THE PIONEER BLOG

Steve Poftak

The Governor No One Voted For

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I’ve written about New York’s insane political world in the past, and it took another turn this week, when the NY Times finally (after two whiffs) printed its stunning piece on NY Governor David Paterson. To start at the beginning, Eliot Spitzer got elected Governor with a little known LG, David Paterson. Spitzer had to resign after the “Client 9” scandal and Paterson took over. During the fighting over control of the state senate, Paterson appointed Richard Ravitch as LG. To give you a sense of the drama involved, Ravitch was sworn in tableside at Peter Luger’s steakhouse to beat a court injunction. His appointment was invalidated, then allowed up the rungs of the court system in NY, before finally […]

Jim Stergios

Why soft skills are pernicious

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Way back in February 2009, we criticized a report issued by the 21st century skills task force report produced by an ad hoc committee established by the chair of the board of education. The report pushed for a move away from the state’s focus on rigorous content-based academic standards and objective tests toward soft skills and portfolio assessments. We criticized the report on many fronts, including its focus on skills rather than content, lack of familiarity with existing state standards, lack of facility with empirical evidence, and on and on. One of the key criticisms we had was that the report wanted to focus this effort on underperforming districts. Hold that thought. The Board of Education has never voted to […]

Jim Stergios

Time for nailbiting

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Massachusetts has submitted its Race to the Top application and the feds have their scales out, weighing all of the documents, included MA’s 900+ pager. So you’d think that a visit from the US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the Hub of the Universe would be newsworthy, right? Hmm. The USED website noted that Secretary Duncan to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Askwith Forum. 2:30-4:00 p.m. at the Askwith Lecture Hall, Longfellow Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education. 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138. Limited space for press. Calls into USED provided no information and rather asked things like – who are you? why do you want to know? Not an auspicious start. Everybody tightlipped. You […]

Steve Poftak

Murphy Beats Grossman!

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See, I told you so, someone needed to join Steve Grossman in the Treasurer’s race. Right there in today’s Suffolk poll at Question 19, Murphy leads Grossman in the race. OK, its only 15% to 13% but still… early momentum?

Steve Poftak

Where's Martha?

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Its not easy being the Attorney General. You step on too many local officials and you end up like Scott Harshbarger — you might get nominated but everyone sits on their hands when you need them to work for you. Martha Coakley seemed to have solved that problem through her office’s seeming disinterest in public corruption of high-ranking public officials. During a period that has seen an unprecedented level of indictments and investigations, the US Attorney’s office has done almost all of the heavy lifting. Now, the Amy Bishop case has captured the headlines and raised serious questions about who among the major players — then-DA no-Congressman Delahunt, Braintree Police, and State Police — was delinquent in their duties. The […]

Jim Stergios

On Finn and Linn

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Checker Finn has a great blog at the Flypaper, which notes the “heavier and heavier burdens” of the common standards project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). I disagree with Checker when he notes that we haven’t seen drafts (we have seen several early drafts) and that we can’t see where this is going. The process is really opaque, and given the criticism CCSSI has received on this point without any action to fix it, any reasonable person would conclude that (1) the team is not up to the job or (2) it’s on purpose. Neither answer is satisfactory. In addition, we don’t have a real sense as to how the common […]

Jim Stergios

Connecting with small businesses?

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State House News Service (subscription required) reports that the Commonwealth Connector, the state authority that oversees the health care exchange envisioned in the 2006 reform, is “launch[ing] a new health insurance product designed for businesses with 50 or fewer employees.” That’s fast. Pioneer’s report, Drawing Lessons, which compared the Utah and Massachusetts “exchanges” found that, in author Amy Lischko’s words, “Some decisions made while implementing the exchange model in Massachusetts, for example, have meant that the Connector has not met the needs of small employers in Massachusetts well.” Small businesses wanting to know more, can go to www.MAhealthconnector.org, or call Connector customer service at 877-623-6765. And, good on you, Dr. Kingsdale. We’re pleased to see it and will look over […]

Jim Stergios

Arne Duncan goes DC

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There was/is the big push to centralize health care. Now centralize academic standards? Yesterday, speaking to the National Governors Association President Obama made it clear that he now is ready to open up a second front in centralizing authority within the federal government. When he originally proposed improving academic standards, the President promised a “state-generated” set of common standards that states would adopt voluntarily. Yesterday, the façade of voluntary adoption fell, and instead President Obama and US Education Secretary Duncan made clear that they would now tie Title I funds for K-12 schools to coerce states to adopt the standards proposed by the Common Core State Standard Initiative. So, essentially, the federal government has decided that it needs a takeover […]

Steve Poftak

That Didn't Take Long

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I heard it for the first time last night — “Benedict Brown”. And read the comments for yourself on Senator Brown’s facebook page. Its going to be a tough few weeks for our junior Senator as the dissonance between his national profile and political reality (particularly the local kind) get reconciled.

Steve Poftak

Legislature Skips Plan Design

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The Legislature is rolling out a “Municipal Relief Act” today, shepherded by Committee Chairs Representative Paul Donato and Senator Jamie Eldridge. Unless I’ve missed some grand strategic plan to insert plan design on the floor, this Act is an embarrassment. Everyone agrees that healthcare costs are killing local governments. By my estimation, its gone from roughly 6% of local budgets to over 12% over the last ten years — no other municipal department is growing like that. One potential avenue to controlling healthcare costs is joining the state employee’s insurance pool, the GIC, but many municipalities either object to that or don’t think it will save money. The next option then is to give municipal managers greater control over health […]

Jim Stergios

Randi blah-blah-blah?

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Central Falls (RI) School Superintendent Frances Gallo is moving to fire all that city’s high school teachers as part of corrective action mandated by RI education commissioner Deborah Gist. The CF high school and five schools in Providence would be affected. “We need to be able to move this school,” Gallo said Tuesday afternoon. “We are persistently in the low-performing category and therefore we have options we must look to.” Gallo said that the 74 teachers can re-apply, but their job descriptions would be different. Under the termination-of-teachers reform model, no more than 50 percent can be re-hired. I know CF really well having spent my youth next door, having relatives there, knowing folks who were police officers and teachers […]

Jim Stergios

Charters and disadvantaged students

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We’ve had some long discussions with legislators and the media over the past few years about “disadvantaged students” and how they fare at charters. As we often note, the number of poor and minority students in charters are higher on statewide comparisons; and they are well within the range on “sending” district to charter comparisons. And their students by and large do far better those in district schools. But the question raised during the recent legislative debate was, well, how about Limited English Proficient (LEP) and Special Needs (SPED) kids. A new study out by Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak and Walters takes a micro-look at this question by focusing on the KIPP Academy in Lynn, a school that is mostly […]

Jim Stergios

Calling Glenn Koocher

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I am pretty sure you have seen the number of online tools Pioneer has created for citizens interested in government transparency and civic engagement on issues like government performance, regionalization, the quality of our schools, etc. Here is a breath of fresh air blowing north from Rhode Island. I was going to say Rhode Island of all places, but then remembered that I am a former Rhodey guy… MassOpenBooks MassReportCards MassCityStats MassHousingRegulations The Regionalization Clearinghouse The GIC Cost Estimator (general, Revere, and there are other community estimators – just ask) So, we were very interested to see that the RI Association of School Committees now puts all their collective bargaining agreements on-line for members — something that could help communities […]

Jim Stergios

The missing link – student data and teacher performance

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Dan Willingham’s good piece in the Boston Globe on what makes for effective accountability in our schools chided the lack of detail behind the Obama administration’s Race to the Top criteria seeking to “hold teachers accountable for student scores.” There are ways of making accountability work. The two key elements are evaluations that take place over long periods of time, to increase stability, and evaluations that are conducted by people who are knowledgeable and are known by teachers to be knowledgeable. Unfortunately, neither element is part of the Obama administration’s plans. Data is super-important, but how we use it matters. So where does MA stand on the use of data, you might ask. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a […]

Steve Poftak

Time for the Essex County Retirement Board To Go

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Governor Patrick, either through PERAC or through legislation, needs to put the Essex County Retirement Board into receivership until it can demonstrate a minimal level of compliance with basic standards of transparency, ethical conduct, and board governance. It seems support for this position is growing. What should be the final straw occurred at a meeting last week when the board tried to reelect Tim Bassett (yep, that Tim Bassett) after the Essex County DA had ruled that a previous election was invalid. And the state’s pension oversight agency, PERAC, reiterated that they alone had the right to elect the chairman. The board’s blatant unwillingness to comply with the legal and ethical standards set by the Commonwealth are the latest demonstration […]