Some things to read this weekend

please enjoy this tree in Palmer

 I've shared much of this on either Twitter or Bluesky, but for those not on there, or who find this easier:

• I'm sneaking this in here due to her connection with the Worcester Public Schools: Senate President Karen Spilka recently asked for ideas on which woman deserves a statute in the state senate, and here is a suggestion it should be Frances Perkins (graduate of Classical High). 
  
  
• There's new research out on state takeovers of school districts, and, as EdWeek writes: 
  

  Politicians typically pitch state takeovers as efforts to help steer a sinking ship to calmer waters. But existing and emerging research offers a more mixed and less rosy view.

  And speaking of state takeovers, things are not great in Houston. 
  

• You may have heard a lot about Norwegian cell phone bans in school. Here's a blunt list of what was actually found.
  

• The bill that passed the House this week adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic is what has been repeatedly called for in public testimony before the Mass Board of Ed; it happened at the January meeting, from the panel invited by Chair Katherine Craven, and then again in February and March. Lest you think it only happens elsewhere. 

• This opinion piece in the New York Times on college admissions spends too much time from the perspective of a wealthy student, but some of the points are useful. Sara Goldrick-Rab, meanwhile, reminds us of community colleges and decisions that need not be made in the spring.

• Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law this week new penalties for those passing a stopped school bus:
  

  Illegally passing a stopped school bus is now classified as a high and aggravated misdemeanor, resulting in a fine of no less than $1,000,12 months in jail, or both.

• A Marin County grand jury found that asking parents to provide school supplies was contrary the California education code:
  

  “Public schools in California are required to provide, at no cost to students or their families, all the supplies, materials and equipment necessary to fully participate at school,” the grand jury states in an introduction to the report. “As a result, it is improper for public schools to distribute lists of school supplies that are required or requested.”

• This piece on rules came in response to the college response to college protests this week, but I thought it applies well to how schools run, too:
  

  We spend our lives being socialized to believe that failure to follow rules is harmful to society. Less remarked upon is the equally important fact that overzealous, unthinking enforcement of the rules is just as harmful to society. Inflexible as rules are, they cannot function effectively without the ability of their enforcers to compare their text to the fluctuating exigencies of the real world. Small-minded determination to use rules as the final word on all human conduct is characteristic of goons, acting with the desperate meanness that comes from the need to have an easy club with which to beat back the imposing intricacy of life.

  And speaking of those, McSweeney's doesn't miss. 

Sarah Ellis Wilson, Worcester teacher (and why Worcester wasn't part Morgan v. Hennigan)

image from First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality
in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1862-1900

From First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1862-1900 by Janette Thomas Greenwood:

Graduating from Classical High School in Worcester, the city's premier public high school, Sarah Ella Willis [whose parents, who had been enslaved, migrated to Worcester from Virginia after the Civil War] entered Worcester Normal School and graduated in 1894. She subsequently became a beloved teacher in the city's public schools and taught first grade for forty-nine years at the Belmont Street Elementary School. One of first African-Americans hired in the Worcester school system, Wilson was a pioneer, mentor, and role model to countless children, regardless of race or ethnicity.

I had heard of Ms. Willis in passing before, but I did not realize how close her family was to slavery, nor that she herself had attended Classical High. This is history we should know better.



I read Greenwood's book in hopes of discovering why it was that, while Springfield was included in the Morgan v. Hennigan decision (the Boston bussing decision), Worcester was not. Worcester's Black population is and has been much smaller than that of Springfield's or Boston's, but I haven't known enough Worcester history past the beginning of the Civil War to know why Worcester's population of free Blacks (here since the early days of settlement) didn't grow as it did elsewhere. There was growth in the Black population during and after the Civil War as those freed in some cases came north to places familiar through occupation of northern forces or through missionary teachers. It then seems to have halted.

And Greenwood covers this:

After an influx of migrants to Worcester between 1880 and 1890, Worcester's black population languished in the first half of the twentieth century, never exceeding 2 percent of the overall population until 1980. Even the Great Migration, which brought millions of southern blacks to northern cities when the wartime shortages of white labor gave them access to industrial jobs, bypassed Worcester. Ella L. Vindal, who conducted a sociological study of Worcester's black community in the 1920's, noted that it was "not a migrant" community, as was typical in many northern cities during and after the Great Migration...Even as the state's black population grew by nearly 20 percent between 1910 and 1920--increasing at a rate even faster than the overall population--Worcester saw barely any increase at all, growing by only 0.7 percent.  Meanwhile, Springfield's black population increased by 80 percent, Brockton's increased by 50 percent, and Boston's increased by 20.3 percent. It is likely that the city had earned a reputation as an inhospitable place, which would not have been surprising given its negative attitude towards black labor...The city that once attracted fugitive and emancipated slaves alike because of its reputation for "benevolent sympathizers" now had a reputation for its paucity of kindness.

 emphasis added

Southwick on Worcester Classical and English High School

...when Worcester took the revolutionary step of making high school co-ed:

The Latin Grammar School, where John Adams once taught, had always been exclusively for boys. Worcester girls who aspired to higher education were given special classes in the Centre District School near Lincoln Square, and that school has sometimes been noted as the first public high school for girls in Massachusetts. There were also a number of private female seminaries available in the area, such as the well-known Mulberry Grove Boarding School in Leicester, run by sisters Eliza and Sarah Earle. Eli Thayer’s Oread Institute for female higher education opened later on Castle Street. But coeducation at the high school level was a novel idea in 1844, and the debate apparently became animated at times. 

Mr. Southwick goes on to cite the influence of Dr. Woodward, who more or less settled the issue by letting it be known he was in favor. Before he did, however, one of the "town fathers" (in a story I found in the Worcester Historical Museum files; not, alas, online!) said that he doubted the gentling influence of girls on the boys: when he had last passed the girls' school, he had been pelted by students with snowballs!
The second building for Worcester High School, built, as Mr. Southwick relates, on Walnut Street after the old building was outgrown, was a Victorian masterpiece. Designed by H.H. Richardson, and built by the Norcross Brothers, it had a central clock tower and was a city landmark until, after years of poor funding for maintenance, it was knocked down in 1966 for the building of then Paul Revere Insurance Company's new building. Of it, the New England Home Journal of 1883 said:

It stands as the stimulus of many hundreds of our youth in all the lower schools...

That's Worcester Classical and English High School (eventually Commerce) on the left and English High School (eventually Classical; now the Durkin Administration Building) on the right.

Comments on the exam school

By now you will have seen the announcement of the special committee to look at an exam school and International Baccalaureate program in Worcester. Mayor Petty has asked me to serve as chair. Per the mayor's announcement:

The special committee will study and report to the School Committee on the feasibility of establishing a school for 200 – 300 high achieving students in grades 9 – 12 to develop and promote academic excellence and leadership relevant to success in the 21st century.  Additionally, the special committee will explore an International Baccalaureate (IB) program for students in Worcester to help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn, and work in a rapidly globalizing world. Included in the report will be an analysis of potential risks and benefits of such a school, a recommendation for a school focus, recommended criteria useful for identifying students for admission, and projected costs. 

My comments from the press conference after the break:

Sharfman's Jewellers: this year's ornament

This year's ornament (the 25th year of Sharfman's ornaments) is the John E. Durkin Administration Building (the former, as John Durkin points out, Classical High School).
It's pointed out that you can buy them at Sharfman's.