Research: In the Trenches

Researcher Richard Murnane took a leave from academe to spend a year working for the Boston public schools.

By Debra Viadero

Boston

It's lunchtime at the downtown headquarters of the Boston public school system and Richard J. Murnane is rolling up his sleeves and going to work.

Murnane, a Harvard University economist, is here having a nuts-and-bolts discussion with some of the school system's top administrators about plans for putting in place a sophisticated new data-management system—one that will help teachers and principals analyze their students' test scores with the click of a computer key.

"Why don't we get a status report on the rollout?" the bearded professor asks over sandwiches and bottles of water. And, over the next two hours, the talk around the conference table is of technical capabilities, union issues, data-processing tasks, and training yet to be done. All the while, the hum and roar of the traffic six floors below drifts in...