A recent Atlantic Cities look at school performance in Washington, DC, helps illustrate why school assignment in Boston is such a politically thorny issue to tackle.
DC recently opened a vault of data on school performance and other attributes, to help parents navigate that city’s choice-heavy school selection process. The Atlantic notes that the highest-performing schools are located in the city’s northwest quadrant, where its wealthiest families live. But the correlation isn’t just about wealth or race, the magazine argues — it’s also about travel patterns. There’s a strong correlation between DC public school performance and walkability.
The schools excelling in the DC public system are the ones kids can walk down the street to; the poorest performing schools are also the ones that students have to spend the most time, and effort, commuting to. There’s no such correlation on the public charter school side, partly because high-performing charters are drawing students from across the city, and partly because real estate values (which also rise and fall with walkability and transit access) dictate where charters can open.
The Atlantic doesn’t interpret the data as saying walkability drives student achievement. Instead, it takes the data as another illustration of inequality in DC. In doing so, the magazine hints at why school assignment and performance — the hottest issue in Boston’s mayoral race, assuming we find out whether we’re ever going to have one — is such a tricky and divisive issue
Boston Mayor Tom Menino launched the city’s most recent overhaul of its school assignment process (one that came after years of false starts and stops) after a brutal round of Globe stories decrying the current busing-heavy system. In a particularly harsh editorial, the paper accused the city of purposefully maintaining a Byzantine choice system, a “whole buckling contraption … designed to make up for the fact that about half of Boston’s schools rank in the bottom fifth on statewide tests.” Menino’s opponent, City Councilor John Connolly, has made school improvement and walkable neighborhood schools the leading prongs of his upstart campaign.
Some old-line activists protested the School Committee’s recent vote on a new hybrid choice and walking plan, casting the new system as a back door to school resegregation. But a lukewarm Globe editorial endorsing the new system pointed to a larger problem — Boston doesn’t provide equal access to enough high-performing schools in enough neighborhoods. Busing came to Boston because of segregation and race-based school spending; it’s hanging around because of neighborhood inequality.
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
The state has already nearly doubled its snow and ice removal budget and today’s storm will keep the meter running.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
In a meeting with reporters and editors from some of the state’s Gateway Cities, Sen. Elizabeth Warren credited the communities with powering her election, saying the vote showed the clout the cities can have in shaping policy. The interview also generated coverage in the Lowell Sun and Sentinel & Enterprise, the Telegram & Gazette, the Enterprise, the Republican,
Peabody Mayor Ted Bettencourt wants to pick his own police and fire chiefs rather than leaving the selection to Civil Service. The Salem News, in an editorial, pushes for doing away with Civil Service entirely
Regionalizing services is proving a challenge for towns, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
The new Cambridge city manager will earn $330,000 a year, and not everyone is happy about it.
The Quincy City Council gave the okay for the developer of a massive downtown makeover to delay a $2.3 million payment to the city’s affordable housing trust fund.
The Boston City Council apparently never got the memo that a 2010 state law eliminated observation of the Evacuation Day “hack holiday.”
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
A growing website called Friend or Foe tells gun owners what businesses allow them to carry their concealed weapons and which ban them
New York strikes a deal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour, Bloomberg reports.
In a blunt election postmortem, the GOP says it is stuck in an “ideological cul-de-sac,” and can’t win if it doesn’t evolve past playing toward strident partisans. The report is immediately attacked by those same strident partisans. The report is highly critical of Republican lawmakers, but bullish on the party’s governors. The Atlantic says the party’s real challenge is “confronting its hucksters.” The Globe account focuses on the failures the report finds with nearly every aspect of Mitt Romney’s campaign
The Republican salutes Sen. Elizabeth Warren for fighting the good fight to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from GOP attempts to dilute its powers
Hillary Clinton endorses same-sex marriage.
ELECTIONS
Sen. Barry Finegold says he is considering a run for treasurer if Steven Grossman runs for governor.
More than 60 towns have opted to move their local election to the same day as the April 30 primary for the special US Senate election and others mulling the change have until next Tuesday to decide.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Members of HarborOne Credit Union in Brockton have approved a charter change to allow the institution to become a mutual bank.
EDUCATION
New Bedford city councilors are lukewarm toward a proposal by Mayor Jon Mitchell to tap the city’s reserve fund to fill a $3 million deficit in the school budget.
HEALTH CARE
Health officials say drug-resistant tuberculosis, which kills more people than any other infectious disease besides HIV, is a growing problem worldwide.
More than one in six Boston doctors offices are not equipped to handle visits by patients in wheelchairs, according to a study by researchers affiliated with Springfield’s Baystate Medical Center.
TRANSPORTATION
Tallahassee goes cold turkey in revamping its bus route system and finds success, Governing reports.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The proposed natural gas-fired power plant in Salem is dealt a major blow when the Department of Public Utilities refuses to order the state’s utilities to buy electricity from the plant, the Salem News reports. Opponents said the plant was seeking a sweetheart deal.
President Obama wants to promote greater energy efficiency across the nation with a Race to the Top-type program, Governing reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The FBI says they know who the thieves were who stole $500 million in artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 23 years ago but the agency is seeking the public’s help to recover the paintings.
Taunton man infected with hepatitis C faces the possibility of life in prison after allegedly urinating in a font of holy water and stealing artifacts from a Catholic church in Westport.
A Boston couple face charges alleging they ran a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme.
MEDIA
Slate’s Matt Yglesias finds one reason not to hate the unpaid journalism internship: For work experience and connections, unpaid grunt work is still cheaper than the $84,000 Columbia’s journalism masters will cost you. Yglesias likens the J-school program to “working for a year at an enormously negative salary,” so compared to that, free work isn’t all that bad.
Pew’s latest State of the News Media report finds that the power of the national political media is waning badly.
The Atlantic reports that newspapers in 2012 lost $16 in print ads for every $1 in digital ads they picked up.
The Washington Post, Marty Baron’s new address, says a paywall is coming this summer.