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October 23, 2003
Tell the truth!
The most daunting problem facing Boston is how to
improve academic achievement in the city’s public schools.
This problem has persisted for some time but school reform legislation
and MCAS test results have made it more difficult to conceal its
magnitude.
Nonetheless, a carefully implemented plan of disinformation has
been somewhat successful in mollifying public concern about the
issue. Such a strategy had a greater chance for success in Boston
because only about 8,736 of the city’s 62,400 public school
population are white. All the rest are minorities. Consequently,
the problem with the schools did not generate an appropriate political
backlash for some time.
Blacks and Latinos are now becoming more concerned about the lack
of academic achievement of their children. There was a period
of patient restraint as the touted academic reforms of the public
schools and independent agencies were implemented. However, for
the past three years the MCAS results indicate that there has
been little improvement.
The consolation offered to blacks and Latinos is that a greater
number is passing the 10th grade math and english MCAS tests so
that fewer students will be prevented from graduating. The education
establishment has set “passing” as the satisfactory
standard, although they are aware that merely passing is not a
level of academic achievement necessary to prepare a student for
competent performance in today’s technological society.
“Proficiency” must be the goal. Only 12 percent of
blacks in the 10th grade and 13 percent of Latinos scored at the
level of proficiency or above in math on the 2002 MCAS exam. However,
60 percent of whites reached proficiency or better. Only 24 percent
of blacks and 25 percent of Latinos attained proficiency in English
that year, compared to 68 percent of whites.
MCAS scores at other grade levels for the years 2001 through 2003
show such modest improvement, if any at all, that it is reasonable
to conclude that all efforts to increase academic achievement
have not succeeded. Educators have asserted, quite erroneously,
that any progress will be painful and slow.
There is an educational program that produces dramatic results
in no more than three years. It has been successfully implemented
in Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Tacoma, St. Louis, and Detroit.
The program is called Efficacy. It was designed by Jeff Howard,
an African-American Ph.D. psychologist from Harvard University.
Efficacy has a proven record of rapid success, even with students
from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, black and
Latino political and community leaders have proposed that the
services of the Efficacy Institute be engaged by the Boston school
system. The matter is presently under consideration.
It is understood that the citizens in Wellesley, Lexington and
other affluent suburbs essentially own the schools. That has not
been the case in Boston in the past. However, times have changed.
Now a well-educated and sophisticated group of citizens has stepped
up to insist that the goal of public education must be academic
proficiency, not merely passing MCAS. And this goal must be achieved
in a few years, not decades.
Disinformation about the present status of public education in
Boston will do little more than stimulate avoidable controversy.
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