Unlike the suburbs you valorize, Cambridge hasn't shut out the poor, makes large investments in public housing. 45% of Cambridge students take free or subsided lunches. What the MCAS results actually show is when we take kids of out wealth segregated neighborhood elementary and middle schools, and put them into a single, unified high school, test score rise dramatically.

If Concord schools had to take any number of first generation impoverished immigrants with poor English language skills, their test scores would implode. That doesn't happen, because working class immigrants don't buy the $800K homes in Concord.