Boston says its schools are getting better. Critics say they’re awful. The data suggest they’re both right. Boston’s schools have improved over the last few years. But they are nowhere near good enough.
The numbers come straight from the Boston school system itself. Several years ago the city agreed to a collaboration with private funders that included some of the region’s top charities — The Boston Foundation, the Barr Foundation, Catholic Charities, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the United Way, as well as a number of local businesses. (Disclosure: I work for a D.C. nonprofit that provides early childhood education.) The public-private collaboration bills itself as the Boston Opportunity Agenda. The funders and the city settled on seven key benchmarks they hoped would generate reliable measures that got beyond anecdotes and politically driven agendas. The 2008-2009 school year was their “base” year, and they set goals for 2013-2014.
If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, the good news is there’s been progress. The number of 10th graders passing the MCAS — a critical step to high-school graduation — grew from 44 percent to 55 percent last year (although some changes in MCAS standards means that’s not as good as it seems). Dropout rates are down slightly. Early literacy climbed to 59 percent. Third-grade reading is up from 2009 (but actually down from 2012). In some cases there’s been a big jump. For example, the number of kids enrolled in Algebra 1 (considered a necessary step to getting into college) grew from 4 percent in 2009 to 38 percent last year.
Don’t get too excited, however. Compare last year’s scores to the goals the school system set for itself for June 2014 — that’s this school year, mind you. Most are wide of the mark and barring some miracle (and no one expects one), they won’t be hit.
One exception is Algebra 1; the goal is just 40 percent and should be easy to attain. The other is college completion rates, a complicated measure. The city’s hope is that 70 percent of those who enter college will graduate within six years. We actually won’t know whether that’s achieved until 2017 (that is, six years after the class of 2011 left high school), but there’s some reason to believe it can be met. If so, that’s the product of an enormous effort made by those involved in the Opportunity Agenda to help coach Boston students as they pursue their post-high-school studies. College can be intimidating and it appears that one-on-one help can make a difference.
But it’s not good enough. Right now, about 76 percent of Boston Public School graduates matriculate to college. If we achieve the goal of 70 percent of those students actually going on to graduate from college, that still means that, overall, only 53 percent of BPS graduates will get a college degree.
Why does all of this matter? Consider this striking fact: Back in 1973, just 28 percent of all jobs required some education after high school. By 2020, 65 percent will need it, according to an estimate by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Moreover, the quality of jobs varies markedly depending on one’s education. Adults with only a high school degree earn an average of $652 a week, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, while those with a bachelor’s degree earn $1,066.
In addition, adults with college degrees find it far easier to get and hold a job. In 2012 the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree was a remarkably low 4.5 percent. Those with a high school degree only were almost double, at 8.3 percent. (And those without a high school degree? A whopping 12.4 percent were unemployed.)
So I look at these numbers from the Opportunity Agenda and draw the following conclusions: Given the course we are on, the best case is that about half of Boston public school kids will get through college and become part of the middle class. The rest will be consigned to low wages, high unemployment, and grinding uncertainty about their lives.
Cheer if you want about the upticks in the latest report card. But it’s like going from an F to a D. No one should be happy.
This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on November 17, 2013.