THE PIONEER BLOG

Steve Poftak

Overheated Extrapolation Department

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Ok, maybe I didn’t pay as much attention to the NH primary as I should have. But the Globe’s Derrick Jackson brings us another of his unique insights today. After a brief bit of throat-clearing about Obama ‘defending’ Hilary’s likability, he rips into the former First Lady : But this pales next to the steady drip, drip, drip of stereotyping from the Clinton camp of a lazy, drug-using, Muslim black man who believes in fairy tales. Mr. Jackson is the early leader in the Globe Op-Ed page’s yearly “Did-They-Really-Just-Say-That” competition. James Carroll is disqualified (see this week’s entry — Football reveals the rotting heart at the core of America).

Liam Day

The Week in Review

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It certainly has been a busy one, both nationally and here at Pioneer. We are set to release a short policy brief on the inequities in Unemployment Insurance in Massachusetts and are gearing up for an education event Tuesday to discuss issues around student test data, including MCAS, TIMSS, the state’s data warehouse and the need to use data to guide professional development and inform classroom practice. For that reason, I saved up my thoughts this week for one weekend post. Here goes; from lightest to most serious. 1) This week’s sign of the apocalypse – According to The Week (a periodical I’ve trumped here before) a Colorado inmate is suing the prison where he is incarcerated because he was […]

Jim Stergios

One reason we do not pay teachers more

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Passed on by a friend is the shocking bulge in hiring for grades K-8: In the past year, there were 52,000 new K-8 students nationwide, and 42,500 new K-8 teachers hired. The National Education Association today released its annual report, Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007… Teacher hiring is completely out of control. Yes, believers in the eternal teacher shortage, you read that correctly. A trend that was obvious after last year’s edition of Rankings and Estimates is now glaring. The last of the Baby Boomer’s kids are working their way through high school and they are not being replaced. NEA estimates that K-12 enrollment grew by only 0.3 percent in 2006-07, […]

Steve Poftak

Minute Clinics are coming

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This space has been a supporter of in-store limited service clinics in the past. And the state’s Public Health Council, despite some misgivings, just approved the regulations which will allow these clinics to begin opening. And good for them, they approved blanket regulations, not just case-by-case waivers, which would tied the process up in red tape. But then, Mayor Menino steps into the frame with a vociferous and very public condemnation of the clinics. Its not clear to this writer why he’s so focussed on the issue. Sure, these clinics bring up some clear issues about our healthcare delivery system — discontinuity of care, fragmented recordkeeping, etc. But, guess what, these problems exist today and will exist tomorrow, regardless of […]

Steve Poftak

Ever wish….

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that Federico Fellini directed a allegorical history of Yugoslavia incorporating the cast of Animal House?  Sure you did. Time permitting, I urge you to view the best film you’ve never heard of — Underground, playing Thursday at the Brattle Theater.

Jim Stergios

Urban education on the move… elsewhere

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Passed on by Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform: Some great news from Washington DC — and by a 10-3 vote! (courtesy of the Center for Education Reform): The Council of the District of Columbia approved the Public Education Personnel Reform Act late this afternoon, 10-3, after several hours of deliberations. The act would give D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee the authority to turn around the district, including cutting ineffective or unproductive personnel in central administration. A majority of the Council embraced this historical landmark reform, recognizing the need for drastic change within the D.C. Public School System. This act shall take effect after final approval by Mayor Adrian Fenty and a 30-day period of Congressional review. In DC they […]

Alan Petrillo

Councilor Feeney, invite some firefighters to your forum.

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The Globe’s Juxtaposition Desk is really on the ball this morning. Right below an investigative piece on alleged abuses of the firefighters’ pension system, there’s a bit about Councilor Maureen Feeney’s wish for a “New England-style town meeting” in Boston. Great idea. Once the Convention Center is packed with ordinary Bostonians – all, presumably, asking for better services or lower taxes – please get some representative of the firefighters or the city up on the dais. And please, someone wave a Pioneer White Paper on pension abuse and mismanagement at that public servant. Ask if the city can distinguish citizens’ interests from those of its employees. I promise that Research Director Steve Poftak will autograph that White Paper, if not […]

Steve Poftak

The Knock-on Effect of the Subprime Mess

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I attended the Finance Advisory Board meeting last week and one of the new appointees to the Board, Robert McConnaughey, (who replaced the previous incompetent), raised an interesting and insightful point — how will downgrades to bond insurers impact public sector debt? To unpack his question a bit — much public sector (i.e. municipalities, authorities, states, etc.) debt is enhanced with bond insurance, which provides a higher bond rating and reduces borrowing costs. If these bond insurers themselves get downgraded (largely as a result of exposure to bad subprime debt that they insured), it flows through the market and affects the bonds that they insured. Mr. McConnaughey’s question is already looking even more timely. S&P just downgraded a major bond […]

Scott W. Graves

Stack em high

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What level of concentration of poverty is the right amount? Is it right for the state to create destination cities for the poor? As it stands, the state will, whenever possible, place the poor it is “helping” in areas of cities where housing values are extremely low in order to maximize their own ability to give people shelter. Seems to be right from the immediate bean-counting standpoint, but if you think about it, it can create a death spiral for cities, which are already deep in the trough fiscally. Let’s start with the numbers.  In Massachusetts, the following Middle Cities have easily met their “state target for affordable housing”: Holyoke – 21% Springfield – 17% Lawrence – 15% Worcester – […]

Liam Day

There are no other issues. This is the issue.

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At a critical moment in The Verdict perhaps the best Boston movie ever made (considerably better, anyway, than the wildly overrated The Departed), Paul Newman’s character, a Boston defense attorney, is advised by his mentor (played by the incomparable Jack Warden, who, as you movie buffs out there may know, played the grandfather in one of the all time great cheesy movies, Problem Child) that there will be other cases. In response, Newman repeats over and over, more to himself than to Jack Warden, that “There are no other cases. This is the case. There are no other cases. This is the case.” I was reminded of this scene this morning reading Ed Moscovitch’s op-ed in the Boston Herald, Soaring […]

Scott W. Graves

46 years ago and still true

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Jane Jacobs was the maven of public input, but she is also in many respects a common sense proponent of organic, private market growth in our cities. Try this on for size, from The Death and life of Great American Cities, published in 1961 when Robert Moses still held the marionette of New York in his hands: There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend — the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars — we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse the decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-before yester-day’s suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and […]

Steve Poftak

Who said this?

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Could, for instance, more services be privatized? Could state and local workers’ benefits be more closely aligned with those in the private sector? Give up?  The lead editorial in today’s Boston Globe!!! Be still my beatin’ heart.

Steve Poftak

Ed Muskie called

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…and he’s wondering why he loses the New Hampshire primary while it appears that Mitt Romney is trying to win Iowa and New Hampshire with the same tactic. A tip of the pen to Adam Reilly of the Phoenix for pointing this out, and recalling a previous teary moment from the candidate.

Steve Poftak

Welcome back, Princess Leia

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For the small (but highly vocal) group of readers of this blog interested in Ukrainian affairs, we salute Yulia Tymoshenko’s return to  the premiership of the country.  We look forward to a stable government free of corruption and backstabbing!! Did you not get the headline reference?  The PM’s signature is her braided hair, first popularized by Carrie Fisher.

Steve Poftak

The real war on Christmas

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No, not the silly kerfluffle whipped up by Bill O’Reilly and Company. Its the slow decline of the incandescent Christmas light, gone from our State Capitol and the birthplace of the American Revolution. Congress has now gotten into the act.  Its new energy bill will make incandescents “extinct by the middle of the next decade”, per the Boston Globe. I know, I know, LEDs and florescents are much more efficient, but c’mon, aren’t real incandescent Christmas lights nicer?    😉