Boston Superintendent Mary Skipper on new Inclusive Education plan: 'Change had to happen'

Paris Alston is co-host of Morning Edition at GBH News.

Gal Tziperman Lotan is a digital producer for GBH’s Morning Edition.

November 28, 2023

Updated November 28, 2023

Paris Alston: This is GBH's Morning Edition. For years, Boston Public Schools has underserved Black and brown students in special education and multilingual learning. Now the district is out with a new five-year inclusive education plan to address that. It's part of an agreement BPS made in 2022 to avoid a state takeover, and it will begin rolling out next year. Superintendent Mary Skipper joins us now to talk more about it. Hello, Superintendent Skipper, and welcome to GBH's Morning Edition.

Mary Skipper: Good morning, Paris. Thank you for having me.

Alston: So what all will be done under this plan that wasn't being done before? And how will that change the students' day-to-day?

Skipper: Right. So I think it's important when we talk about the inclusive ed plan to talk about why we're here, really for our special education students in particular, but also for our English language learners in Boston. You know, this is decades and decades of less choice for parents and students in the programs that they were able to select. Students were, instead of us focusing on services and ensuring that could happen across all schools, we very much concentrated them in programs. And that meant more restrictive environments. It also meant less choice for our parents and our students. Also, when you look statistically at the performance, what you see is, is that they are very much underperforming relative to their non-disabled peers and English-only peers. And that's not okay. This has been decades and decades of opportunity and performance gap that we've seen here in Boston. We've also you know, if you're a Black student, a Black male, you're three times more likely to be in a substantially separate setting with emotional impairment. If you are a multilingual learner, you are two and a half times more likely to be in a substantially separate setting and be diagnosed with a communications disorder. So lots of data to just say that what we were doing doesn't work. And I think the inclusive ed plan, you know, again, we've said from the start we are going to learn from it. There are going to be parts of it that will be messy when we first implement it. But I think the goal is to really make sure that both our special education students and our multilingual learners have the least restrictive access to a high-quality education with grade level, high-quality instruction that also is with high-quality instructional materials. And that is something that sounds as if it should have been happening. But in the reality, when we look at the past, it was not happening.

Alston: Yeah. And I want to talk more about why that was. But this plan is going to take those students who were historically put into a separate learning environment and integrate them into general education, right? And I know that there's research that suggests that this will help those students to learn more easily. So why wasn't that happening? And to your point about Black and Latino male students, how was it that they were able to disproportionately be mis-identified as having these learning disabilities?

Skipper: I think sometimes in large districts, rather than look at individual students and see their needs and their services, we instead group students. And we group them for lots of efficiency reasons. It can be scheduling, it can be transportation, it can be performance. So lots of ways in which we work away from the individual student and what they actually need. I think what our inclusive ed plan attempts to do is undo a lot of that. It really kind of has four tenets. The first is making sure, you know, and this is what will be different, making sure that our students, our special education and our multilingual learners, that they have access to high-quality grade level instruction with materials that are high-level and high-quality. And we believe that that will lead to improved performance from an academic and an opportunity setting for our students. That being said, I think secondly, you know, they will from a team perspective, have access to a team supporting them. And that is very different than how it is now, where you might have one instructor and a paraprofessional with a group of students. Instead there will be a team supporting. We're already beginning that planning with our inclusion planning teams in each of the schools, and that's going to really help our students to get a broader range of real world skills, you know, lots of academic supports. Third is making sure that they have supports in the interventions they need to be able to access that high quality instruction at grade level in those materials. And lastly, you know, I think with the Green New Deal, there's a commitment both at the city and with our mayor to make sure that our very aged old buildings that don't support academic programing the way we need them to, that that changes, and that our students are actually able to be in that 21st century type of facility that's going to support academic programing, particularly inclusive education.

Alston: Now, even as all of these corrections are made, Superintendent, what do you say to the parent who is worried about their child getting left behind in this more inclusive setting, or maybe not being welcomed into the classroom by their peers?

Skipper: So this is really it's very much grounded in the team, the IEP team, and the parent is a critical component of that team. We're working very hard right now to educate all of the staff that will be working with our parents, everything from our family liaisons, you know, up through the actual educators who will be part of that team process. The parent still has full ability to decide whether or not the student goes into the inclusive ed setting. But we want to make sure that we help to educate all those folks that are going to be supporting the parents in making that decision.

Alston: Now, I want to zero in on the part of this plan here, Superintendent, about the English language learners, because we do know that eight members of a 13-member English learners taskforce resigned over this part, another nine separately citing concerns about students having to learn English while also learning academic content and English at the same time, and worries that that could exacerbate current gaps in their performance and increase dropout rates. How valid were those concerns to you?

Skipper: So first, I always will begin by thanking all of the members who over decades gave their time here in the city of Boston and in the Boston public schools who are part of the task force. I think that, you know, when we look at the results for our English language learners, what we see is just decades of very, very low performance, sometimes as low as five times less likely for an English language learner to be at proficient level in English than their counterparts who speak English only. So making change had to happen. And I think change can be hard. I think we're working very hard with our schools and our community for multilingual learners to make sure that they understand what we are doing and what we aren't doing. You know, what we are doing is we are deepening our newcomer programing. We're deepening our SLIFE [Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education] programing, which is for our interrupted learners, making sure they have social emotional supports as well. We're really looking at our entrance and exit criteria for our multilingual learners, which is really critical for them making progress in moving through. Sometimes we had English language learners five, six, seven years staying in small classes with only their, you know, only peers who are who are not English speakers. And what that yielded was just really poor performance. I mean, instead we're trying to be really exact about making sure our programing meets the student's needs when it comes to our multi language learners and we are adopting, you know, the sheltered English immersion, you know, model of the state, which means that it's not general education classes —

Alston: So, Superintendent, we do unfortunately have to stop there due to time, but we would love to keep this conversation going with you. That is Boston Public School Superintendent Mary Skipper. Thank you so much.

Skipper: Thank you so much.

Alston: You're listening to GBH News.

Boston Public Schools officials are out with a new five-year inclusive education plan to address long-running disparities in student performance.

It's part of an agreement BPS made in 2022 to avoid a state takeover, and a reaction to years of underserving Black and brown students in special education and multilingual learning.

“I think it's important when we talk about the inclusive ed plan to talk about why we're here,” Superintendent Mary Skipper told GBH’s Morning Edition co-host Paris Alston. “This is decades and decades of less choice for parents and students in the programs that they were able to select. Instead of us focusing on services and ensuring that could happen across all schools, we very much concentrated them in programs. And that meant more restrictive environments.”

For years, students in special education and English language learners programs underperformed relative to peers in general education classes, Skipper said. Black and Latino students especially were more likely to be placed in such classrooms and be kept there for longer, even if the curriculum did not serve them.

“Sometimes we had English language learners five, six, seven years staying in small classes with only peers who are who are not English speakers. And what that yielded was just really poor performance,” Skipper said. “If you're a Black student, a Black male, you're three times more likely to be in a substantially separate setting with emotional impairment. If you are a multilingual learner, you are two and a half times more likely to be in a substantially separate setting and be diagnosed with a communications disorder.”

And instead of looking at individual students’ needs, Skipper said, the district would often lump students together without enough regard for what would help them learn.

The goal of the new plan, called the Inclusive Education Plan, is to make sure students with special needs and English language learners have more access to grade-level education, Skipper said.

“That is something that sounds as if it should have been happening. But in the reality, when we look at the past, it was not happening,” she said.

She outlined for tenets of the plan: Giving special education students and English language learners access to “high-quality grade level instruction;” giving the students support teams, which include their parents, their teachers and other staff; giving students access to supports and interventions they need; and updating the district’s old buildings to better support students.

“We're working very hard right now to educate all of the staff that will be working with our parents, everything from our family liaisons, you know, up through the actual educators who will be part of that team process,” Skipper said. “The parent still has full ability to decide whether or not the student goes into the inclusive ed setting. But we want to make sure that we help to educate all those folks that are going to be supporting the parents in making that decision.”

In late October, eight members of a 13-member English learners taskforce resigned over part of the plan, saying they were concerned taking language learners out of dedicated classes and asking them to learn English and other curricula at the same time may exacerbate performance gaps.

“I always will begin by thanking all of the members who over decades gave their time here in the city of Boston and in the Boston public schools who are part of the task force,” Skipper said.

But she stood by the changes, saying that years of disparities in performance have made some sort of change necessary.

“Making change had to happen,” Skipper said. “And I think change can be hard. I think we're working very hard with our schools and our community for multilingual learners to make sure that they understand what we are doing and what we aren't doing.”

The district announced on Tuesday that it will delay implementing changes to its English language learners program. Students in kindergarten and 7th grade will see changes in the fall of 2024. Students in grades 1, 2, 5, 6 and 8 will now have to make the change by the start of the 2025 school year. Grades 3, 4 and 9-12 will see changes in the 2026-27 school year.