Enroll Boston: Concerns for Our Students and Our Schools

The Boston Compact Steering Committee, a group of 12 charter, parochial and BPS
administrators, plus one representative from City Hall, has developed a plan called
Enroll Boston that would include charter schools in the Boston Public School lottery.
QUEST believes Enroll Boston is not in the interests of families, will lead to less
equitable access to quality schools, and will hurt the Boston Public Schools.
Why will Enroll Boston be bad for families and public schools?
1) Enroll Boston changes the student assignment plan without any analysis of equity. When
it approved the Home-Based student assignment plan in March 2013, the Boston School
Committee asked for a yearly racial and socio-economic impact analysis. No such analysis has
been done. We dont know whether Enroll Boston would increase or decrease equitable access to
quality schools; nor do we have any analysis about the impact on equity of including charters in
the plan. Furthermore, charter schools currently serve fewer English Language Learners, students
with disabilities, and other high needs students than BPS schools. Enroll Boston offers no plan for
increasing equity of services among charters and district schools, and the proposal lacks
mechanisms for holding charter schools accountable for serving the needs of these students.
2) Enroll Boston makes it harder for families to identify and select a school that is right for
their child. Charter schools have different policies and procedures from BPS district schools. For
example, BPS schools have a common set of progressive discipline guidelines, while many
charters have no-excuses/punitive discipline strategies. BPS schools require that parents be part
of the governing body of the school, but charter boards rarely have parents on their boards. With
charter schools in the BPS lottery, families would have to investigate all these differences before
ranking their school choices, and the single school assigned to them may have policies that do not
serve their children well.
(3) The proposal limits families access to charter schools and possibly to BPS schools as
well. Families can currently apply to as many charter schools as they like, and can be accepted to
both one district school and multiple charters. The new system, however, assigns families to only
one school. In addition, most charter schools that participate (charters can choose not to
participate in Enroll Boston) would no longer be citywide. Also, it's possible that families will
lose access to BPS schools that they are currently eligible to attend. The Boston Compact recently
presented a model where a family living at Mayhew and Boston Streets in Dorchester, for
example, loses access to both the new BPS Dearborn STEM 6-12 and Lilla Frederick School,
both of which are currently in this familys basket.
(4) Enroll Boston would likely result in expansion of charter seats, hinder school
improvement efforts, and be accompanied by the closure of district schools. Evidence from
other cities with similar unified enrollment systems shows that charters tend to expand and
district schools tend to be closed, even over the objections of parents and students. In Denver, for
example, a similar plan brought 21 new charter schools, many located in the same buildings as
district schools. Boston Compact records show plans to lease BPS buildings to charters and to
co-locate charters in district schools. Enroll Boston also creates a disincentive for continued
improvements to Boston Public Schools. The city can claim that parents have access to quality
schools through charters, and neglect or close district schools rather than work to improve them.

5) Families have not received full explanations for why Enroll Boston has been proposed.
We are told Boston's families want this, but no evidence exists to show that. On the other hand,
the Boston Compact received $3.25 million from the Gates Foundation and is pursuing more
money to support the Enroll Boston plan from the Walton Foundation, the Dell Foundation, and
other private groups associated with growing the charter school sector. Such funding will likely
go to the Boston Compact for administration and to create the complicated computer algorithm
needed for Enroll Boston, rather than directly to our schools and children.

Is this what we want for Boston? Recent test scores show BPS is among the highest
performing urban districts in the country. Though BPS is far from perfect, Enroll Boston
turns its back on progress we have made, on hopes for improving our schools, and on a
truly public school system that educates ALL students, regardless of who they are, where
they live, or how they learn.
Contact QUEST (Quality Education for Every Student) at
qualityforeverystudent@gmail.com or at questbps on Facebook.