Boston - Advanced Placement Courses Cancelled because Black Kids Don't Want to Take Them

Boston Public Schools Suspends Test For Advanced Learning Classes; Concerns About Program’s Racial Inequities Linger

An analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black.

www.wgbh.org

A selective program for high-performing fourth, fifth and sixth graders in Boston has suspended enrollment due to the pandemic and concerns about equity in the program, GBH News has learned.

Superintendent Brenda Cassellius recommended the one-year hiatus for the program, known as Advanced Work Classes, saying the district would not proceed with the program for new students next year.

"There's been a lot of inequities that have been brought to the light in the pandemic that we have to address," Cassellius told GBH News. "There's a lot of work we have to do in the district to be antiracist and have policies where all of our students have a fair shot at an equitable and excellent education."

New students will be admitted in the fourth grade by standards to be determined at the school level, according to a BPS spokesman.

There will be no new students admitted in the fifth or sixth grades, the spokesman said, but those already in advanced work will be allowed to continue.

A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black.

School Committee member Lorna Rivera said at a January meeting that she was disturbed by the findings, noting that nearly 60 percent of fourth graders in the program at the Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury are white even though most third graders enrolled at the school are Black and Hispanic.

"This is just not acceptable," Rivera said at a recent school committee meeting. "I've never heard these statistics before, and I'm very very disturbed by them."

The program was open to all students in the Boston Public Schools who took a test known as Terra Nova in the third grade and received a high score. Those students were placed in a lottery conducted by the central administration office, and lottery winners received letters inviting them to apply to the program. Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled this year, officials said.

Students in the program have the opportunity to study subjects in greater depth and are offered more schoolwork than the traditional curriculum requires.

Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years and only five schools currently offered the program: the James F. Condon School in South Boston, the Jackson/Mann K-8 in Allston, the Richard J. Murphy School in Dorchester, the William H. Ohrenberger school in West Roxbury, and the Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Chinatown.

Students already enrolled in the program will continue, Cassellius said, but programming decisions about how to continue will be made at the principal level.

District officials have launched a working group to determine the long-term future of the program and are expected to make a recommendation in May.

Edit: Reformatted for guidelines.

 

[HiddenFist]

Just stop sending your kids to these public schools, they're just gonna keep watering everything down and eventually force CRT on them. You're better off homeschooling them or finding charter/private that don't divulge into this bullshit.

 

[Akira Fudo]

Equity is just communism in disguise.
And in true communist fashion it's much easier to achieve equality by knocking successful people down a few pegs rather than lifting struggling people up

 

[Mal0]

They create equality not by bringing people up, but by dragging everyone down. It's fucking bullshit.

AP classes are what helped me prepare for college. In Highschool I was a lazy fuck, thinking I can just cruise on by college like I did highschool. Taking course at the local Community College showed how different things were, and helped me quickly change my work ethic. It's how I managed to make the deans list twice in college already. Don't ruin these kids education just because the wrong colored people are succeeding.

 

[FAQnews Correspondent]

They create equality not by bringing people up, but by dragging everyone down. It's fucking bullshit.

Welcome to socialism.

 

[Pixy]

We have something similar going on over here in Australia, equally as non-sensical. We've got mostly-white parents constantly complaining over Asian parents sending their kids to coaching classes and the consequent over-representation of them (compared to the wider population) in academically-selective public high schools.

Every year there's a push against selective schools that coincides whenever the selection exams for Unis and these High Schools takes place.

edit:

Last fall, 453 students received invitations, 143 students applied and 116 enrolled this year,

Correct me if I'm misinterpreting this, but the way this data is presented makes it seem like most of the students taking these tests don't even apply for the academically selective classes. What's the point of them taking it, then, other than bragging rights?

That's just depriving students who lost out of those opportunities due to the lottery system from getting a chance to take those classes.

 

[murdered meat bag]

Just stop sending your kids to these public schools, they're just gonna keep watering everything down and eventually force CRT on them. You're better off homeschooling them or finding charter/private that don't divulge into this bullshit.

HRT and CRT will really become mandatory for you kids unless we.... do.... something.... Homeschool pods will be outlawed because they won't conform to the HRT/CRT guidance.

 

[Aidan]

This is going to make some racists out of those otherwise AP kids, when they witness what goes on in the normal classes and have to suffer through it.

 

[AnotherPleb]

That sucks. 90% of the reason to take classes like these is to get away from the loud, obnoxious apes who completely disrupt every class and turn the entire day into the teacher playing babysitter instead of actually teaching - and yes this is true all the way through High School. Let people who actually want to learn have the opportunity to learn. Who gives a FUCK what the fuck-ups are doing? Help the people trying to help themselves.

This is going to make some racists out of those otherwise AP kids, when they witness what goes on in the normal classes and have to suffer through it.

Nothing quite like seeing all the lazy joggers in regular classes barely being able to read. It was already bad when I was going through school, and that was before all that crt shit slipped into high schools.

You can't force lazy fucks to care, but fucking over kids every way that someone can seems to be the order of the day.I can only wonder why that is.

 

[whatever I feel like]

If it needs a lottery, it shouldn't be taking place in public schools. Fuck that BS, give it to all students with good enough test results or none of them.

 

[Long Tongue Silver]

Just stop sending your kids to these public schools, they're just gonna keep watering everything down and eventually force CRT on them. You're better off homeschooling them or finding charter/private that don't divulge into this bullshit.

Indeed. This will only fuck over the AP kids whose parents can't afford or are somehow unwilling to enroll them in private or charter schools.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Um....Boston Strong....?

 

[AltisticRight]

Lol niggers can't do Laplace Transforms, but they sure are good at transforming their neighbourhoods into Zimbabwe.

 

[Kosher Dill]

This doesn't look like a big deal though, it seems to be some sort of local program that was on its last legs already.

Cassellius says interest in the program had declined over several years and only five schools currently offered the program

I think what's really going on here is souldead administrators using the race fad as a fig leaf for whatever budget cuts they feel like making.

 

[MrJokerRager]

Just stop sending your kids to these public schools, they're just gonna keep watering everything down and eventually force CRT on them. You're better off homeschooling them or finding charter/private that don't divulge into this bullshit.

Democrats and Teachers Unions have been hard at work destroying charter schools. If there was a way for the parents, the party of CRT is making sure you obey their bullshit.

 

[Ruin]

The district where is happened is 87% black and has some of the worst performing schools in the nation. It seems perfectly natural to cancel AP classes as a cost cutting measure when the overwhelming majority of students fail to complete junior high.

This isn't a fuck whitey thing it's a "niggers are retarded and no one of value is being hurt anyways" thing.

 

[User names must be unique]

Now cancel the remedial classes because they're almost full of students of a certain races

A district analysis of the program found that more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black.

DESPITE.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Equity is just communism in disguise.
And in true communist fashion it's much easier to achieve equality by knocking successful people down a few pegs rather than lifting struggling people up

And they'll find a way then some of their people are more equal than the others to paraphrase Orwell in Animal Farm.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Should have called them Replacement Courses

 

[TowinKarz]

You can't force lazy fucks to care, but fucking over kids every way that someone can seems to be the order of the day.I can only wonder why that is.

So the bureaucrats can prove they are "doing something"

It's easier to give compliant people 10 more forms to fill out than to get one lazy ass to just get off the couch and half-fill the first form.

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Not in modern scholarly bureaucracy.

There, the quiet wheels get swamped in grease because the other 3 on the cart are rusted up tight or missing, and a tube of grease costs less than new wheels.

So, people already achieving are rewarded with higher standards while the layabouts are encouraged to layabout harder so they'll at least be quiet and easier to hide when the Superintendent comes by to check on things, "Oh, are standards are very high, just look at all the hoops this one kid had to jump through, oh, and don't go in that room, nothing important going on in there, smells like weed smoke? Oh, don't be silly...... would we tolerate that here when we just showed you how hard perfect kids have to perform to stay perfect?"