Publications

Our white paper investigates the commonwealth's strong reputation for educational achievement to reveal entrenched achievement gaps and to suggest that the very measures we use to evaluate schools and students do not align with important indicators of preparation for college, career, and civic life in the 21st century. As an antidote to this mismatch, the paper describes the promise of equity-embedded personalized learning practices and creates a vision for schools that embrace this promise. After exploring the five key principles of Essential Personalized Learning, the paper closes with a delineation of policy and practice steps at the state, district, and school levels that will aid Massachusetts in becoming a more authentic beacon for excellent, equitable education.

Recent data from Boston Public Schools revealed policies that perpetuate academic gatekeeping along racial lines as well as an absence of culturally responsive curriculum. See how the district is reforming to promote equity in learning opportunities and learn recommendations for any district confronting similar challenges.

Relying on teachers’ assessments for the information currently provided by standardized test scores would save instructional time, better capture the true abilities of diverse students, and reduce the problem of teaching to the test. A California high school is implementing standards-based reporting, ensuring that teacher-issued grades function as reliable and valid descriptors of student academic performance. At the state level, the New Hampshire Department of Education is anchoring accountability in teacher-assessed performance tasks rather than in standardized tests. The article offers guidelines and caveats to those interested in pursuing this work.

In response to Joan Vennochi's column (“Students should know about Boston Latin’s up escalator”), Dan French's letter to the editor calls into question the author's suggestion that Boston Latin School is the only path to upward mobility in the Boston Public Schools, and that black and Latino students are underrepresented at BLS due to lack of knowledge about the school. Dan writes, "This disparity is not due to lack of communication; rather, systemic district policies ensure that BLS serves a predominantly white, Asian, and middle-class student population."

On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) — a long-overdue replacement of its predecessor, No Child Left Behind. ESSA marks a new chapter in public education and we see some promising signs.“ESSA opens the door to enable states to rethink what schools and learning of the 21^st century should look like. If we believe that every school should nurture life-long learning in every student, in which classrooms are places of exploration, creativity, and discourse, where learning is meaningfully connected to the world outside the school walls, and in which teachers are respected and empowered to design engaging curricula and assessments, then state accountability systems should be recast and reimagined.”

"All of us must work harder to create schools that embrace students and families of all backgrounds, rather than places where some are asked to leave their cultures, languages, and experiences outside the schoolhouse door."

Dan French and Warren Simmons write a commentary on urban education.

To improve educational – and life – outcomes for Boston’s Black and Latino males, we must use a systemic, equity-focused approach.