Boston Valedictorians study

Parent Cafe
101

@jym626 Re sergeants taking a step back to go to OCS, the answer is occasionally yes, but mostly no.

Enlisted pay grades go from a low of E1 to a high of E9. In the Army, “sergeants” would be E5 & above (sergeant, staff sergeant, and so on). While people at E8 & E9 levels are probably in positions with enough clout & privilege that they generally wouldn’t want to go to the O1 (second lieutenant) level, it is not unheard of; and the lower you get from there ( E7 & below) it would would be increasingly unlikely that they would think a commission at O1 would be a step down.

While being an O1 isn’t much fun, in a few years you can be an O3, where the pay and authority are significantly above those of the vast majority of enlisted personnel.

Regardless, the sergeant in the article wants to become a warrant officer, not an O1. Warrant officers fulfill various roles in different fields in the different branches of the military, but they tend to be more subject-matter experts than leaders of large groups. If he aspires to be a warrant officer, it indicates he probably wants a future as more of a technical expert than a leader. That’s why it says it will be a dozen years until he becomes a warrant officer–it might take that long to acquire the necessary technical knowledge. If he wanted to be in more of a leadership role, his bachelor’s degree would make him eligible to apply to go to OCS right now.

102

Didn’t read through the entire thread so hope I’m not repeating anything.

One of our kids is in an exam school. She took a test in 3rd grade which allowed her to enter the BPS “Advanced Work” program available in a select few elementary/middle schools. Those classes put the kids up to one year ahead of their peers. Some of those programs instead choose to put on the brakes in 6th grade so their kids get higher GPA’s.

Other kids go to one of several area parochial schools famous for having all straight A students. Admissions to the exam schools is 50% grades and 50% ISEE score. Applying from one of BPS’s over-achieving Charter schools? You are probably screwed, because they don’t inflate grades.

You can’t swing a cat without hitting an ISEE prep course. Some are run by BPS, some by other schools, and there are a number of private programs of varying quality and cost.

There is immense pressure on the city to maintain the exam system, as well as the charter schools. Middle class families routinely leave Boston once kids are school age, or if they do not get into one of four schools:

Boston Latin School, currently #1 in US News ranking
Boston Latin Academy, currently #6
O’Bryant School of Math & Science (in name only) currently #10
Boston Collegiate Charter School, currently #21

Then there are 3-4 more ranked 50-100.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/massachusetts/rankings

City managers and private employers apply the pressure because most other BPS high schools do a very poor job of preparing their students for college despite spending over $18,000 per student per year.

We looked at some numbers a few years ago for one nearby school. Their graduation rate is about 70%. Of that 70%, about half go on to higher education. But most of them go to two year community colleges with open admissions, and many of them do not complete the Associates degree program. The number of kids from this school who complete a four year college degree is between 2-5%.

Because of the bussing decision, BPS kids not in an exam or charter school enter a lottery. Parents may dubmit a list of their choices, as many as they want (I believe there are 27 total). When your number comes up, they look at the school location and determine I’d you are a “walker” leaving near the school, or will have to be bussed. If you live near the school but the Walker quota (usually 50%, there are some “tweens”) is filled, you don’t get to go there and it’s on to choice #2. You might be in the bussing category at the n3xt school, or not, your choice.

If you are a middle class two parent household, you visit the schools, talk to other parents and teachers, and make your choices. But what if you are a single immigrant parent with minimal language skills and a grueling work schedule? Chances are you don’t even know about the lottery, that you have the right to make choices, and gather the information to make the best choice. BPS will then simply assign you the school of their choice, which will be weighted by proximity and #of seats available.

The court decree was due to systematic segregation by BPS. How is it working? BPS is now “Majority Minority.” The exam schools?

“In a school system where whites account for 14 percent of the enrollment and Asians 9 percent, the student body at Latin School last year was 46 percent white and 29 percent Asian. Latinos represented 13 percent and blacks 8 percent, according to the most recent state data.

The two other exam schools had better representations. Latin Academy students were 29 percent white; 24 percent Latino; 22 percent Asian; and 22 percent black. The O’Bryant was 10 percent white; 33 percent Latino; 21 percent Asian; and 33 percent black.”

103

@Aussiemom - I think you misunderstood my post. In the Army person can go to OCS with a college degree, BUT they can ALSO just enlist and go into the Army as an E-4 (NCO) with a college degree.

And @moooop I completely agree (and I think is what I said) that most NCOs are not going to try to then go to OCS even if they could. I must have missed the part in the article that said he wanted to be a warrant officer. That being the case, he would certainly not be interested in going to OCS and retraining in another field (as someone suggested he could). Makes that whole conversation moot.

104

Just eyeballing the data, BPS spends a good deal more per student than the top suburban districts like Newton, Needham, Lexington, etc., with of course terrible results.

Latest 2017 data from BPS shows ~$21K per pupil spending. (I’m guessing this is not a fully-costed number and doesn’t include any imputed rent or capital cost on all the city owned property, or accrual of pension liabilities for teachers in excess of cash contributions to pension funds.) I’m also not sure if that number includes Federal transfers, or if that is simply the expenditures of BPS, so there might be even more spending than indicated.

Mass DOE has a neat sortable spreadsheet of spending per pupil by district here: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/statereport/ppx.aspx

105

Do any of these BPS have vocational programs? Most kids should not go to college, that’s a fact. Why do we try and track every kid like their goal should be college? They should be tested for various vocational skills and interests and give them opportunities to learn trades - including paid summer jobs/internships which in the old days was called apprenticeship.

106

Boston’s population itself is about 45% (non Hispanic/Latino) white (i.e. majority minority). But 14% in the schools is much lower than 45%, so that suggests that there may be a lot of “white flight” even after accounting for the school age population being somewhat less white than the overall population.

107

Excellent short article on this very issue, well worth reading:
http://www.aei.org/publication/whats-wrong-with-vocational-school/

108

The Sunday Globe has an article on “What you can get for $3 million in the suburbs” today as well as “Addition gives $1.4 million Carlisle home an edge.” This is the Globe’s target audience. Again, I would prefer an article written by a BPS grad who knows the terrain.

109

@SatchelSF: The OECD PISA survey shows that 19% of students surveyed in the US did not attain what PISA calls “level 2” in reading, and defines as “a baseline level – proficiency Level 2, on a scale with 6 as the highest level and 1b the lowest – at which readers begin to demonstrate the competencies that will enable them to participate effectively and productively in life as continuing students, workers and citizens.”

But that is attainment. It would tell you something about the underlying cognitive capacity of this percentage of the student body if, and only if, everyone attended the same high quality schools under the same circumstances. But not everyone does, and in fact chances are much higher that these students attended low quality schools, in poor circumstances. Now equalise schools and other circumstances (“nurture”) and only then scores like these can tell you something about nature.

110

I’m not discounting “white flight” which certainly does play a role, but there are also other factors at play here. Boston’s non-Hispanic white population is heavily Catholic—people of Irish and Italian descent alone comprise over 50% of the non-Hispanic white population. I haven’t been able to put my hands on hard numbers, but my guess is this means a pretty significant fraction of the white students are in Catholic schools.

Beyond Catholic schools, private education—both day schools and boarding schools—is much more prominent in the Boston area than in most parts of the country. This is an old, old tradition in New England, predating white flight. I met a lot of native Bostonians when I lived there 40 years ago, and I don’t recall a single one who was a BPS alum. Again, I don’t have hard numbers, but my guess is this takes a disproportionately high percentage of white students out of the BPS system.

As for the non-Hispanic white population generally, Boston is a mecca for college students, grad students, and recent college grads who tend to cycle through the city with a very high turnover rate. Many don’t stay long enough to put down roots and have kids, but they count toward the city’s total population, and the non-Hispanic whites among them probably pad the city’s non-Hispanic white totals without contributing non-Hispanic white kids to the school-age population. Some do stay and have kids. Of these, many are affluent enough to afford private schools, or to afford suburbs with good schools. They also tend to be well-educated and strongly education-oriented, thus more motivated than most to search out the best schools for their kids. Call it white flight if you like, but it’s a very different phenomenon than a lifelong resident of Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland leaving the city out of fear of racial change.

111

College students are not counted as city residents.There are roughly 150,000 in the city.

The very high BPS per-student cost results from a number of challenges. Bussing kids all over the city. Teachers are paid a substantial premium over most suburbs because of the challenging learning environment. Most school provide free breakfast and lunch. One or two years of free pre-school programs. Seven official languages and the needfor ESL programming. Aging physical plant. Gross mismanagement, with regularly changing Superintendents.

It’s not just white flight, but middle-class flight. Outside of the exam schools and top charter schools, anyone else who can leave Boston often does so.

112

“What you can get for $3 million” May be coming to Boston soon. A single family house sold for over $1 million for the first time in our neighborhood last year. Then one sold for $1.4 million. Now there are Condos with asking prices over $1 million.

Boston is one of the worst cities in the country in terms of income inequality, and that may be worsening.