You report that some faculty members doubt Doug Sears’s qualifications to be dean of the School of Education; you also refer to the university’s Chelsea Partnership as “beleaguered” (“Faculty members question Sears’ leadership after his near departure from SED,” March 21, p.1). The Boston University/Chelsea Partnership, however, is one of the great success stories in American education; Dean Sears’s greatest qualification as an educator, moreover, is his remarkable track record as Chelsea’s superintendent of schools during the Partnership’s critical years.
BU’s 18-year commitment to improving the Chelsea schools is a credit to the university. In a city where 20 percent of families fall below the poverty line and more than half the children are of recent immigrants, the BU/Chelsea Partnership has given tens of thousands of young people opportunities that would have been unimaginable two decades ago. By rationalizing budgets and curricula; overseeing construction of six new school; and introducing AP classes, pre-kindergarten early learning, intergenerational literacy programs — even free dental care — the BU/Chelsea Partnership has shown the nation’s universities how to make a difference in their local communities.
Dean Sears was involved in the Partnership from its beginning, first as an assistant to then-President John Silber and later when appointed Chelsea school superintendent in 1995. Did the Chelsea schools improve under Sears? When Sears arrived, only 13 high school students took AP classes; by the time he left, 122 did. From 1995 to 2001 the average SAT score of a Chelsea High School student rose from 754 to 884, a gain of 17 percent, while the number of students taking the test doubled. During Sears’s tenure the drop-out rate at Chelsea High School was cut in half and the graduation rate rose from 84.8 percent to 97.6 percent.
I admit that I do not have a PhD in education, but as a layman I would say that Dean Sears appears to know something about how schools work. Boston University can be proud of its successes in Chelsea and proud to have Doug Sears as a dean.
Dr. Chandler Rosenberger
The writer is a member of the management team of the Boston University/Chelsea Partnership.