I see value both in the suburbs goal (diversity) and the Boston parents goal (school options for kids), but I’m particularly interested in the latter goal.
Boston Foundation is going to release a report soon showing that black 10-year-old in Boston has less than 10% chance of ever getting a college degree. Parents are desperate for alternatives.
A. My proposal: what if we had an EXPANDED Metco, with means-testing, and greater per-pupil funding from current $3700 per kid (as an incentive for suburbs to take more kids)?
B. Tell suburbs: each kid you take beyond the present is funded at, say, $6,000 per student. So this would cost the state an extra $19 million per year.
Current (approx)
3200 kids: 2500 black, 500 Hispanic, 100 Asian, 100 white
My estimate of what a means-tested Metco would look like (based on demographic data): 6400 kids: 3200 black, 1900 Hispanic, 600 Asian, 600 white.
Grandfather the current Metco kids who are not from low-income families.
C. This would alleviate certain concerns:
(1). Suburban. They only want Metco if it serves racial diversity. They may sympathize with the poor white or Asian kid from Southie, but not enough to educate them.
However, if they knew that a means-tested Metco would still be 80% black and Hispanic (BPS is currently 75% black and Hispanic, and if you only examine kids from poor families, it’s more like 80+% black and Hispanic), they’d realize a changed Metco could still achieve the diversity objective.
(2). Boston black families. Opportunities rise from 2500 to 3200. Alternative: 2500 to 0.
(3). Legally: kosher, I think.
(4). Effect on district. I know BPS hates to lose people. But BPS hires some 500 teachers a year. If you have to educate 3,000 fewer kids who are now in suburbs, that means you hire 400 teachers a year. If you hire well, that means you’d lop off the 100 least promising new teachers. Over time, the compound effect is more parents want to stay in BPS because average teacher quality is higher.
One remaining concern:
Metco’s Jean McGuire said: “I’m not going to send a bus of poor kids to the suburbs. That’s cruel. There are enough people who think that all black kids are poor as it is.”
Legit concern. But does anyone know the current % of poor kids in Metco? Since about 80% of black families in BPS qualify for free/reduced lunch, I’d assume that most Metco kids are also from lower-income families, so I’m not sure if this would change perception too much from status quo.
…and thought about the idea that not only might suburban kids think that all black kids are poor, but that all poor kids are black.
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How about those poor white kids?
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What ideas, what preconceptions, might they challange?
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I have always thought that the voluntary METCO program should be income, rather than race, based. I had someone (Jay Fitzgerald, actually) tell me that suburban parents aren’t interested in poor kids, just black kids, to feel better about themselves. I would like to think he is wrong, and that these communities are acting from a more idealistic perspective than that.
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As a former poor white kid, I would have welcomed such an opportunity. And as I pointed out to Mr. Fitzgerald, it was a METCO-esque program that made Deval Patrick what he is today. That’s how far that can take you. Let’s allow more poor kids to be helped, regardless of race.
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Dr. King would have approved, I think.
of my premise, which is to bypass the legitimate and vexing discussion that you raise….
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….via a pragmatic program that creates net increased Metco seats for black and Hispanic kids, deals with suburban school board attitudes as they exist (instead of wishing they didn’t), AND handles the legal issue….all through a means-tested expansion with predictable results (ie, Metco remains, de facto, a program which for suburban schools continues to add minority faces)…?
Other than that, it’s fine. When did the METCO slogan become ‘NINA’?
Boston has about 80,000 school-age kids total. About 57,000 in BPS (including exam and pilot schools); 4500 in charters; 3000 in Metco; 14,000 in private (mostly Catholic schools).
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In BPS, 73% of kids are low-income. In charters it’s about 67%. Other programs: unclear.
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If we assume that most low-income kids are in these schools, that means roughly 45,000 low-income kids (about 71% of 61,000 kids, plus a couple thousand poor kids in Catholic schools, plus a couple thousand in Metco).
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Well, roughly 80% of those 45,000 kids are black or Hispanic. So one might extrapolate and say: if low-income people choose Metco in roughly the same proportions by race, then you’d end up with Metco that is 80% black and Hispanic.
I expect what Peter is thinking is that white or Asian families might be more likely to apply for the Metco opportunity than black or Latino families. In fact the chance of a free suburban education might draw students out of the Catholic system (which is a whiter population than the publics, right?). And presumably once applicants meet the means test, the program wouldn’t classify by race, would it? Perhaps there could be an “equal representation of neighborhoods” system that would affect the pool in a race-blind way.
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I’ll all behind the general idea of preserving the opportunity being given to the current Metco students, even at the “cost” of expanding it to some white and Asian students. There’s the problem of stripping some of the most ambitious kids out of the urban public schools and thus weakening their academic environment, but that’s a problem with any way that you provide alternatives.
and we don’t have good data to answer it.
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still, Metco has long had wait lists in the 10,000 to 15,000 range, and until recently, Metco was a program that was pretty much 100% black students.
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there are about 30,000 school-age black kids in boston. so if the wait list # is right, i think the african-american community in boston has a high rate of applying to participate. no reason why that would change.
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basically, even if white and asian families had unusually high application rates to a means-tested Metco, there just aren’t that many eligible ones in Boston.
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BPS used to (30 years ago) have 60,000 white kids. Now BPS has 8,000 white kids (many from middle and upper class families at Boston Latin et al, therefore wouldn’t be eligible under an income test).
I would argue that the primary benefit of METCO is to introduce kids in mostly white school systems to kids of other races. The better education that those non-white kids receive is just a fringe benefit.
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I just don’t see it very useful to expose kids in mostly white school systems to more white kids from a different neighborhood.
The argument about how to “adequately” integrate our public schools depends very much on what is the goal of integration. Much of the original argument for integration, and even the current rationale for programs like METCO, focuses on the disproportionate lack of resources and opportunities that some children face. To be short, urban schools with mostly poor and ethnic/racial minority students do not have the same level of funding as suburban, predominantly white schools. In the past, the thinking went: if our black and brown students shared their classrooms with white students, we would receive the resources needed to receive an adequate education.
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There are good things that come out of integrated schools, whether it is economic or racial integration. Being exposed to people unlike yourself is inherently a good thing (at least in my view). Unfortunately, integration by itself does not necessarily improve educational outcomes nor does it result in a well-rounded person – white, black, or brown. There has also been quite a bit of research showing that integration, by itself, doesn’t necessarily lead to tolerance or less discriminatory behavior – also one of the alleged goals of integration.
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So, I’m left to wonder, thinking about the vast majority of poor kids (regardless of race) and kids of all races and backgrounds (regardless of economic status) who do not participate in METCO or go to “adequately” integrated schools, how much better would we be as a society if ALL public schools were properly funded? What would happen if we focused less on whether middle-class, suburban white folks will accept a poor black or white kid in their school and more on whether all of our public schools receive the resources they need to educate the children they serve?
Boston schools spend around $14,000 per year per student (by the way, that’s more than most Massachusetts suburban schools).
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How much is needed?
It’s the Surge strategy. Been going on in education since 1970s.
Related question to gauge an ol-fashioned fiscal conservative:
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Would you support higher taxes for education if….
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*The extra per-student funding only went for kids who, say, by Grade 4 failed MCAS
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and
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*it could only be spent on 1-on-1 tutoring, say $25 per hour
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and
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*Parents could shop for the tutor they wanted, the school couldn’t “assign” one
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and
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*Anyone who passed their CORI could try to qualify as a tutor, but their performance with the first student would be measured — did the kid make measurable gains in reading/math? If the kid didn’t make gains, you could volunteer (no pay) tutor, but you could not be on the “paid” list.
Conservatively speaking, it’s easy to support any increase in education spending that follows the kid, or conversely, doesn’t fatten the institution.
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So yes, your proposal appears to be a voucher for tutoring students in under-performing districts. I’d endorse it. (that won’t get you much political capital, mind you, but nevertheless).
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It could be a program run by the Department of Education. We could call it, the Under Performing Youth Of Urban and Rural System: UP YOURS, Department of Education.
The state Dept. of Education already has a tutoring program in place as required under NCLB. The major challenge (or problem depending on your perspective) is that the state has not monitored the tutoring that it pays for. So we have no idea whether the tutoring has at all been effective even in doing the little thing that it is supposed to do – help kids pass the MCAS test. Millions of dollars are being spent on these services but who knows what we are getting out of it.
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The idea of tutoring sounds good but if we want to ensure that the money is spent appropriately, the state needs to 1) collect the data needed to monitor the outcomes of the tutoring and 2) perform periodic top-to-bottom evaluations of these programs.
agree 100%
And it depends on what the goal of education should be. There have been 3 SJC decisions that grapple with this exact question. The two McDuffy decisions in the 1990s found that in MA the state has a constitutional obligation to provide a public education that satisfies some minimum requirements. The question in the more recent Hancock decision was whether the funding formulas adopted by the state in the wake of McDuffy met those obligations. In that case, the Superior Court judge Margot Botsford (recently elevated to the SJC) found that the state’s funding mechanism was not meeting its constitutional obligations and recommended certain changes be made. The SJC in 2005 reversed that decision. The main basis of the SJC’s decision focused on the efforts made by MA to reduce funding disparities rather than on the outcomes of those efforts.
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The fact remains that there are significant and preventable educational achievement disparities (however you measure it) between racial/ethnic groups, between urban vs. suburban students, and between poor vs. non-poor students. Average per pupil and total expenditures have been found to be significantly related to academic achievement.
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With that said, the problem may not entirely be the “amount” of funding, but how the funding is used. Nonetheless, we have obviously not directed the proper resources to our public schools whether the source of this problem is not enough money or money not being directed to its most effective use.
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In either case, I wonder whether focusing more on a quality education, as described in the McDuffy decision, would result in better educational outcomes than the current focus on how to achieve a proper balance of racial integration.