THE OPERATORS
Meet the third-party partners who are really running Boston Public Schools
By Chris Faraone
No New England boy was allowed to question that he was destined to succeed in life, and Boston was determined that the boys and girls, and the blind and the lame as well, should have the opportunity to know enough.
So wrote historian Van Wyck Brooks in his 1936 regional portrait. Describing the impact of Horace Mann and the ensuing whirlwind of education reform that transformed the commonwealth and eventually young America, Brooks emphasized the strong New England tradition of pushing growing minds to overcome inadequacies and become scholars.
In retrospect, that description by Brooks could pass for the motivational speak in which contemporary ed reformers traffic. Take, for example, a 2010 report by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE); titled “Human Capital in Boston Public Schools,” the manifesto calls for a “commitment to a high quality public education system that will prepare all students to engage successfully in a global economy and society.”
The tone sounds familiar. Unlike in Horace Mann’s day, however, in 2015 the push for sweeping overhauls in schools comes from business groups like MBAE, whose directorial board is a who’s who of construction, banking, and other executives. Said human capital research was conducted with grants from the Barr Foundation, The Boston Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all major players in this steady and ubiquitous disruption. The “corporate ed reform movement,” as some critics categorize such venture philanthropy, has come under fire of late due to various brazen grabs for public education dollars. As Business Insider reported last month about a Gates Foundation forum in Manhattan, which was titled Bonds & Blackboards: Investing In Charter Schools:
Hedge funds and other private businesses are particularly interested in the growth and success of charter schools. The growth of charter networks around the US offer new revenue streams for investing, and the sector is quickly growing. Funding for charter schools is further incentivized by generous tax credits for investments to charter schools in underserved areas.
Beneath the surface war between unions and charter school cheerleaders like Gates, a much more nuanced shift in administration and policy has gone virtually unnoticed, at least in the Bay State. As ascertained by interviews conducted for this story, very few families, administrators, or even workers inside Boston Public Schools (BPS) know exactly what’s happening, as the line between traditional schools and their charter counterparts grows blurrier. Even if the public institution in your neighborhood, or the one that your child, niece, or nephew attends, is a public school in name, outside partners may be tasked with duties ranging from teaching to counseling.
Similar to the way in which the MBTA Commuter Rail is operated by Keolis, a private company, an increasing number of third-party players are being given control of Hub schools. Unlike the MBTA arrangement though, this is a case in which money flowing from taxpayers to nonprofit BPS partners is often difficult to trace, and is not always itemized for transparency purposes. Despite tepid-to-weak results stemming from partnerships in Mass so far, the trend continues; in one recent example that spurred controversy among Roxbury residents, BPS handed over the struggling Dearborn School on Geneva Street to a non-governmental entity, along with a new $70 million state-of-the-art Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) facility. The new Dearborn won’t technically be a charter school, but it will be run by a charter operator (or “receiver,” as they’re sometimes called).
Charter partners have varying roles in almost every school where they have contracts, which in certain cases seems to make for an administrative mess. Upon discovering that Shaun Harrison, a dean at English High School in Jamaica Plain, had apparently shot a student who was dealing weed for him, BPS was unable to immediately pinpoint how Harrison first became a city worker. By the time he was employed at English, Harrison had held jobs at four BPS schools, all of which had receiverships or partner agreements during his tenure. More than a month after the arrest, however, very little remains known about his movements as a dean and educator. The Boston Globe concluded in early April that, “His path to Magazine Street [where he allegedly tried to execute a student] may never be fully known. But Harrison worked alone.”
Though pieces of his personal mystery persist, the trail of Harrison’s steps within BPS help to explain how schools in Boston, heck, in all of Massachusetts have been quietly overtaken by many of the same forces behind the Boston 2024 Olympics, the subprime lending crisis, school software and testing companies, and dozens of investment funds and business interests that are impacting everything from policy to curriculum. This is not another article about the fight over the number of commonwealth institutions that operate outside of the direct purview of school districts and unions — the “charter cap” debate, as reporters have characterized that polarizing spat. Nor is this a wholesale attack on the so-called “education reform movement,” which even many of its critics reluctantly concede has forced public school loyalists to welcome new challenges. This saga is infinitely more complex than any of the buzzword dramas playing out in the media, and that may be the most alarming part.
