‘HUMBLING’ DATA DUMP
Skipper vows to fix poor use of key BPS intel
Flawed data is holding back Boston schools in a “humbling” discovery Superintendent Mary Skipper said she’s moving “urgently” to correct.
The key, she added, is if city schools are going to rebound the facts need to lead administrators in the right direction.
“Reading the data audit was a humbling experience,” Skipper said this week. “When I came back to BPS five months ago I knew there’d be hard realities that as a district we have to face and we can’t fix them unless we know what they are.”
Skipper said it’s all the result of decades of slapping “band-aids” on systemic issues.
The report she referenced was a recently released EY Parthenon audit on the district’s handling of withdrawal, safety, transportation and other critical data commissioned by the state.
The report showed broad sweeps of missing and inaccurate data — highlighting withdrawals and incidents of student restraints in schools data in the “greatest risk” designation — and a generally “weak” system of data oversight.
Chair Jeri Robinson said as a school committee member since 2014, the district’s widespread problems aren’t a surprise but “quite honestly frustrating.”
“It’s well past time for the adults in this city and in this system to put children first,” Robinson said.
School Committee member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez remarked on the “trust deficit” between district officials and the public, exacerbated by this most recent revelation that cited data has been significantly inaccurate.
“I’ve been thinking about the graduation data specifically, which I pressed a lot around a year ago,” CardetHernandez remarked, referencing a report finding that the district is missing 80% of withdrawal documentation for students who leave BPS schools. “We were told it was accurate, and we don’t have concerns. And so this is a trust issue.”
Skipper outlined a couple steps of the district’s response to the issues, including the launch of an Office of Compliance and Risk Management to maintain regular audits and investments in data infrastructure.
BPS officials also remarked on steps taken since the auditors evaluated the system, including “significant improvement” on transportation data. The report found data on arrival times was missing for 25% of buses in the 2021-22 year, but BPS officials said recent audits have found the data was missing for an average of 7.7% of buses between September and January.
Skipper said she anticipates the process of systemic improvement will take about three years.
The superintendent also used the meeting to emphasize beyond the data issues, the district is taking a serious look at several highprofile problems like the recent safety and transportation reports.
“What I want everyone to understand is when we talk about systems change, this is the time for the change,” Skipper said. “We have all the reports. We have the information. Now it’s time for us to actually follow through with them.”