When Dan O’Brien of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) presented the group’s report on the Home-Based Assignment Plan to the School Committee on July 16 (read about it here), he included three suggestions for making school assignment more equitable. They ranged from obvious to expensive.
One problem BARI discovered was that the sixth-grade algorithm doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. The plan was to offer each child at least four schools in MCAS tier 1 and 2, including at least two in tier 1. But the algorithm selects those schools from all schools with kindergartens. Some of those don’t have sixth grades. Many students had no MCAS tier 1 schools in their choice baskets.
Fixing that glitch was O’Brien’s first recommendation.