fb-pixel Skip to main content

The Great Divide

Race, class, and opportunity in our schools
Katie Yue-Sum Li, the ethnic studies coordinator at Boston Public Schools, said the onus is often on individual teachers to ensure Asian American history is covered.

Why is Asian American history barely taught in Mass. schools?

Asian Americans and their contributions to US history and culture are largely missing from the nation’s social studies curricula and textbooks. Teachers and scholars say the surge in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic is one consequence of that erasure.

A third-grade class in Rye, N.Y.
Some lawmakers want to ban critical race theory in schools. So, what is it?
As national debate over race-related curriculums rages on, here is a lesson on the subject and the controversy surrounding it.

Teachers wary of new laws limiting instruction on race
The exterior of Boston Latin School.

In seismic shift, a lottery might govern admission to Boston’s exam schools

A School Committee task force is giving serious consideration to scrapping the assignments and replacing them with a lottery.
Four things to know about the Boston exam school admissions debate
Boston Latin School.

A lottery for exam schools in Boston? Mayoral hopefuls react to the idea

Candidates running for Boston mayor had mixed reactions to the idea of nixing the traditional exam process for the city’s trio of highly competitive exam schools.
New Boston exam school admission requirements might include entrance test and ZIP code allocations
Khymani James, shown at a March press conference, resigned from the Boston School Committee and Boston Student Advisory Council and called the counseling sessions emotional abuse.

Former student representative to Boston School Committee says he met with Suffolk DA about use of unorthodox therapy

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins met virtually with current and former members of a Boston Public Schools student government group, some of whom were exposed to an unorthodox form of group therapy under the supervision of an outside contractor.
Kelly Bates, photographed in 2012, is running for a Boston City Council at-large seat. She says she has benefited from Re-evaluation Counseling and was a guest speaker at RC sessions with high school students on Boston Public Schools' student advisory council.

City Council candidate participated in controversial counseling sessions for Boston students

Kelly Bates described herself as a guest speaker for the Boston Student Advisory Council's Re-evaluation Counseling events and said she no longer teaches the therapy.

Many students and staffers described the Boston Student Advisory Council’s Re-evaluation Counseling sessions as inappropriate and dangerous, among them (clockwise from top left) student Khymani James, ex-staffer Margaret Fiori, student Charlene Adames-Pimentel, and former employee Jeff Foulkes.
Inside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse
An independent investigator wrote in a report released this week that students described the “Re-Evaluation Counseling” sessions as “weird, uncomfortable, and cult-like." But the report barely scratched the surface of students’ experiences.

Legislative bills take aim at school segregation in Mass.

After a difficult academic year, the majority of Mass. parents want in-person school this fall

They called the police on a 6-year-old. Now, Somerville school leaders are suspending school police programs

Visit our archive of all stories from The Great Divide team

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Patricia Lampron, the principal of Dr. William W. Henderson Inclusion Upper School, celebrates Angela Rose DiBella's graduation.

Photos: Fenway Park hosts first of more than a dozen Boston Public Schools graduations

Fenway Park was home on Sunday to the first of 14 Boston Public Schools graduations set to be celebrated in the ballpark this month.

Globe Opinion

EDITORIAL
Mayor Janey spoke at City Hall on June 16 to announce next steps for the Boston School Committee and share a COVID-19 update afternoon.
Who covered up the Boston School Committee texts?
The public had every right to see text messages between school committee members on the night of a controversial exam school vote, but the city withheld them.

RENÉE GRAHAM
People talk before the start of a rally against "critical race theory" (CRT) being taught in schools, at the Loudoun County Government Center in Leesburg, Va., on June 12.
How white supremacy weaponizes ignorance
Racists have always understood that if they can censor what people learn, they can control what people believe.

How many coronavirus cases have been reported in Mass. schools? Check our map

The Globe is tracking coronavirus clusters and other reported cases in Massachusetts schools.
In final report of the year, Mass. reports 53 coronavirus cases among public school students, 5 among school staff members

Boston School Committee may extend superintendent’s contract by 2 years after giving her high marks on job review

The School Committee selected Jeri Robinson as their new chair following a texting scandal that recently prompted former chair Alexandra Oliver-Dávila and member Lorna Rivera to resign.

Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey spoke at City Hall on Wednesday.
Janey reaffirms commitment to fill the ‘void’ of Latino representation on Boston School Committee
Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey named Betty Francisco, cofounder of Amplify Latinx and a BPS parent, to the Boston School Committee Nominating Panel on Wednesday.

Janey seeks Latino nominees for School Committee

Boston School Committee chair Alexandra Oliver-Dávila resigns over racially charged texts

A growing number of elected officials called for Oliver-Dávila’s resignation after she disparaged West Roxbury families in text message exchanges with another School Committee member.
US Representative Ayanna Pressley.

Pressley urges Mass. lawmakers to shift funding away from school police to counselors, nurses

School discipline policies in the hands of law enforcement often are used to disproportionately punish students of color, Pressley said, pointing to a study published by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality.

John Blake became Duxbury High School’s head hockey coach in 2003.
Duxbury parents say officials downplayed misconduct claims against now-fired hockey coach
Several local parents say a number of sexual misconduct accusations through the years should’ve sparked more scrutiny of longtime hockey coach John Blake.

Conn. towns face losing funds if tribal team mascots don’t change

Connecticut schools that still use Native American nicknames and mascots could take a financial hit if they continue to use those images without written consent from a state- or federally-recognized tribe in their region, according to a provision tucked into a massive budget implementation bill that’s up for a vote Monday.

Biden administration extends protections to transgender students

In a new policy directive, the department said discrimination based on a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity will be treated as a violation of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that protects against sex discrimination in education.

Antisemitic imagery, racial slur written in some 20 yearbooks at Seekonk school

Multiple students at a Seekonk middle school on Monday defaced about 20 yearbooks with “anti-semitic imagery, a racist slur, and inappropriate drawings of a sexual nature,” Superintendent Rich Drolet said Tuesday

How Rhode Island wants to spend $415 million on education

Duxbury High football team used antisemitic audibles since 2010 in practice, investigator reports

School amid the pandemic

In final report of the year, Mass. reports 53 coronavirus cases among public school students, 5 among school staff members

Cases have declined significantly in recent weeks, even after the number of students attending school in person rose in mid-May when high schools were required to fully reopen in person.

Read all of our stories about school reopening and education amid a pandemic

Featured Stories

Maureen Ronayne sits with her son, Daniel, as he reads aloud in the family's Medford backyard.

For schoolchildren struggling to read, COVID-19 has been a wrecking ball

Flavia Peréa and her now 7-year-old son dug for worms in their local community garden in Somerville.

A Somerville mother is stunned: How can school officials accuse her 6-year-old son of sexual misconduct and report him to the police?

Skyla Withers, 5, left, and Giovanni Gamble, 5, play with other children at the Cooper Community Center in Roxbury in January. They are among hundreds of children who have benefited from Boston's expansion of city-funded prekindergarten in recent years.

Eight years after Walsh’s promises, Boston prekindergarten is still not universal

When Em Quiles' second-grade son didn't participate in zoom classes during remote learning due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the school reported her to the Department of Children and Families.

Your child’s a no-show at virtual school? You may get a call from the state’s foster care agency

Fredy Solís, a recent immigrant from Guatemala, spent the last year trying to learn from home. The Globe followed Fredy's 11-member Spanish class at Boston International Newcomers Academy through the pandemic, to better understand how school closures have affected the city's most vulnerable students.
A year of grit and despair

For one class of immigrant students, the pandemic threatens to upend their educational dreams

To understand the remarkable forces and obstacles newcomers to America have to contend with, a Globe team closely tracked one class at Boston International Newcomers Academy — BINcA for short — for most of a year.
Leer en español: Un año de lucha y desesperación: la pandemia amenaza con poner fin a los sueños de una clase de estudiantes inmigrantesYvonne Abraham: Students’ dreams made impossible by the pandemic
New to English and technology: One student's remarkable journey
Fredy left Guatemala for Boston in 2019. He was just beginning to learn English at Boston International Newcomers Academy when the pandemic shuttered schools. (Shelby Lum/Globe Staff)
As schools went remote, many students stopped attending
When classrooms went virtual, nationwide as many as 1 and 4 English learners have left their classes. (Shelby Lum/Globe Staff)
This special series features student essays, poems and artwork on living and learning during a pandemic.

It was hard enough being a low-income university student. Then COVID hit

Last fall, Jasmine, a sophomore at a public four-year university in Massachusetts, received an e-mail from one of her professors telling her she was failing her class. This essay is an edited version of Jasmine’s belated response to her professor.

Listen to high school junior Maceo Wright’s spoken word poem, ‘Damn Pandemic’

I swear sometimes it’s like they want to build the world without us. We fought for our equality but still there ain’t no balance. How we supposed to fight back when they holding all the power?

• My name is Mariella Murillo, and I am struggling

• A teenager’s lament

• The lockers, once full of ideas with all the books stuffed inside them, are now just full of memories

Education, Interrupted
This series explored how school closures in the spring of 2020 affected individual students.
Malaki Solo, a sixth-grader, works on his homework in his family's living room on Tuesday morning. Malaki, who is a generally confident student, has been feeling unmoored during this online learning experiment.

Online, but off-kilter: A day in the life of a Boston sixth-grader

Malaki Solo is one of more than 50,000 students in Boston studying at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Without enough to do, the 12-year-old spends much of his time bored inside his small Dorchester apartment.

Read our full Education, Interrupted series

Jaliyah Bacchus and her littler sister, Jayda, greet their mother, Trisha Anderson.
With daycares closed, it’s sometimes older siblings watching young children
It’s a common scenario affecting countless teenagers across the city and state, as more parents juggle a full schedule with limited childcare support.

Lisa Kincade was with her son Willie, 21, after going for a walk in their Roslindale neighborhood.
For high school seniors with disabilities, school closures can feel like walking off a cliff
For high school seniors, school closures have brought angst and logistical hurdles, including concerns about graduation and college delays.

Academics and Learning

“If I had had someone there to be with me during the school hours, I would have been more successful,” said Jessy Feliz, who goes to John W. McCormack Middle School in Boston.

Struggling Boston teens find few support options, fueling record absentee rates

After schools closed last year, many nonprofit organizations set up learning “hubs” that would allow small groups of students to join together and be overseen by an adult. But they were primarily for younger students.

40 percent of Boston high school juniors and seniors are chronically absent, raising concerns about their futures

The most striking increases in chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10 percent of classes — occurred among Black, Latino, disabled, and English-learner students.

From individual sessions to taking a real-world approach, here’s how teachers are adapting to the pandemic

Many Massachusetts teachers have begun to feel comfortable with teaching virtually, and now some are starting to experiment.

Mass. school districts' plans vary widely on key practices for pandemic-era education, review finds

The findings of a new survey from the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education underscore the wildly different approaches districts have taken to pandemic-era education in a state that has largely taken a hands-off approach to local education affairs.

Equity and Access

Jabari Murphy is a student in the METCO program who lives in Roslindale and goes to Natick High School.

In exploring the history of educational inequity, METCO students find echos of the present

METCO, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, a voluntary school integration program, has been enrolling K-12 students from Boston in predominantly white suburban school districts since 1966 — a history that now spans multiple generations of students.

Eight years after Walsh’s promises, Boston prekindergarten is still not universal

The pre-K program in Boston Public Schools is well-regarded, but without universal capacity, the spots tend to go to savvier families who know about the early application deadline.

Equity concerns spark discussion about school year

As policymakers think about ways to address learning disruptions students are experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, one potential tool that got attention during a Boston College webinar Thursday was the concept of restructuring the academic calendar.

Thousands of Boston public school students cut off from dental care

Oral health programs were halted in March when school buildings closed amid the pandemic. But that has left students without an opportunity to see a dentist or hygienist for the past seven months.

Race and Diversity

Students with parents arrived at the Quincy Elementary School in Chinatown. Asian American parents are reluctant to send their children back to school full time.

Asian American families overwhelmingly reject full-time return to BPS classrooms this month

As Boston prepares to reopen elementary and middle schools full time, Asian American families are choosing to keep their children learning from home at rates higher than any other racial group, amid fears about both the pandemic and a growing tide of racism targeting their community.

‘Learning pods’ taking root in Black, Latino neighborhoods

Pods, also known as learning hubs or study halls, have been slow to arrive in low-income communities. But in the last six months, more have popped up to provide safe spaces for students to do their remote learning.

Coalition of students urge school leaders around Boston to address anti-Asian racism

In an open letter to school leaders in Boston, Quincy and Malden, a coalition of Asian-American students and their supporters is urging educators to take action now to ensure their safety as a new school year begins.

How teachers are bringing lessons from the racial justice uprisings into the classroom

Galvanized by a summer of civil unrest, teachers across the Commonwealth are planning to integrate the tenets of antiracism into their curriculum during a school year already defined by change amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Money and Facilities

Chairs were stacked against a blackboard for temporary storage in September at the McCormack Middle School in Dorchester.

To help low-income students, build more affordable housing in high-performing school districts, report says

Massachusetts and other New England states should create more affordable housing in well-to-do suburbs in an effort to provide low-income students greater access to a high-quality education, according to a report released Monday.

How Rhode Island brought most students back for in-person learning — and Massachusetts did not

In Massachusetts, only about a dozen districts, most of them made up entirely of elementary schools, plan to return all students to classrooms full time this fall. Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, the vast majority of the state’s 66 districts and charter schools plan to offer full-time in-person learning by October.

State school funding formula too generous to wealthy districts, report says

The state’s formula for funding public schools has changed over time in ways that pump extra money into wealthier districts while shortchanging low-income areas, according to a report released Monday by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

BPS students see bathroom improvements after Globe story

Students and staff at three schools mentioned in a previous Globe story said they have seen improvements, including more regular cleaning, reduced odors, and new janitors.
Finalist for a Pulitzer Prize

The Valedictorians Project

The city’s top students from 2005 to 2007 set out to change the world. But then life happened. Explore their stories here.

Sign up for The Great Divide newsletter

Stay abreast of the most pressing issues plaguing our public education system and their possible solutions. Sign up for our free newsletter with updates on our investigative findings, links to stories, and other relevant information.
June 14: After racially charged texts, two abruptly resign from Boston School CommitteeJune 7: In Massachusetts, legislative bills are taking aim at school segregationJune 1: Inside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse
STUDENT CORNER

Make sure your voice is heard

Students, we want to hear from you. Please subscribe to a student-only text line to share your story ideas and tips with our team, and receive occasional news alerts from our team. To join, text the word HELLO to 1-833-335-2777.
Event Hub

Upcoming and past events

The Great Divide has been hosting an ongoing series of virtual events, with an emphasis on student voices, during the pandemic. Watch some of our past events:
The State of Race: EducationAll in this together? How to minimize harm in reopening schoolsGlobeDocs presents: 'My voice matters': Brighton Debate en Español teamThe Digital Divide: Education, Race and Virtual LearningGreat Divide Town Hall: What will it take for you to feel safe when schools reopen?

About The Great Divide

The Great Divide is a two-year reporting effort dedicated to investigating race, class, and inequality in Boston-area schools. It is jointly funded by the Globe and the Barr Foundation, a Boston-based foundation that has prioritized student success in high school and beyond. The Globe maintains editorial control and independence over the project.
Brighton High debate team members.
The Great Divide

‘My voice matters’: Brighton Debate en Español team gives students a platform to grow

Throughout the winter, scores of Boston students devoted much of their weekends to fervently argue about a single topic: whether the United States should limit its arms sales. Teens in the Boston Debate League verbally jabbed back and forth, poking holes in their opponents’ arguments.
IDEAS | Linda K. Wertheimer

Teaching about racism is urgent — but tricky

Many K-12 educators now want to go deeper on the subject of race. Are they equipped to do it well?
Tips for teaching about racism