FYI from BSF, 11.04.22
Follow the Money
Without much fanfare over the past few years, the education departments of Massachusetts, agencies, researchers, and others have done the tedious work of linking data. Modeled after initiatives in other states, the data hub being grown can provide more reliable, long-term data on how kids in Massachusetts are doing, from cradle to career, and assess what is helping them along the way.
Notwithstanding one recent, notable critique, the future careers and earnings of our kids are widely considered to be important. And, thanks to this hub, we can now see what kind of jobs and what kind of money our public school graduates make. It’s not a perfect measure - some students’ data is not linked, it does not include earnings outside of Massachusetts, etc. - but it provides insight. This type of resource powers important findings, such as the study that showed a relationship between higher MCAS achievement and higher wages later.
Although school districts have had access to this data for some time, it is now finally public. You can look at the data yourself using this tool.
Six years is the generally accepted timeframe for post-secondary outcomes, so we can look at Boston’s Class of 2015 and make some observations about how they were doing last year. The gaps, unfortunately, track to many of the ones we observe across other academic outcomes.
In 2021, the average BPS graduate earned $35,874, about $6,000 less than the average Massachusetts public school graduate ($41,500). Unclosed, that gap continues to more than a quarter of a million dollars in expected earnings.
And there were gaps within the BPS graduate cohort, accelerating as some students complete postsecondary credentials, while others have not.
By race.
By income.
By ability.
Although less pronounced by native language.
The data goes beyond individuals. It also shines a light on workforce patterns. Nearly 50% of the BPS Class of 2015 is employed in one of three fields.
Similar for Massachusetts, with one notable exception.
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (at $54,213) has a significantly higher average annual salary than the other five.
More remains to be done. For example, individual school data is not yet public, and that could yield insights about further inequities or the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of certain programs.
But there is a foundation here for inquiry, public conversation, and commonsense policy and reform.
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Notes in the Margin
Boston School Committee met for the second week in a row. Full materials here. Public reports concerned the progress of the district’s 28 “transformation schools” (schools for which the state requires assistance or intervention) and hiring updates. Despite the challenges of filling new or vacant positions, there has been significant progress on staffing diversity goals.
Curious about BPS is spending its federal recovery dollars? There's a dashboard of that. An early study implies that states and districts that spent more of their recovery dollars on learning saw lower declines in student achievement results.
Perhaps lost in the shuffle of all the federal dollars for schools, $700M from the Massachusetts Student Opportunity Act has flowed into public schools, but into more districts than others, by design. The economic package finalized by the legislature this week has some funding for early education. And, to round out the education funding section, with this week's poll showing a margin of 27 points to pass Question 1, additional taxes on the wealthy in Massachusetts could mean even more money for schools.
The pandemic has made managing school buses more challenging. One possible solution? Some districts, like Worcester, are running their own buses.
Likely Governor-Elect Healey will choose a secretary of education committed to addressing academic recovery in schools.
Arguments this week at Supreme Court concerning Harvard’s admission policies could have implications for PK-12.
The academic and emotional toll of the pandemic is playing out on college campuses.
The pathway from community college to four-year public universities has gotten easier overall, but not for everyone.
Massachusetts new Commissioner of Higher Education, Dr. Noe Ortega, was officially sworn in this week.
Other Matters
Quite a few people have asked about how we cut and visualized MCAS results. Thanks to Matt and Natalya from our team, some of that is now public. You can filter by grade and subgroup to see how individual schools performed in 2022 and have progressed - or not - since 2019.
Link here.
