An MIT-designed algorithm intended to make access to good schools more equal in Boston did not achieve its goal and in fact “diminished integration” in the district, according to a new report from Northeastern’s Boston Area Research Center.
The study, commissioned by Boston Public Schools, analyzed the success of a new “home-based assignment system” approved in 2013 and launched in 2014, which was created to give parents a list of options for elementary and middle schools that took into account where they live and whether the schools were higher- or lower-achieving based on test scores. It sounds OK on paper, but, researchers realized, Boston’s unequal distribution of good schools proved too difficult an obstacle for the computer system to overcome, and it remained likely that sections of the city that are less affluent and where there are larger populations of students of color—including parts of South Boston, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester—remained disadvantaged, while white and Asian students in wealthier neighborhoods had better access to better schools.