This past week on Broadside, Jim Braude interviewed all of Boston’s Mayoral candidates beginning on Monday with McCrea, and ending today with Mayor Tom Menino. The expression ending on a high note in no way applies here. Mayor Menino continues to deny that Boston needs substantial changes in the public schools, as well as in City Hall.
Let’s start with the schools. In his interview with Jim Braude, Mayor Menino said the following:
“We’ve made improvements in the Boston Public Schools. We send more kids on to college than most urban school systems…we’re working with these kids who go on to college…trying to make sure that we’re working with them as they go through the college system.”
In Kevin McCrea’s interview with Jim Braude, Kevin brings up a conversation he had with Paul Grogan, the head of the Boston Foundation that sheds light on the Mayor’s claim that he is “working with these kids who go on to college”.
Braude –
“What’s his (the Mayor’s) biggest failing?”
Kevin –
“His biggest failing is the stagnation of the city of Boston. And most importantly the education system here in Boston. As Paul Grogan, who you know…”
Braude –
“Head of the Boston Foundation”
Kevin –
“…just testified at the State House last week that freshman in Boston High Schools now have a 6% chance of getting a 2 or 4 year degree, and that’s just failure.”
It doesn’t seem to me like the Mayor has been helping kids make it through college.
When asked about why, after years of opposition, he suddenly changed his stance on Charter Schools after Yoon and Flaherty came out in support of them, Menino said this…
“I was meeting with people before they came out with it. I was talking to individuals in the educational field about in-district Charter Schools.”
When asked by Jim Braude about Charter Schools, Flaherty mentioned that he endorsed them before Mayor Menino.
Braude-
“But he is there, whether it was a result of you or Yoon or whoever”
Flaherty-
“Because we had no leadership on this issue for an extended period of time, we’re going to miss out on the very precious federal stimulus money that’s coming in with respect to Charters.”
I would hope that the “individuals in the educational field” that Mayor Menino talked to would have told him about this and prevented him from missing the boat.
The fire department was also brought up in these interviews. Here’s what Mayor Menino and Michael Flaherty had to say on the issue.
Braude (to Menino) –
“Why did you sign contracts with them in previous years in which there was not mandatory drug testing?”
Menino –
“Cause they would never agree to it.”
Braude –
“Then why didn’t you just say no? Why don’t you say ‘then there’s no contract’ if you believed in it so deeply, ‘until it’s in this agreement then there’s no agreement’?”
Menino –
“Well we had some, we have reasonable doubt as part it, that you could check on a guy’s adaptability to drugs and alcohol testing, but that’s why I want mandatory drug and alcohol testing within the fire department…Give me a break, I mean, other fire departments are doing it, all our public safety departments right now have drug and alcohol testing, the only ones who don’t are the fire department.”
Braude (to Flaherty) –
“Do you support mandatory drug testing for fire fighters with no quid pro quo?”
Flaherty –
“Absolutely. And before I received their endorsement I made it perfectly clear that under the Flaherty administration we will have mandatory drug and alcohol testing.”
Braude –
“Nothing in return?”
Flaherty –
“Absolutely nothing.”
Mayor Menino didn’t even answer the question about why the Mayor did not refuse to sign a contract that did not include mandatory drug and alcohol testing.
When asked about the sad state of the Boston Publics Schools sports programs, Mayor Menino was hesitant to accept the blame.
Menino –
“There are issues with the Boston athletic program, but not as bad as the Globe made them out to be. So what I did after I read that, I got John Fish, a local business man, to create a foundation, other businesses stepped up, and now we’re going to start with our soccer program, we’re hiring a director of athletics, a director of academia, to work with these kids, make sure, we don’t want just good athletes, we want scholar athletes in Boston”
So the first person he called was his friend, who owns Suffolk Construction (the company that gets the majority of contracts for building projects in our city) John Fish? That was the first person he called? Hiring a director of athletics? Our city already has an Athletic Director, why not call him? And wouldn’t a Director of Academia be the school’s Superintendent? I’m confused.
These interviews make it absolutely clear that we are in need of a new mayor in our city. According to Sam Yoon during his interview…
“Massachusetts has the lowest rate of incumbency challenge in the Nation.”
That is unacceptable.
Here is the link to the interview,
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p>http://www.necn.com/Boston/Pol…
http://www.boston.com/news/edu…
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p>If Grogan said anything close to what McCrea said he did, it may have been in reference to non-exam schools (Boston Latin, Latin Academy, O’Bryant), but that number stretchs the imagination considering the performance of a number of non-exam schools, particularly the pilots, but to say that it is in reference to the “Boston High Schools”, is, at the least, misleading.
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p>And as is frequently noted, Boston has received several awards from the Broad Foundation for school district improvement, including the top prize several years ago. Needless to say, it wasn’t winning anything close to those type of awards pre-Menino, when the average tenure per superintendent was 1.5 years, far too short a period to have any meaningful educational reform.
He says during his interview that he works with kids
throughout their time in college.
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p>He can say that Boston schools are improving but according to the MA Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education things are not looking so good. The facts speak for themselves. The schools are
deplorable. For 16 years Menino has said judge me by the schools. As a non-supporter if you saw
these facts how would you judge him? And saying Boston is the most urban enviroment in Massachusetts
and therefore the most difficult doesn’t work. What about Holyoke, Springfield and Worchester, they
have the same problems if not worse because of ELL and seem to be doing better. How do you explain
that? I do not think you can.
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You’d stick with the actual facts like you did in this post. Throwing out a bogus stat like a freshman has a 6% chance of getting a degree (unless they went to an exam school, a pilot school or some other school we’re not counting…) says more about McCrea as a creep than Menino as a failure in eduacation – he’ll be able to improve their chances simply by counting accurately!
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p>Basically, about 4,000 kids started in the city’s open admission high schools (including the few pilots around at that time) back in 1996. By 2007, only 250 of the kids had a bachelors degree.
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p>Turned out the biggest category of kids would be told they were on the college track in high school. They would take courses with the right titles, even with the word “honors.” They had high GPAs.
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p>But because these courses were incredibly easy and required little effort, they got jammed academically once in college.
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p>2. Howard, you are correct: the 3 exam schools take about 1400 ninth graders each year and lots of them end up with college degrees. And now with more pilot schools, like Tech Boston, I suspect those kids are much more college-ready.
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p>3. So in total about 35% of the BPS kids, counting both types of schools, ended up with a college degree.
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p>4. Also, the context is also half full and half empty.
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p>Howard is right that Boston is better than many urban districts. See Lawrence (corrupt, horrible).
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p>But Kaj has a fair point, too. Shouldn’t we want more?
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p>To my mind, the single biggest fixable item: we willfully mislead the 9th graders in Boston’s 30 open-admission schools (to be fair, in almost all high schools).
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p>We talk up college, give collegiate-sounding names to courses, and set expectations SO unbelievably low that even a kid who does his work faithfully and gets B’s has almost no shot at succeeding in college.
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p>My pal at Large BPS High teaches Algebra 2. That’s a solid-sounding course for Grade 11.
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p>He says 90% of his kids last year arrived to his class having FAILED Algebra 1. It’s implausible to teach them real Algebra 2.
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p>We could be straight with kids in open-admissions schools. That’s fixable. Something like:
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