THE PIONEER BLOG

Steve Poftak

Hmmm, Astrid Glynn returns

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New York State Transportation Commissioner Astrid Glynn is resigning to return to the Boston area. I wonder if there is a soft landing awaiting her here in a transportation-related position?

Liam Day

Try to make your point more skillfully. . . err, I mean more subtly

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As I have been in the past critical of Michael Graham’s column, I thought I would (as I have also done in the past) give him props when he deserves it. His column on Harvard’s exclusion of the ROTC from its campus appears in the Herald today opposite a similarly themed op-ed in the Globe. Both authors argue (correctly, I believe) it is time to bring ROTC back to Harvard after a 40-year absence. In contrast to the Globe piece, however, Graham’s column is a monument to nuance and careful argumentation. Frank Schaeffer paints Harvard (actually, the entire Ivy League) and its students with the broadest possible brush (a polite way of saying he stereotypes). Here is what he believes […]

Liam Day

The Revolving Door Also Swings Close to Home

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There’s been some hand-wringing recently over the increasingly oligarchical nature of our federal government. The revolving door between D.C. and Wall Street is and should be of concern. (See Blue Mass Group, Salon.com and The Atlantic.) In all of this, however, it should not be missed that the same door is held open between Beacon Hill and the corporate sector here in Massachusetts. The Governor’s new Transportation Secretary (about which enough has probably already been written) and his Stimulus Czar both came back to state government after very lucrative stints in the private sector, which were set up by previous stints in state government, from which they both cashed out, the former by remaining a legal consultant to the Pike […]

Steve Poftak

Truth Telling

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An eye-opening quote from the CBO’s analysis of the proposed Truth in Writing act (my emphasis added): S. 574 would amend federal law to require all federal agencies within one year to use plain writing (clear, concise, well-organized, and readily identifiable to the intended reader) in all documents except for regulations. Thus, we are lead to believe that regulations will continue to be written in opaque, lengthy, disjointed, and obscure bureaucratese.

Jim Stergios

Is quasi-governmental power a 21st century skill

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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 […]

Steve Poftak

Metrics Matter

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Noah Bierman of the Globe had an interesting piece in Sunday’s Globe on commuter rail’s on-time performance. He found that peak service trains fared significantly worse than non-peak service trains for on-time service. The interesting part is that that the commuter rail operator, MBCR, is evaluated and reports on the basis of trains delayed, not passengers. What this means is that the bulk of commuter rail riders (i.e. rush hour passengers) experience a far higher level of late trains than the publicly reported data would suggest. I would suggest that a more customer-oriented metric would be based on the total delay per passenger but that would take a level of detail and information the MBTA cannot currently collect.

Steve Poftak

Going After the Cabbies

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City Councillor John Tobin has proposed a sliding taxi fare scale tied to gas prices. Given that fares were just increased (in response to $4/gallon gas prices), this seems logical but hard to implement. Careful readers of this space will recall that we pointed out this issue in January — that taxi fares were raised in response to high gas prices but no cuts were implemented after gas prices moderated. Very careful readers will note that Councillor Tobin has a (laudable) history when it comes to vehicular issues. He led the effort to put GPS monitors on all Boston Public School buses as well.

Liam Day

Is he just spinning or out of the loop?

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The other day my esteemed colleague Steve Poftak and I, in separate posts here and here, both jumped on a schizophrenic statement in a Boston Globe editorial to the effect that there is excess infrastructure and staffing in Boston’s public schools, yet, at least according to the Globe, the City should eliminate transportation for students attending private and parochial schools as a way to offset cuts. (As I wrote in my original post, I don’t disagree with the premise that the City shouldn’t be on the hook for the transportation costs of students whose parents choose not to send them to public school. I simply have a problem with the discrepancy between the excess capacity the Globe cites and the […]

Steve Poftak

Enough about Marian Walsh, let's talk about Quasi-Public Conduits

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The Patrick Administration’s publicly stated (still!) strategy for placing Senator Walsh in the Assistant Director’s position at HEFA is to facilitate the merger of HEFA and MassDevelopment. As part of their business, each of these entities serves as a conduit for non-profits to issue debt. The Administration believes that the overlap between these two entities is bad, as it drives down fees to the non-profits, limiting the amount of money these entities collect. Paul Levy, among others, points out that having a competitive environment allows non-profits to access financing at lower rates. Which is a good thing, I think. I would also note that if overlap is an issue, MassDevelopment and MassHousing have competed with each other for a much […]

Steve Poftak

Assignment Desk: No Compensation Provision of Pension Reform

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To: Hilary Chabot, Matt Viser and whomever else is writing on pension reform. Pension reform plans put forward by the Senate and the Governor each have provisions to stop local officials serving in largely voluntary positions from receiving pension service credit for time in those positions. The problem is that each of the bills restricts this reform to “unpaid local officials” (in this case of the Governor) or “municipal officials” who served in positions with “no compensation” (in the case of the Senate). Why shouldn’t this count towards state positions and those local positions that receive a nominal salary, as many moderators and selectboards do? No offense to those providing those important services, but credit towards a state pension should […]

Steve Poftak

Begging to Be Unpacked

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(Great minds think alike — My colleague beat me to the punch. I’m posting anyway.) Today’s Globe has an editorial calling for an end to the practice of funding transportation for schoolchildren attending private school in Boston. Within the piece there was this little nugget: Crowded school districts in many suburbs are only too happy to pay to transport private school students while saving the much higher cost of educating them. But such equilibrium does not exist in Boston, where the infrastructure and staffing can support thousands more children than currently attend the public schools. [Emphasis Added] That’s a mouthful — given that the Mayor is planning on laying off hundreds of teachers, I’d like to know if these layoffs […]

Liam Day

When falling demand and inflexible management collide

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There’s a rather curious editorial in today’s Globe. I don’t necessarily quibble with its basic premise, that the City of Boston should not be on the hook for the transportation costs of those students whose parents choose to send them to a private or parochial school. At one point, however, the editorial states that Boston’s infrastructure and staffing can support thousands more children than currently attend the public schools. The estimated $2 million spent on busing Boston’s private school students would be better used to offset cuts in public classrooms. This struck me as a paradoxical juxtaposition. If there is so much excess capacity in the system, then should we not be encouraging cuts, not looking for ways to offset […]

Jim Stergios

Take a deep breath and relax on union infiltration of charters

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Our Education Intelligence agent comes through with an interesting find. Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools has the scoop: “Teachers at two New York City KIPP charter schools today asked state labor officials to sever their ties from the city teachers union, in petitions signed by every single teacher at the two schools.” The KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity staffs (totaling about 60 members) sent out a press release about their decision: “In recent months, the UFT has made clear its desire to play a more active part in the day-to-day operations of our schools. Two examples illustrate this point. In January, the UFT sent a letter to the KIPP: Infinity Board of Directors with the goal of beginning collective bargaining […]

Liam Day

Live Blogging the President's Press Conference

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Sort of. I’m not really in the East Room of the White House, but on my couch doing work as I listened to what the President had to say tonight. He has a tendency, a verbal tick almost, to try to buttress his answers with: That’s not just my opinion, but the opinion of many others. Or some variant thereof. I only caught the last half hour and he used it three separate times. It’s almost as if it’s his tell and we should all know he’s bluffing whenever he uses it. Hey, ifTeddy KGB can get caught listening to his Oreos, it can happen to the best of us.

Liam Day

Is KIPP really scalable?

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Yesterday on Slate, in her review of Jay Mathews’ new book on KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, which now runs 66 schools in 19 states mostly geared to disadvantaged and minority students, Sara Mosle begins with an interesting remark: Let me begin—before I’m denounced as a traitor to the cause of educational reform—by saying that I’m inclined to agree. What she’s inclined to agree with is Mathews’ assessment of KIPP as the best program serving underprivileged students in America today. The reason for putting it so baldly out there at the top of her review is that Ms. Mosle goes on to question whether KIPP, despite her admiration of its success, is replicable to a scale sufficient to the […]