Choosing Schools

More than a decade after it began, Cambridge's nationally touted controlled choice program has yielded both successes and failures. While the original aim of racial balance in Cambridge's public schools has been for the most part achieved, students, parents and administrators alike say that socioeconomic diversity remains the educational vision, as opposed to the reality.

Cambridge was spurred to act on school choice in 1977, when the courts mandated desegregation of the schools in neighboring Boston, providing the basis for the Cambridge Controlled Choice School Desegregation Plan that has been in place for the past eleven and a half years.

"Before we were cited by the state and got involved in court action, we decided to get involved in forming a program acceptable to all members of the city," says Albert Giroux, director of public information for Cambridge's public schools.

"We basically tried to balance out the schools," Giroux says. "As population changed, we have more and more minority students."

Policy makers saw school choice as a way to accomplish the task of balancing, while adding value and pleasing customers.

"The one thing that parents kept saying was that they wanted to choose the school that their children were attending," says Eileen Bacci, registrar of the Cambridge schools.

During the years of 1977 and 1978, parents had the opportunity to do just that. Community-based committees of parents and staff members brainstormed ideas for the citywide desegregation plan, channeling their proposals to a citywide planning committee directed by the Director of Elementary Education, now Superintendent Mary Lou McGrath.

"We had two years of meetings...One benefit was that we were watching Boston, along with the rest of the nation, and knew how not to do it," says Bacci, a life-long resident of East Cambridge who served as a representative for Harrington School during the planning years.

The controlled choice plan that resulted included city funding for transportation of students to schools outside their neighborhoods.

At the beginning, school choice depended on availability of space in the school and on the impact the move had on the racial balance of the institutions involved.

School Choice Today

After a period in the 1980s of redistricting and emphasis on neighborhood schools, Cambridge arrived at the current plan, whereby each student and his or her parents would chose at least three of the 14 schools, in consultation with the Parent Information Office and parent coordinators who staff each school.

Students get their choices depending on the impact on racial balance of the schools of choice, the space available, the presence of siblings and the location of the school in relation to the child's home.

School officials say that roughly 10 per-cent of students are assigned to schools they don't choose, and they say that is evidence of the success of the system.

"My experience has been that there is a good amount of people who get into their first choice school," says Harrington School parent liaison Donna M. Sousa.

"Sometimes it works for people and sometimes it doesn't," says Josiane Hudicourt-Barnes, a teacher at Graham and Parks School and mother of three.

Sousa noted that opportunities for transfer do exist when people don't want to stay with their assigned school.

Information Helps

Parents aren't alone in making choices. They're aided by the four full-time staff members of the Parent Information Office, who are responsible for school registration each year and field queries and complaints regarding the system from Cambridge residents the rest of the year.

Registrar Eileen Bacci orients parents who are new to Cambridge's controlled choice process--guiding parents and students through the barrage of mandatory paperwork that must accompanies the registration process.

"We are always paying attention to constant outreach," Superintendent Mary Lou McGrath says. "It's very hard--I don't think we ever get it 100 percent."

McGrath says equal access can depend on the information being provided.

"We've found that a lot of the choosing is by word of mouth," Giroux says.

"People that are aware of various educational concepts might do some reading...on using more manipulatives in math and that sort of thing," Giroux says. "This is one of our major problems. If you get someone from Haiti...who's fleeing oppression, many times people from that kind of background are looking for a school close to their house."

"It's an educational program just to acquaint them with what the choices are," Giroux says.

Giroux explains that the office conveys its message in a variety of settings and languages, posting notices in day care centers, preschools and in community centers before information sessions and school tours for the parents in November of each year.

The job is challenging, but not impossible. "There is really not a language group that doesn't have someone [to help translate] or that you don't understand," Bacci says.

When parents make their choices, informed or not, they consider factors such as the location of the school, academics, special focus, siblings, trendiness and approach to education.

"Parents choose schools for various and sundry reasons," Bacci says.

When Cambridge implemented the school choice program, it tried to give students a real choice.

"We used the opportunity to improve the quality of the schools, as well as to achieve racial balance," McGrath says.

Each of the Cambridge's 14 elementary schools have worked, and are still working to create a distinct educational atmosphere and focus. Programs like Harrington's kindergarten through third grade community computer lab that features 25 Macintosh computers and Graham and Parks' development of innovative year-long themes to package standard curriculum in a bold, new way, distinguish the schools from one another and contribute toward the goals of Cambridge's school choice program.

Graham and Parks

The Sandra Graham and Rosa Parks Alternative Public School on 15 Upton Street, just west of Central Square, offers one choice. The school emerged in its present form as a result of the 1981 merger of the nationally touted magnet school, the Cambridge Alternative Public School, and the neighborhood district school, the Webster School. The school, now housed in Webster School's building, is the teaching center for 370 Cambridge children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

"This school has been a school of choice since its inception in 1972," Graham and Parks Principal Leonard Solo says.

Graham and Parks has carved a niche for itself within the Cambridge School system from the very beginning, notably for its emphasis on "cooperative learning." The school's staff work to facilitate learning as a social activity.

While several students may be reading silently in one part of the classroom, others may be working together on a social studies project, and still others are being helped one-on-one by the classroom teacher. Graham and Parks' alternative approach is also evident in the multi-graded organization of the classes.

"This school was started by parents who really enjoyed their preschools," parent coordinator Ann Bolger says. "They wanted to see their child's experience continued in the public schools...They were interested in the whole child."

Graham and Parks houses the city's Haitian bilingual program, as well. "It's the only place where they can talk to [people] and teach them in their native language," Hudicourt-Barnes says. Hudicourt-Barnes, who teaches first through fourth graders in the bilingual program, said that Graham and Parks offers the only choice in terms of the language and that this is the motivation for many Creole-speaking parents.

Harrington School

The Harrington School, just past Inman Square on Cambridge Street, offers a different environment for Cambridge children. At almost 700 students, Harrington houses a Portuguese bilingual program. Follow Through Program for students in grades K-3, along with the mainstream "traditional" approach to education.

"We find our population here at Harrington tend to be those who haven't had preschool experience," Sousa says. Characterizing the students as coming from largely "working middle class" families, Sousa says that the extended network of relatives and friends care for young children, instead of preschool teachers, in many cases.

Harrington features the "Say Yes to Education" idea that started two years ago with second graders. Each of the 67 students was awarded a four-year scholarship to the school of his or her choice by the Weiss Foundation, which is based in Philadelphia, Penn. Each child has a mentor and recently took a standardized test as part of the program.

Harrington also features a "Parents as Partners" Computer Program and an English as a Second Language Center, both of which utilize the 25 Macintosh computers Harrington acquired through a partnership with Jonsten and Lotus corporations.

Peabody School

In contrast, the aura of academia still pervades the Peabody School, located on Linnean Street on the grounds of the Radcliffe Quad.

"Previous to desegregation every school had its own personality. By virtue of its location in the middle of academia, [Peabody] was a private school within the system," says Ellen M. Varella, acting principal of the Peabody School. "Even with desegregation, it still retains that flavor or reputation," Varella says.

Peabody School, for example, has the aura of a school for the affluent academic children even now, although as fourth grader Chloe A. Kandall says. "There is a mix of all different kids."

Peabody, a popular choice, boasts a K-3 model school for reading. The mainstay of this program is the school's Literacy Center, staffed with a early childhood specialist and part-time reading assistants for all first and second graders.

Peabody hosts an English as a Second Language Center and has facilities for special needs students, as well. "I think choice has really added for every school," Varella says. "There are so many children from different backgrounds...it probably wouldn't occur in a neighborhood school."

Socioeconomic Diversity?

Most people involved in the system seem to believe that the original aim, racial desegregation, has been achieved. But while colors may be mixed, economic distinctions blur less easily.

McGrath notes that when the original planners of the controlled choice broached the idea of socioeconomic integration more than 10 years ago, they were accused of "social engineering."

"How do you have a socioeconomic integration, as well? We are looking at that again," McGrath says. This year's incoming kindergarten class received a series of questions that addressed the child's parents' level of education and whether the child had attended pre-school, among other issues. The specific use that the answers to these questions will serve has not yet been decided.

"It's a tough issue--how do you really get at it?" McGrath said. "You can't just go with free and reduced lunch [statistics]."

Varella asks, "How can you judge [socioeconomic status]? If you base it on the lunch, I would say that 30 percent of the children that go here are economically needy."

"The [Graham and Parks] school has two classes--it has a large number of middle class parents and probably 40 percent of the people are working class or poor," Hudicourt-Barnes says. "I'm not sure that we know very well how to address everyone's problems."

Bolger, also of Graham and Parks, sees class as a variance in the level of access and awareness a person has to information, not by income level. "The class issue is real inequity...and not an easily resolvable one," Bolger says.

Currently, Cambridge's schools are balanced exclusively according to race.

Those involved in the system, from parents to administrators to the Superintendent of Schools herself, agree that class is an issue that has not yet been resolved by the current system of controlled choice, and that, so far, the means of addressing this gap have not been formulated.