Worcester, Massachusetts: The Best Urban School System in America

Worcester’s distinction, our nationally recognized mark of achievement for which we become known and recognized, should be to have the best urban school system in the United States. This goal, broadly defined, is achievable due to Worcester’s unique confluence of demographics, historical development and diverse mix of our citizens and non-citizens.

First we should include in our definition of urban schools our primary and secondary schools, including public, charter, parochial, private and the directly state funded Mass Academy. We should encourage these schools to stop viewing each other as threats and just plain out admit that public schools and teachers have the hardest job by far that their results cannot be fairly measured on the same matrix as the other schools. Let’s applaud the public schools and teachers and then openly utilize the other options freely.

Worcester starts with great advantage. University Park School, assisted by Clark University is already a national model, located in the heart of Worcester’s Main South area. Worcester Academy and the Bancroft School are two of the best urban prep schools in the country. The Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, with its joint program at WPI, guides its graduates to some of the best colleges in America. Worcester Technical High School (the old Worcester Voke) is also among the very best technical vocational schools in the U.S. Abbey Kelly and Seven Hills are two accomplished charter schools with long waiting lists. Holy Name, St. Peter-Marian, The Nativity School, and St. Mary’s are well-respected parochial schools. Doherty, Burncoat, South and North High schools provide a safe structured environment for a diverse middle and working class, as well as financially poorer and often transient population.

Further, our urban fabric is not predominated only by groups who have been unable for generations to break out of a cycle of poverty, but instead by immigrants from Ghana, Brazil, Albania, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, Liberia, Kenya, Columbia, China and India, who have joined U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico and working class and middle class Americans. Most of these groups of people generally have much more of a work ethic than groups mired in a history of generation after generation of urban poverty. Most of the people in our working class and poorer groups want to succeed and will work towards success. However, because the adult(s) in these families, at all levels of the socio-economic spectrum, but particularly these on the bottom half, are spending most of their available time and energy at work to support their family, major assistance needs to be forthcoming to provide the structure and resources necessary for success.

Much more funding is needed in three areas: pre-school education from birth to age five, after-school enrichment and summer programs. These programs are expensive but necessary to supplement or actually replicate what parents with proper focus, energy and resources do for their children in suburban and upper middle class contexts.

Early childhood spending will be expensive. But its value and worth is surely worth as much or more than all the money we are already spending on bricks and mortar construction of school building and city sidewalks and streetscapes. Instead of more new buildings, the Head Start program should be made much more available, not just to the poor but on a sliding scale for the economically lower middle class and the working poor. We’ll also then have job growth in early childhood education jobs, (jobs that cannot be exported abroad during this era of globalization).

Institutional fiefdoms, power centers and interest groups would lose some of their growl for resources and turf if teachers, administrators, school buses, programs and money could flow between and among the schools more seamlessly. A student centered, new way of educating our cities’ young would have these entities look at each other as collaborators not competitors. Tests developed to measure students’ achievement could be given to the students from all the Worcester schools. We could then put our scores out to all the cities in the U.S. to see how we measure up on a national standardized test scale, knowing that standardized tests are one measure – even if a limited one – of student achievement.

Lastly, our colleges should both join with and/or start community wide pre-school education programs to get our students ready for educating up our city and to help build a new urban magnet, merit based school at the old courthouse or the old UNUM building, which was previously, in part, a high school.

If this goal is accomplished, we will have educated and productive children, job growth, and gain national acclaim. Companies will come to locate in Worcester and our universities and colleges will expand. We’ll ascend in ways that bricks and concrete cannot touch; we will be home to one of the most, or among the most, educated, diverse urban centers in the United States. Then, we will accomplish something truly special.