Resources to more equitably educate Cambridge Public School students exist but are being under-utilized, according to a new equity audit that compiles two years of research on the district’s schools. The findings shed light on how a district that spends nearly double the national average per pupil produces disparate student outcomes on the basis of race and socioeconomic status.
“We should be uncomfortable with this. We should not feel this is okay,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation (CCF), which funded the audit. CCF partners with local non-profits to promote economic mobility and social equity.
The findings assert that the district should better use its “human capital,” invest in targeted and individualized tiers of instruction – a tier being approaches to teaching and supporting students – and collect more data on sub-groups of students to reduce rates of chronic absenteeism and to narrow gaps in state testing data.
The two-year study is a comprehensive review of CPSD internal workings, MCAS data, and district resource allocation to design a more effective use of the school district’s budget. “The report shows that the resources are available” to narrow discrepancies in student outcomes, the audit says.
The report points to persistent achievement gaps in the district. Students grouped as “High Needs, Low Income, Students with Disabilities, and English Learners” score below state averages in MCAS data, even in the district’s higher performing schools.
“Only 44 percent of Black students were achieving benchmark MCAS scores, compared with 59 percent of Latinx students and 80 percent of their White and Asian peers,” as reported in a 2021 study by the CCF.
This trend is the same for rates of chronic absenteeism. At Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 35 percent of students miss a tenth of their school days, in comparison to a statewide average of 25 percent.
The report’s release comes as the district is creating the budget for the school year that will begin July 1. The committee will conduct a public hearing on the proposed budget on March 17 and vote on its adoption on April 7, according to the district website.
CCF conducted “Budgeting for Equity and Student Success in Cambridge Public Schools” in partnership with Cambridge Public Schools and Thrive Industries Incorporated (THRIVE!), a company with a budgeting algorithm designed to improve educational outcomes.
Performance gaps and chronic absenteeism
The report makes important distinctions between district, school-specific and group-focused data. While CPSD performed above the state average in MCAS data in the 2023-24 school year, and its composite scores surpassed the state average in ELA and Math in 2024, there remain significant barriers for marginalized students at schools throughout the district.
“When a district is already outperforming the state, the most meaningful improvement opportunities often come from looking within the district,” according to the audit.
Within the district, the schools that underperformed state averages in both ELA and Math scores in the 2023-24 school year are Fletcher Maynard Academy at the elementary level, and Cambridge Street and Darby Vassal at the upper school level. (Kennedy Longfellow School, which was shut down late last summer, is also mentioned in the audit as underperforming state averages at the time of the report.) Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, the district’s high school, scored above state averages.
Chronic absenteeism rates follow a different pattern, according to the report, which are about a half-percent higher than the state data in grades 3-8 and almost 10% higher than the state at the high school level.
The report’s initial phase, a review of central-office operations, analyzed internal planning documents from the district and 10 budget development meetings that took place between January and March 2023. The audit specified that these included the Joint School Committee/City Council Meeting, CPSD Executive Leadership Team meetings, program budget planning sessions, and community meetings.
The district should be more effectively utilizing “human capital,” the audit recommends. It remained “unclear” as to whether the district was considering existing personnel for new roles, and investing in areas like cross-department partnership and professional development.
The audit also points to a lack of “shared vision” between administrators, which conflicts with the District Plan. It recommends re-orienting senior leaders’ visions of success around a concrete district plan. The school committee began the process of crafting a new District Plan, which will set goals for the next four years, at a February 6 retreat.
Participatory budgeting, where many stakeholders have an opportunity to weigh in on district investments, and more consistent use of data across departments, are two key recommendations from phase one.
“Some budget requests lacked clear links to demonstrated needs,” the audit says. All programs that provide the district with student support should be required to track outcome data regularly, the audit recommends.
The second phase of the report is a review of the district’s 17 individual schools, to further analyze the performance of marginalized groups throughout the district.
Strengths to build upon
The report identifies highly-qualified staff as a district strength, but notes that “staff capacity is underutilized” at implementing social-emotional learning programs. Positive Action, a program recognized by the Department of Education designed to encourage positive thoughts and actions at school, has demonstrated positive impacts on literacy and math rates for students of color, the report notes. The program costs $35-45 per student.
A lack of “low-cost” programs may be contributing to Cambridge’s equity problem, according to the report, which calls for the district “to consider a broad investment in the highest impact, empirically proven SEL (social and emotional learning) school interventions, science-backed literacy curricula, math curricula, and family engagement models at each of the different tiers,” the report says.
The district uses a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), which differentiates between instruction provided to all children (Tier one), targeted small-group instruction (Tier two), and highly-individualized intensive support for specific students (Tier three). While CPSD is excelling at the first tier of instruction, the report recommends focusing on the later tiers where achievement gaps grow. At the time of the report, low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and high need students made up a majority of students in tiers two and three.
The report points to this underinvestment as a “missing link” in achieving education equity in the district.
Along with the report, THRIVE! has issued 17 school-specific plans for student outcome improvement.
The report’s findings were discussed publicly at a February 9 event, featuring conversation with educational researchers, representatives from CCF, and CPS Superintendent Dave Murphy.
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This process and report shows the importance of standardized testing to illuminate the inequities of resource allocation. Clearly greater resources – money, staff and didactic materials (digital, audio, and visual aids) must be directed toward students who are struggling, by subject matter, with more general support available within classrooms and at schools with a preponderance of students with learning challenges. How would we know how to target these resources without the data that testing provides?
I agree wholeheartedly with lblout. I’m dismayed by the resistance to testing among so many parents in the district. We would all love to believe that we’re doing a great job, especially when it comes to poor, minority and disabled students. Eliminating the pesky objective indicators that demonstrate we’re not is a great way to maintain our illusions. And if we try something new, how are we supposed to know whether it’s working? Vibes? Too many intellectuals in this community have taken a decidedly non-intellectual approach to education and equity.