Massachusetts

Standards-based reform creates an inherent system of winners and losers by raising the bar and assessing who makes the cut. Supports-based reforms provide and strategically align the needed resources so each student has the opportunity to reach that bar—and surpass it.

 A new study released by UCLA's Civil Rights Project shows that while student enrollment in Massachusetts public schools is growing ever more diverse, the schools themselves are becoming increasingly segregated along race and class lines.

The National Center for Education Policy (NEPC), an OTL ally, has a new, must-read book about the change our nation needs to make from thinking about the achievement gap to trying to fix the opportunity gap that underlies it.

In the passion of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Jonathan Kozol gave up the prospect of an academic career, moved from Harvard Square to a poor black Boston neighborhood, and became a fourth grade teacher. Since then, he has devoted his life to advocating for equal educational opportunity.

In an article published in Phi Delta Kappan, Dan Chu from the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) details BSAC's long and ultimately successful campaign to develop a tool for students to give constructive feedback to their teachers.

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center's new Children's Budget is an expansive database of government services and programs for children and their families that impact their access to high quality educational opportunities. Covering everything from early childhood education, fair funding, expanded learning time, healthcare, affordable housing and juvenile justice, this database is a potent tool worth replicating in other states, and it drives home the need for supports-based, not standards-based, education reform.

A number of OTL allies in Massachusetts – including youth organizers from the Boston Student Advisory Council and the Boston Youth Organizing Project – are helping build grassroots pressure for revenue building initiatives and investments in communities and education. The move is particularly exciting following MA Governor Deval Patrick's recent call for a nearly $2 billion investment in the state's education system and transportation infrastructure.