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OVERVIEW
Metro Boston has one of the best-educated work forces in the country and the world. But competitor “citistates” are aggressively seeking to increase their share of workers, research funds, industries, and the region’s competitive edge in educational attainment levels can no longer be taken for granted. Today, with mounting state deficits and budget cuts, public education — the seed corn of Boston’s future prosperity — is at risk.
The economic boom of the 1990s in Boston and the region was fueled by research dollars and high-skilled workers, many of whom graduated from local institutions of higher learning.
The region’s public and private colleges and universities attract brilliant students and professors from around the nation and the world, who, in turn, attract research funding, start new companies and generate jobs. They also create fertile ground for new ideas, attract more high-skilled workers, foster a welcoming environment for ethnic diversity, and become a magnet for the “creative class,” all of which adds to Boston’s vitality and quality of life. Because of the beneficial multiplier effect of Metro Boston’s high concentration of students, other states have begun to compete for their own greater share. In the tight high-skilled labor market in the1990s— which forced many companies to recruit foreign professionals — Metro Boston lost young workers to other regions.
What this means, particularly in light of 9/11, is that the region cannot count as readily as it once did on a steady flow of graduates from local institutions of higher education. Nor can it rely on a large portion of the 40% of graduate students in the region who are here from foreign countries to stay on, or on visas for high-skilled professionals from other nations to supply new talent as needed.
The long-term health of Boston and the region depends — now more than ever — on the capacity of public institutions of education at all levels to nurture local talent to high standards of excellence in order to retain the region’s competitive advantage in educational attainment.
While some high-income families can and do send their children to private schools, most families in Boston and the region rely on public education to prepare their children to succeed as citizens and as workers. And academic success depends to a large extent on the quality of public education at all rungs of a ladder of educational opportunity. These rungs include:
- prenatal care through age three — the most critical stage of brain development;
- early childhood education;
- elementary school;
- middle school;
- after-school and summer programs;
- high school and vocational education;
- workforce retraining and development, basic adult education, English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) and continuing education;
- higher education — from community colleges and undergraduate degrees to advanced graduate programs;
- advanced professional training in fields such as medicine.
In recognition of the importance of public education to the social and economic goals of the Commonwealth — and the need to equalize education spending among rich and poor communities — the Massachusetts Legislature passed the Massachusetts’ Education Reform Act in 1993, setting the stage for a decade-long overhaul of the Commonwealth’s K-12 public education system. The Education Reform Act mandated a new standards-based curriculum with broad learning goals as well as greater accountability for teachers, students and schools, to be measured by a rigorous new test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).
Reforms were supported by a dramatic increase in state funding, focused particularly on less wealthy school districts. Since then, Massachusetts has more than doubled its annual spending on education — from $1.3 billion in 1993 to $3.2 billion in 2002, creating a level foundation of funding in all communities.
The Reform Act also encouraged a greater degree of choice within the public school system, allowing for the chartering of up to 25 innovative “charter” schools, outside the purview of local school committees and collective bargaining agreements based on specific plans submitted for approval to the Massachusetts Board of Education. That number was later amended to 50, including 13 Horace Mann Schools that require support from the local teachers union and school committee and the hiring of certified teachers at prevailing wages. As of the fall of 2002, 46 charter schools had opened, of which 14 are in Boston — with three more approved to open in Boston in the fall of 2003.
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A Snap Shot of Boston’s School-Aged Children
Of an estimated 82,300 school-age children in Boston in 2002:
- 75%, or 62,400, attend the Boston Public Schools, of whom 48% are black, 28% are Latino, 14% are white, 9% are Asian, and fewer than 1% are American Indian.
- Of these: 5,000 attend kindergarten; 24,000 are in grades 1-5; 14,400 attend grades 6-8; and 18,300 attend high school.
- More than 70% of Boston Public School students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — a measure of poverty.
- 11,700 students — about 20% — are enrolled in special education. About 9,800 do not speak English as their first language and were enrolled in bi-lingual education in one of seven languages (Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Chinese, Portuguese or Somali.)
- Of the 25% of Boston’s school-aged children who do not attend the Boston Public Schools: 41% are white; 41% are black; 9% are Latino; and 3% are Asian. These include 14,000 in private and parochial schools; 3,100 in the METCO program; 2,700 in public charter schools; and 700 in private special education schools.
Source: Boston Public Schools, 2002
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As part of the contract agreement between the City of Boston, the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Teachers Union, another innovative option was created for the transition to a new form of more autonomous and flexible public school: the Pilot School. The Boston Public Schools currently include 13 Pilot Schools, with more on the way.
In January 2002, school reform in Massachusetts was joined by the reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Schools Act: “No Child Left Behind.” Offering more money to the states at the same time as it imposed stricter requirements and established penalties for poor performance, the new law was designed “to ensure that every child in the nation has the skills to succeed at grade level by 2014.”
It requires standardized testing, “highly qualified” teachers in every “high-poverty classroom” by 2002 and in all classrooms by 2005, tutoring for students who fall behind, and choice for parents
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