Boston Magazine is set to release its September issue with the annual ranking of the Top Massachusetts Public High Schools, and we already know that Belmont won’t make the Top 10 again this year. That’s because the magazine has already released its Top 10 districts, and Belmont’s name isn’t on the list.

Once again, its posh Weston atop the list of the school’s best public high school. Dover-Sherborn, Lexington, Wellesley, Concord-Carlisle, Bedford, Brookline, Wayland, Newton North and South fill out the list of the state’s best high schools, according to this story in The Globe.

Belmont ranked a paltry 29th out of 150 in last year’s high school rankings, despite landing numerous, national awards, including a Silver Medal on the U.S. News and World Report list of Best High Schools and an award from Forbes Magazine and Great Schools that listed Belmont as the top district among towns with a median home price between $600,000 and $799,000.

Why the sharp discrepancy in rankings? Simple: the Boston Magazine list ranks all the state’s school districts on their deviation from a mean for each of the data points that Boston looks at. Those include touchy issues for Belmont like Student-teacher ratio, where Belmont had the highest ratio (15.7:1) of any school in the top 50 districts, excepting Boston Latin. Per pupil spending is another measure that Boston weights heavily – and we look bad there, too – well below the state average and a full $2,000 per child per year less than the lowest spending high school in the Top 10 (Wellesley High, as it turns out). Not that I’m making comparisons, but…ah what the hell…Weston spent $5,700 more per student than Belmont in 2009. In other areas, we do well: MCAS and SAT scores, graduation rates, etc. all push Belmont up to the top 20% of school districts state wide despite high achieving, middle class communities that are outspending us.

It will be interesting to see if Belmont hangs on to 29 or slips further in the 2010 rankings, but with the failure of the Prop 2 1/2 override in June leading to larger class sizes, among other district-wide changes, its safe to assume that Belmont will be moving down this yearly ranking rather than up it. And, as we’ve pointed out before, lower rankings tend to be bad for homeowners in a variety of ways.

I have no doubt the No Freeloaders of the world will take all kinds of umbrage to these rankings: how subjective they are, how our kids get a great education whatever these studies say. But the bottom line for Belmont is really what prospective home buyers (read: families) read and perceive about the communities they’re considering plunking their hard earned cash down in. In all likelihood, Boston Magazine is going to give them a couple dozen towns to consider before “Belmont,” and that…just…sucks.

My 2c.

I’ve been out of town and not keeping up with the morning papers like I usually do, so thanks to Blogging Belmont reader Rita for pointing me to this recent article in the New York Times about the difference that excellent early education – especially kindergarten – can have in the trajectory of children’s lives.

As many of you who followed this debate in town when the issue of funding full day kindergarten came up in 2007 and 2008, there’s a common belief, based on some academic research, that more kindergarten doesn’t end up improving academic outcomes, at least in populations that aren’t at risk to begin with.

The times article takes up that issue of the “fade” effect by talking about a new study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, who observed that earlier studies about the benefits of early childhood education Programs like FDK based their conclusions on analyses of student test scores in middle and high school, rather than on life outcomes like a child’s health or eventual earnings.

When Chetty and fellow researchers looked at those broader measures, by studying the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s,they discovered that their success in life correlated strongly with their exposure to high quality early education.

From the Times article:

“Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.”

How much more? The economists calculated that a 5 year old who benefitted from an excellent kindergarten teacher who was able to improve their test scores from just the 50th to 60th percentile earned $1,000 more a year by age 27 than a student who didn’t get that boost.

Check it out- there’s a link to the researchers’ presentation, too. But this brings us back to the argument about cuts without cutting – the way that withdrawing resources from our kids education (libraries, anyone) seem harmless, but can actually have large and unforseen consequences later on.

OK – let me start by saying that I didn’t stay for the whole School Committee meeting on Monday evening in which the contentious issue of freshmen sports was discussed.  My wife was working late and our babysitter could only stay until 8:00 so I was only there in person for the first hour or so. I did watch the rest, live, on Belmont cable with my three daughters, who sat there glued to the televised meeting with about the same level of interest and engagement as they show for Wizards of Waverly Place or Sunny with a Chance, thereby proving my “its not the content, stupid” theory about television. I should just lock out everything but channel 28 and enjoy the most locally engaged elementary schoolers in town.

What can I say?  I showed up to this meeting an ardent supporter of the SC stance on funding for freshmen athletics, left early on tasting a bit of the frustration with a Committee that seemed officious and tone deaf about the message from voters, and wound up the (late night) meeting at home feeling about as divided as the Committee (and our Town) about what the right course is.

If you weren’t among the 100 or so folks who were in the room or didn’t catch it on cable,  this was one of those occasions where everyone was in agreement on what they wanted to see, but bitterly divided about how to get there.  Everyone at the School Committee table and in the administration and in the audience wants to see freshmen sports, middle school track and a vibrant athletics program for Belmont public school students. The difference is really about whether you focus on the forest, or the trees.

The administration and the School Committee see the forest: a school system facing $2 million in cuts from the needs-based budget, many of which are critical and affect every student, district wide.

The folks in the audience are seeing the trees: the $40,000 or $60,000 that’s needed to fund some subset of eight freshmen sports that students have enjoyed for a long time now and that they desperately want to continue.

What I heard was two things: our Superintendent and school leadership council saying: we have bigger fish to fry. Freshmen sports are important, but they’re not a priority. Textbooks are a priority. Elective courses are a priority. Professional development is a priority, building maintenance is a priority, but money for those things is gone — lost with the override. And those changes have already happened: the teachers were fired, the librarian was fired, the library aids and curriculum directors were fired. We’re sorry you’re not happy about the sports piece, but its done.

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