Boston Schools cancel advanced classes since minorities are underrepresented

Boston Public Schools officials said they were canceling advanced learning classes out of concern that the classes served disproportionate racial groups.

The program known as Advanced Work Classes was intended to serve high-performing students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Students are encouraged to study their subjects in a deeper and non-traditional manner.

School officials became concerned when a report showed that the program was disproportionately serving white students, and underserving black and Hispanic students.

Their solution is not to raise up the minority students, but rather to drag down the white students. That makes sense to no one ever.

The district analysis found that more than 70% of the students in the program were white or Asian, while nearly 80% of the students in the district are Hispanic or black.

“This is just not acceptable,” said School Committee member Lorna Rivera in a school meeting in January. “I’ve never heard these statistics before, and I’m very very disturbed by them.”

Rivera cited one finding at one school that showed the program included 60% white fourth-graders though a majority of third graders are black or Hispanic.

Superintendent Brenda Cassellius told WGBH News on Friday that they would put the program on hiatus over the racial findings.

“There’s been a lot of inequities that have been brought to the light in the pandemic that we have to address,” Cassellius said. “There’s a lot of work we have to do in the district to be antiracist and have policies where all of our students have a fair shot at an equitable and excellent education.”

Cassellius said students already enrolled in the program could continue, but it would be phased out for fourth and fifth grades.

OPINION

This is complete idiocy. Do a better job with the minority children. There are foreign language problems, lack of parental attention, and so on. That doesn’t mean white and Asian children should be kept back. That’s bigotry — against whites and Asians.

The social elements holding back minorities are not due to racism.

The school officials are obviously using Marxist disparate impact as a guideline.

This is the dumbing down of whites and Asians.

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