Proposal To End Tracking Raises Ire

Parents of students in accelerated learning programs have erupted in protest in the wake of a report questioning the role of such classes in Cambridge public schools.

The study, "Our Children, Our Future," was released by the Task Force on the Potential of Students on October 19.

The report dealt with issues of parental involvement, new curricular standards for each grade level, and appropriating resources for at-risk students and schools in low-income areas. But the final recommendations, which included phasing out Intensive Studies Program (ISP) by the year 2000, triggered complaints from parents.

Misinformed Reporting

Spurred on by what task force members called egregiously misinformed reporting by the Boston Globe and other newspapers, many parents of students in ISP voiced strong opposition to the report in a contentious PTA meeting and in telephone calls to the Cambridge Superintendent of Schools.

The parents believed, due to the newspapers' coverage, that the task force's recommendation meant the inevitable demise of that program.

But the superintendent, Mary Lou McGrath, said the report was only a recommendation and that she intends to preserve ISP if parents support it.

"We are a school system of choice, and I support choice in the Cambridge public schools," McGrath said.

The superindentent's office is also conducting a review of the ISP program, along with other topics covered in the task force report.

ISP is reviewed regularly, McGrath said, and has been modified several times over the past few years.

"Our Children, Our Future" recommends that the school committee develop special programs by September, 1994, so that all students will learn from a curriculum comparable to ISP coursework. The report suggests that ISP be dismantled by the year 2000, but only if those alternative programs prove successful.

Parents of students in the Longfellow School's intensive learning program attacked the report at a November 8 PTA meeting attended by Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72, saying that the ISP was successful in challenging their children and should not be dismantled.

Many parents had heard of the report primarily through an article in the Boston Globe.

The article suggested that the school committee would move to end tracking in accordance with the report's recommendation, according to Sanjiv Singh '92, education liaison to Reeves and a task force member. Singh and McGrath said this suggestion was inaccurate.

Task Force

The task force, which is composed of 35 students, teachers, parents and administrators, was appointed in September 1992 by Reeves because of concerns raised by its co-chair, Larry Weinstein, the vice president of the school committee.

According to the report, Weinstein was concerned that under the current Cambridge school tracking system, students are placed in academic programs based on certain mainstream signs of intellectual promise--signs that can be masked in a child from a less-educated or culturally different background.

Once placed in such a group, the report argues, students are pressured to achieve at the group's pace, even if they are intellectually ready for more, and can be locked into a track that leaves them bored and at a higher risk of dropping out.