AMIDST ALL THE TURMOIL and angst that has turned the world as we know it upside down, we long for signs of normal life, some sort of consistency that can be counted on.
Look no further than Boston’s troubled Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, where a global pandemic has done nothing to upset the drumbeat of dysfunction that has seen school leaders come and go at a dizzying pace. Today’s Globe reports that the school will be launching its eighth search for a new headmaster in eight years.
The current school leader, Brett Dickens, is being yanked from her position and the head of the neighboring O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, one of the city’s three exam schools, will temporarily be in charge. The school’s executive director, Kevin McCaskill, is also being pulled and assigned to a job at the school department headquarters.
The moves come after years of tumult at the top at Madison Park, which has seen enrollment numbers sag and has a graduation rate of 68 percent.
One headmaster was put on leave and eventually left the district with no public explanation ever given. Another resigned when it was revealed she didn’t have proper certification to lead a school in Massachusetts. And one acting headmaster was put on leave when it was reported he was under investigation for a possible role in an alleged credit card fraud ring. (No charges were ultimately filed and he was brought back on board in a central office job.)
The problems at Madison Park have taken place while a number of voc-tech schools across the state have emerged as high-achieving training grounds, successfully launching kids into skilled trades as well as four-year colleges.
Worcester Technical High School’s success drew President Obama as its commencement speaker in 2014. Meanwhile, the controversy that dogged Massachusetts voc-tech schools as a whole has not been their performance struggles, but their selective admission standards, which critics say are locking out some of those who would benefit most from their mix of traditional academics and hands-on learning.
The success of the state’s voc-tech schools has put an even bigger spotlight on the problems at Madison Park and Boston’s failure to get its vocational school on track for the thousands of city youth who would gain from a quality program there.
Meet the Author
Executive Editor, CommonWealth
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
The
Globe reports that the changes at Madison Park are part of a set of leadership appointments made by new Superintendent Brenda Cassellius in her effort to boost academic performance, especially low-performing high schools. The story reported a few other interesting developments, including the return of one-time Boston principal Andrew Bott to be headmaster of Brighton High School. Bott, who led a much-acclaimed turnaround of the Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury before leaving to serve as superintendent of the Brookline schools, has the sort of track record that should inspire confidence in Cassellius’s moves.
If she can finally bring stable, high-quality leadership to Madison Park, maybe the latest round of changes there will mark the last chapter in its long slide and a new, more promising era can actually begin.
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