A recent report highlighting the abysmally low college graduation rates of Boston public school graduates who go on to higher education ought to be a call to arms. Instead, some education leaders seem committed to a circle-the-wagons defense in which they devote more effort to denying there is a problem than outlining strategies to address it. Such was the unfortunate tack of an op-ed in yesterday’s Globe by UMass-Boston chancellor Keith Motley.
The Boston Foundation report found that just over one-third (35.5 percent) of those Boston public schools graduates in the class of 2000 who went on to a two- or four-year college had received a degree by 2007. For those who enrolled at UMass-Boston the figure was just 20.7 percent.
Many have viewed the report as yet another wake-up call on the need for urban districts to better prepare students for college and for colleges to do a better job helping them graduate. But Motley devotes most of his piece to arguing away the data, emphasizing all the challenges — personal, financial, social — that can detour the sort of students who attend UMass-Boston from getting a degree, and pointing out the significant number of students who are still enrolled in local public colleges and universities beyond the six-year window of the study. (Unstated is how many of those on such an extended college plan typically wind up with degrees.)
Motley finally touches on efforts underway at UMass-Boston to boost student success. Putting his focus squarely on those initiatives — and pledging to redouble such efforts in the face of the troubling data –might have been a more constructive addition to the public conversation than trying to explain away findings that aren’t what he would have wished for.