Entries by Jim Stergios

What we should we ask of the new UMass president?

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With former Congressman and current chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell Marty Meehan having pulled out of the running for the presidency of the overall UMass system, we are left with three finalists: Charles Bantz, the chancellor of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, Robert Caret, the president of Towson University in Maryland, and Phillip Clay, chancellor of MIT IUPUI’s website trumpets that it is one of the top five “up and coming” American universities that U.S. News and World Report says people should be watching, and the 8th best public college in the Midwest according to Forbes magazine. IUPUI has a strong mix of undergraduate (22,000) and graduate and professional students (8,000). Its progress in raising the quality […]

Delivering a reality check

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Back in October, a nasty teacher union v. school district battle came to a decision point in the Wrentham-Norfolk-Plainville area. Months had passed with the local union refusing to allow teachers to perform basic duties (writing letters of recommendation, providing parents access to updates online, etc.). As the Globe’s Brian McGrory noted, the unions were sore that the school committee didn’t want to agree to a new contract that would have given them a 28 percent raise over three years. Anyone who has been around the block in education knows the clout of the teachers unions and can easily twist his fingers in knots counting the obstacles and “actions” some local unions are willing to use to persuade school committees […]

How do student absences affect students?

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A story in the Providence Journal focuses on Central Falls, the tiny city best known in Massachusetts education circles as the place where the CF Schools Superintendent, with the support of RI Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, fired all of the district’s teachers unless they agreed to reforms that included spending more time in the classrooms. That story drew national headlines, but the city of Central Falls and the school district continue to garner headlines in Rhode Island. The city is facing bankruptcy, with the head of a special commission suggesting that the entire city be folded into Pawtucket. (The mayor of Pawtucket wasn’t so hot on that idea.) There are numerous stories that are still coming out concerning the school […]

Full Disclosure

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AEI edu-wonk Rick Hess went blue in the face in his Education Week blog criticizing Pioneer’s call for an investigation of Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester in the wake of a Channel 5 story showing that Chester accepted free and discounted travel from groups with an interest in issues before him. Rick’s piece leans hard on references to a supposed Salem Witch Hunt (yup, that’s right in the title of his blog) and the piece just goes downhill from there. Building your case on a Salem Witch Hunt frame is a sure sign of overheated passion. It’s not just people in Salem who shake their heads at the hackneyed reference (as if that great merchant city’s history begins and ends […]

Ryan & Rivlin on containing health care costs

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This week’s Economist has an article worth reading on the various proposals to curb the burgeoning federal deficit. In it, you can view a comparative table of deficit cutting options (would include it here but it’s worth reading the whole thing). As Economics 21 notes, Many critics have taken Bowles-Simpson to task for “hand-waving” at Medicare cost growth by declaring an intention to cap Medicare to a growth rate of GDP growth + 1% while retaining its defined benefit structure. Given that Medicare has grown at a far faster rate in recent years, the idea is that this is a highly unrealistic projection. Happily, left and right have come together, respectively, in the persons of Paul Ryan (WI) and Alice […]

Does the heroic reform model work?

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School Choice Models & Public School Reform from Mike Dean on Vimeo. With the recent electoral defeat of Mayor Adrian Fenty, a strong advocate of school reform and school choice, and the subsequent resignation of DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, many have reflected on the attempt to fix the DC schools from within. The recent release of the film Waiting for ‘Superman’ has, while drawing attention to the plight of children trapped in mediocre public schools, also advanced the motif of the “heroic superintendent.” I’ve never been terribly convinced by the “heroic superintendent” line of thinking. And my guess is that the long line of foundations and private investors who have bet the house on a single personality’s heroic endeavors […]

Questioning the Convergence on National Standards

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The Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s Everything that Rises Must Converge is a collection of tragicomic pulp fiction stories about dangerous human flaws and the “blind wills and low dodges of the heart” found in everyday life. People have failings. That’s the way we’re built and that’s the way of the world. But there are “game days” when a lot is riding on decisions and you have to muster the courage of your convictions for the benefit of all. This summer, that game day came on a scorcher in late July and concerned whether Massachusetts should or should not adopt national standards. In exchange for $250 million in federal support over four years (about 1/144 of overall school spending over that […]

Rumblings of an earthquake in national education policy?

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With Rick Perry said to be a shoo-in for the head of the Republican Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), which was one of a handful of lead groups pushing states to adopt national standards, may find itself in deep trouble. In fact, Perry, as the head of the RGA, may force the National Governors Association, which together the CCSSO, Achieve Inc., and the Gates Foundation, acted as cheerleaders for national standards, to revisit its position in support of national standards. Here’s why. Governor Perry opposed the national standards because Under the program’s rules, Washington gives preference and dollars to states that agree to adopt national standards that haven’t even been written yet. Texans strongly support […]

Time to Remember

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Lovett C. Peters died Thursday, November 11, at the age of 97. After a fall this summer that led to a fractured hip, it was his hopeful determination that took him from hospital emergency room to rehab center, to his home, to a walker and even a cane. In October, Pete came to the office and attended board meetings. His death came after a fall at the theater, when his walker got caught on a carpet. His was a great life—a hopeful, principled, determined, and undiscouraged life. We were all touched by it, as were thousands and thousands of children in the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the country, because of his work to improve the academic excellence and equality of […]

Too many do-gooders?

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I’ve had a chance to talk by phone with a number of superintendents over the past month. After the election of Vincent Gray in Washington DC and the hammer ready to fall on the now former DC School Chancellor (the equivalent of the city’s superintendent) Michelle Rhee, I wanted to get their thoughts on how things are going. When you talk to superintendents, there are two things you hear. One is predictable (the lack of resources—and it is not just in Massachusetts that you hear it), the other isn’t. So after the first five or ten minutes listening about how there is no money, you often hear quite a bit on this: the number of people who show up on […]

Was Galileo Wrong?

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Diane Ravitch, the eminent historian of education, has noted that “[i]n the land of American pedagogy, innovation is frequently confused with progress, and whatever is thought to be new is always embraced more readily than what is known to be true.” Nowhere does public education’s intellectual fog envelope minds more obviously than when American educators think about how to improve the nation’s academic standing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Today’s Globe article makes it crystal clear that we are falling far short of the best countries and especially short of our global economic competitors. Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo Galilei, the “Father of Modern Science,” told the geocentric world, “science is written in the language of mathematics.” And […]

Do we misdiagnose younger students as ADHD?

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The PreventDisease.com website highlighted a couple of studies strongly suggesting that the answer is yes. The two studies in question are: The importance of relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: Evidence based on exact birth dates, by Todd E. Elder is available in the Journal of Health Economics. Measuring Inappropriate Medical Diagnosis and Treatment in Survey Data: The Case of ADHD among School-Age Children, by William N. Evans, Melinda S. Morrill, and Stephen T. Parente is also available in the Journal of Health Economics. ADHD is a frequently diagnosed behavioral disorder among American students. As the PreventDisease.com folks note, “currently there are no neurological markers for ADHD.” (An excerpt from a great Frontline investigation can be found here.) The website summarizes […]

If the feds pay, the states will play

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Don’t worry, Governor Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Murray and Massachusetts Education Secretary Reville have repeatedly said. If at any point we realize that the final testing products being developed by national consortium groups are not as rigorous as the MCAS, we can simply back out. We can simply back out, even after spending a big chunk the of $250 million in Race to the Top funds to train teachers and buy textbooks in line with the new national standards. We can back out even though we, as a state, have committed on paper to adopting the national assessments. Sigh. Then there is the question of whether national standards can realistically be considered voluntary with federal money in the balance. I suppose […]

Teaching the district a lesson

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We’ve seen this movie all too many times. There was the kerfluffle when the Boston Teachers Union opposed allowing Teach for America fellows into the Boston Public Schools. More recently, there was the story about teachers in Bridgewater and Raynham who opposed letting volunteers staff the libraries so they could keep them open. Those were two that made the papers. Often stories of union pressure don’t. The pressure tactics go under the radar screen… except when they get especially egregious. Fast-forward to a report a couple of weeks ago by Brian McGrory entitled Teachers Need a Lesson. After the usual throat-clearing about teachers (“I’m a huge fan of teachers, and fully understand that most public school teachers are conscientious, hard-working […]

Obama must do better on charters

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It looks like voters across the country, and in a number of races possibly even in Massachusetts, may be voting out congressional leaders who breathed life into many of President Obama’s signature laws. In education, many of his priorities will likely be affected, but polling from Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance suggests that his support for charter schools is not at all affected by his plummeting approval ratings. As noted in a study we just released, Opinion polls conducted between 2008 and 2010 by Education Next and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance show that support for charter schools among the general public is reasonably strong and on the rise. Of a representative sample of nearly […]

How big of a deal was the 2010 ed reform law?

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Back in January 2010, there was a lot of hoopla around the passage and signing of the new Achievement Gap law. At the time: “We are standing up for children,’’ Patrick said before an upbeat gathering of educators… And Education Secretary Paul Reville released this statement: Last week, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Governor Deval Patrick signed historic education reform legislation which will forever alter the landscape of public education in Massachusetts. The most significant piece of education reform legislation since the 1993 Education Reform Act, the Achievement Gap bill signals the beginning of a new chapter in education reform. With hindsight (and time to unpack the law’s provisions), the answer is that the achievement gap law was a […]

Rhee Out in DC

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Got sad news in the middle of a screening of Waiting for Superman last night. Somewhere right after the section on how bad the DC schools are, I got a text message that Michelle Rhee would be stepping down today. Yup. Today Michelle Rhee is announcing that she is resigning in a “mutual” decision aimed to refocus the schools on kids and learning, rather than on the tug of war that might ensure between her and newly elected Mayor Vincent Gray (above, at right). The Washington Post is reporting She will be replaced until at least the end of the school year by Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, a close associate. Rhee and presumptive mayor Vincent C. Gray recently reached a […]

Pension Protest Style Points

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I am increasingly dismayed at the lack of style at American (and especially Boston) protests. Seems we have gotten in the habit of going “military” with protesters being dolled out in the equivalent of uniforms. The old “sea of humans” and “huddled masses” thing just doesn’t cut it in a 21st century world where fashion never sleeps. A quick sampling of comparables we might want to start emulating. We’ll stick to pensions, because of the number of countries where pension protests are occurring, and especially the ability to get the French to weigh in on this important question. First, the Aussies: The Brits show that their former colonies are still hundreds of years behind in character (and they have gotten […]

"Race to Solvency" for our cities?

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A press release from the Milken Institute notes: Vallejo, Calif; Harrisburg, Penn; the entire state of Illinois; and, of course, California…they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Across the United States, we’ve got a full-blown state and muni budget mess on our hands. To find a way forward, the Milken Institute and the Kauffman Foundation brought together a diverse group of state and local officials, union representatives, experts from the capital markets, money managers, academics, public-sector attorneys and representatives from bond rating agencies. The report, Ensuring State and Municipal Solvency, lists a number of potential reforms, including the establishment of rainy-day funds, agency consolidations, and control boards for states and municipalities. Yup. We got those things. Have helped, but not […]

Mid-terms and the national education debate

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The national standards may have been approved in nearly 40 states, but the fact is that after the mid-terms the policy conversation is going to change dramatically. So much so that there are good political reasons to wager that this effort at developing national standards will collapse, as did similar attempts under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As the Gucci Gulch types inside the Beltway admit, the road to implementation will require getting a lot of things — very big things — right. Big things like professional development, changes in ed school curricula and teacher certification. These big things raise big questions about how the federal government will motivate states to keep moving in lockstep with the its priorities […]

Ed Glaeser slips on a banana peel

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Ed Glaeser is a brilliant economist and someone who cares deeply about local, state and federal policies that impact housing, segregation, crime, the growth of cities and the role of innovation in reviving urban landscapes. He has done a ton of work with us, spoken at Pioneer events, and we look to him as a leading intellectual — as does just about everybody. All that throat-clearing is necessary because in today’s Globe, Ed slipped on a banana peel. Looking to weigh in with a timely piece on what is becoming a key issue in the gubernatorial debate — the standards and MCAS debate — Ed makes four assertions that are questionable at best and wrong at worst. Here’s wrong assertion […]

Can Big City Superintendents Fix the Schools?

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When Adrian Fenty was elected as the mayor of Washington DC, he worked relentlessly to gain control of the DC school board. After all, the DC public schools cost so much more than your average public school and they were among the nation’s worst performers. In 2007 he appointed Michelle Rhee as the Public School Chancellor, who immediately took some of the toughest actions one could imagine to turn around the schools, including mass principal and teacher firings, numerous school closures, strict accountability measures, and strong outreach to recruit new energetic teachers and lots more foundation funding for her school (and really district) “turnaround” efforts. Above are just some of the magazine cover and lead article pictures of Michelle Rhee. […]

The Texas standards controversy: You decide

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Gilbert King notes in his blog that Ironically, it was textbooks that brought Thurgood Marshall to Texas more than sixty years ago. Heman Marion Sweatt was an African American mail carrier in Houston who wanted to become a lawyer, but was denied admission to the University of Texas law school in 1946 on the sole basis of his race. With the NAACP representing him, Sweatt sued the University of Texas on the grounds that the state had no law school that would admit blacks. That’s because Thurgood Marshall went on to represent Sweatt, seeing in the case an opportunity to take up a civil rights case that could have broad impact on the law of the land. This spring, after […]

A picture tells one story about the recession

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Certainly, the pictures that matter most in the current recession are those of individuals trying to make ends meet and trying to find a way to stay afloat. That said, an image from our upcoming paper on the state’s business climate — and specifically on our tax competitiveness relative to other states — struck me as important to share. Massachusetts’ economy has been mauled by the global recession, though several observers have noted that, during the recession, Massachusetts is faring better than many other states. The image below depicts the overall number of unemployed in the state from December 2007 to July 2009. (Source) If doubling the unemployed population is better, then we are really in deep trouble. The image […]

Revenue sharing for cities is a non-starter

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In today’s Boston Herald Jay Fitzgerald penned a tough article on the remarks Eric Rosengren (President/CEO of the Boston Fed made at a meeting of the Fed’s Board of Governors in DC on REO and Vacant Property Strategies for Neighborhood Stabilization. (REOs are properties that a lender takes back because of a foreclosure, where no one bought the property at a foreclosure sale process.) Eric Rosengren’s presentation was framed around the slide deck linked here. There are many problems with the case Eric is making, not least of which is that it entirely ignores the generous state commitment to education which pores $4.5 billion into our cities and towns, with a disproportionate amount going to our cities. Some communities, like […]

Ed Reform going soft

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The MCAS is different from most other state tests. It is a high-stakes test for all students; its being a graduation requirement underscored the seriousness of purpose, and its being for all students meant that we would not allow a good system for some and a less good system for others. After all, that is what we had before 1993. Success on the MCAS test correlates very well with success on national and international assessments. The better you do on MCAS, the better you are likely to do in college and in your career. You can’t say that about most state tests, which are all over the place in terms of correlation. So the MCAS is a good test. (There […]

Ho-hum to the Guv on education

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This morning on the Todd and Tom show on WRKO, Joe Battenfield (who was sitting in for Todd Feinburg) noted that the Governor’s office is claiming that Pioneer’s view of the national standards issue is a result of politics. What they are suggesting is that because Charlie Baker was Pioneer’s first executive director 20+ years ago, we are running defense for him. You can listen to the whole interview here (it’s not too long, clocking in at 10 minutes). My response was Ho-Hum. What I noted was that it’s hard to say that when on the day of the Board of Education’s vote to scrap the state standards, we did a press release with Tim Cahill — not Charlie Baker. […]

Massachusetts gets Race to the Top grant

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The Race to the Top grants have been made and Massachusetts will receive a total of $250 million, to be distributed over a four-year period. That’s good for MA. Very good. Though we should remember at what cost the money came and also take the opportunity to ask a few meaty questions. Let’s start with the questions: Why the late August release? It’s not a great news cycle. And the decisions were supposed to be announced in mid-September — that would be perfect with the kids back at school and lots of parents thinking about education. How did Massachusetts get the highest score of all the states? After all, they had strong unions support (unlike Massachusetts, where the local chapter […]

Ed Commish "blatantly violated the law"

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Patrick Anderson at the Gloucester Times reports today that Superior Court Judge Richard Welch III found that the case presents “considerable evidence” that the state education commissioner and Board of Education “blatantly ignored and violated state law when granting the GCA charter for political reasons.” And more: While he dismissed the parents’ argument that the commissioner is legally bound to follow the recommendation of his Charter School Office, Welch — echoing state Sen. Bruce Tarr and state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan — said there is no evidence Chester made any attempt to independently judge the application against the established criteria. “… There is a strong factual showing that the Commissioner, despite his affidavit to the contrary, did not perform his […]

Curb your enthusiasm

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Jobs is a tough issue for the Governor these days, given the news of job losses coming out of Wonderland. But then there’s the announcement today, which Robert Gavin reports about in the Globe: The state gained more than 13,000 jobs in July, while data revisions showed that employment growth in June, nearly 3,000 jobs, was far stronger than initially estimated, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported today. The state unemployment rate held steady at 9 percent. David Guarino is tweeting about a pep rally the Governor is going to hold at 4:30 to celebrate the jobs numbers. And Doug Rubin is tweeting Globe: “MA added jobs for 6th consecutive month as MA economy continued a broad […]