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Who Controls Health Care Costs? Experts Debate

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This week, Pioneer hosted its annual Hewitt Health Care Lecture, again bringing together influential leaders in medicine, business, and public policy to hear nationally recognized experts discuss our most pressing health care policy challenges. This year,  Harvard economist David Cutler and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Avik Roy discussed issues relevant to both the ACA (ObamaCare) and the new Massachusetts law (Chapter 224) that attempts to control costs and implement payment reform. The speakers delivered presentations on the problem of rising healthcare costs, followed by a moderated discussion, and audience Q&A. Check out our Facebook photo album; watch the video: Featured Speakers: David Cutler is Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics at Harvard and holds secondary appointments at the […]

Jim Stergios

Why do district superintendents oppose charter schools?

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When you ask that question, the usual answer is something about the kids, equity, and the unfairness of all the flexibility that charters get. It’s hard to get a superintendent to go beyond the platitudes. Perhaps the superintendent will raise all the good work that’s going on in the district. There may in fact be lots of work going on, but without a judgment on whether it is good or not so good of work is really dependent on results. Otherwise, such statements are simply assertions of exertion. With the closing of ranks in Brockton by the Brockton school superintendent and the district’s school committee in opposition to a proposed high-quality charter application, I got to wondering: Why? Why such […]

Jim Stergios

Suicide and the stress from school

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We often hear that kids are stressed by school — and most times MCAS testing is considered the culprit. Let’s look at the broad picture first. Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement suggests the following about US District High School students: 82.7% spend no more than 5 hours a week on homework. 42.5% spend an hour or less each week on homework. In contrast, according to a 2009 Korean National Statistics Office: The average Korean high school senior spent 11 hours per day studying The all student average was 8 hours (with about 3 hours per day of studying occurring outside the classroom). Of course, that begs lots of questions — important questions about culture, familial expectations, and […]

Jim Stergios

Hope the governor had a nice vacation

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The governor’s Colombia trip is over and here is what your money paid for. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Colombia comes with a translation into Spanish. That’s the good news. The rest of the story kind of goes as follows: They probably didn’t spend much time on it given the obvious typo of the word Party (Partiy) in Article 9. The document is clear in stating that it does not provide any legally binding obligations. (So, remind me why the governor’s presence was required when the agreement includes no obligations…) The document is extremely artful in its use of indeterminate gobbledy-gook speak like “foster” and “encourage.” All this is a little bit like John Cage’s […]

Jim Stergios

An easy vote for the Board of Education

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Tomorrow’s Board of Education meeting expects a crowd. Applicants for five new charter schools and 11 expansions will be on hand, as will detractors. There will be those on hand who pursued and opposed new charters that were denied the commissioner’s recommendation and therefore will not be brought to a Board vote. Push into that mix the oddly timed, late Friday news release (to one news source) that the Renaissance charter school is likely to be placed on probation, and you have a pretty full agenda and set of possible items that could come up. So plenty of opportunity for eruptions, interruptions, and controversy. On the underlying five new charter and 11 expansion applications that will be at the center […]

Jim Stergios

Two new charter schools for City on a Hill

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For the past decade and a half, February has served as the month during which the state’s Board of Education votes on proposed charter schools. The process is a long one, involving during the previous year the submission of concepts, detailed applications, revised applications, interviews with proponents and evaluations by the Charter School Office, which is today located within the state’s Department of Education. This year, the state’s education commissioner Mitch Chester has recommended a handful of the original 22 charter applications move forward. At next Tuesday’s education board meeting, final votes will be taken on the 5 new charters and 11 charter expansions recommended by the department. If all of the charters recommended by the department move forward, there […]

Jim Stergios

Boston Kids Need Another Brooke Charter School

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The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s vote later this month on a new set of charter school proposals is an opportunity to give thousands of Massachusetts kids access to a great school. The list of proposed charters includes new proposals for Boston, such as City on a Hill Charter Public School, which is proposing to open a second 280-student high school in Boston to open in 2013. (City on a Hill has also applied for a separate, new high school in New Bedford to serve 280 students.) In addition, a number of Boston charters have looked at expanding their existing enrollment caps, including Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School, a 5-12 charter that would like to serve […]

Joshua Archambault

5 Takeaways from the Employer Healthcare Survey in Massachusetts

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CHIA, the healthcare data agency for the Commonwealth, finally released a very late version of the 2011 employer survey. (The two reports can be found here and here.) Recently I blogged on the data neglect I observed at the agency as they are  delivering numerous regular reports late, and questioned if they were ready for even greater responsibility under Chapter 224 (the so-called payment reform and cost control law). So what can we learn from the latest survey? I decided to pull a few graphs to illustrate some trends, and provide five takeaways. 1. Increasing Uninsured Rate — We have seen an uptick in the number of uninsured, 3.1% in 2011 when compared to 1.9% in 2010. Could this account for […]

A Tale of Two Economies: Job Creation in Massachusetts

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In the State of the Union Address last night, President Obama spoke at length about how the country can kick-start the great American job engine. Here in Massachusetts, we hear that we are doing well compared to the rest of the country. And in part it is true that Greater Boston (though not the rest of the state) is faring better than many older industrialized states. But overall we have a stagnant job base and we face huge challenges. In the video presentation below, Pioneer Executive Director Jim Stergios provides a comprehensive overview of findings from our seven-report series on job creation and economic development in the Commonwealth, entitled, “Massachusetts’ New Economy.” [youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaePzajNdpc[/youtube] The “Massachusetts’ New Economy” series […]

Jim Stergios

Give Brockton students a choice

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The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s vote later this month on a new set of charter school proposals is an opportunity to give thousands of Massachusetts kids access to a great school. The list of proposed charters includes the following schools in cities outside of Greater Boston: Argosy Collegiate Charter School in Fall River the replication of Boston’s successful City on a Hill Charter Public School in New Bedford the replication of Springfield and Holyoke’s successful SABIS charter model in Brockton (the International Charter School of Brockton) the replication of Chelsea’s successful Phoenix Charter Academy in Springfield, and YouthBuild Charter Academy in Lawrence In the Greater Boston area, there are also two charter proposals, replications of the Pioneer […]

Jim Stergios

Bureaucratic teacher evaluations bring no change

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Back in April 2011, the Globe editorial page touted “Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester’s proposed regulations linking teacher evaluations to student performance” as “a long-awaited step toward rewarding effective teachers and unmasking incompetent ones.” Many have seen the new evaluation system as a huge step forward, but I’ve always been highly skeptical that it will do anything but create a lot more paper. In this regard, as I noted at the time, I think the Worcester Telegram & Gazette was the media outlet with the most detailed and most accurate view of the new evaluations: The state’s new regulations for the evaluation of educators… establish that MCAS test results will play some role in teacher evaluations; they state that student and […]

Joshua Archambault

Data Neglect at Massachusetts’s Data Agency (CHIA/DHCFP)

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The agency responsible for much of the publicly available data on healthcare in Massachusetts appears to be falling asleep at the wheel. The newly renamed Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) has fallen woefully behind on releasing regular reports on their website. While Massachusetts embarks on a massive reconfiguration of our marketplace (Chapter 224) and so much national attention lingers on the state’s 2006 experiment, the agency that has helped to inform policymakers is missing in action. In some cases, regular reports have not been updated since before the current Commissioner took over 16 months ago. In my mind, this raises some serious questions about what CHIA is being asked to do under Chapter 224. How can the state guide a $18 […]

Jim Stergios

WBUR RadioBoston debate on Guv’s Texas-sized budget and tax increases

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A good debate with Northeastern University’s Peter Enrich on RadioBoston today. More to come in several op-eds, blogs and Pioneer’s annual The Good, The Bad and the Ugly series.

Jim Stergios

Duking it out on NECN on the governor’s transportation plan

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Jim Braude referees, as I duke it out with Stephanie Pollack on the Governor’s transportation proposal. You can read more here for more of Pioneer’s position on the topic.

Jim Stergios

The incredible shrinking voc tech dropout rate

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On January 6th the Boston Globe published a thoughtful opinion piece on the cost of dropouts by Alan Leventhal, who in his day job serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Beacon Capital Partners. It opened with a good overview of the challenge in the country: EQUAL OPPORTUNITY for education has been a social and moral imperative of our society. In the looming budget battles, it is now an economic imperative. The secondary education system annually produces 1 million dropouts nationally — 10,000 in Massachusetts alone — at a staggering cost to society. The cost of a dropout over a lifetime has been estimated at up to $500,000 in lost wages, increased entitlements, and criminal justice spending. If the […]