Learning Campaign. Make sure you let us know about your event so we can help spread the word! Testing season begins at the end of the month, so start planning soon!
P.S. And remember, we need your voice, your participation and your support to continue this work. Join or donate to CPS today by clicking here!
_________________________________________
Upcoming Events
Cambridge Education Forum, March 16, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 459 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
For more information, email ltmlcambridge@gmail.com.
Boston Public Schools Budget Hearing, Wednesday, March 16, 5 to 6 p.m.,
Bolling Building, 2300 Washington St., Roxbury.
The fight for full funding of Boston schools continues. To sign up to testify, call 617-635-9014 or email esullivan3@bostonpublicschools.org. (For the full schedule of Boston Public School hearings and meetings on budget cuts and unified enrollment, see the Boston Education Justice Alliance calendar page, here.)
Charter Schools: A Serious Threat to Public Schools in Massachusetts, Wednesday, March 23, 7 to 9 p.m.,
Sons of Italy Hall, 19 Prentiss Rd. Arlington. 7 to 9 p.m.
Open to the public, including educators, parents, and students.
Opt Out Westwood, Saturday, April 2 from 2 to 4 p.m. Join us in the Community Room at the Westwood Public Library, 66 High St., Westwood. Standardized testing season is upon us. Be informed about your right to opt out of PARCC. Join teachers and parents in the conversation about your child’s data.
Please share and bring a friend. For more information, contact Meg Maloney.
Citizens for Public Schools, Inc.
18 Tremont St., Suite 320
Boston MA 02108
EduShyster joined the thousands of students who were protesting the budget cuts. She wanted to know what they were thinking. She got an earful.
Who do you think is really powerful? I will tell you: students and parents. When either group gets organized, they have real power. Consider the parents who opted out in New York: they made Governor Cuomo beat a fast retreat. No one knows how to stop them. No one can stop them.
And now there are the high school students in Boston. They organized a protest against massive budget cuts. They planned meticulously. And thousands of students walked out, ready with signs of protest. The students are fighting for what they need and deserve: a well-resourced education. This should be their right. They should have to fight for it. But they are fighting, and their voices are powerful.
Hours before more than 3,500 of their peers would march out of their classrooms toward Boston Common, a small group of high schoolers was glued to a group chat on their phones. It was 3 a.m., and they needed to make sure everything was ready for the district-wide protest they’d spent the past week organizing.
Were the posters finished? Yes. Was the meeting place finalized? Yes. Did they all promise that, no matter what, they would leave their classrooms at 11:30 a.m.?
Duh.
“There’s this stereotype that young kids don’t know what we’re doing and should let adults handle things because it’s their fight more than ours,” said Jahi Spaloss, a senior at Boston Green Academy. “But we’re the ones in school. This fight is ours.”
Elected officials were sure that adults were behind the protest. Wrong. The students organized it and carried it out. It was their idea.
The notion of a walk-out was hatched on Feb. 27, when three sophomores at Snowden International High School attended a leadership conference at Harvard University and felt inspired after they learned about successful college protests against racism and sexism.
“We knew that all the schools in the district would be impacted by the budget cuts,” said Jailyn Lopez, a sophomore at Snowden who helped organize the protest. “We knew at our school that we might lose foreign language programs and teachers we liked. We decided to do something about it.”
Their first step was writing a letter explaining the budget cuts, which they posted to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on Feb. 29. In the letter, they warned: “Your school will have less extra-curricular activities, if any at all. If students are engaged in school, there would be less cracks for our youth to even look towards violence. We have lost too many young lives already.”
The students used social media to communicate, plan and reach other students.
Over the weekend, the district sent out a series of robocalls and texts to inform parents that students would be marked absent if they walked out of class. But that only increased the students’ determination.
“It gave us more motivation,” Lopez said. “This was something we organized and we felt like people were trying to discourage us from standing up for what we believed in. And after all the calls, we felt like even more people knew about it and wanted to stand up for their schools too….”
At 11:30 Monday morning, the mobilization began.
Students from grades 6 through 12 stood up and walked out of their classrooms, chanting: “They say cut back, we say fight back,” and “What do we want? Education!”
In the end, more than 3,600 students flooded the streets, a number that amazed even the organizers themselves.
Afterward, Mayor Walsh said he’d like to find out who organized the protest and hoped the adults behind it “start to feed the young students in our city with accurate information.”
The mayor’s office tried to mollify the students by saying that there would not be $50 million, as first reported, but only $30 million.
A student leader responded.
But [Brian] Foster said the students don’t feel as if that’s true—which is why they decided to take a stand.
“It’s kind of like they’re saying, ‘Don’t worry it’s not $50 million, it’s $30 million,’” he said. “That doesn’t answer anything. Even if it’s a $1 deficit, it’s the idea that you’re taking away from students’ futures.”
Students said this was not a one-time event. If the city goes through with cuts, they will be back on the streets again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 