BOSTON — Boston Public Schools say a human error made while calculating GPAs led to some students missing out on exam school invitations. In the meantime, other students were admitted to schools they shouldn’t have been.
According to the district, a total of 150 students were impacted. BPS is currently in the process of contacting their families.
The three BPS exam schools are Boston Latin Academy, Boston Latin School, and John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science and, each year, the district invites more than 1,300 students to attend these exam schools.
BPS says some schools in the district and non-BPS schools use different grading systems, some use grades of 1 - 4, others use A - F. BPS in particular uses a formula to calculate the A - F grades to the 1 - 4 system, assigning a number grade to each letter grade ranges (i.e. A+, A, A- = 1, etc.).
A human error made in the calculation of GPAs happened when the district switched to a new student database in 2018, effectively miscalculating GPAs for students for the 2019-2020 school year and the 2020-2021 school year.
BPS recently entered into a contract with a new testing vendor to address identified issues with equity and bias with the previous test.
Superintendent of Boston schools Brenda Cassellius says they’ll offer students enrollment into the exam school for which they’ve tested for and been deemed eligible.
Students admitted to schools by mistake will stay where they are for the time being.
“My top priority since arriving as Superintendent has been to ensure that every student in every school accesses the high quality teaching and learning and social emotional development they need to be successful scholars, engaged citizens, and the future leaders of our community. Today, we had to apologize to a group of students for not meeting our end of that partnership. We are calling students to invite them to attend one of our exam schools after we mistakenly left them out of the process. We deeply regret this error. We are committed to working with these students and their families to successfully enroll in one of our exam schools and to a strong start to the new school year.”
— BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius
For the 2019 - 2020 school year:
- 25 students should have been invited to attend an exam school but were not, including 4 from BPS schools and 21 from non-BPS schools.
- This included 10 white students, 8 Latinx students, 5 Black students and 2 Asian students
- There were 58 students who were invited to an exam school that was a different preference on their application, including 2 from BPS schools and 56 from non-BPS schools. Of these students, there were 23 white students, 18 Black students, 11 Latinx students, 5 Asian students, and 1 other.
For this year, school year 2020 - 2021:
- 37 students should have been invited to attend an exam school, including 2 from BPS schools and 35 from non-BPS schools.
- This included 12 Black students, 11 Latinx students, 9 white students, 4 other, and 1 Asian student.
- There are 32 students who were invited to an exam school that was a different preference on their application, including 3 from BPS schools and 29 from non-BPS schools. Of these students, there were 12 Black students, 11 white students, 6 Latinx students, 2 Asian students, and 1 other.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for alerts on breaking news stories like this one.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter.