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You don't need Charter Schools to get troublemakers our of the school. You need an administrative with balls. Admins support your teachers who identify the problems, kick out the troublemakers, send them to the alternative school (the practice prison), and admins prepare for and defend against lawsuits from pissed off parents.
Instead today the teachers get no support, troublemakers are sent back to the classroom, disruption is the order of the day.
This is all true. ISS doesn’t work. Safety transfers don’t work.
I saw your data that METCO students perform a little better than BPS students without being exposed to gangs, dangerously neglected buildings , rapid school closings, gang recruitment in front of the school, non-potable water, drafty classroooms, poor ventilation underfunded athletics. Yea I saw it.
I agree it hurts BPS but only because BPS won’t provide modern school amenities for its students.
You really are impervious to empirical evidence that negates your priors.
Based on the census data, at least 25% of the African American population in school districts are probably residents. If African American residents are testing at 500 - 6.5 points below the rest of the district average - that would mean that METCO students are testing at 477, below BPS.
In any case, 3.3 points is not a statistically significant difference. METCO students are indistinguishable from BPS students.
The METCO program is like many government programs a vehicle to further the interest of public workers rather than the communities it is supposed to serve.
I saw your data that METCO students perform a little better than BPS students without being exposed to gangs, dangerously neglected buildings , rapid school closings, gang recruitment in front of the school, non-potable water, drafty classroooms, poor ventilation underfunded athletics. Yea I saw it.
I agree it hurts BPS but only because BPS won’t provide modern school amenities for its students.
Homie, not that BPS is underfunded now but what do you think it could achieve with an extra ~$150M or so each year that’s currently being flushed down the toilet in the name of diesel-fueled centered racial equitable equity assuming it’s actually used on school needs and not grifted?
You really are impervious to empirical evidence that negates your priors.
Based on the census data, at least 25% of the African American population in school districts are probably residents. If African American residents are testing at 500 - 6.5 points below the rest of the district average - that would mean that METCO students are testing at 477, below BPS.
In any case, 3.3 points is not a statistically significant difference. METCO students are indistinguishable from BPS students.
The METCO program is like many government programs a vehicle to further the interest of public workers rather than the communities it is supposed to serve.
I think you are failing to se/acknowledge the non empirical benefit that he pointed out. I think a big part of getting your kid into Metco is to have them in a different social circle.
It tracks to the same reason people move for school districts. do i think district A is really that much better than B? no. Its that school is likely a bigger focus for the families there on a whole and you want to get your kid in their environment.
Also - you made a point about top students being underserved because of metco? are you rally trying to make the argument that metco districts are dumbing down their curriculum due to metco? come on. less than 10 of the districts (1/3rd) have more than 100 kids in their whole k-12 program. they are not changing their teaching due to this tiny fraction of student population.
I am not a massive metco proponent, i would be fine with Charters, but lets not act like its a giant negative.
I think you are failing to se/acknowledge the non empirical benefit that he pointed out. I think a big part of getting your kid into Metco is to have them in a different social circle.
It tracks to the same reason people move for school districts. do i think district A is really that much better than B? no. Its that school is likely a bigger focus for the families there on a whole and you want to get your kid in their environment.
Also - you made a point about top students being underserved because of metco? are you rally trying to make the argument that metco districts are dumbing down their curriculum due to metco? come on. less than 10 of the districts (1/3rd) have more than 100 kids in their whole k-12 program. they are not changing their teaching due to this tiny fraction of student population.
I am not a massive metco proponent, i would be fine with Charters, but lets not act like its a giant negative.
If the non-empirical benefits are real positives, I do not understand how that wouldn't manifest itself in better MCAS scores. Let's not act like they are testing the kids in some arcane topics. A child that is not meeting MCAS grade expectations consistently, like most METCO children are, is going to have a difficult time becoming a skilled worker in the future. Having children spend hours in a bus every day with no educational improvement is a waste of resources in many levels.
There are several districts that have a significant METCO population as a % of the student body (double-digit percentage) even if the number of students is not very large, because they are very small towns. The curriculum is being dumbed down and the specialists do not have the capacity to cater to those children because they are too busy with remedial work.
Do you really think your like smarter than all the professional parents utilizing METCO and raving about it? That’s you’ve found the flaw in this 55 year old prized institution many people thank their lives for?
It’s a massively different experience in school and I’ll just go off anecdotes that the average METCO and BPS students are very different and run in different social circles. MCAS isn’t the end all be all. METCO students anecdotally go way way further in life.
Tito Jackson, Kim Janey, John Barros, Marilyn Mosby, Audie Cornish, Bruce Brown, Michael Bivins. approximately 85% of all professional or successful black people I’ve meet in Boston native to Boston are METCO grads or private school grads.
https://binjonline.com/2019/05/29/a-modern-metco/
Boston’s arts community also abounds with former Metco students, including RCA-signed rapper Cousin Stizz, acclaimed guitarist and Berklee College of Music associate professor Jeffrey Lockhart, JAM’N 94.5 DJ and rapper Money Mav, and the DJ-brother duo SuperSmashBroz.
This also includes the head of Boston Arts Music and Soul Festival and the heads of several other cultural organizations throughout Boston.
https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/we...s/38428663007/
Other METCO grads
Dwayne Simmons is one example of what Fuller is talking about. Simmons is an award-winning musician and the education director for America Scores, a literacy program for inner-city youth.
Simmons was a Weston Public School "lifer," having started his education in Weston with kindergarten.
Akosua Cook, who has a graduate degree in environmental studies and has been working as senior planner for Florida’s Orange County, experienced this hardship along with the other Metco students.
She recalled, "I started in kindergarten so I don’t have a comparison with other experiences. If it’s all you know, it’s all you’re used to."
Metco students today are supported in their efforts to adapt to this routine with support systems, such as a breakfast club at the elementary schools and affinity groups at the Middle School.
Sherice Grant, an alumna from the Class of 1993, will be one such speaker this spring. An author of a children’s book, Grant is from a family of dancers and performers
Countless stories of people appreciating all the METCO showed them. Next time you meet a successful black person in Greater Boston, from greater bapton please ask them where they went to HS.
It is not a matter of being smarter, it is a matter of looking at the program with an open mind, something you clearly fail to do and most other people involved in the program behave similarly. This close-mindedness can be explained on the one hand by being overtly ideologically-driven and refusing to consider the world does not neatly adjust to one's strongly-held beliefs, and on the other hand by having a pecuniary stake in the program continuing to run.
I feel bad for the METCO parents because they are being led on by exaggerated claims of what the program accomplishes but I feel worst for the METCO children that suffer through it to no benefit. There is clearly a lot of cognitive dissonance going on because as a METCO parent I would be very angry and likely to change course if I got a letter every year in the fall telling my child is failing to meet grade standards despite the incredible sacrifice he is going through.
Putting together some examples of successful former METCO students does not prove anything. First, you do not know what the counterfactual would have been - they might have done as well or better had they gone through BPS. Second, we should look at what BPS grads accomplish. The only way to do this would be to conduct a cohort study 10, 15 or 20 years after graduation and look at average income per group or some other achievement metric. Any program anywhere can cherry pick a few successful stories even if it is overall harmful.
An educational program that costs taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year and cannot show (or even try) any improvement is a woeful shame.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade
Do you really think your like smarter than all the professional parents utilizing METCO and raving about it? That’s you’ve found the flaw in this 55 year old prized institution many people thank their lives for?
It’s a massively different experience in school and I’ll just go off anecdotes that the average METCO and BPS students are very different and run in different social circles. MCAS isn’t the end all be all. METCO students anecdotally go way way further in life.
Tito Jackson, Kim Janey, John Barros, Marilyn Mosby, Audie Cornish, Bruce Brown, Michael Bivins. approximately 85% of all professional or successful black people I’ve meet in Boston native to Boston are METCO grads or private school grads.
https://binjonline.com/2019/05/29/a-modern-metco/
Boston’s arts community also abounds with former Metco students, including RCA-signed rapper Cousin Stizz, acclaimed guitarist and Berklee College of Music associate professor Jeffrey Lockhart, JAM’N 94.5 DJ and rapper Money Mav, and the DJ-brother duo SuperSmashBroz.
This also includes the head of Boston Arts Music and Soul Festival and the heads of several other cultural organizations throughout Boston.
https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/we...s/38428663007/
Other METCO grads
Dwayne Simmons is one example of what Fuller is talking about. Simmons is an award-winning musician and the education director for America Scores, a literacy program for inner-city youth.
Simmons was a Weston Public School "lifer," having started his education in Weston with kindergarten.
Akosua Cook, who has a graduate degree in environmental studies and has been working as senior planner for Florida’s Orange County, experienced this hardship along with the other Metco students.
She recalled, "I started in kindergarten so I don’t have a comparison with other experiences. If it’s all you know, it’s all you’re used to."
Metco students today are supported in their efforts to adapt to this routine with support systems, such as a breakfast club at the elementary schools and affinity groups at the Middle School.
Sherice Grant, an alumna from the Class of 1993, will be one such speaker this spring. An author of a children’s book, Grant is from a family of dancers and performers
Countless stories of people appreciating all the METCO showed them. Next time you meet a successful black person in Greater Boston, from greater bapton please ask them where they went to HS.
We know what BPS valedictorians accomplish thanks to the Globe- and the answer is nothing much of note at all. They are also boxed out of the city government by and large.
Equity in Education: A closer look at the METCO program
The METCO program started in 1966 as a voluntary busing program to provide Boston students of color access better schools and resources. Fifty-two years later, the four-year graduation rate for students in METCO is roughly 30% higher than students in Boston public and charter schools, according to a Harvard researcher. The college enrollment rate was also 30% higher.
Metco places 350 to 400 students each year, and the enrollment process, from waiting list to classroom, can take five years. One-quarter of parents signed up their children before their first birthday.
Metco students regularly scored proficient or advanced on reading and language arts, the report said. The achievement gap between Metco and suburban students shrinks as students get older.
According to research done by Harvard University in 1997, a whopping ninety-one percent of students participating in METCO reported that “they had a good or excellent experience in learning to get along with people from other backgrounds.” Eighty-two percent of students said they had “a good or excellent experience with the academic program.”
New Report: Closing the Achievement Gap Through METCO
Lastly, they did all of this without having to worry about getting shot by a teacher at English High, shot at Tech Boston Academy, guns at Dearborn STEM Academy, Beatdowns at the Henderson, Gang recruitment outside the Obryant, no shootings after school at the Bolling Building, and while being able to drink the water from the water fountain. Amazing.
Didn't even have to attend high school in a former elementary/junior high school with no gymnasium or auditorium like kids at the Edward M. kennedy. No abrupt school closure like West Roxbury Educational Complex either. Wow.
METCO is not perfect but its better than the alternative.
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