American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten addresses reporters during a visit to highlight Mayor Michell Wu’s $2 billion investment in BPS school buildings.
Mayor Michelle Wu and American Federation of Teachers President Randi
Weingarten talk to students at the Jackson Mann/ Horace Mann education
complex in Allston.
Elected officials speak in opposition to receivership
Teachers and parent activists protested outside One Ashburton Place Tuesday morning while the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education discussed its review of the Boston Public Schools in what’s widely perceived as a precursor to state intervention into Massachusetts’ largest school district.
The review comes amid growing opposition to state intervention. Last Thursday, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and former state Secretary of Education Paul Reville joined Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other education leaders to highlight the city’s planned $2 billion investment in BPS school building improvements. Both Weingarten and Reville, an author of the 2010 law that allows the state to place districts in receivership, have come out against a state intervention in Boston’s schools.
Testifying before the board, Wu said her administration has during the first six months of her term in office laid the groundwork to make lasting improvements to the schools, said the city is making progress in its search for a new school superintendent. She asked that the state not intervene.
“Receivership would be counterproductive in light of this transition
and superintendent hiring process now underway, and the strides we’re
making in collaboration with the state,” she said.
“If
the commissioner does put forward a proposal for the board to designate
and take over the Boston Public Schools, we will be requesting a
hearing and due process under the board’s laws and regulations to
continue to make our case that no one is better equipped to accelerate
the progress Boston has made with our Boston Public Schools
communities.”
Among
those testifying during the hearing were state Sens. Sonia Chang Diaz
and Lydia Edwards, state Rep. Liz Miranda, City Council President Ed
Flynn, and atlarge Councilors Michael Flaherty and Erin Murphy.
Edwards pointed out that the state will have a new governor in January, when Gov. Charlie Baker’s term ends.
“Why would you also put this on the new governor’s plate as well?” she said.
While
the elected officials called on the state to back away from its push to
intervene in BPS, Flaherty asked the board to consider a targeted
partnership with the district.
“Our
district continues to fail thousands of students, particularly our most
vulnerable,” he said, directing criticism at the BPS central office.
“Our superintendent and the central office need to be held accountable
for the failure to provide each school, each teaching professional, with
adequate support and tools they need to thrive.”
Murphy told the board she wants what’s best for the students, but she did not speak for or against receivership.
The
BESE review is a follow-up to a 2020 review that found BPS is not
providing adequate services to English language learners and students
with disabilities in accordance with state guidelines. The review also
highlighted deficiencies in the district’s busing, in the condition of
school bathrooms and in school curriculum and graduation requirements.
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeff Riley raised the
possibility of receivership or an empowerment zone model, in which a
cohort of schools the state designates as “underperforming” is removed
from local district control.
Receivership
and the empowerment zone model have become increasingly controversial.
None of the three districts the state has put in receivership has shown
appreciable improvements in student test scores — the main metric the
state uses to make the case for such interventions. In the state’s only
empowerment zone, the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, the
cohort of schools removed from district control show lower student test
scores than the district as a whole. Additionally, two Boston schools
placed under state receivership — the Dever and Holland schools — have
been plagued by mismanagement and, in the case of the Holland,
abnormally high suspension rates of kindergarteners. Neither has shown
significant improvement in students’ test scores.
The
new report acknowledges that the district has made progress in the
areas highlighted in its 2020 report, but states that instruction for
English language learners remains inadequate and that special needs
students are still being educated in substantially separate classrooms.
The report also highlights 31 schools in which students’ test scores
place them in the lowest 10% of schools in the state, and asserts that
the district has not done enough to improve those schools.
“While
numerous instructional initiatives are underway, the lack of coherent
improvement systems and capacity to provide targeted support to the
district’s 31 lowest-performing schools is highly concerning,” the
report reads.
Notably,
the report makes little mention of the COVID pandemic, which forced
school districts across the nation to pivot to remote learning beginning
in March 2020 — at the same time BPS officials entered into a
memorandum of understanding with DESE to make improvements to the school
system.
For instance,
the report highlights the district’s struggles with on-time school
buses but makes no mention of how that problem has affected districts
across the nation, with more than half reporting severe staffing
shortages.
While the
2020 review relied heavily on student scores on the state’s
Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test, because that
test was suspended for a year during remote learning and because
students across the state and across the nation have shown declining
test scores during the pandemic, state evaluators did not use such data
in their review this year.
Instead,
they toured school facilities and relied on observations and
evaluations of teachers in some of the district’s 121 schools.
Additionally,
the report hits the district for faulty data reporting, noting that
buses that do not show up aren’t counted as late in the district’s
reporting, and that two of the 29 bathrooms the district reported
repairing were not, in fact, repaired.
The
report highlighted progress the district made, noting improvements in
curriculum and alignment of graduation requirements with state
standards.
BESE is expected to make its decision on how and whether to intervene in BPS before the end of June.