ARTicles vol.6 i.2: Education after No Child Left Behind: A Brief Look at Boston & Massachusetts

Under the 2002 federal act, No Child Left Behind, Massachusetts public schools must score in advanced and proficient categories by the year 2014 or face sanctions including loss of federal money and government takeover of schools. Given to students in grades three through eight, as well as grade ten, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) singularly determines whether a school succeeds or fails. Nationally, in 2002–03 nearly 550,000 9th through 12th-grade students dropped out of public schools.

In Boston Public Schools alone, 21% of students who entered as ninth graders in 1999 dropped out by 2003.  Since the implementation of the MCAS, the annual dropout rate in the Boston Public Schools has increased to nearly 1,700 students.

Racial disparities are still great.  13% of Whites are failing the MCAS compared to 31% percent of Blacks, and twenty-eight percent of Latinos.  The drop out rate has particularly affected Black students since 2003.  932 Blacks dropped out in 2003-04, an increase of 175 students over the past two years.  463 Latinos dropped out that same year, an increase of nearly 70 in the past two years.

What Can Be Done To Improve These Rates?

“How to address the well-pronounced and persistent despair that afflicts disadvantaged families and children is a challenge we have to work on, but it has to be more than teachers and public school officials working on it. If we are to move education forward in [Massachusetts], it is essential we work to educate the whole child from the time they start learning before kindergarten through Grade 12 and higher education and continue that effort in workforce development and lifelong learning.”

Glenn Koochner is Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.

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