Recommended and Proposed Order

    ROBERT A. JORDAN 

Parents’ choice 
1S for quality 

. THE “CONTROLLED 

® choice” desegregation plan for 
on “io. 8 Boston's public school system is 

+ ze ¥ now four years old and appears 
‘| to be getting better with age. 

   

  

Both older and younger 
models of the plan also appear 
to be doing well in several com- 
munities across the state and a 
dozen cities across the country. 

Controlled choice has been the viable, federal- 

ly approved option to the widespread forced bus- 
ing that came with court-ordered desegregation of 
Boston's school system in the mid-1970s. 

It is not a perfect system in terms of every 
parent sending their child to the school of their 
choice, but there appear to be an increasing num- 
ber of parents who find the system one with which 
they can easily live. 

Boston's plan, for example, implemented in 
1989 and revised last fall, has shown gradual im- 
provements in several key areas and the promise 
appears to be of more improvements for the 1993- 
94 school year. 

One of the more attractive features of the Bos- 
ton plan, created and developed by Harvard soci- 
ologist Charles Willie and educational planner Mi- 
chael Alves, is that 96 percent of the students en- 
rolled under “controlled choice” got the school of *- 
their choice. 

Compared with the 1970s in Boston, when 80 
percent of the students were in mandatory busing 
plans, only 4 percent of the students today receive 
mandatory assignments. 

In addition, 91 percent of the students who ap- 
plied to the “walk-to” schools in their zone, which 
involve about a mile walk or less from their 
homes, received their choice. 

" noted, “is that there are schools in Boston that are 

THE BOSTON GLOBE e SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 1993 18 

Not every student wanted to go to the schools 
that were close to home. Only 40 percent of the 
children who applied to schools of their choice se- | 
lected “walk-to” schools as their first choice. 

“This data means that more children are 
choosing to attend schools outside of their neigh- | 
borhood,” Alves said. The reason for this, he ex- 

plained, is that some parents recognize quality 
schools more than a mile from their homes and 
are willing to go the distance to enroll their chil- 
dren in them. 

What the improved “controlled choice” system 
in Boston has done is to give more parents a 
chance to have their children enrolled in a school 
of their first or second choice. 

Some schools are so popular among parents 
who recognize the quality teaching and adminis- 
tration that they become overchosen. 

“What's really significant about this,” Alves 

very attractive to parents and they want their 
children to go these schools. They know that these 
schools are doing something right and can be 
models for the rest of the school system.” And be- 
cause of the racial mix in the classrooms, he add- 
ed, these are the schools that clearly show deseg- 
regation works in Boston. 

“Desegregation means equal access,” said 
Alves. “What we are showing in Boston more than 
in other cities is that there is more genuine deseg- 
regation going on in Boston, more than in any oth- 
er city we've studied.” That case is made, he add-   ed, with the increasing number of overchosen 
schools in the system under this plan. 

What the data on “controlled choice” also de- 
termine is that there are both overchosen and un- 
derchosen schools in the same neighborhood. 

As both Alves and Willie pointed out, it’s not 
location that matters most to parents choosing 
schools, it’s quality. 

The schools not attracting a lot of choices, as 
parents can attest, are those not considered to be 
providing quality education. 

The 4 percent of students who are mandatorily 
assigned to schools would drop even lower if Bos- 
ton improved the quality of education in a number 
of schools across the city. 

Contrary to some beliefs, the schools that are 

not heavily chosen because of poor quality are not 
located in one or two neighborhoods. They are in 
Hyde Park, Dorchester, Charlestown, Roxbury 
and Jamaica Plain - virtually covering the gamut 
of Boston's racial and ethnic neighborhoods. Bos- 
ton can improve these schools, Willie believes. 

“I think if the School Committee will institu- 
tionalize this plan within the next few years,” Wil- 
lie said, “Boston will be the most desegregated ur 
ban school system in the nation, and will also have 
an even higher number of improved schools. I 
honestly believe that.” 

That could easily happen if some politicians 
stopped pushing “location, location, location” 
when it comes to the city’s schools and started 
stressing “quality, quality, quality.” 

If the city coneentrates on these three words, 
Boston's school system may again rise to the top” 
of the nation’s educational class.