Boston Focus

A dominant frame in American education policy for the past ~70 years has been the fear that US students were falling behind their international peers. A consistent barometer has been the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test the OECD administers every three years to a random selection of 15-year-olds around the world.

There isn’t one first day of school. Most Massachusetts students were back in school this week, but summer continues for a fortunate few. ~1 of 6 American kids are still holding out on fall; this includes those enrolled in Boston Public Schools (BPS), which starts next Tuesday. Nothing matches the excitement, nerves, dread, and novelty of the beginning of a school year. In the past and coming week, there will be no shortage of photo ops, cute videos, and lofty rhetoric launching 2026-2027.

Led in part by MA Attorney General Andrea Campbell, Meta settled a massive lawsuit by agreeing to pay up to $17.1B for rampant violations of privacy and business practices to hook young users. Massachusetts expects up to $500M, likely distributed in a manner similar to Big Tobacco and opioid settlement funds. It’s a lot of zeroes. But perhaps less valuable than the operating concessions Meta has agreed to.

Here are two other Substacks you may like: • Aldeman on Education - Chad writes frequent, to-the-point pieces that are often tied into his published work in outlets like The 74. He does really nice work pulling together and summarizing disparate data sources. • American Inequality - Columbia Professor Jeremy Ney has an inequality ax to grind, and does so very well and convincingly. Education and educational opportunity are consistent themes.

You can’t cover everything in education every week, so you have to pick your spots. No one covers local education news in Massachusetts more comprehensively than Tracy Novick. A former Worcester School Committee member and a field director for the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC), Tracy writes the The Daily Ed, a round-up ranging from federal regulations to town budgets.

Boston School Committee met this week, approving grants and quickly adjourning. Not on the agenda? Boston’s exam school admissions data, which was just updated here. This past fall, Boston School Committee did something for the first time in decades: it committed to an exam school admissions policy for multiple years. Since 2020, BPS has made annual changes to rules and formulas that blend test scores, grades, socioeconomic status, and geography to determine which students are invited.

Since the turn of the century, one of the biggest demographic shifts in Boston and Massachusetts has been the increase in our foreign-born population (“newcomers”). Despite this, there is almost no public information or state reporting on newcomer student enrollment and performance.

BU and the city got big headlines with a 5-year pledge of $104M for the city’s PILOT (“payment in lieu of taxes”) program. Good news, but a solution to the city’s “budget woes?” The PILOT program was started under Mayor Menino, with the idea that the city’s tax-exempt, real estate-owning non-profits needed to pay something for city services/benefits.

What do the Iranian hostage crisis, the savings and loans crisis, the Iraq War, and the pandemic have in common? They all contributed to declining American confidence in institutions, according to new survey data and a report from Gallup. Not surprising, the most recent downturn has the timbre of polarization. There is easy right/left fodder here, but the bipartisan nature of institutional discontent is more interesting and more serious.

Kids weren’t the only ones getting final report cards last month. The state released educator evaluation data for 2024-2025. Massachusetts public school teachers earned honor roll grades. Nearly 96% of teachers were rated exemplary or proficient by instructional leaders, and this is remarkably consistent across districts. Only 10 Massachusetts districts reported ratings below 90%. Even more remarkable is the low incidence of low performance.