December 17, 2008 State of Education: The education pipeline Play video

(Peter Howe, NECN) - The Boston Foundation and NECN continue the series: State of Education: Making the grade in Massachusetts. Over the course of this year we have been examining what's working and what isn't in public schools, from preschool to college. The focus of this program is the education pipeline.

Peter Howe reports.

For Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson, it was a day to be getting, not giving, a report card -- a 130-page study by The Boston Foundation, the city's biggest charitable foundation. The graders were, at best, mixed. The report cited myriad great efforts underway in the city's schools and many pockets of success, but as Johnson acknowledged, the report showed that "the education our children need for the future is not being provided by our schools.''

As Boston Foundation president and chief executive Paul S. Grogan said, "We are not yet obtaining results that should be acceptable to any of us.''

First, let's acknowledge the huge challenges the Boston public schools face. Twenty percent of their students have disabilities. Forty percent come from non-English-speaking families. And 75 percent live in poverty.

And right off the top, let's salute where the city is succeeding: "Boston has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of relative to the performance of other cities around the country,'' Grogan said. "Indeed, there is significant evidence that Boston is among the best or perhaps is the best urban school system

But now, look inside the study, starting with one crucial piece of data: how many third-graders in Boston are rated proficient readers.

"Third-grade reading mastery really is the holy grail of elementary school education,'' said Charlotte Kahn, who spent 15 months researching and writing the report. "Until the third grade what educators say is children are learning to read, but after third grade, they read to learn. If they are disadvantaged at that point, they are really going to be falling behind at every future level.''

What the report found was just 32 percent of Boston's third graders are reading proficiently, barely half the 59 percent state average, and far behind the 75 percent-plus in suburbs like Milton, Newton, and Arlington.

But it's not just wealthier suburbs. Notably fewer hub third graders are mastering reading than do in Everett, Lynn, Somerville, and Quincy, nearby low income cities with substantial percentages of schoolchildren who are English learners.

Kahn said: "The third-grade reading proficiency level in Boston has been about 30 percent for the last five or six years, and that is really the key finding in the entire report.''

That theme -- that progress in Boston's schools has somehow stalled in recent years -- comes up repeatedly. Other measures that haven't improved this decade include 8th graders' math scores; the achievement gap between blacks and Hispanics and Asians and whites; and 20 percent high school dropout rate. Johnson said: "There are too many children in our schools who are dropping out and who are not succeeding.'' The report also cautions that unless the current rate of progress improves, Boston won't see a goal of 90 percent of its students rated proficient on standardized tests until the year 2047.

Grogan said: "We are not breaking the very tight correlation that exists here in Boston and in every city between poverty and poor educational attainment.''

The report also predicts that if current trends hold, of this year's ninth graders in Boston public schools, less than 15 percent will ever graduate from college.

"That's an appalling figure,'' said Ted Landsmark, president of the Boston Architectural College and a former city official. "We can't blame the Boston public schools for that. We really have to hold ourselves accountable, it seems to me, as citizens, for not having done enough and even now for not doing enough to support young people.''

How can things be improved? The report suggests taking a look at some longtime sacred cows. For example, the report notes, $1 out of every $10 that the Boston public schools spend goes towards transportation. That adds up to $76 million every year that never gets to a classroom. Landsmark said: "We have to face the fact that we have to end busing as it has existed in Boston for the last decades.'' But Johnson cautions that half of busing is for special-needs kids, and much of the other half enables thousands of children from struggling neighborhoods like Roxbury to seek the best school opportunities in other neighborhoods. Not to mention, who will be brave enough to take on bus driver unions.

One thing almost everyone agrees on, as Charlotte Kahn puts it, is that "it's very clear that we need more ways to come together, to have hard conversations, and to develop really creative effective strategies.'' Something like a clearinghouse for success stories, or what she calls "more connective tissue'' among teachers, principals, administrators, researchers, and education advocates in business and government.

The state elementary-secondary education commissioner, Mitchell Chester, agrees: "We don't do a good enough job of disseminating what's working, of sharing those ideas ... and if we don't have that sense of urgency , shame on us, as the adults in the community, as the leaders in the community.''

Johnson said: "We have great schools in Boston, so some of our students are getting the best education we can afford in America.'' But Johnson agreed the report challenges her, teachers, parents, students, and all the city to do far better for far more Boston kids. She sees a followup test: "If it moves us to action, and it moves us to think about both individually and collectively how we should jump-start the system.''

"Many of us,'' Kahn said, "have been working on these issues for the last quarter-century, so we're trying to say in our report: We don't have time to waste.''

State of Education: Challenge of getting parents involved

State of Education: Identifying at-risk children

State of Education: Benefit of the Jumpstart program

State of Education: Strides made in Boston schools

State of Education: What changes should be made?