Boston `recruits' kindergarteners

24 November 2000

There are small signs, a quarter-century after court-ordered busing of students virtually destroyed the city's schools, that Boston is emerging from its educational purgatory.

One such sign can be found in kindergarten.

The city has just launched an innovative program call "Countdown to Kindergarten." The idea is to get parents thinking about their child's first year of school well before it begins.

Sending your kid to school is a scary and intimidating experience. Entrusting a child who's not old enough to cross the street to the maw of a vast school department is nerve-racking. And Boston's complex system and arcane assignment rules - three zones, at least 20 schools per zone, and three citywide schools - are enough to addle any brain. On top of that, not all schools are created equal. Some elementary schools are good, others less so. One has to play the system, choosing the best schools in the hopes of getting in but still leaving room for a "safe" school - one that's good but perhaps not as popular.

As part of "Countdown to Kindergarten," city workers, community organizations and volunteers this November have begun to contact parents of 4-year-olds, offering them information about kindergarten. They plan to work with parents to set up times when they can visit schools that their kids might attend. They hope to meet with parents to figure out what schools would be best for their children and then assist them through the application process.

In a sense, one can look at the program and think it's no big deal. Providing information to parents is a nice thing, of course, and earlier is always better. It seems the obvious thing to do.

In fact, though, it really is a big deal. For one thing, obvious or not, schools just haven't done it before.

"Customer-friendly" is practically a foreign concept for public school systems, so much so that Boston's program is thought to be unique in the nation. Other school systems contact parents a few weeks or a few months, in advance of kindergarten, but none reach out as early or as extensively as Boston hopes to.

But Boston's program is about more than information. It's about parental involvement. The real intent of the program is to get parents to participate actively in their children's education, by thinking about what schools would suit their needs, helping them prepare for the rigors of kindergarten (and if you think kindergarten isn't rigorous, then you forget just how tough it was to read "Run, Spot, run" aloud to your peers) and establishing early on that the success of their education will depend on mom and dad's own interest and concern.

There's a compelling idea here. An increasing amount of data supports the notion that the degree to which parents are involved in their children's education relates directly to their academic achievement. School reformers, evaluating educational alternatives such as charter schools, cite those schools' insistence on parental involvement as a key reason for their success.

Which brings us back to busing.

Busing was supposed to be Boston's remedy to its shameful history of segregation. For years the Boston School Committee had deliberately segregated the city's schools, drawing district lines to ensure that whites attended one school while blacks attended another. To compound the crime, the black schools were underfunded. White schools got the new textbooks; black schools got the discards.

In 1974, a federal court mandated an extreme remedy: Schools were to be immediately desegregated. Black students were to be shipped to white schools; white students to black.

But however noble the court's purpose, its decision had a multitude of corrosive effects on education. Families with enough money left the system for private schools or simply left the city altogether. Politicians spent time bashing busing rather than improving scbools. Schools focused on matters other than educating children. And the level of parents' involvement in their children's education plummeted.

Parents using the Boston public schools had no choice in deciding where their children were to go to school. Kids were assigned a school, often miles from home, often in neighborhoods that were unknown and inaccessible to parents. The attitude developed that education was the SCHOOL'S responsibility. Parents had little role to play.

In the years since, Boston has slowly emerged from busing. Courts once oversaw every decision by the School Committee. Now the city runs its own schools. Schools were once assigned. Now parents have substantial leave to choose their own schools. The racial guidelines that once constricted a parent's choice are gone.

It is a change that has happened so slowly that there are still many within the city - particularly its politicians - who are seemingly unaware that "busing" (except as a mode of transportation) is no more.

In stressing the primacy of parental participation in education, Countdown to Kindergarten signals that those days are over. Parents once again matter.