Boston adopts new plan for assigning students to schools

The Boston school system is doing away with a school assignment plan developed in the 1980s under court-ordered desegregation and will use a new method that is designed to allow more students to attend schools closer to home. The Boston Globe says that starting in fall 2014, the city will use a computer algorithm to generate a list of at least six schools from which parents will be able to choose based on several factors, such as distance from school, school capacity, and test scores.