"Missteps, neglect thwart vision for Madison Park; Troubled journey for vocational school" by James Vaznis | Globe Staff October 12, 2014
The plans for the long-stalled Madison Park High School in November 1966 were the grandest ever pitched for a Boston public school, startling city councilors during a presentation that made front-page news the next day.
The campus-style high school in Roxbury — a neighborhood where educational opportunities had long been short-changed — would boast an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a television studio, and possibly a nightclub or coffeehouse for teenagers. There would be seven buildings total, including a venue inspired by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and a vocational-education center geared for students and adults alike.
“This high school will be the salvation of the Boston school system,” city development director Edward J. Logue boldly predicted. “It will give Latin School a run for its money.”
Those lofty aspirations would never come to be.
Instead of delivering salvation to a school system battling racial inequality, Madison Park repeatedly emerged over the ensuing decades as a symbol of educational failure, bureaucratic neglect, and lingering racial tensions.
Related: School spending by affluent is widening wealth gap
Also see: Walsh pushes for middle-income housing
Not really a part of Walsh's world now.
Not why shuls are failing, though.
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The troubled history of Madison Park offers insight into why Boston has failed generations of its students who desire to learn a trade or technical skills — often to boost themselves out of a life of poverty — and why local employers have to tap out-of-state workers for jobs that otherwise could have gone to residents a few blocks away.
More excu$es for a $y$tem that enriches a few at the expense of the many, all put out by their owned mouthpieces of the propaganda pre$$.
And why not? That is who the Bo$ton Globe is written of and for.
It also raises questions, as Boston faces another urgent crisis to turn around Madison Park, about what it will take for the city to develop a top-notch vocational high school, like those that thrive in almost every corner of the state, or whether it is doomed to repeat the failures of its past.
“Madison Park has tremendous potential if we could ever get it together,” said Michael Contompasis, a former Boston school superintendent, noting that Worcester has transformed its vocational school into a national model. “It’s a question of leadership, it’s a question of political will, and it’s a question of rethinking all the recommendations ever made.”
In this state, this country, that city? HA!
Some educators and education advocates in the city question whether the problems facing Madison Park are surmountable, and believe Boston should consider starting a new vocational school from scratch. The decades of disappointment, they say, have bred a deeply rooted culture of distrust and entrenched territorialism within the school and the neighborhood around it.
Look at the agenda-promoting pot hollering kettle!
Overhaul efforts through the years have often stalled or failed as teachers, community activists, and political leaders have clashed over philosophical differences in how to push the school forward, and debates over whether motives were fueled by the interest of students or personal or political agendas.
That is the best way of describing it.
Looming over these fights is a School Department that state and city leaders have criticized for valuing college preparatory programs over vocational education and for lacking a basic understanding of what it takes to train students for technical careers or the trades.
That has led to ill-fated decisions, such as appointing headmasters without the appropriate expertise, and filling seats at Madison Park with students who have failing grades, disciplinary problems, and no interest in vocational education.
Yet every time state or city officials propose spinning off Madison Park from the city school system, allowing it to operate as an independent school system like nearly every other vocational school across the state, the School Department balks. Some teachers get nervous they will lose their jobs or protection under the Boston Teachers Union contract, and community activists protest, fearing such a move could prevent fewer Roxbury students from enrolling.
Goddamn $pecial intere$ts!
Just this summer, an intervention team, appointed by Interim Superintendent John McDonough and the Boston Teachers Union to craft a set of remedies for Madison Park, recommended closing the school in three years and replacing it with a regional vocational school at another site if a turnaround fails. McDonough rejected the idea.
“It is my belief and intent to focus on success rather than planning for failure,” McDonough said.
But he acknowledged the challenges are immense, including developing a new culture and mindset at the school.
It's now a brainwashing “opportunity.”
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Turnaround effort founders
As school opened this fall, the situation at Madison Park could not have been more bleak. The school scrambled to hire nearly 60 teachers and administrators in August, and some positions remain unfilled.
See: Teacher's Lounge Getting ready to take a break myself.
Many students and teachers went about a week without a legitimate class schedule, prompting students to demonstrate.
Headmaster Diane Ross Gary, who took the reins just a year earlier, resigned a few days later, as a growing number of teachers, students, and parents called for her termination.
The School Department had resisted firing her for months, and several black political leaders and community activists had lobbied Mayor Martin J. Walsh to keep her in the post, saying she deserved more time to prove herself.
In the end, Gary, who had no prior experience as a headmaster, had failed to gain state certification to lead a school in Massachusetts.
Related: Madison Park Mess
Sorry I failed you, readers.
Also see: Madison Park Monday
All of this occurred as Madison Park was supposed to be starting the third year of a turnaround effort that was pushed by then-mayor Thomas M. Menino, who promised in his 2012 State of the City address to transform the school into a critical job training center for students and adults alike.
More and more Menino's legacy is looking like one of failure unless you were part of the elite of Bo$ton. He left Walsh a $hit hole.
Each year of the turnaround has been marked by notable missteps. Scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams this spring dropped in each subject area. The school’s graduation rate of 63.6 percent, while largely improving, still remains more than 20 percentage points below the state average.
“We have kids here who can’t read,” said one teacher who was not authorized to speak to the news media. “We have a huge problem with kids who can’t do fractions. To me that’s a real crisis.”
That's failure, but at least administration got paid.
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In the late 1980s, then-mayor Raymond Flynn, concerned that Boston was failing to prepare enough students for jobs on the Big Dig and other major projects, called for Madison Park to become an independent vocational school in his 1992 State of the City address.
But the proposal sparked bitter protests from students, community activists, and disaffected faculty, who repeatedly spread false rumors that Flynn wanted to give away seats to suburbanites.
I'm always amazed how people will mobilize to defend their own stupidity.
Trying to move forward
A year later, students descended on City Hall to protest. Menino, who was preparing to become acting mayor because Flynn was departing to become ambassador to the Vatican, met with a few of the students. After they emerged from the meeting, other protesters pelted Menino with snowballs, even though he remained undecided about the proposal.
:-)
Next time just start chanting asshole and don't stop.
The issue ultimately proved too toxic during a mayoral election year and it died.
Madison Park slipped from the headlines, and with a skilled headmaster at the helm for a few years, the school enjoyed an academic reemergence. But that, too, would be short-lived....
On a tour of the 900-student school one recent morning, the chaos of last month appeared to have subsided. Nicely painted hallways were quiet.
The reporter got a public relations look!
Freshmen in one math class listened carefully to a lesson on solving algebraic equations; students in the electrical shop diligently wired light switches; and students donned chef caps as they sliced peaches for a cobbler.
Teachers talked enthusiastically about their programs and grooming students for the workforce or college....
Except they were supposed to be groomed for a JOB!
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At least "good things are happening."
First Day of School in Boston
I hope you didn't miss the bus.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"New charter schools unlikely in Massachusetts; Advocates critical as state halts plans in Brockton, Fitchburg" by James Vaznis | Globe Staff October 14, 2014
For the first time in 15 years, Massachusetts education officials probably will not be approving any new independently run charter schools this year, a prospect that is stunning proponents and applicants.
Two new charter schools, in Brockton and Fitchburg, nearly got the green light, but were halted last week after officials discovered that the proposals had advanced through the state’s approval process because of a procedural error by the state Department of Education.
Proponents say the move represents another blow in their quest to open more charter schools across the state. It comes just three months after the state Senate overwhelmingly rejected an increase in the number of charter schools that can operate in low-performing districts.
“It’s disappointing to everyone that a technicality like this is stopping momentum and taking away a school that can do so much,” said Omari Walker, president of the Resiliency Foundation, a nonprofit that is developing the New Heights Charter School of Brockton. “We feel this is prohibiting students from an opportunity in life they would not otherwise get.”
New Heights would have been the first independent charter school in Brockton.
Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, which has been pushing for more charter schools, said the state is doing great injury to charter schools and the cities they want to serve.
“We still have an immense crisis in these communities given the absolute achievement of these students,” Grogan said.
Created under the 1993 Education Reform Act, charter schools are intended to be laboratories of educational innovation. They operate under looser state regulations than traditional schools and are rarely unionized.
Seventy operate independently of local school systems, while 10 others operate in partnership with a school district.
Many charter schools have among the highest MCAS scores, but some struggle academically and more than a dozen have closed, typically because of low test scores or financial problems.
The move last week delighted charter school opponents, who argue that such institutions drain funding from traditional school systems and cherry pick students, assertions that proponents dispute....
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With all due respect, the world is moving at light speed right now and this really is not the most important issue as designated by the Globe's placement in the upper-right hand corner of the front page.
