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Our View: Keep the Hotel Subsidy Out of the BCEC Expansion Bill
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Blog: Transparency, Featured /byToday (Thursday), the Massachusetts State Senate is planning to vote on the proposed $1 billion expansion of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Pioneer has been working hard to shine the spotlight on problems with the project. The good news is that added public attention helped bring about a revision in the Senate Ways and Means draft, removing the $100 million hotel subsidy that Pioneer found troubling. Last week, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote about our concerns that the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) would have been allowed to select a developer to build and operate a 1,000- to 1,200-room hotel on land owned by Massport, with $110 million in public subsidies. There is no provision in the bill requiring MassPort and MCCA to award […]
WCVB Team 5 Reports on Pioneer’s Analysis of $92M Boston Fire Contract
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Blog: Transparency, Featured, News /byPioneer Institute Executive Director Greg Sullivan appeared on a WCVB Team 5 Investigates news report about the City of Boston’s $92 million contract with the Fire Department, which disproportionately benefits highly paid administrators and supervisors over rank and file firefighters. Watch the WCVB video here. Read the story here. Study: Boston fire, EMS most expensive in US 148 supervisors earn more than Gov. Deval Patrick BOSTON —Team 5 Investigates exclusive new details about the $92 million deal just inked for the city of Boston’s firefighters. Read more: http://www.wcvb.com/news/study-boston-fire-ems-most-expensive-in-us/26405806#ixzz34F21XGpT Greg Sullivan said, ““The top brass is overstaffed and overpaid.” These graphics from the WCVB report compare the average salaries of district chiefs in 4 large cities: Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, and […]
To Be a National Curriculum, or Not to Be a National Curriculum: More Fordham-Finn Flip Flopping
/3 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core, Jamie Gass, News /byWho says that Common Core ELA cuts classic literature, poetry, and drama? Our good friends at the Fordham Institute (see Checker & Co. as Gates Foundation vendor) must wake up early to start writing their dramatic “exemplar” texts and examples for America’s kids and policymakers. But here’s a dramatic exemplar of Common Core’s Surrealist art imitating life: Checker Finn as ed reform’s very own Hamlet. A new episode in the Common Core drama demonstrates once again the situational ethics involved with Common Core advocacy. Let’s take it from the top. [quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]As people in the K-12 edu-sphere now know, Fordham has had more costume changes than Madonna…[/quote] Back in 2011 (the Era of Good Feelings for the Common Core) one time […]
The Globe on Common Core and Poetry
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core, Jim Stergios, News /byIt is not stereotyping poets to say that they burn with a particular passion. Just as a biochemist has insatiable curiosity about living organisms, the ways in which genetic information gets stamped into DNA, nucleic acids and lipids, poets have a burning passion for creating worlds, images and associative metaphors and paradoxes with words. They are believers in The Word. That’s why it may seem so unthinkable for a curmudgeonly poet like Philip Larkin to insist that his diaries be shredded and burned. But of course, that is easily understood given that he likely saw himself as editing out unreadable stuff or at least stuff that others would use to reduce his poetry to “buggery,” as he’d put it. (Well, […]
Legislative Common Core Remedy No Panacea
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core, Sandra Stotsky /byThe next phase of the Great Game to control the minds of the next generation of Americans has just begun. Oklahoma is the most recent state to try to eliminate the academic malignancies entailed by Common Core. Many Oklahomans deserve credit for the bill Governor Fallin may sign this week, especially Jenni White, an energetic mother of six. But there will be no end to the Gates Foundation’s effort to impose weak secondary school standards on this country in the name of ending “white privilege” (the motivation acknowledged by New Hampshire teacher David Pook at a Cornerstone Institute debate two weeks ago), rather than to strengthen secondary school coursework for all students with academically rigorous and internationally benchmarked standards. The following steps […]
A Fractured Testing Landscape
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core, Jim Stergios /byOne of the benefits of waking up at 3 am to do some work is that you get to read everything without interruption from kids who have questions about their Common Core-aligned homework. EdWeek just emailed out this nifty map on the status of testing plans for states in the US. It interested me for a number of reasons but here is my list of four big takeaways: What will happen to the ever dwindling PARCC? Nine states? They started out with 25 states participating and now they are down to 9? (Just a year ago, according to the USED, they stood at 19.) How tenable with that be going forward given that with fewer states come fewer student customers and […]
Another Misleading Attack on Charter Schools from the BTU
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Charter Schools, Featured, News /byA recent Boston Teachers Union e-bulletin grossly misrepresented data on Boston students’ performance on Advanced Placement (AP) exams, claiming that district high schools outperform public charter high schools. Pioneer’s analysis demonstrates that the BTU’s manipulation of the data is meant to create a false perception about charter schools and to cover up dismayingly poor results in BPS’s non-exam schools. The BTU newsletter shamefully includes in its calculation of districtwide AP exam results the City’s three exam schools, which have a passing rate (an AP test score of three or better) of 72%. Remove the City’s elite exam schools, and BPS’s non-exam district schools have a passing rate of only 14%. The City’s public charter schools do not accept students on the basis of entrance exams; rather they accept students based on lottery. […]
Massachusetts to Default to Healthcare.gov, After Hail Mary to Save Its Exchange
/2 Comments/in ACA, Blog: ACA, Blog: Healthcare, Featured /byYesterday Massachusetts officials announced plans to default to Healthcare.gov, but also announced a quixotic sprint to try first try to rebuild the entire site in five months with a brand new, no-bid taxpayer-paid contract to health care software developer hCentive. This move comes eight months into open enrollment, after launching the worst performing exchange in the country, spending most of the $180 million from Washington and announcing that original contractor CGI would be fired—even though it is still working on the project. The announcement should leave taxpayers and policymakers scratching their heads and wondering about the lack of accountability, government management and procurement. A “Dual-Track” Strategy Kyle Cheney at Politico broke the story: Massachusetts is taking steps this week to […]
Orchard Gardens Against the Machine
/1 Comment/in Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Charter Schools, Jim Stergios /byYvonne Abraham’s column this week bemoaned the resignation of Andrew Bott from the Orchard Gardens School in Roxburyto take the helm of the K-8 Lincoln School in Brookline The column and most of the commentary I’ve heard focuses on why Mr. Bott, by all accounts an effective principal, is leaving. To the Boston public schools’ long list of woes, add this one: Andrew Bott is leaving. Bott is the principal of Orchard Gardens K-8, the Roxbury school that has become the shining, nationally recognized poster child for successful turnaround efforts. A few years ago, the school defined failure and faced a state takeover. Bott, equipped with a strong vision, federal funds, and autonomy to hire teachers, brought about staggering improvements […]
Building the Machine – a review
/0 Comments/in Blog: Education, Common Core, Featured, Jim Stergios, News /byWhat is Common Core? How did it start–and who drove it? Are the standards high? How will it change our understanding of authentic college-level work? Are Common Core proponents well-intentioned? Or are they DC office-sitters who’ve rarely had any direct impact on a school or classroom but who really believe that they deserve control of key levers of education policy? What is the purpose of education? These are the kinds of questions that make up the greater part of the storyline of Building the Machine, a documentary film produced by the Home School Legal Defense Association. Let me start this movie review by donning my Roger Ebert hat (decidedly not the Pauline Kael scarf) and getting the movie buff comments out of the way: […]
Government Transparency: A Step Forward
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Blog: Transparency, Transparency /byGovernor Deval Patrick launched the MassResults web page to promote transparency and accountability in Massachusetts government. Effectiveness, accountability and openness are Gov. Patrick’s goals. He aims to build a “results-oriented culture” in state government and says, “I encourage you to explore the site, ask questions and tell me what you think. Asking government to articulate what success looks like and be accountable for results is something that every citizen should expect.” The MassResults web page includes strategic plans and performance reports for each of the governor’s cabinet secretaries, incorporating the agencies and departments the secretaries oversee. The Web page links other transparency tools, as well, including Open Checkbook, Budget Dash Boards, annual financial reports, and others. [quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]MassResults is a […]
100+ Unanswered Questions about the Failed Connector ACA Website
/2 Comments/in ACA, Blog, Blog: ACA, Blog: Healthcare, Featured, Healthcare /byAs a result of the failed Connector website, 160,000 Massachusetts residents are on temporary public Medicaid coverage even though they don’t qualify for MassHealth. Failure at the Connector will cost Massachusetts taxpayers over $100 million dollars this year. So, Pioneer has questions about how Massachusetts went from having a well-functioning Exchange to one of the worst performances of any state in the Union: 102 questions to be exact. This week legislators on Beacon Hill are finally convening a second hearing in the seventh month since open enrollment started under the ACA, on the failures at the Connector. This follows a recent Congressional hearing featuring the executive director of the Connector, and a February hearing in Boston where legislators simply vented […]
What Reporters Think They Know about Common Core
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core, Sandra Stotsky /byThe public is ill-served by reporters who are no longer skeptical of what they are told, can’t read a set of ELA or math standards for K-12, and do not try to find out what is actually happening in the classroom in the name of Common Core. Here is a chart that appeared in an October 15, 2013 Hechinger Report. The comments mingle partial truths and outright lies. Why didn’t Sarah Garland, the reporter, seek a range of perspectives in order to evaluate what he or she had been told? (“Sold” may be the more accurate word.) Six ways Common Core changes English and math classrooms: Before Common Core English classes concentrated on literature, like Huckleberry Finn and Great Gatsby […]
Watch “Building the Machine,” New Common Core Movie
/2 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Common Core /by Editorial Staff“Building the Machine” is an excellent primer on the fatal deficiencies of Common Core national education standards. It features Pioneer’s Jim Stergios as well as all the major authors of Pioneer’s research on the inferior quality of the Common Core: Sandra Stotsky, R. James Milgram, Ze’ev Wurman and Bill Evers. Watch it here: [youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc[/youtube]
Mass Connector Called Before Congress To Explain Failed Rollout
/0 Comments/in ACA, Blog: ACA, Blog: Healthcare, Featured, Healthcare /byChris Cassidy at the Boston Herald is reporting that Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, will be called before two Congressional committees to explain the failings of the exchange under the ACA on Thursday April 3rd at 10am. It should be noted that Yang will be the only executive director who has not been fired or resigned due to the poor performance of their state based exchange of the states invited that are likely to testify. These states include Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, and Oregon. As I have written about before, Massachusetts has the distinction of currently being the worst performing exchange in the country. Meanwhile, Governor Patrick has expressed his support for the current leadership […]