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I recently had the opportunity to read the Annual Report of the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council. I wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation for RIAC’s analysis and the attention brought to such a critical issue.
I do have some concerns, not least with media headlines framing the segregation issue as one of “substandard schools.” That said, I am particularly grateful to see RIAC focus on the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s failure to develop a more equitable funding system. As Stanford professor Destin Jenkins notes, historical inequities and capital funding imbalances in poorer communities are a crucial challenge should we move toward achieving educational equity.
The recommendations of the RIAC include greater oversight and accountability. Having worked in New Bedford Public Schools for 20 years (since the implementation of No Child Left Behind and through the 2010 Massachusetts Achievement Gap Act), I am very wary of educational reform models that unfairly stigmatize districts.
I recall the era when labeling schools as “underperforming” was the main oversight tool of the state’s department of education. The result was to further stigmatize communities, further enforce fiscal penalties, and further marginalize and segregate these areas. Enrollment fell through “school choice” policies, segregation accelerated, and achievement and opportunity gaps widened.
Beyond my longstanding concerns, I am grateful to the RIAC for bringing its dormant policy mandates back into focus. After reading the report, I took some time to review the first years of racial imbalance reforms in New Bedford (approximately 1971), which focused on improving school construction and assignment policies to create a more equitable education system. In this context, the recent report’s terminology, describing schools as “integrated,” “segregated,” or “intensely segregated,” serves as a valuable schema for a district like ours to self-assess. We should learn from the past, and also ensure our families are made aware of their rights regarding in-district choices. And we should constantly see student and family satisfaction as our best accountability metric.
It will not surprise you to see that I am cynical of school choice as a tool for school improvement. As the number of newcomers and homeless students increases in Massachusetts, choice models are explicitly underserving them. National and state data shows that English learners and students on Individualized Education Programs are suspended and excluded from choice schools at higher rates than traditional districts.
It is clear that the flaw of school choice in Massachusetts is that it allows too many schools to choose their students through selective and screened admissions. Looking within a district like ours, however, I think the report correctly highlights students’ right to “choose out” of intensely segregated schools. Indeed, a well-resourced, accountable, transparent, comprehensive district that allows multiple, integrated pathways to student success is my own favored mechanism to address current and historical inequities.
As demographics change and many suburban schools serve fewer students, schools in cities like Holyoke, New Bedford and Lawrence see high enrollment and model inclusion of our changing city and state populations. Looking again at New Bedford, more Whalers score above 3 on AP exams than the recently praised state average, and despite an absenteeism crisis, our schools kept strong graduation and lower dropout rates. This year Whaling City has just graduated a historically large cohort, larger than two dozen choice and charter schools in Massachusetts.
There are far better ways to serve young people than labels and sorting. New Bedford’s successes reveal we fare better with a pathways model that students can choose, integrated and supported by strong traditional districts serving all kids.
Since its founding as the first truly popular, free and desegregated school system in Massachusetts, this is what New Bedford Schools have done. This is the promise of integrated public schools envisioned by the RIAC report.
Andrew O’Leary is the superintendent of schools in New Bedford.
As an independent, nonpartisan news outlet dedicated to diverse community voices, The New Bedford Light welcomes guest essays. Opinions expressed in our Community Voices essays are those of the individual writers.