A tepid welcome to President Obama

President Obama is today going to be visiting TechBoston Academy with Melinda Gates, whose foundation helped in the school’s start-up phase. TBA is an excellent school that boasts of having “students come from over 15 countries around the world, speak more than 37 languages, and represent an array of cultures that span the globe, and that are celebrated in our classrooms daily.” And they are rightfully proud of their academic record:

Everyone knows that a good education is about more than test scores, but every year since TechBoston Academy opened, our students have continually scored significantly above the BPS average on their 10th Grade MCAS. From the 07/08 sophomore year, more than 40% of our students earned the John & Abigail Adams Scolarship [sic] that pays 100% of their tuition at any state college or university.

Some back-up for TBA’s claims to impressive improvements in student achievement at MassReportCards.com:

• TechBoston’s improvement in English Language Arts is noteworthy. In the 2003-4 academic year, 76 % of students were scoring at CPI*, whereas in 2007-8 the percentage rose to around 85-90.


• On Math, the percentage went from around 78 in 2003-4 to around 90 in 2007-8.

(On science, the number of years is insufficient to draw conclusions about progress.) See the chart below for 2003-2008 performance improvement (and click on the graphic if you would like a clearer look).

The president’s visit is part of the executive’s push to ensure that the federal budget axe does not fall on the Department of Education. He began the campaign by visiting a school in Florida, teaming up with an unlikely bedfellow, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Bush has been very supportive of the president’s education agenda, which he has interpreted as more choice through charter schools and an improvement in standards for states like Florida (which was known as having pretty mediocre state curricula). Bush has also seen an opportunity to convince the president to throw US DOE's support behind online learning, where Florida has led the way nationally with its Florida Virtual School. In fact the push for $90 million in federal money to support the development of online programs was directly inspired by Florida’s successful experience with online learning.

Coming to Boston is another story. We were not like Florida. We had higher academic standards, and our testing and accountability for a decade were seen as national models. Ditto for our charter schools. We had the most rigorous approval process, which yielded fewer charters but charters of a very high quality for the most part. The major challenges we had were related to removing the charter school caps in order to address the achievement gap, and the need to address the fact that we have a low percentage of students scoring advanced in math and science, compared to international leaders like Singapore and South Korea.

President Obama’s impact here has been mixed. On the charter front, he pushed the Governor and Legislature to double the number of charter schools in the Commonwealth. That was a real achievement given that the Governor, just four months before submitting a bill to double the number of charters was calling the charter cap a “red herring.” Incentives for states through the Race to the Top competition worked in a way that was public and accountable: The Governor proposed and the Legislature modified and approved (and frankly markedly improved) the bill they were given.

So, kudos, Mr. President. And you might like to take a detour before the fundraiser at the MFA to visit the MATCH Charter Public High School, which was just approved to expand and also to start a new school in tandem with the Lawrence Community Day School—a school that will focus on English Language Learners. Below is a "match-up" between TBA and MATCH--both schools we need to see more of!

Or try Excel Academy, or Roxbury Prep.

On academic standards, the president’s push to get all states to adopt a largely uniform set of curricular goals (state standards must now be 85 verbatim what’s in the Common Core) was not good for Massachusetts; nor was it for California and a number of other states. Incentives in this case worked, if you are the feds. They needed Massachusetts to adopt the Common Core because if they could get the state with the best academic standards in the country to adopt the Common Core, other states would have no reason to balk.

Though the 1993 Education Reform Act called for the state to develop state standards, the Board of Education voted to adopt the Common Core without any presentation or hearing before the Legislature. As Sandra Stotsky wrote in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in February:

Despite the Massachusetts Constitution’s instructions to “cherish” literature and a state literary history that includes the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson and Wharton, the commonwealth has replaced its best-in-the-nation academic standards with ones that reduce the amount of literature public school students will study by more than half.

No. We're not Florida. Culturally we have always believed in a strong basis of knowledge--history, literature, math and science. What other state constitution makes that commitment so clear? And what other state depends so much on an educated workforce? And if US Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan's views on the subject come to fruition, we will also see similar changes in our MCAS. The MCAS, which has been one of the few tests nationwide to have its results parallel those coming out of the national assessments, will become more skills-based; and according to statements made by the Secretary in September, it may not apply to all students.

The President has brought big change. But not all for the better.

*The Composite Performance Index (CPI) is a measure of the extent to which students are progressing toward proficiency in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, respectively. A CPI of 100 in a given content area means that all students have reached proficiency.