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My brother teaches at an exam school in Boston which similarly had its requirements dropped recently, and it seems like a lot of these changes are poorly though

by tapoxi 5y ago

My brother teaches at an exam school in Boston which similarly had its requirements dropped recently, and it seems like a lot of these changes are poorly thought out and done for optics. Sure, some of the exam schools in BPS are overwhelmingly White/Asian, but the school he teaches at is mostly Black/Asian/Hispanic. While he was previously able to teach classes of bright, focused students, now they need to break up fights of unruly students and divert their attention to the ones that are struggling. I imagine the parents that can afford it will likely remove their kids from the public school system if quality continues to drop, which will only hurt funding. The real issue is a much more complex socioeconomic problem, but that's hard to solve, so it's easier to point the finger at schools.

arkades 5y ago
This has already happened in NY. What the NYT article omits is that the elimination of advanced classes has been preceded by a couple of decades of highly restricted availability. 15 years ago (shit I’ve gotten old), when I lived in nyc_borough, there was precisely one elementary school honors class for the entire borough. 30 spots for the entire borough. I didn’t bother to wait and see if my kid managed to get a spot, we pulled her out and stuck her in private school.
seibelj 5y ago
Boston has one of the highest per-pupil funding in the US. Yet excluding the exam schools, the majority of the schools are awful. Here is the school my kids would have to go to if I wasn’t rich enough to go private: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-profile https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-p... Ranked 1644 out of 1667 in Massachusetts. In 2018, the vice principal of anti gang violence was convicted of recruiting students there to deal drugs for him, then attempting to execute one of them with a gunshot to the head for withholding drug profits https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-boston-student-shooting https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-b... There is no talk on the left of how to fix these schools, other than giving them more money, which they are already the highest funded in the country. The progressives need to rethink their school reform plan otherwise society will continue to exit the public schools and go private or home school.
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dorchadas 5y ago
This is the issue at the school I taught at. Our guidance officers and previous admin have actively been working to gut accelerated and honors classes. All this does is harm those kids (I was one myself at the same school; I took more AP classes my junior year than they even offer now), as well as the lower level kids who you have to try to balance out the others for. Hell, I've had collab classes where half the students have an IEP and the other half are in whatever honors classes are left (not science sadly!) because our guidance doesn't care. They also actively tell kids not to challenge themselves and do whatever's easiest. Actively ruining the school because they don't give a shit about education. Hopefully the new admin changes that

by tapoxi 5y ago

arkades 5y ago

This has already happened in NY. What the NYT article omits is that the elimination of advanced classes has been preceded by a couple of decades of highly restricted availability. 15 years ago (shit I’ve gotten old), when I lived in nyc_borough, there was precisely one elementary school honors class for the entire borough. 30 spots for the entire borough. I didn’t bother to wait and see if my kid managed to get a spot, we pulled her out and stuck her in private school.

seibelj 5y ago

Boston has one of the highest per-pupil funding in the US. Yet excluding the exam schools, the majority of the schools are awful. Here is the school my kids would have to go to if I wasn’t rich enough to go private: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-profile https://www.publicschoolreview.com/the-english-high-school-p... Ranked 1644 out of 1667 in Massachusetts. In 2018, the vice principal of anti gang violence was convicted of recruiting students there to deal drugs for him, then attempting to execute one of them with a gunshot to the head for withholding drug profits https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-boston-student-shooting https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/31/shaun-harrison-guilty-b... There is no talk on the left of how to fix these schools, other than giving them more money, which they are already the highest funded in the country. The progressives need to rethink their school reform plan otherwise society will continue to exit the public schools and go private or home school.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dorchadas 5y ago

This is the issue at the school I taught at. Our guidance officers and previous admin have actively been working to gut accelerated and honors classes. All this does is harm those kids (I was one myself at the same school; I took more AP classes my junior year than they even offer now), as well as the lower level kids who you have to try to balance out the others for. Hell, I've had collab classes where half the students have an IEP and the other half are in whatever honors classes are left (not science sadly!) because our guidance doesn't care. They also actively tell kids not to challenge themselves and do whatever's easiest. Actively ruining the school because they don't give a shit about education. Hopefully the new admin changes that