the best part of Menino's proposed legislation is the balanced funding formula he proposes to attach to charter schools.  Presently charters take the average cost of a student in a district, but since the charters overwhelmingly take the "easy" to educate (i.e., kids who know English, are mainstreamed, who are not handicapped, etc...), their real cost is far lower than the district average.

Under Menino's plan, the charters get the same money for the student as a BPS school would get.  How is this plan not fair?

There is no research to demonstrate that the imposition of merit pay improves schools.  There is lots of research to demonstrate that a longer school day is not always a measure of improvement unless it's properly implemented.  Menino already has this power--he just doesn't want to pay teachers for the extra hours they will work.  Creative structuring such as staggered days for teachers would allow this to happen already. School principals already have the right to remove incompetent staff.  Curriculum alterations are already possible in the existing structure.  Once again, this is a teacher bashing editorial disguised as a search for "school improvement."  I urge the writers at the Globe to go into BPS schools, actually see what is happening, speak to teachers--you never know what you might learn about Editorial Improvment.

"More Boston Schools need flexible “turnaround” rules"

No they don't! What the author and public, might not be aware of is that BPS Traditional Public Schools have been purposely set up to fail by the BPS Administration.  BPS Administration did this to supplement the school system.  Historically BPS has moved programs and populations of students, with a history of failure, into traditional schools around the city.  When these schools failed, BPS qualified for more Federal, State, and private grants.  When the grant ran out at a school, the failing program and its students were moved to another school, BPS would re-apply for the grant.  The English High, Gavin Middle School, and the Marshall School are just three of many examples!

What Mayor Menino has come to realize is that the independent charter schools he invited into BPS "portfolio of schools", through his "appointed" school committee, have cherry picked students and disseminated many Boston Public Schools of a heterogeneous academic population. You will notice that the Mayor's External Advisory Committee (EAC) aggregated student data in every possible way except student test scores by neighborhood! The student testing "data" reflects whether a school is a quality school. Quality follows the students who attend it, not the other way around! This is particularly evident in the "Circle of Promise" neighborhoods that are saturated with these segregation academy charter schools whose SPED and ELL populations NEVER reflect the populations of the sending schools!  Mayor Menino is responsible for that.

Mayor Menino is hell bent on creating in-district segregation charter academies out of Boston’s traditional public schools! After a year of public discussion, by his appointed External Advisory Committee (EAC), resulted in a vote in favor of allowing sibling grandfathering through the 2019-2020 school year, Mayor Menino has come to realize that he is not going get his way and eliminate the cities busing expense by just throwing kids off the bus and putting them back into a local school.

So now he is trying to legislate it by making the schools not considered "quality" into in-district charter schools, limiting their citywide status, which means that the city will not have to pay for citywide busing of students into these schools, and it also means that the children living in those communities without "quality schools" will not be bused out! As if attaching the name "in-district charter" to a school, and legislating the "tools" to exploit the people who work in them, is somehow supposed to insure a "quality school?"  I don’t think so, and parents shouldn't either!  This legislation is just a way for Mayor Menino to force families to return to the neighborhood schools, he allowed to be disseminated, so he can eliminate the cities busing expense!  Parent’s insistence on "quality schools for all Boston students" be damned!     

This myopic "editorial", most likely written by a representative of the corporate education movement, is a classic classist example of how our schools, teachers, and students are demonized relentlessly by those vested interests who wish to PROFIT off of us. Riddled with misconceptions, inaccuracies, and lies this charter school ad is an undeserved kick in the teeth. Yes, "staff shakeups" are wonderful for school communities. I, for one, will personally work so much harder if I know that I'll get "merit pay"! (Worked so well for the "Greed is Good" mantra of Reaganite economics, which led to our nation's fiscal collapse.) Certainly, union veto power is "foolish", while the rich business interests have carte blanche to do as they please. I wonder if the author has ever taught a day in his life? No matter, the charter school corporate takeover is upon us. Let nothing - not equity, fairness, truth, or real education - stand his way. The wars are winding down and there's money to be made. Just looking for a piece of that 1 trillion dollar pie baked every year. YUM!

"Independent charter schools" are for-profit. If a school is run on a business model, the idea is to make the most money. "Independent charter schools", therefore, are most interested in the efficient way to increase revenue. The easiest way to do that is to attract and keep the easiest students to teach. These charter schools set up rules and procedures that sift out students with academic and behavioral special needs, those who speak English as a second language, and those whose parents are, for many reasons, not involved. For example, a school can declare it's policy to be that all students will receive the same "highly rigorous" curriculum and then, the school does not offer support services to students experiencing difficulty. The school is reimbursed per student in Oct. If the student returns to public school, where no student can legally be discouraged from enrolling, the public school has to educate that student without the funding. So think about it, if you were a purely profit based school, wouldn't you raise revenue by all methods available? That is why we need public education. All students deserve a chance to succeed and no school should be allowed to systematically turn away needy students. Profit driven prganizations should not be in charge of schools.

I agree with the mayor that the weighted student funding formula should determine the charter school per student reimbursement. Unfortunately, the mayor has spent almost 20 years blaming the union, teachers, the assignemnt plan for Boston's inability to educate all students. It is time for self analysis and reflection for Boston. He should examine the budget, how much is spent at Court ST and how much actually goes to student learning? We know that smaller class size works, so many of the business and non-profit heads choose to send their children to private schools, all with very small classes.

Tutoring works because it tailors itself to the needs of the individual students and it is done with fewers students allowing for an authentic relationship with the tutor and room to learn. Boston spends too much time on red herrings and needs to focus on a system overhaul.