These would be the best of times for Boston public charter schools were education policy decisions driven by evidence. Boston’s charters are nationwide models and uniquely successful at closing pernicious achievement gaps. But in education politics, where “momentum” is too often the benchmark, charter skeptics are crowing about the loss of a ballot initiative to […]
Read this full op-ed on WGBH News. In the midst of the 2016 ballot initiative campaign about whether to raise the state cap on charter schools, opponents questioned whether charters even are public schools. It now appears that the answer to the public school question turns on whether a school’s teachers are unionized. When teachers at two City […]
In downtown Boston Monday there was a rally of a few hundred public union members, with a speaker roster that included U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, among many other elected officials. The reason was that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was hearing oral arguments on the Janus v. AFSCME case. The plaintiff in the case, […]
THE MBTA’S BUDGET SHORTFALL, once pegged at $335 million for the current fiscal year, is now down to $30 million. That’s good news for riders, taxpayers, employers, and legislators—really everyone except the T’s unions. Much of the savings is the result of a three-year exemption from the Commonwealth’s anti-privatization law that the authority was granted […]
State leaders need to work together to tackle Medicaid challenge MASSACHUSETTS HAS A unique culture when it comes to health care. Over the last quarter century, we have seen the business, provider, payer, consumer, and academic sectors come together to advance reforms aimed at expanding coverage and containing the cost of care. Whether it was repeal […]
By Jim Stergios JUNE 02, 2017 The MBTA has hundreds of thousands of daily riders and 6,000 employees. You would think that the interests of the people consuming 1.3 million daily rides might matter more than those of 6,000 public employees. Not so in the Massachusetts Senate, which used a voice vote to undo […]
By Cheryl Brown Henderson and Jim Stergios The Boston Globe | MARCH 08, 2017 THE 50TH anniversary of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (Metco), which allows about 3,300 Boston and Springfield students to attend school in surrounding districts, provides a good opportunity to take stock of the program and, in doing so, compare it […]
By Jim Stergios and Charles Chieppo Read this op-ed online at USA Today. Education nominee could improve on past secretaries by backing state and local innovation. Every administration since President George H.W. Bush’s has pinned its hopes of transforming American K-12 education on several thousand bureaucrats in the Lyndon B. Johnson Building in Washington, D.C. and the Beltway lobbyists perched […]
Fred Thorne, a longtime Pioneer Board Director and major contributor to the Institute, died this weekend. Fred was someone that Pioneer’s founder, Pete Peters, thought the world of — and for good reason. He was a man of deep intelligence, thoughtful judgment, class, and kindness. Roger Perry and I had a chance to sit with […]
As University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan considers raising tuitions yet again, his institution is at a crossroads. On the one hand, the University of Massachusetts has many achievements of which to be proud. Under the leadership of Meehan and his predecessors over a quarter century, the average grade point average of entering UMass Amherst […]
Published in The Boston Globe, JUNE 01, 2016 AFTER NEARLY a decade of opposition, Boston may be on the verge of getting its first for-profit walk-in clinic. Although it’s not yet official, it appears the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals has approved an urgent-care center application in West Roxbury. Almost 3,000 “convenience” clinics in 41 states […]
Excerpt from Jim Stergios’ column in The Boston Globe. REVIEWS OF GOVERNOR Baker’s first year in office, capped off by General Electric’s decision to move its corporate headquarters to Boston, have been largely positive. A more important marker to evaluate his long-term performance began six months ago, when the Legislature passed significant MBTA reform. Read more […]
The Globe‘s Shirley Leung gets it right in her piece this afternoon on General Electric’s decision to relocate its headquarters to Boston: This is better than hosting the Olympics. No controversy over potential cost overruns, or whether taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of dollars. No worries about traffic on Southeast Expressway, or […]
On December 14th, the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) met to discuss how to rein in the agency’s spending and debated making changes to its paratransit system, The Ride. The FMCB faces a daunting task. The MBTA is plagued with financial woes, including $5.5 billion in outstanding debt and $7 billion in deferred […]
When it comes to the “confidence game” that has been played around the country to advance Common Core standards, there are few places where connivance was more on display than in West Virginia. As noted in a post in March of 2012, you had there “noted national standards boosters” including “former Governor Bob Wise, now […]
Jon Chesto’s report in the Globe on Monday noted that the Lawn on D, an almost three-acre parcel immediately behind the South Boston Convention Center, is currently costing about $2.7 million to operate and generating about $424,000 in revenues, sponsorships, etc. Both the operating costs and the revenues are up in 2015, from $2.1 million […]
Unseasonably warm November days have given way to increasing chill. Long-winded prescriptions for how to fix the MBTA will now give way to the immediacy of winter’s demands — and there are reasons to worry. Longer term, there’s also cause for optimism. One side of the ledger — recent delays, breakdowns and fires during a […]
Each year, much is written and said about K-12 education when students head back to school. That will be especially true this fall, as the education policy community eagerly awaits a decision by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education about whether to keep the MCAS tests, or switch to assessments developed by the national Partnership […]
The value of work cannot be overstated. If you love what you’re doing — great. If you don’t, studies demonstrate that even mundane jobs carry broad psychic and material benefits. Work begets self-reliance and dignity. It provides resources to live, engage with society, and establish an identity. It stabilizes families. It makes social and economic […]
Read this op-ed in The Patriot Ledger, the Brockton Enterprise, the Fall River Herald News, the Taunton Gazette, the Salem News, the Gloucester Times, and The MetroWest Daily News. The budget lawmakers sent to Gov. Charlie Baker includes important new powers to reform the beleaguered MBTA, but ensuring an effective transit system will require additional […]
A couple of weeks ago, Ari Ofsevit wrote a pretty scathing blog claiming that Pioneer is really, really bad at math. We take math and transparency seriously here at Pioneer, so after sharing my reply with Ari last week, I wanted to post it publicly. Ofsevit’s piece is remarkable, not for the quality and length […]
post by Gregory W. Sullivan & Matthew Blackbourn In an article published in the Globe last week, the MBTA Carmen’s union threatened to block MBTA federal transit funding if the legislature enacts the governor’s proposal to give the proposed fiscal and management control board final say on collective bargaining agreements. We hope that the legislature sees […]
In a piece by Jack Encarnacao in the Boston Herald, Richard Rogers, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council claimed that opponents of the South Boston Convention Center expansion were “ideological.” He called out Pioneer for putting ideology “ahead of the best interests of our regional and state economy.” As I noted in the piece, Mr. Rogers […]
With my older daughter heading off to college next year, the question of how much debt is too much debt for her take on is something I’m mulling over quite a bit these days. How much can you pay, how much will she need to borrow and work, and how much support, if any, can […]
Notwithstanding articles that pass the blame off on John Fish, then Doug Rubin’s Northwind Strategies, then everybody else on the local committee, the striking fall in support for the Olympics has little to do with any one person. It has to do with trust. While not for or against the Olympics at this point, I will […]
Pioneer has long been interested in the efficiency of the MBTA relative to other systems around the country. As noted in a blog response to an organization critical of our work, we are not interested in ideological playtime with numbers. The organization, called the Frontier Group, which is allied with advocates of continued MBTA expansion, […]
Lawsuit – who is part of it – Michael Keating (Foley-Hoag), William F. Lee (WilmerHale), Paul F. Ware Jr. (Goodwin Procter). Good on them for doing it. Is it a civil rights issue? You bet it is. The long history of the Civil Rights movement runs right through the Brown v Board of Education […]
Recently on Greater Boston, when asked his appraisal of the final candidates for Boston superintendent, former state education secretary Paul Reville sniffed that it was a weak lot. I don’t often agree with Paul, given that under his leadership Massachusetts went from among the fastest improving states on the Nation’s Report Card to stagnant (and […]
Pioneer focuses on four policy issues that we believe are critical to making Massachusetts freer and more prosperous — a world-class education for all, accessible and affordable health care, government that can do big things but is not overweening, and a dynamic economy. That’s the mission, but the mission is informed by a deep belief […]
Scot Lehigh and Shirley Leung in the Globe today both focused attention on the idea of, as Lehigh put it, “tak[ing] the $1 billion in bonding bandwidth it last year dedicated to expanding the Boston Convention Center & Exhibition Center and instead apply[ing] it to helping improve the MBTA.” The background here is that at […]