Post by Moses on Jan 10, 2006 0:44:24 GMT -5
Homework for the next school chief
In December, the Boston School Committee and Mayor Thomas M. Menino named a 12-member Search Committee to coordinate the process of identifying and recommending candidates for the position of Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. Elizabeth Reilinger, Chair of the Boston School Committee, will co-chair the Search Committee with Cleve Killingsworth, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
Other members: William L. Boyan, retired as President and Chief Operating Officer/Vice Chairman of John Hancock Financial Services; Michele Brooks, currently an education consultant with the firm Transformative Solutions; Robert Brown, president of Boston University; Lisa Gonsalves, Assistant Professor at the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Reverend Gregory S. Groover, Sr., Chairman of the Political Action and the Nominating Committee of the Black Ministerial Alliance; Yvette Rodriguez , the Chief Operating Officer of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), a multi-service community agency with a focus on education; Klare Shaw is the Senior Advisor for Education, Arts and culture at the Barr Foundation, formerly executive Director of The Boston Globe Foundation; Richard Stutman, the president of the Boston Teachers Union; Mary Tamer, a communications consultant and a volunteer at the Kilmer School; Brien Wong, an engineer for the City of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development and a volunteer at the West End House.
By Judith K. Baker and Felix D. Arroyo
IN THE next few months, the newly appointed Search Committee will interview candidates to fill Boston School Superintendent Thomas Payzant's large shoes. Dr. Payzant made some essential changes that should continue to improve schools in Boston, including hiring strong administrators, streamlining teacher hiring, which has attracted more qualified candidates, increasing emphasis on professional development, and breaking up struggling large high schools into energized small schools.
However, Boston faces critical unsolved problems that threaten the very possibility of equal educational opportunities for disadvantaged, immigrant, urban, and of-color students. These problems are not just our problems. They are the local results of the dual education system in this country. This is a national reality affecting every American city. The deepening isolation of large groups of urban students threatens to marginalize them completely from the American mainstream. As US schools become more class-segregated and race-segregated than ever, students of color are falling further behind, dropping out more, ending up in prison at higher rates, earning less and completing fewer years of college than we should find morally acceptable or economically justifiable.
Boston's new superintendent must understand these challenges and must be committed to taking a role in the public dialogue, which can lead to solutions.
With the necessity of choosing a new superintendent, we also have the opportunity to craft a new agenda, an agenda that counters the effects of a dual educational system, and in so doing helps create a less segregated city and provide equal opportunity for every student in the Boston Public Schools.
We therefore urge the Search Committee to seek candidates best suited to addressing these 10 pressing needs in the Boston Public Schools:
Judith K. Baker is a former Boston public school teacher. Felix D. Arroyo, at-large Boston city councilor, was a member of the Boston School Committee from 1992-1999.
— Judith K. Baker and Felix D. Arroyo
Boston Globe
2006-01-09
In December, the Boston School Committee and Mayor Thomas M. Menino named a 12-member Search Committee to coordinate the process of identifying and recommending candidates for the position of Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. Elizabeth Reilinger, Chair of the Boston School Committee, will co-chair the Search Committee with Cleve Killingsworth, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
Other members: William L. Boyan, retired as President and Chief Operating Officer/Vice Chairman of John Hancock Financial Services; Michele Brooks, currently an education consultant with the firm Transformative Solutions; Robert Brown, president of Boston University; Lisa Gonsalves, Assistant Professor at the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Reverend Gregory S. Groover, Sr., Chairman of the Political Action and the Nominating Committee of the Black Ministerial Alliance; Yvette Rodriguez , the Chief Operating Officer of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), a multi-service community agency with a focus on education; Klare Shaw is the Senior Advisor for Education, Arts and culture at the Barr Foundation, formerly executive Director of The Boston Globe Foundation; Richard Stutman, the president of the Boston Teachers Union; Mary Tamer, a communications consultant and a volunteer at the Kilmer School; Brien Wong, an engineer for the City of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development and a volunteer at the West End House.
By Judith K. Baker and Felix D. Arroyo
IN THE next few months, the newly appointed Search Committee will interview candidates to fill Boston School Superintendent Thomas Payzant's large shoes. Dr. Payzant made some essential changes that should continue to improve schools in Boston, including hiring strong administrators, streamlining teacher hiring, which has attracted more qualified candidates, increasing emphasis on professional development, and breaking up struggling large high schools into energized small schools.
However, Boston faces critical unsolved problems that threaten the very possibility of equal educational opportunities for disadvantaged, immigrant, urban, and of-color students. These problems are not just our problems. They are the local results of the dual education system in this country. This is a national reality affecting every American city. The deepening isolation of large groups of urban students threatens to marginalize them completely from the American mainstream. As US schools become more class-segregated and race-segregated than ever, students of color are falling further behind, dropping out more, ending up in prison at higher rates, earning less and completing fewer years of college than we should find morally acceptable or economically justifiable.
Boston's new superintendent must understand these challenges and must be committed to taking a role in the public dialogue, which can lead to solutions.
With the necessity of choosing a new superintendent, we also have the opportunity to craft a new agenda, an agenda that counters the effects of a dual educational system, and in so doing helps create a less segregated city and provide equal opportunity for every student in the Boston Public Schools.
We therefore urge the Search Committee to seek candidates best suited to addressing these 10 pressing needs in the Boston Public Schools:
Judith K. Baker is a former Boston public school teacher. Felix D. Arroyo, at-large Boston city councilor, was a member of the Boston School Committee from 1992-1999.
— Judith K. Baker and Felix D. Arroyo
Boston Globe
2006-01-09