Cambridge School Committee Faces ‘Difficult’ Decisions to Close Achievement Gaps

The Cambridge School Committee raised the possibility of school and resource reorganization to close persistent achievement gaps in the district’s standardized test scores at a four-hour meeting on Tuesday night.

The discussion came as the district goes through its sixth month without a permanent superintendent. Though the district officially launched its search on Tuesday, after several delays, parents and educators will likely be looking to interim superintendent David G. Murphy to address longstanding disparities in the test scores.

Since taking office in July, Murphy has reshuffled his executive team, managed lengthy bussing delays, and rolled out a no-phone policy at Cambridge’s high school. In an interview with The Crimson in September, he did not rule out considering the permanent role.

Even as Murphy’s future in the district remains uncertain, he braced the School Committee for “difficult” decisions to tackle persistent achievement gaps revealed in this year’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores.

“I can’t stress enough that I believe there is an urgency to this,” he said. “And so it may be the case that difficult recommendations will come in the short-term.”

Murphy also said he did not expect “any final decisions” coming within the next 24 hours, but maintained that “we are on the precipice of important decisions that have to be made.”

Tuesday’s meeting featured the final component of a three-part MCAS disaggregation presentation saga where district officials presented achievement “challenges” — especially “inconsistent outcomes” across schools and student demographic groups.

In the presentation, district officials named Kennedy-Longfellow School and Fletcher Maynard Academy as two “outliers” in CPS’ performance. According to the presentation, KLO and FMA’s English Language Arts MCAS scores reached five-year lows in 2024, and on the math test, only 29 and 34 percent of students met or exceeded expectations, respectively.

These scores are more than 50 percentage points lower than Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, which was awarded the National Blue Ribbon School distinction the same academic year.

Committee member Richard Harding, Jr. stressed the need for an honest talk on how to rectify persistent underachievement.

“I don’t think tomorrow we’re closing the KLO,” Harding said. “So we’re going to have to have a real serious conversation — a courageous conversation — about what exactly are we going to do now.”

At the meeting, members also contemplated KLO and FMA’s large proportion of high needs enrollment — referring to students who are low-income, English learners or former English learners, or who have disabilities.

While MLK’s ratio of high needs enrollment sits at 40 percent, KLO and FMA high needs enrollment is 86 and 83 percent, respectively, according to the presentation.

Murphy said specialized programming at schools — such as FMA’s extended day and specialized classroom program or KLO’s sheltered English immersion program — might concentrate high needs populations in certain schools. He added, however, that he did not “have an explanation” for why FMA and KLO’s high needs population distributions were fifteen percentage points higher than any other CPS school.

School Committee Vice Chair Caroline Hunter said she was “prepared” to make some tough calls, including restructuring schools and their programming.

“I’m prepared to make the tough decision if we have to reorganize a school, if we have to redistribute or repurpose a program,” she said, adding that she wanted to be “a part of the conversation” with parents and caregivers at both schools.

The committee pledged to schedule a roundtable meeting where they will continue the conversation, with member Elizabeth C.P. Hudson asking for the meeting to come in “the short-term.”

“I think it’s important that we have this discussion,” Simmons said of the roundtable. “We’re talking about a precious asset, which is our children and we do have to make those hard decisions.”

Leading up to the roundtable, which has not been scheduled, Murphy was tasked with gathering relevant data on specialized programs and developing recommendations — recommendations which may be tough pills to swallow.

“What I’m not willing to do is be disingenuous and tell you that our structure as it currently exists can continue to exist if we want to change the outcomes,” he said. “So if something becomes the only option to serve students, that is the option that we will recommend.”

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com.