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“After it was unveiled parents loudly objected to the proposal. Less than a month later, the district repealed the proposed new school start times. As Dimitris

“After it was unveiled parents loudly objected to the proposal. Less than a month later, the district repealed the proposed new school start times. As Dimitris Bertsimas, a professor who led the MIT team, pointed out in a presentation about the solution, those who favored the status quo had the most to lose. “When your kids are affected negatively, it is hard to see the big picture,” he said.” Joi Ito wrote on this https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2018/12/05/what-the-boston-school-bus-schedule-can-teach-us-about-ai.html https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2018/12/05/what-the-boston-school... : “In very polite email, they told me that I didn’t have the whole story. Kade and I met later that month with Arthur, Sebastien, and their adviser, MIT professor Dimitris Bertsimas. One of the first things they showed us was a photo of the parents who had protested against the schedules devised by the algorithm. Nearly all of them were white. The majority of families in the Boston school system are not white. White families represent only about 15 percent the public school population in the city. Clearly something was off.” “Optimizing the algorithm for greater “equity" also meant many of the planned changes were "biased" against families with privilege. My view is that the fact that an algorithm was making decisions also upset people. And the families who were happy with the new schedule probably didn’t pay as much attention. The families who were upset marched on City Hall in an effort to overturn the planned changes.”

frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago
>Optimizing the algorithm for greater “equity" also meant many of the planned changes were "biased" against families with privilege. I mean maybe but measuring that by the skin color of those protesting is... not a good method. Of course people marching on City Hall or showing up at schoolboard meetings are going to be the disproportionately privileged, they're the people who have the time for that sort of thing. But even there I'm a bit skeptical, take a look at this: >Parent Antonia Rodriguez after a fiery address. She says of her and fellow parents, “We don’t have careers; we have jobs!... We’re laborers!” And that makes it hard to handle early starts and early dismissals. or this video just below: https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/941104843137064960 https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/941104843137064960 which gets to the main root of the opposition which was drastically earlier start and end times for elementary school students, two hours earlier in some cases. >But for those who can’t stagger working hours — specifically single parents or families who don’t have any wiggle room on working hours — kids often see themselves to bus stops in the morning, then wait an hour or so after school, alone, until parents return. I see it every day. >Under the new start times, and therefore early end times, these kids will be spending up to four hours home alone every day. >Let’s not sugarcoat: After-school care is for financially advantaged families. Costs vary, but for two children at the YMCA in West Roxbury, after-school care from 3:25 p.m. until 6 p.m. is more than $700 per month (the cost would naturally go up with the extension of hours needed), plus the yearly membership cost of the YMCA (currently $90 per family). ... >And for what? So Boston Public School can save a little in transportation expenses. And while they save, families will find themselves in increasingly precarious financial straits. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/12/12/boston-public-school-johannah-haney https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/12/12/boston-public-sc... Or this analysis from the Boston NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and the East Boston Ecumenical Community Council: >This ignores the fact that parents of color are disproportionately in lower-wage jobs, and are less likely to have the flexibility needed to build their schedules around a school day that ends at 1:15 or 1:55, let alone pay for any resulting need in after school care https://www.boston.com/news/education/2017/12/16/naacp-letter-condemning-new-boston-public-school-start-times https://www.boston.com/news/education/2017/12/16/naacp-lette... --- Now it's clear that BPS used the MIT students here as a tool, a coating of algorithmic sophistication over a plan they already had, but it strikes me a bit poorly to see those students using 'actually we did everything right, it's just rich parents who stopped us' as a scapegoat.
- hitekker 7y ago
  Excellent rebuttal. Something about the presence of a metric and an algorithm causes our brains to switch off.
- seltzered_ 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I don't live in Boston so I haven't closely tracked all the views on BPS.

frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago

>Optimizing the algorithm for greater “equity" also meant many of the planned changes were "biased" against families with privilege. I mean maybe but measuring that by the skin color of those protesting is... not a good method. Of course people marching on City Hall or showing up at schoolboard meetings are going to be the disproportionately privileged, they're the people who have the time for that sort of thing. But even there I'm a bit skeptical, take a look at this: >Parent Antonia Rodriguez after a fiery address. She says of her and fellow parents, “We don’t have careers; we have jobs!... We’re laborers!” And that makes it hard to handle early starts and early dismissals. or this video just below: https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/941104843137064960 https://twitter.com/jmlarkin/status/941104843137064960 which gets to the main root of the opposition which was drastically earlier start and end times for elementary school students, two hours earlier in some cases. >But for those who can’t stagger working hours — specifically single parents or families who don’t have any wiggle room on working hours — kids often see themselves to bus stops in the morning, then wait an hour or so after school, alone, until parents return. I see it every day. >Under the new start times, and therefore early end times, these kids will be spending up to four hours home alone every day. >Let’s not sugarcoat: After-school care is for financially advantaged families. Costs vary, but for two children at the YMCA in West Roxbury, after-school care from 3:25 p.m. until 6 p.m. is more than $700 per month (the cost would naturally go up with the extension of hours needed), plus the yearly membership cost of the YMCA (currently $90 per family). ... >And for what? So Boston Public School can save a little in transportation expenses. And while they save, families will find themselves in increasingly precarious financial straits. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/12/12/boston-public-school-johannah-haney https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/12/12/boston-public-sc... Or this analysis from the Boston NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and the East Boston Ecumenical Community Council: >This ignores the fact that parents of color are disproportionately in lower-wage jobs, and are less likely to have the flexibility needed to build their schedules around a school day that ends at 1:15 or 1:55, let alone pay for any resulting need in after school care https://www.boston.com/news/education/2017/12/16/naacp-letter-condemning-new-boston-public-school-start-times https://www.boston.com/news/education/2017/12/16/naacp-lette... --- Now it's clear that BPS used the MIT students here as a tool, a coating of algorithmic sophistication over a plan they already had, but it strikes me a bit poorly to see those students using 'actually we did everything right, it's just rich parents who stopped us' as a scapegoat.

hitekker 7y ago
Excellent rebuttal. Something about the presence of a metric and an algorithm causes our brains to switch off.
seltzered_ 7y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I don't live in Boston so I haven't closely tracked all the views on BPS.