Sep
5
Statement About Boston Globe
September 5, 2008 |
May 28, 2008
1. “War of Words.”
The Globe is stirring things up. There is no war of words between BPS and MATCH. Despite the headline, we are pleased that for the first time, a superintendent has agreed to examine the transfer issue, something we’ve asked for in the past.
2. How did this arise?
In previous years, most recently in 2006, MATCH has approached BPS officials seeking resolution of the “automatic promotion.” We initiated contact.
We explained that if a student was not succeeding, and was not on track to be promoted by his teachers — he knew he could transfer to BPS and get automatically promoted. This obviously gave students who struggled an incentive to leave MATCH — the automatic promotion despite not completing their work in our school.
We approached senior officials at BPS in previous administrations.
They acknowledged the issue but did not move forward on a solution.
3. Who Are These Students?
In the past 2 years, we’ve had 25 upperclassmen transfer from MATCH back to BPS:
*25 of 25 had passed both parts of MCAS.
*18 of 25 were PROFICIENT on both parts of MCAS. By contrast, just 2 of the 25 had ARRIVED to our high school from BPS having scored proficient on 8th grade MCAS in their former middle schools.
*In fact, 16 of the 25 who transferred back to BPS scored so high on MCAS that they are Adams Scholarship recipients. That means these 16 are able to get full tuition scholarships at any state university in Massachusetts.
In short, the MATCH students who transfer back have gained enough academic skills to dramatically outperform the BPS averages.
Yet our school’s teacher-set standards are way higher than just faring well on MCAS. MCAS is a low, and narrow, bar. Our teacher- set standards better align with true college readiness.
4. What happens when students struggle at MATCH?
We up their daily 1-on-1 tutoring from 2 hours per day to 4 hours per day. We check in with their parents each week by phone.
5. What Is The Big Picture?
Of every 100 black and Hispanic 9th graders in Boston, only about 60 become high school graduates. But what is less known, and at least as troublesome, is that less than 10 become college graduates. Most of the high school graduates in our nation’s cities — Chicago, Hartford, New York — go on to fail in college.
MATCH has high standards precisely because our mission is not to hand kids a high school diploma, but to prepare them to succeed in college.
Of 91 students who started at MATCH in September 2004, roughly 87 are on track to complete high school, whether at MATCH or elsewhere.
6. What Is The Solution?
We favor any district policy which reduces the incentive of students to transfer back to BPS because they perceive that the workload is easy and that they will be automatically promoted to the next grade.
However, just as we appreciate opportunity to set our own school’s policies, we are very mindful of autonomy of a district to set its policies.
Keywords: article, policies, boston globe, bps, solution, nationality, news
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