Tanisha Sullivan’s agenda undermining Boston
As president of Boston’s NAACP, Tanisha Sullivan’s mission is to fight race-based discrimination. Her agenda in shaping city policy, however, is a study in racism.
Sullivan helped shape Boston’s “unity” map, which creates anything but unity in the city. By carving out the white Irish Catholic citizens of Dorchester’s District 3 and moving them into District 4, Sullivan delivered a one-two punch of disenfranchisement and payback. She divided African Americans living in District 4, the largest Black district in the city. This is what you get for not supporting Sullivan and other progressive candidates in the recent elections.
The fallout for Sullivan’s “unity” map? Outraged citizens and a lawsuit against the city.
Sullivan didn’t grow up in Boston and didn’t attend Boston Public Schools. She was raised in Brockton and attended the prestigious Thayer Academy in Braintree. The 2020-21 tuition was $51,800. Sullivan’s father taught at The John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science.
None of this stopped her from the reckless pursuit to undermine Boston’s exam schools. Sullivan chaired the Exam School Working Group during the COVID
pandemic, and set out to end the meritocracy for entrance into exam schools and replace it with mediocrity. A subsequent interim policy for Boston’s exam schools based admission on grades and zip codes.
This tier system replaces students from the top-performing BPS schools with students from historically underperforming BPS schools. This policy is the modern version of the busing fiasco of the 1970s, which forcibly put children from underperforming schools in environments they were ill prepared for. Those from better schools who could perform well were shipped out and deprived of quality educations.
Today, the students from underperforming schools who’ve leapfrogged ahead of those with better grades from better schools must also adapt to environments they aren’t prepared for.
What’s the fallout of their struggle — for themselves and the exam schools?
Black and white students denied seats are suffering — no surprise there, but Asian children have taken the largest blow. Despite making up about 10% of Boston’s population, 29% of Asians here live in poverty. A good exam school education is highly prized and strived for, and Asian students have been greatly represented in these institutions.
According to a 2018 Harvard Kennedy School report, until 2021, exam school admissions were based half on the Independent School Entrance Exam, or ISEE, and half on GPA. Black and Latino students were less likely than their white and Asian classmates to take the exam — and those who did scored lower than white and Asian students with similar fifth grade state test scores, the report found. ticket to better opportunity
Sullivan and the task force’s policy discriminates against
Asian students. Under the new plan, Asian children lost a significant number of seats at Boston’s exam schools. Their parents are fighting back, first with a petition against the policy signed by 1,150 Asian parents who distributed it to Boston City Councilors. The Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence (BPCAE) have filed a lawsuit against the Boston Public Schools over the exam school policy.
Unfortunately, this reckless anti-Asian bias isn’t a story the liberal media or city leaders can get behind.
Tanisha Sullivan is making her mark on the city. And Boston is the worse for it.