Report: ‘Weak district accountability’ cause for concern
Audit finds widespread data collection issues
Tracking and reporting when students drop out of school and incidents in which students are restrained are major issues among other oversight and accountability concerns documented in a state-commissioned report on Boston Public Schools.
“As it relates to data management and oversight, we found that in general there was relatively weak district accountability,” Kate Pinto, senior director at the research group EY-Parthenon, said Tuesday morning in a board meeting for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that discussed the report. “Data is pretty often getting reported to DESE without a lot of review from the central office.”
The study of BPS’s data collection and management was commissioned by the state as part of an agreement with BPS last year to avoid a state takeover of the district.
The firm reviewed collected data, district policies and conducted interviews in the 2021—22 school year, determining the risk associated with types of missing or inaccurate data.
Researchers put student withdrawal and “restraint” incidents in the highest risk category.
There is no districtlevel oversight of data on students who withdraw from BPS schools, the report said. Of the sample checked, BPS did not have supporting documentation for 80% of the students who left schools.
This may mean graduation rates could be inaccurate, board members noted. BPS is reportedly conducting a manual review of the data this year.
BPS also failed to report 30% of incidents in which a student was restrained in schools to DESE, as require by the state, the report said, and lacks any formal district oversight of the data.
The report also documented several “moderate risk” data issues.
Data on buses on-time arrival performance — a highprofile issue for the district — was missing for 25% of routes. These routes went undocumented largely because they were either uncovered or had no functioning GPS tracking.
Approximately 25% of special education plans in the district were overdue for review due to faulty data monitoring, meaning a large category of kids may have outdated plans.
And though BPS policy states bullying investigations should be completed in five days, the report found about 32% of reports from the Bullying Hotline were not marked closed by the end of the year.
The report made a wide list of recommendation for additional positions and policies to review data, and noted BPS has begun to correct some issues just within the 2022-23 year.
“I was really encouraged by (Superintendent Mary Skipper’s) reflections on what EY found, but also the solutions that they’ve already started thinking about in place,” said Chris Librizzi, EY-Parthenon’s managing director.