Okay, now I’m below the thingie. I count 16 different types of public schools in MA. You could actually create a couple more subcategories, which folks can do in the comments.
Here they are:
1. Traditional public school. If you live there, you’re in.
1a. Regional. Same thing, comes from more than 1 district.
2. Vocational school
Often a regional school. Usually selective about which kids get in. Minuteman is an example
There are also private vocational schools, called proprietary schools
3. Exam School
Must take a test to get in. Boston Latin Academy is an example
4. Themed School
No particular admission standard, but maybe some principal discretion on whether “there is space.”
Urban Science Academy is an example.
5. School within a School
Gates Foundation pushed an idea where big high schools, like South Boston High, would become 3 smaller high schools, each with one floor of the building (Odyssey High, Excel High, and Monument High).
This isn’t very popular anymore.
6. 766 School
I’m not sure whether to include these. These are private schools for special needs students, paid for with public dollars. Info here
7. Alternative Schools. Hard to classify. 157 of them. Public schools which usually serve kids with behavioral issues.
8. Commonwealth Charters.
Here is the state’s definition. There are about 60. Example.
8b. Horace Mann Charters. In-district charter school. Union is still there. District approves. Example. Not very popular.
9. Pilot School. Boston only. 20 of them. Created as alternative to charters. Some have selective admissions. Some have random admissions. Very similar to Horace Mann, but no state involvement.
Okay I’m sure I’m missing something but those are the 11 types of schools I know about.
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Also
*Metco
This isn’t a type of school. It’s the program that originally bussed black students from Boston and Springfield to suburban schools. I think it has made some changes to also serve a small number of non-black students. Info here
*Interdistrict choice
Parents can send a kid to a different district if the district agrees. Hope this is not editorializing, but more or less only white families get this option, as you can see on the map.
Districts which “risk” getting kids from low-income communities generally refuse to participate.
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Five new types of schools have been proposed in last month. None of these exist yet.
Mayor Menino – in-district charter schools. Like pilots, but would not need to be unionized. I think would be Boston only.
Governor Patrick proposed 4 new types.
a. Replication of high-performing charter schools. Only in a district where kids are scoring in lowest 10% in state, not in suburbs.
Slightly different rules designed to maximize outreach to most disadvantaged kids in most disadvantaged communities.
b. Readiness Advantage Schools. School committee and supe agree to give a traditional school more flexibility.
c. Readiness Alliance Schools: Non-profit partner or university changes a school, creates a performance contract, then helps run school.
d. Readiness Acceleration Schools: If Commissioner deems a school to be persistently failing, it could place the school in receivership, and appoint an external organization to run the school. “Turnarounds.”
These is one other nuance in the traditional public schools, depending on district policy. There are either neighborhood schools, which means that a chilk is assigned to a school based on his address, or there is intra-district school choice, which means that someone in a city can submit their choices and then their child is assigned to an available school.
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p>This is an important nuance to parents, I think, because it either means that you can “escape” your neighborhood school without having to move, or on the flip side, you cannot choose a school with a home purchase, since you to deal with a lottery to figure out what school your child will attend — which is something that a lot of smaller town parents don’t have to deal with.
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p>In most smaller towns, there are either no choices — just one school per grade, or your housing purchase determines the school (I’ve read that in Winchester, one of the elementary schools is highly sought after, so the houses in that part of town are more valued).
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p>I think this is an important nuance because I think that parents who are concerned with their kids’ education don’t want to gamble in a lottery with no solid backup plan. That means that this can be a factor in how kids are distributed among various cities and towns.
We have kinda a hybrid approach here in Melrose. Parents submit their top three choices out of five elementary schools and the assignment is based on choice and proximity (no lottery). So if you live close to the school you want, you are more likely to go there then if you live far away. This is only at the first grade level (and full-day K, but that is a tuition based program). Once a child is at a school they stay there. Also if a parent already has a child in elementary school then their siblings automatically get that same school. There is always a bit of angst when assignment time comes around, but it seems to work out for most people.
I don’t agree with your assessment on “more or less only white families get this option”.
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p>Most often kids transfer from poorly performing districts (i.e. broke cities) to better performing districts (i.e. wealthy towns). That is reflected in the map you linked to, for example the town of Longmeadow (considered to be a great town for education) sent 3.8 kids to other towns and received 56 kids from other districts.
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p>I do agree that race tinges the discussion on this (I’ve heard people in Springfield suburban communities argue against School Choice because they don’t want “Springfield kids” (potentially code for “non-white”) in their school system “dragging down the test scores”).
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p>I think that No Child Left Behind changes have affected this program too, because in order for a district to be labeled “not failing” all significant subgroups have to be not failing — which means that if you are a mostly white district but you take on too many non-white “choice” kids who aren’t as prepared as the district kids, you can risk being labeled as underperforming.
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p>Massachusetts changed its subgroup law in 2007. Subgroups are judged when:
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p>There have been claims that students have been accepted in this program by other districts due to them either being politically well-connected or very good athletically. I don’t know how much stock to put in those claims though.
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p>The benefit of the school choice program to certain districts is that those districts receive funding from the communities where the kids originate. Since often adding an additional child to a district has a very small incremental cost, it is a good deal for those towns to get a chunk of money that was derived taking fixed costs into account.
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p>Of course, the opposite is true from the sending district — the fixed costs don’t go down when one child leaves the system, but if that child leaves via School Choice, a large chunk of money derived from fixed costs leaves the district.
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p>The tuition rate is based on 75% of the receiving district’s per-pupil tuition rate, with a cap of $5,000. I think that most districts probably are at the cap since most districts spend more than $6,250 per pupil.
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p>In FY09, Springfield sent 633 students out of the district (out of 21,466.50 total students) at a total cost of $3.6 million. It received 7 students for a revenue of $35,000.
I teach at one of the suburb of Springfield schools, that you mention. We also have METCO.
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p>I can’t tell you what the school committee’s reasoning was for discontinuing school choice, but from my experience as a teacher, I don’t believe race was a factor, though I think the nature of the some of the students may have been.
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p>My school system accepted school choice, I think, for the money. However, one expensive school choice kid, i.e. one who ends up requiring a lot of special education services, even outside placement, or one really difficult school choice kid, made the costs outweigh the benefits.
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p>The problems that some school choice kids brought with them had nothing to do with the fact that they came from Springfield.
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p>People in town liked to say people from Springfield and other communities sent their kids to our schools because we had better special education. People also used to say that our poshest neighbor didn’t follow lottery procedures and thus got higher-achieving kids. I never thought much of these beliefs.
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p>I always thought that it was much more likely that of the three suburban districts south of Springfield, ours was the most middle (as opposed to upper-middle) class and the least of a jump for a working-class kid. Even then, I never had any empirical evidence to support this hypothesis.
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p>It’s been a long time since I had a school choice student. Unless they were new to the high school, there wasn’t any way for me to know unless it came up somehow. If there were school choice students of color, I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish them from our METCO students.
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p>The town I live in, a small Hampshire County town, takes school choice kids, to the tune of $600,000. That’s a lot for a a $15 million school budget. The choice kids seem to come from everywhere including Springfield as well as towns that might be considered to have better school systems.
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p>The problem with school choice is similar to the funding problem with charter schools. Cities like Springfield lose money.
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Melrose participates in METCO and we love our METCO kids. Personally, I wish we could do more to increase diversity in our City and Schools. We do not participate in inter-district school choice and I’ve never heard anyone advocate for it. The school committee has annual hearings (as required) and in the past 3 years, at least, no one has testified. A big part is the economics. $5,000 is not going to cover our costs unless it was just a couple of kids and we had the space in existing classrooms (we don’t). Same thing with sending kids out. Unless there is enough kids to cut a classroom it is not going to make economic sense. The SPED issues could also be a big can of worms. I’m not sure what the laws and regulations are there.
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p>If they could do inter-district choice with a guarantee of equity (same going out as coming in) I’d be happy to participate as long as they worked out the SPED issues, if any.
Pretty comprehensive review of the options out there.
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p>I would suggest that you may want to edit this to indicate in which schools students must pass the MCAS, and in which schools teachers need to pass the MTEL in order to work there. That is where the rubber meets the road in a tangible way.
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p>Also, I would suggest you add “magnet schools”. A vocational school is actually a sub-type of magnet school. Magnet schools cover a minimum of the general curriculum as tested by the MCAS, and seek to clear time to focus on a particular curriculum. Though vocational is the most common type, others focus on arts, or math and sciences.
I’m assuming a school like Essex Aggie would be a sub-type of a magnet.
I think the smartest thing we could do is ramp-up the number and diversity of magnet schools in and out of cities. Do it in high schools, and start piloting models of middle school magnet schools. I’d say about 1/3 of students of high school would be better off outside an academic area and in a scitech, aggie, voke, art, or liberal art magnet.
My impression of magnet schools is that they are too temporary to gain any traction, because they are often funded with grants which have a finite life span.
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p>Here are Springfield’s magnet lineups from 2003 and today:
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p>2003
* Reggio Emilia Inspired Approach
* Inquiry Science Across the Curriculum
* Primary Years International Baccalaureate Approach
* Montessori K-8
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p>2009
* Expeditionary Learning
* Museum Studies/Expeditionary Learning
* Montessori K-5
* Visual and Performing Arts
* Math Discovery & Communications
* Montessori K-8
* Primary Years International Baccalaureate Approach
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p>See the turnover in just 6 years?
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p>I have to believe that it takes many years for a school to gain a good reputation. In Springfield, the magnet duration seems to be about 3-5 years, then they get another grant and switch things up to whatever plan is available. The latest fad is the Expeditionary Learning (Gates) programs.
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p>In addition, I don’t think that all the students in a magnet school are there because it is a magnet school; some are just assigned there because it is in their neighborhood. That would seem to defeat the purpose of the magnet school, which would be to group students with similar goals.
They’re a lot like charters in that way — they come and go based on funding and the founders’ passion. However, if we had a more predictable funding formula, as we do with aggies and vokes, we’d be in a better position.
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p>Most public schools and charters only service the all-around academy type of student, who may be the plurality but not the majority of the modern student body. If we do more to service students interested in voke and aggie, and start aggressively servicing students interested in fine arts, liberal arts, and STEM, we would do them a greater service.
What you’re talking about is somewhat like the European model of tracking kids, though you may intend it to be voluntary.
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p>There is a huge cultural hurdle, however. Americans are addicted to the idea of college as the answer to everything. A good job? Go to college. A middle-class lifestyle? Go to college. The economic future of America? Go to college.
Talk to college professors, and almost to a one they’ll say that they are seeing lots of students, more than ever before, who really shouldn’t be in college.
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p>It’s a tough call — college trains the mind to some good habits, but it’s also an expensive means to a qualifications race where the only winners are the colleges.
work preparation. I sometimes think it’s more about acculturation and the accumulation of social and cultural capital than anything else.
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p>Don’t get me wrong, I love education and believe in people being educated when it happens, but if a kid wants to be a banker or a nurse a literature class is poor preparation. Yeah, nominally it means reading and writing, but learning these skills are far from assured.
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p>I had a very bright exchange student from Finland. For all we brag about their education and test scores, a signficant portion of their population enters the work force after 9th or 10th grade. They learn on the job. A relatively small percentage(compared to, say, a middle-class American suburb)goes on to college. Many go on to business and trade schools after what we would consider high school.
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p>History has favored them in the development of their education system.
two types of schools. Public schools and schools which segregate populations according to one scheme or another.
all public schools segregate populations according to one scheme or another.
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p>a dorchester family that is 500 yards from a traditional milton elementary school is forbidden access to that school. a west roxbury family right near a brookline traditional public school may not send their children there.
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p>middle class families exercise school choice in a simple way – they can afford to live in different communities.
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p>poor families generally must live in neighborhoods of other poor people, and, with a few exceptions, are blocked from going elsewhere.
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p>in massachusetts the situation is even worse: housing laws that block affordable housing in most communities, as a way to keep people out.
Geographical segregation is the most pernicious of all, the most arbitrary (though not historically), and perhaps the most damaging.
I think the UMass system would benefit tremendously from more magnet schools in Massachusetts. Top and middle tier private schools would too, but I suspect that the UMass schools would do quite well indeed.
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p>Universities already know how to manage housing and dining and education. Sure, high school ain’t college and they’d clearly need to bring in the appropriate high school expertise, but imagine each UMass running a magnet school — be it for science, performing arts, languages, history and culture, whatever. 9-12, 10-12, or even 11-12 only. I’m specifically thinking about boarding magnet exam schools. Who pays for them? Some combination of state, university system, towns (who transfer the “per student” cost to the school), grants, whatever. Who goes to them? Kids statewide, and there could be geographic or economic quotas to ensure a minimum percentage come from west/central/boston/cape, middle/lower-middle/lower class, rural/suburban/city, etc. Since they’re state schools, it’s reasonable to ensure folks statewide can come.
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p>A diverse group of students would have the opportunity to dive deep in their area of both interest and talent. Since these kids ought to be college-bound kids, this gives them a chance to transition to a college campus in a more structured dorm environment. If these kids are superstars, they could even be taking some actual college courses in college classrooms in the 11th and 12 grades.
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p>So, what’s in it for UMass-xxx? Well, some of these kids are destined for Harvard et al, but some aren’t. I believe that these kinds of programs would help cultivate kids with the ability and talent to do well at UMass-xxx but for whatever reason might not make it there. This program could help these kids make it there, but above and beyond that help generate the top 10% of the class at UMass-xxx, thereby helping improve the rank/ability/esteem of the student body as a whole, thereby improving the ranking of UMass-xxx. I think it would be a way for UMass to both (a) recruit more quality kids, and (b) generate more quality kids simultaneously. It’d also do well for UMass in the long term, since 20 years from now more adults in MA would have an affinity to at least one UMass campus; that means more citizens demanding their legislators (none of whom got a law degree from a UMass campus) provide more funding for the UMass schools from the state budget.