Boston Municipal Research Bureau
March 2002
This short (8-page) and highly focused study by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau (in collaboration with the Massachusetts Advocacy Center) looks at how well the Boston Public School implemented some worthwhile reforms in the spring of 2001, reforms that the school system and its teachers' union had only agreed to in late 2000. The reason this is worth mentioning is that the reforms entailed giving school principals greater say over the selection of teachers for their schools than is common in big-city systems. The starting (and correct) premise is that staff selection is a key element of school success and that seniority rules shouldn't trump a school's ability to obtain the people it wants. Another change in Boston accelerated the annual teacher contracting cycle so that positions needing to be filled by going "outside the system" could be recruited for early enough to compete with suburban school systems. (Only in the context of an iron-grip teachers' contract would these even warrant attention. Many contractual impediments to staffing flexibility remain in Boston. Nothing, for example, was done about teacher tenure.) Considering the relatively short time the school system had to get ready for these changes in 2001, the authors of this report conclude, perhaps predictably, that they did pretty well but should do better next time. (Next time, incidentally, is right now.) If you'd like to read it, contact the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, Inc. at 617-227-1900. The report is free but you'll have to pay shipping.
