坐公交车还是不坐：波士顿的择校计划

SED SED院长领导委员会审查问题

2012年3月15日
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推特 脸谱网
教育学院院长哈丁·科尔曼（Hardin Coleman）是一个审查学校选择的委员会的主席，这在波士顿的学校系统中是一个经常引起争议的问题。Vernon Doucette摄

去年秋天，波士顿的校车经常晚点一小时。几个月过去了，一些学生仍然没能在第一声上课铃响之前赶到学校，这让困扰波士顿公立学校几十年的一个问题浮出水面：让家长选择孩子去哪里上学，在时间和金钱上都要付出巨大代价。

这座城市分为三个地理区域，这意味着每个家庭有多达24所学校可供选择。由于每个地区都包含如此广泛的物理区域，家庭可以选择离家几英里远的学校。目前的制度是1974年法院命令废除该市学校种族隔离的结果。该命令早已过期，但学区仍在努力解决接送学生在城市各处的成本问题。今年，8000万美元（约占年度预算的10%）将用于交通运输。据估计，如果不采取任何措施，到2014年，这些费用可能攀升至1亿美元以上。

市长托马斯·梅尼诺（Thomas Menino）希望有一个更好的系统，不仅能降低交通成本，还能让孩子们离家更近，从而培养出更多家长参与的社区学校。因此，上个月，他和波士顿学校负责人卡罗尔·约翰逊（Carol Johnson）任命了一个咨询委员会，在明年审查当前的选择系统。

教育学院院长哈丁·科尔曼（Hardin Coleman）被校长任命为这个由27名成员组成的委员会的负责人，委员会成员包括波士顿公立学校学生的家长以及当地企业和社区领袖。该小组于上周六在罗克斯伯里举行了第一次社区会议，并将于12月向波士顿学校委员会提交其建议。

Boston Public Schools Principal for a Day, Hardin Coleman, Dean Boston University School of Education SED
2010年，担任波士顿公立学校校长一天，SED新西林校长Hardin Coleman（左）聆听波士顿艺术学院的Linda Nathan与学生Vasili Luzanau谈论他的项目。西德尼·斯科特摄

《波士顿邮报》今天采访了科尔曼，让他谈谈委员会在一个很可能会引起争议的问题上的工作。

《今日波士顿》：在周六的会议上，你听到了什么让你惊讶的事情吗？科尔曼：有几个带着高中孩子的人来跟我说，他们的孩子是如何从结识来自不同社会和文化背景的人中受益的。他们重视多样性的体验。这些令人痛心的评论来自澳门威尼斯人注册网站，他们认为选择是一种幻觉，不管创造出什么样的制度，总有一些人有足够的社会资本来管理它，使其对自己有利。

选择对学校质量的影响有多大？澳门威尼斯人注册网站研究发现，这与学校的类型无关，例如，它是否是一所有吸引力的学校，或者澳门威尼斯人注册网站是否有选择。这取决于澳门威尼斯人注册网站的素质。无论学生的类型如何，学校的澳门威尼斯人注册网站质量越高，学校的表现就越好。一般来说，贫困可以显著地预测教育结果，但如果你看一所贫困率高但表现良好的学校，区别就在于澳门威尼斯人注册网站的质量。

By 2014, the district will be spending $100 million on transportation before it buys a book or hires a teacher. You have to wonder what the district as a whole gains with that. If you put that money into improving the schools by recruiting and retaining good teachers, then students could go to a good school near their home. That would in turn reduce transportation costs. Which is the best investment? Having a quality school or choice and transportation. I might be tipping my hand a little on what I believe.

Is race an issue in this conversation?
Yes and no. My father [William T. Coleman (Hon.’10)] believes the only way to improve educational outcomes is to have desegregated schools. I disagree with him, and we have argued about this for years. I think the most important factor is competent teachers in the classroom. The data support me. But that question is inconsequential here because Boston busing is no longer integrating students. The population is only 15 percent Anglo. You are moving culturally diverse kids around to schools with other culturally diverse kids. So there’s no busing pattern that would create integration unless you opened it up to the suburbs, such as Brookline, Newton, Winchester. Then you’d get racial and economic balance. But you can’t do that. So busing in Boston serves no purpose when it comes to integration.

But in the big picture, the darker you are, the poorer you are, and if you are male, you are more likely to fail in American schools than if you are white, wealthy, and female. And that data is national. The question becomes, what do we do to reduce the risk factors for our poor black males. Improving schools would be one answer.

Why did you agree to chair the committee?
I think this addresses the issues of our time. And I can go back through generations of my own family who have worked on this issue. My father was a corporate and civil rights lawyer who as a junior lawyer worked on the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in the nation’s schools. One of my grandfathers was a social worker in Philadelphia and the other was a physician who did social service work in New Orleans. How to better serve African American boys has been a family issue for generations. And it’s not solved. That’s the scary thing.

What is your biggest hope and biggest concern as the committee reviews the school assignment process?
That the proposals that come forward have strong data support so that people can see why these proposals are made, and that the solutions are given time to work. My biggest fear is that the solutions are generated to assuage various political needs. That rhetoric or ideology come to dominate the process, such as, we have to have choice at all costs. But people on this committee aren’t coming in with a history. They aren’t already committed to a solution.

In the past, the issue of school choice has often become rancorous. How will you avoid that?
Clearly, Boston has a complex racial history. And when you consider choice in schools, you have to visit that broader history. But this conversation needs to focus on how you make sure parents have access to schools that we’d all want to send our kids to. As I told the superintendent, I think there’s an elegant solution out there to be found. If we work together, we will find it. If we break down in acrimony or historical problems, that won’t help us.

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To Bus or Not: Boston’s School-Choice Program

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 12 comments on To Bus or Not: Boston’s School-Choice Program

    1. He said his father think that racial integration is the ONLY way to improve educational outcomes. Mixing income levels is not racial integration, improving the quality of teachers is not racial integration. Both of these things will improve the quality of education in schools. Statistics, when arrived at properly, are a way to measure reality, people who don’t like them usually don’t like the ones that they disagree with, la la land is saying statistics are useless and then saying that they show money from discontinued busing would not go to improving schools.

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  2. I do see a pattern, most kids are going to schools near their homes now as it is and some parents would like there kids to go to suburban schools. I feel that diversity is a necessity for our minority kids. When I was 14, I was bussed to a school in Charlestown where people threw rocks as us. We persevered and as a result, became stronger, received a quality education, and experienced the diversity of other communities and cultures. I feel that all the work we did years ago is being reversed. By stopping bussing to other communities, it is a set back from where we started. Also, I don’t feel that we can just blame the teachers for ours kids’ education. We as parents share the responsibility for our children’s education.

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  3. Cool and interesting article–important stuff. It’s got to be mind-boggling trying to figure out how to improve a school system with very limited resources.

    The dean cited several examples of different studies/data evaluating certain issues–anyone know who performs these studies/how they go about it? Who are the authoritative sources in the field? For readers that would like to become more informed on the subject, where is a good a place to go access reliable information?

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  6. The Boston Public Schools have one of the highest rates of per-pupil spending in the US, at upwards of $20,000 per student. I do not think lack of resources is the reason the schools are not working.

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    1. BPS Student Cost:
      Regular Ed Student: $11,558.
      ELL Student: 13,820
      Mod Sped (.3) $18,220.
      Sub Sep Sped (.4) $28,233.
      Private Placement Student $72,913.

      Boston Public Schools at a Glance 2011-2012:
      bostonpublicschools.org/file/bps_at_a_glance_12-0419_0.pdf

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  7. This is such an important issue to me. I’m an African-American woman born and raised in the heart of Dorchester. School choice is exactly that: a choice. The fact that parents are choosing to send their children to schools outside of their neighborhoods speaks volumes about education equality and diversity in Boston schools.

    Growing up, for only two years of my academic career did I attend school in Dorchester, and even that was in a different area code. My parents wanted my two sisters and I to receive the best education possible. They did not believe that education existed in our Dorchester neighborhood and we all attended schools well outside our borders. I attended schools in Roxbury, East Boston, and, eventually, attended a school in Middlesex County district as a METCO student. Only three distinct times in my entire career did I arrive to school late, and certainly never by an entire hour.

    我

    The pessimist in me is not so convinced that money saved in transportation will be reinvested in better education in those neighborhoods that most need the extra funding. Really, it’s the transportation system that needs to be reevaluated so parents may continue to have choices and, more importantly, get students to school on time.

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  8. “The more high-quality teachers you have in a school, the better it will perform, regardless of the type of students. Poverty in general predicts educational outcome phenomenally, but if you look at a school with a high poverty rate that is performing well, the difference is in the quality of the teachers.”

    我不同意科尔曼博士的观点，不同之处在于那些表现良好的城市学校的支持系统。如果你看一下他所说的成功的城市学校的数据，“高质量的澳门威尼斯人注册网站”被校内的支持人员所增加，直接为学生服务，这使得这些澳门威尼斯人注册网站有可能教书。波士顿公立学校有“高质量”的、敬业的、经验丰富的澳门威尼斯人注册网站，他们在失败的学校里不知疲倦地工作了很多年，却没有结果，因为学校的支持系统不到位，因为钱都花在校车上了。这是一个不为人知的问题，首先需要由分配小组来解决。你打算怎么处理700多名失业的公交车司机？许多是波士顿居民，多年来，他们看到我们的学生安全地上学和回家。让50个以上的孩子在城市里走走停停，日复一日，不是一件容易的事。这些巴士司机是波士顿公立学校社区的一部分；我们对他们负有道义责任。

    Will Boston University step-up and train these soon to be unemployed bus drivers, for BPS in-school support jobs as attendance officers, timeout room monitors, discipline deans, security paraprofessionals, teaching assistants and fresh food chefs in our schools? These positions were eliminated for “lack of funds” caused by busing, and schools spiraled down. Successful school systems, mentioned by Dr. Coleman, have these in-school support positions, why not Boston Public Schools?

    As Dr. Coleman knows the “turnaround,” and forever spinning, English High School is an example of a once good school that, without the essential in-school support, and experienced school leadership, is still failing. As part of being a turnaround school, the “high-quality,” veteran teaching staff, at “The English High,” was replaced with other “high-quality” teachers of the systems choosing, yet only 50% of the senior students graduated in 2011! Why? “High quality” teachers were in place! In an evaluation of program implementation by the Donahue Institute at UMass, veteran and new teachers, at The English, sited a “lack of support” as the major factor of the schools failure. That is the case in many of our Boston Schools.

    Dr. Coleman said, “conversation needs to focus on how you make sure parents have access to schools that we’d all want to send our kids to.” If this is the real agenda of the Assignment Panel, then they should suggest that the money, now allocated for busing, be directed toward instituting in-school support systems in direct service to students. Eliminating busing, and returning to neighborhood schools, should not be a windfall to the City of Boston.

    That said, will Boston University step-up and make the commitment to retrain these bus drivers for support positions in our schools? Mayor Menino that will even give Boston University up to 50% of “community service credit,” on the 25% municipal service fee B.U. owes the taxpayers of Boston! That’s only 12.5% for municipal services! What a deal!

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