In a press release entitled “States Open to Charters Start Fast in ‘Race to Top’: Education Secretary Seeking Autonomy with Real Accountability for School Innovators,” Arne Duncan made it very clear what he wants. As the press release states: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters during a conference call this afternoon that states must be open to charter schools. Too much is at stake for states financially and for students academically to restrict choice and innovation. And more to follow: “States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund,” Secretary Duncan said. “To be clear, this administration is […]

Tip of the cap to Whitney Tilson for directing me to this article by Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, who calls on mayor Bloomberg to “roll the union.” My, how far attitudes toward charters have changed on Left. Everywhere, that is, except in Massachusetts. If Bloomberg wins this year, it will be the fifth consecutive time that a Republican candidate has carried a 5-1 Democratic city. This time, the mayor isn’t running as a registered Republican—as he did the first two times—and he wants us to believe that he is an Independent with a Democratic tilt. Democrats just can’t take back the big office in Gotham, and the Union of Federated Teachers has learned new tactics to gain the […]

Shawn Regan reports in the Eagle Tribune that “the greatest myth in the [Haverhill] school district” is “that city schools have been losing dozens of teachers every year due to budget cuts.” Not so. But in truth, the number of teachers in the district has grown by four in each of the previous three years, according to information provided by the Haverhill teachers union — figures school administrators don’t dispute. Several School Committee members who have voted to eliminate teachers for several years in a row said they were surprised by the revelation. “The community and certainly the School Committee has believed teachers are going down every year because we’ve been cutting them,” School Committee President Scott Wood said after […]

That’s all it took. We wait years for pension reform. Years for the state to reform the health care purchasing regime. Decades for them to loose the embrace of public employee unions. All that takes decades. And it isn’t done. But an increase in the sales tax? All it takes is a day. On this one the Governor is right. His letter yesterday certainly offended House members, in a way U.S. interference in a Central American election would offend that country’s population. The Governor’s letter was certainly an act of political gamesmanship, but what is wrong with that? Yes, he got the gospel late in the game, finally insisting on reform first. But the Senate only talked a great game. […]

Robert Pondiscio of Core Knowledge passed on this nugget: Common Core’s Lynne Munson has an eyebrow-raising post today on a piece of federal legislation that would give extraordinary quasi-governmental power to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Munson reports that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will put forth a “21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act.” The bill would create “an incentive fund for states to sign on to P21 and give tax breaks to corporations who support P21 at the state level.” As Munson notes the bill would make P21 the gatekeeper of hundreds of millions in federal taxdollars. That’s because the legislation would require any state that applies for these incentive funds first to be ‘approved as a 21st Century […]

Mayor Menino is asking bargaining units in Boston to accept wage freezes and other compensation reductions in order to minimize layoffs. Well, in from our former companion state, Maine, comes some very helpful advice as to how unions can interact with the other side of the table in tough times. From our Education Intelligence Agent Mike Antonucci comes this report: I learned the Maine Education Association’s “Dos, Don’ts of Bargaining in Tough Times” aren’t appreciably different from bargaining in good times, or bargaining in OK times, or bargaining in the End Times. Still, this one caught my eye: “Insist that all other steps to reduce costs be implemented, including reduction-in-force if it is unavoidable, before reductions in employees’ compensation are […]

Good public policy is built on two pillars – and they pretty much boil down to common sense: Be fair and first do no harm. Giving preferential treatment to individual businesses or industries is bad public policy. The Governor and Legislature’s $250 million tax giveaway to the life sciences industry (even as they increased taxes and fees on other sectors by $300 million last year alone) isn’t fair. And it’s particularly unjustifiable as we enter a protracted economic downturn – a downturn that has already caused hundreds of millions of dollars in social service cuts. But it’s hard to comprehend the logic behind it, when we throw money at life sciences companies with one hand, and take it away with […]

Jim Cramer is obviously a smart guy with a schtick. It’s kind of fun for 2 minutes. Then you have to lower the volume. I am troubled to say that he is sounding much wiser than our leaders in Washington. I don’t know about you, but I think that means we are now officially in deep do-do. In this clip, Cramer rails against the stimulus because it does not invest in infrastructure at anything even close to the level originally discussed. Yup. Then he calls for interest rate and principal adjustments for all mortgage payers, not select ones. Yup. Finally, he gets hot under the collar on Geithner’s lack of a plan. That’s a feeling many of us are getting. […]

A great post by DA Mittell on his new blog (welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Mittell!), where he delves into the work by Dr. Peter Langdon Ward on volcanic activity, sulfur and global warming. I quote at length, because there is no snipping where Mittell is concerned: A year ago, I had the privilege as a mere editorialist of reading, along with scientists of several disciplines, the draft of a paper on the causes of global warming written by Massachusetts native Dr. Peter Langdon Ward. Dr. Ward studied earthquakes, plate tectonics and volcanoes for 27 years at the U.S Geological Survey. Viewing climate change over the whole history of the Earth, Dr. Ward noticed that warming patterns have appeared consistently […]

I’ve always thought state policy is more interesting than federal policy. It takes so much to move big things in Washington. It is so much easier to get a waiver, to test and correct at the state level. And then all those 000000s make me think there is less to what they are doing in DC. And in the zeroes, you can include all the lobbyists. But let me wander a bit into the thicket of the “stimulus package,” which we once knew as the “bailout” before Obama became president. Question: We hear everyone bemoan the lack of savings by Americans. We need to save more, they say, because we are living beyond our ability to sustain the spending rate […]

The Governor’s proposal on charter schools does two things: It increases the cap on commonwealth charter schools for a single year in districts falling in the state’s lowest performing districts, and it changes the funding formula in a way that puts equitable funding for charters at risk. The proposal ostensibly creates 4500 new charter seats, but stipulates a range of sub-groups that must make up 80 percent of the charter student body, including low-income, limited English proficient or special education students, or students determined to be at risk of dropping out. In addition, LEP and SPED enrollments in each new charter must exceed the sending district’s average by 5%. The one-year limit on the time to create any new charter […]