“The biggest demographic difference between BPS and charter schools involves students whose first language is not English.”
– Jim Peyser, MA Secretary of Education1
Let’s begin with some simple facts about ELL students in Boston in 2016. We’ll deal with the excuses, the obfuscation and complex equations cooked up at MIT in our next post.
30% of the students in Boston Public Schools (BPS) are categorized as English Language Learners (ELLs). In contrast, only 13% of students in Boston Commonwealth Charters are categorized as ELL.
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| Based on 2015-2016 data from DESE. View data HERE. |
Ten years ago, BPS had 9,200 ELL students. That number has nearly doubled to 16,228 in 2016. This year, only two Boston Commonwealth Charter Schools (Bridge Boston and MATCH) have numbers of ELLs equal to or greater than Boston’s average. 10 Boston Commonwealth Charter Schools have less than 10% ELL students. Of those ten, 3 have less than 5% (Brooke Roslindale, Boston Collegiate Charter School and Brooke Mattapan). It's worth noting that in February 2016, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to expand Brooke Charter School, despite their abysmally low ELL numbers.
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| Based on data from DESE. View a high resolution file HERE. |
OK. That’s it. If you’re not up for reading any more of this post, fine. Stop here, you now have the basic facts. In 2016, the overwhelming majority of Boston Commonwealth Charter schools are violating the charters under which they were established (and thereby, state law) with regard to ELL students.
Outrageous! Untrue! Unfair! Really? Let’s take a look at the state statutes. Fair warning readers, the simple part of this post is now over.
Massachusetts State Law requires that “charter schools shall be open to all students, on a space available basis, and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, creed, sex, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental or physical disability, age, ancestry, athletic performance, special need, proficiency in the English language or academic achievement”. The law states further that charter schools should “attract, enroll and retain a student population that, when compared to students in similar grades in schools from which the charter school is expected to enroll students, contains a comparable academic and demographic profile”.
Not so fast! Says the Commissioner and the Department of Education and Secondary Education (DESE) who are, in theory, responsible for enforcing Charter School laws. In February 2016, DESE’s Charter School Enrollment Annual Report stated: “The subgroup composition of a charter school is not required to be a mirror image of the schools in its sending districts and region (emphasis theirs in the report). Such a requirement would contradict the statutory requirement that a lottery determine admissions when the number of applications exceeds available seats.” 2
In 2010 the Charter School statute was amended to, in the words of State Commissioner Mitchell Chester: “require charter schools to develop and implement student recruitment and retention plans that include deliberate, specific strategies to attract, enroll, and retain a student population that is demographically comparable to similar grades in schools from which the charter school enrolls students.” 2
So what gives? Are these recruitment plans working?
We examined the recruitment strategies at Boston Commonwealth Charter Schools and found that schools deploying passive strategies, such as merely translating their applications, sending out third party mailers or attending Charter School Fairs do not have success diversifying their enrollment demographics. Bridge Boston and MATCH have the highest percentages of ELLs, at 36.9% and 33% respectively. Their recruitment strategies show a commitment to engaging with established community partners and activating current families from ethnic groups to recruit from their networks. Surprisingly, Bridge Boston’s recruitment plan includes the following: “We are consciously not a part of any charter school fairs, believing that families who seek out educational opportunities might not benefit the most from our mission.”
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| Based on 2015 – 2015 data from DESE. View a high resolution file HERE. View data HERE. |
In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Boston Public Schools (BPS) reached a settlement after a DOJ and Office of Civil Rights investigation blasted BPS for their lack of proficiency in identifying ELLs, the quality of the curriculum in Sheltered English Immersion classes, and the number of teachers adequately trained to teach ELLs. The settlement prompted sweeping changes within BPS and DESE to address these concerns. The scrutiny over compliance of these regulations continues.
But we ask this question: Where is the scrutiny towards the Boston charter sector, which continues to dramatically under-enroll English Language Learners despite legislative attempts that require them to recruit and retain a student demographic similar to the sending district?
Boston’s Commonwealth Charter Schools are awash in resources. They can afford to educate a student demographic with costly instructional needs, but largely they don’t.
In 2015, Boston’s Commonwealth Charter Schools spent an average of $17,500 per pupil at the building level 3 . Contrast that with $8,000 per pupil spending at the building level in BPS schools 4. While spending more than double their BPS counterparts, Charter Schools and their supporting foundations also retained $14.3 million in Operational Surpluses just for that year.
Who is in charge of enforcing the accountability measures of state laws related to charters and ELLs? DESE. However their leadership, Commissioner Chester and Chairman Sagan, among others on the Board, are Baker appointees who are ardent promoters of charter school expansion. The fox is not only in the hen house; the fox wants to sell off the hen house to the highest bidder.
Stay tuned for our next post about ELLs. We’ll talk about how some Boston Commonwealth Charters are magically reclassifying students from ELL to regular education at an alarmingly unrealistic rate and how data is manipulated to obscure all of this.
1 Boston and the Charter School Cap” EducationNext, Winter 2014, Vol. 14, No. 1
2 Charter School Enrollment Data Annual Report, MA DESE, February 2016. p.8. http://www.doe.mass.edu/research/reports/2016/02CharterReport.pdf
3 Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education,
FY15 Charter School Expenditures Per Pupil, All Funds, Summary By Function
4 Boston Public Schools FY16 Weighted Student Funding Template
