THE PIONEER BLOG

Jim Stergios

Michelle Rhee takes out the knife

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From the Washingtonian.com piece on Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of DC schools, there is a quote that stood out from the rest of the piece as the primary dilemma that Rhee and Mayor Fenty are trying to stare down: “She’s got all the right ideas, a wonderful attitude, and she’s open,” says Mary Levy, an authority on school governance with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. “I worry about her being undercut or overwhelmed.” It seems that Ms. Levy need not worry. Fenty and Rhee first sought authority from the D.C. Council to reclassify over half of the 700 non-union positions in the Central District Office, making them “at-will”–i.e., now she could fire them. And that […]

Amy Dain

CitiStat: Don’t make a sham of it

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Pioneer is on the cheering squad, promoting CitiStat programs. We are featuring CitiStat in our April 25 conference on revitalizing Middle Cities (rsvp to jfenton@pioneerinst.wpengine.com.) Pioneered by cities such as Baltimore and Somerville, CitiStat is a way for city leadership to use data to improve delivery of traditional city services. Dedicating its spring lineup of events to stat programs, the Rappaport Institute just released an excellent brief on the pitfalls setting up CitiStat. Professor Bob Behn has observed stat programs all across the country and came up with 7 ways that these efforts often get it wrong, turning opportunities to produce results into “symbolic shams.” Come to our conference to learn more!

Jim Stergios

NYC charter to pay teachers more than lawyers

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But the unions don’t like this idea. A proposed New York City charter school is to pay teachers $125,000. There is even thought of adding incentive pay for high performance. The idea is that the higher salaries will be made possible by becoming more efficient and by reducing the number of support staff. According to the Friday New York Times, the head of NYC’s principals’ union, Ernest A. Logan, called the notion of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” “It’s nice to have a first violinist, a first tuba, but you’ve got to have someone who brings them all together,” Mr. Logan said. “If you cheapen the role of the school leader, you’re […]

Steve Poftak

The Choice to Go Negative

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By Obama? No, Silly. The New England Patriots. The Boston Globe dedicates a full page of its sports section on Monday to a relentless unpacking of the short and undistinguished life of former Patriots videotape intern/employee Matt Walsh, who may shortly testify about the team’s videotaping activities. Former sportswriter and current enterprise reporter Bob Hohler discovers that Mr. Walsh frequently puffed up his various internships on his resume, was a real jerk in college, and has bounced around as an assistant golf pro (or is that assistant to the golf pro?) for the past few years. I love the Pats (even if Coach Belichick’s “it takes two to argue” defense of Spygate got to be a bit old). But I […]

Jim Stergios

Education leadership but not here

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Diane Ravitch, Sol Stern and others have criticized Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein for putting all their eggs into the “choice” basket. Frankly, there is merit to some of what they say – choice alone is not going to get it done. You need standards and accountability, including great curriculum frameworks and teacher testing, AND you need choice and the development of new supply (charters, pilots, METCO, university partnership schools, voc-tech schools and more). But the fact of the matter is, the unions will fight standards and accountability every step of the way. The proof of that is in the fact that where union strength is most entrenched in Massachusetts – in the urban centers – standards and accountability […]

Amy Dain

Are local zoning, wetlands regulations “market oriented”?

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At Thursday’s Pioneer forum on wetlands policy, one participant commented that tough local regulation of housing development IS market-oriented policy. The regulations raise the price of construction in the hinterlands and near wetlands, she argued, thus steering development to places it makes more sense – where there is infrastructure to support it. On one level, yes, the local regulations do raise the cost of construction, and in that way they can work as a market-tool to slow construction, where that is the goal. Problems on a few more levels, though. First, the local regulations are not, as she might hope, steering development towards downtowns and transportation corridors. Instead, localities too often use regulations to slow development both in ‘smart growth’ […]

Jim Stergios

Good on Alan LeBovidge

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Back in the Amorello days of the Mass Turnpike, Tom Keane wrote a splendid little dissection of the Turnpike’s penchant for giving out toll collections to charities of Chairman Matt’s choice. As Tom noted at the start of The Kindness of Tax Payers in the Sunday Globe Magazine: In the waning days of his administration, as the wolves were starting to circle and friends were looking few, Matt Amorello, head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority until August, started handing out money. The Boston College Associates Program got $5,000, as did a community health center in the North End. In all, according to a report in the Globe, Amorello distributed more than $52,000 to charities in the first six months of […]

Jim Stergios

Eating his words

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As noted last week, the Board Chairman S. Paul Reville performed a disservice to the parents and kids of Brockton, when he attacked a proposal for a new regional charter school at the last Board of Education meeting. It was the first time that the Board turned down a recommendation from the Commissioner of Education, whose department puts all proposals through a rigorous vetting process. Now, golly, I have intimated that the whole thing was rigged, given the bent of the Brockton Superintendent, the Governor’s Senior Adviser on Education Dana Mohler-Faria and the Governor against charters. I have received a couple of emails noting that I am pre-judging the decision. Uh, no. Just look back to a report issued in […]

Jim Stergios

Boom market for teachers in Denver

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Next thing you know, it won’t just be the skilled workforce in the private sector. Soon, the teachers will be leaving! A crosspost from Mike Antonucci’s Education Intercepts: The autonomy movement in Denver is leading to a strange phenomenon: a boom market for quality teachers: Diane Kenealy interviewed for a teaching job at West Denver Preparatory Charter School on Jan. 9, received a job offer within 24 hours and accepted the position three days later. Compare that rapid hiring to this spring’s staffing calendar in traditional Denver Public Schools, which dictates principals can’t schedule interviews with teaching candidates until the middle of March. Even then, they can only talk to candidates already working in a city school. A DPS principal […]

Steve Poftak

Is Christy Available?

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On the heels of Tuesday’s results, Obama’s ability to take a punch and deliver an effective counterpunch is the key question going forward in this race. But I’m not sure that the Axelrod Formula, summarized by the NYTimes: Over the last year, though, Mr. Obama has struggled to deliver that examination [of Clinton’s record]. He picks up the cudgel, and then sets it down. The problem is that Mr. Obama has built a campaign persona as the man of hope, a young candidate with oratorical skills who promises to build bridges across the ideological divide. allows for this type of behavior. If you recall the experience of another Axelrod client – Deval Patrick – he was able to avoid most […]

Jim Stergios

Louisiana beat us

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A follow to Meister Poftak’s post on the Grading the States report card released by Governing magazine and Pew’s Government Performance Project on the quality of governance in the 50 states. Just think about it: Last year Governing magazine splashed House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi’s face all over America for the work that he, former Senate President Travaglini and former Governor Romeny did in crafting the health care reform act. So much change, so fast. Governing rates Mass governance a C after a review of fiscal management, the use of technology, the state workforce, and infrastructure. (I understand the rating on the workforce – the grade must have taken a nosedive after I left…) Where do we stink? Well, we are […]

Steve Poftak

We beat Rhode Island and New Hampshire

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But that’s about it. In the latest Governing Magazine assessment of state management, Massachusetts finished 48th out of 50. In particular, our performance on infrastructure was quite poor, meriting just a D+ grade, but you may have already heard about that. A tip of the pen to the redoubtable Robert David Sullivan of Beyond Red & Blue for the point about infrastructure. 031308-testimony-to-bonding-cmte.doc h4409-governors-transportation-bond-bill.pdf h4562-house-transportation-committee-transpo-bond-bill.pdf masstrans-framework.pdf driving-questions-powerpoint-edited.ppt 2008-02-19-ian-bowles-on-sect-13-parkways-letter.pdf Language for Proposed Transportation Reforms DeLeo Letter on Transportation Bond BillLanguage for Proposed Transportation ReformsLanguage for Proposed Transportation Reforms

Steve Poftak

Farm Subsidies, Part XXXVI

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This space takes a dim view of almost all farm subsidies as market-distorting and wasteful. And as part of the nascent Pioneer Staff Caucus for good food, I find the evidence that the incentives contained in the farm bill to produce a handful of commodity crops — in essence creating a market through government interference — is neither healthy nor good for farmers in the long run. Yesterday’s NYTimes ran an op-ed from a farmer in Minnesota who pointed out another wrinkle in the farm bill — if you try and plant fruits and vegetables on land that had commodity (corn, soybean, rice, wheat, cotton) crops, you lose your government subsidy and you are penalized the market value of that […]

Steve Poftak

Counterintuitive News

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It’s too early, I realize.  But the state is $245 million ahead of where we projected we would be at this point in the fiscal year and $674 million ahead of the same point last fiscal year. Given all the chatter about a recession, its interesting that we aren’t (yet?) feeling the pinch tax-wise. If that $245 million holds, keep an eye on where it ends up — spent out in a ‘supp’, flushed into the Bay State Competitiveness Trust Fund, or put back into Stabilization.   What, you thought it would fund an income tax rollback?

Steve Poftak

Healthcare Cost Control

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Senate President Murray presented her ideas about controlling medical costs today. I don’t agree (or fully understand all of them) but I give her credit for setting out a broad array of potential areas for reform. And count me in as a fan of Section 20, expanding the role of Nurse Practitioners.