Flying solo

Part 5

Education by Yvonne Abraham

That is the greatest promise of the pilot schools, and the very reason for their existence: catalyzing change throughout the whole system. That's the way pilots, which serve only 1500 students, can help benefit all of Boston's schools. But so far, that promise hasn't been realized.

"We want the whole district to use us as their research-and-development wing," says the Fenway's Nathan, whose school is the best established of the city's pilots (it's 15 years old, and was one of the first pilots). "That's our obligation." Nathan's school was offered state charter status but turned it down in favor of remaining within the Boston Public Schools. All pilots have made a similar commitment.

The experiment is only three years old, but already, pilot schools could teach the rest of the system a great deal. How to give teachers more planning time and professional development, for example; how to assess students by nontraditional methods, such as portfolios of their best work; how to manage extended school hours; how to get parents more involved in their children's educations; how to set up partnerships with corporations and colleges. All these steps could go far toward reversing the schools' slide.

Nathan has done presentations for other schools on nontraditional assessment. And Al Holland says that, within a year, the department will draw up a list of best practices from the pilot schools.

But the pilots' directors say they aren't optimistic that the lessons they have to teach other schools will go any further. Nor do they think that the rest of the district is interested in what they're doing.

Linda Nathan recalls a November 5 school-committee meeting on reform, to which the pilots were not invited. "Is it pathetic to me that we're not there? You bet." she says. "But it's not because they're bad people, it's because they're busy people, and there are too many agendas."

Few of the schools have had visits from other educators besides Payzant, either.

"The [Boston public school system] hasn't drawn on us," says Kate Johnson. "Maybe they're leaving us alone to get started up. But I need to feel we'll have the chance to express and exhibit what we're doing here."

"I don't have the sense that anyone from the district knows what we're doing here in enough detail to learn from it," says another director.

Payzant is aware of pilots' concerns, and he says he's on the job. "My role," he says, "is to help establish a relationship between the pilot schools and the other schools in the system, to try to break down the pilots' sense of being orphaned and underappreciated on one hand, and the rest of the system's sense that pilots have most-favored-nation status on the other."

If he doesn't succeed, the pilots may become just another group of boutique schools with very long waiting lists.

Back to part 4

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.