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Progress and Promise
How Pilot Schools Stack Up
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Principals, teachers, parents, administrators, funders, civic leaders. It was standing room only at the Boston Foundation on the morning of January 18th for an Understanding Boston forum focused on the first report to measure the performance of Boston’s Pilot Schools. Unique to Boston, Pilot Schools are generally small schools that set their own course in everything from curriculum and budget to schedule and staffing. The Boston Foundation has been a major supporter of Pilot Schools by providing the early funding needed to start new schools and help district schools to explore the innovative Pilot model.
Currently there are 19 Pilot Schools, with total students representing about 10 percent of the system. The Boston Foundation has been a major supporter of Pilot Schools since 2002, when it issued a Request for Proposals inviting district schools interested in converting to the Pilot model to apply. Fifteen schools applied for planning grants, 13 were funded, and four schools converted. All together, the Foundation invested more than $1 million between 2002 and 2004. The conversion of the Gardner School in Allston, the fifth school to vote for Pilot status, was vetoed by the Boston Teachers Union, but a new agreement reached between the City, the Union and the Boston Public Schools will allow more schools, including the Gardner, to convert. (See In The News article.)
The study, which was funded by the Foundation and conducted by the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE), finds that Pilot School students perform better than district averages across every indicator of student engagement and performance. Among the results were higher performance by Pilot students at every grade level on every MCAS test administered, as well as higher attendance, lower suspension rates, and a higher rate of students heading for college or technical school.
“This data suggests that the Pilot model of granting schools control over their resources and holding them to increased accountability is a powerful formula for improving our urban public schools,” said CCE’s Dan French, who co-authored the study.
Among the results detailed in the report were the 10th grade MCAS English Language Arts test, where twice the number of Pilot students scored at the “advanced/proficient” level as non-Pilot students. Tenth grade math MCAS results showed 80% of Pilot students passing, compared to 59% of non-Pilot students. (The comparison does not include Boston’s exam schools, since, like other public schools, Pilot Schools are not selective in their acceptance of students.)
The original architects of the Pilot School model, including Richard Stutman, President of the Boston Teachers Union, and Thomas Payzant, Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, participated in a panel discussion led by Paul Reville, President of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy.
Supt. Payzant urged those gathered to think of Pilot Schools in the context of a broader commitment to improve the entire system. “Competition and choice,” he said, “are two results of the Pilot School experiment.”
Mr. Stutman added, “We take pride in having launched Pilot Schools, which were created to serve as labs for the entire district. It is important to share best practices so that all schools can benefit.” Mr. Stutman’s counterpart in Rochester, New York, Adam Urbanski, who serves as President of the Rochester Teachers Association, praised the Pilot School model, but also spoke to the importance of raising standards for all students.
“The most daunting challenge in public education in this nation is not how do we create more exceptions,” he said, “but how do we turn exceptions into the norm? We must never pursue excellence without pursuing equity with the same vigor. Excellence without equity is not excellence. It is privilege. Conversely, equity without excellence is not equity, it is tokenism.”
Boston Foundation President Paul S. Grogan suggested that Pilot Schools could erase the need for charter schools. “Superintendent Payzant has correctly said that the era of school choice is here,” he said. “Some families choose charter schools, some choose Metco, but unfortunately some choose to leave the city if they don’t have confidence in public education, and this city cannot afford to lose the young families we’re losing. I believe that if we make Pilot Schools more broadly available, charter schools would either disappear or petition to become part of the Boston Public Schools, because they embody the same big idea as Pilots—of school-level accountability and freedom and flexibility. And there is no reason to have that outside the system. So, let’s be ambitious! Let’s have the big idea. Let’s start today.”