BARI and Boston Public Schools (BPS) collaborated on a data-driven approach to identifying inequities in academic opportunities—whether driven by race, socioeconomic status, English language learner status, or otherwise—and to developing policies that can close the achievement gap. This took the form of two projects:
Equity in School Choice and Assignment. In 2018, BARI evaluated the equity impacts of BPS’ newest school choice and assignment system, known as the Home-Based Assignment Plan (HBAP). BPS adopted HBAP in 2013 as a new and innovative approach for providing more students access to quality schools close to home. The report revealed that geographic and racial inequities in access to quality schools persisted under HBAP and found that there ways that the algorithms underlying HBAP could be improved in these regards. The overarching lesson of the evaluation, however, was that there are limits to what any school choice and assignment plan can do when there are few high-quality schools in a city and that those schools are not evenly distributed across neighborhoods.
The Opportunity Index (OI) is a place-based metric that captures inequities in academic achievement that arise from factors outside of the control of schools that Boston Public Schools (BPS) and the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) constructed to inform funding and programming. In addition to considering factors that are traditionally used in funding decisions, like special education status and eligibility for free-or-reduced-price lunch, the OI is distinctive in that it takes seriously the consequences of neighborhood effects (i.e., the impacts of the events and conditions in one’s neighborhood) for academic achievement. For this reason, elements like neighborhood crime, concentrated poverty, and the academic attainment of local adults in a student’s community contribute to the calculation of the OI. The OI continues to be used to distribute certain funds, and its components provide guidance to school leaders as to the kinds of supports that would most benefit their students.
Investigators:
Nancy E. Hill (Harvard University), Dan O’Brien (Northeastern University)* *-Contact: d.obrien@neu.edu
Publications:
- O’Brien, D.T., Hill, N.E., Contreras, M., Phillips, N.E, Sidoni, G. 2018. An Evaluation of Equity in the Boston Public Schools’ Home-Based Assignment Policy. Boston Area Research Initiative.
- O’Brien, D.T., Hill, N.E., Contreras, M. 2017. The Opportunity Index: A Data-Driven Tool for Countering Inequities in Boston Public Schools.