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Session 6 -CMS & Mass Marriage Counseling
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare /byToday marks the 6th extension granted to the Commonwealth for the Medicaid waiver that serves as the foundation for our 2006 reform. I have written about this before here and here. As a review, the Massachusetts MassHealth 1115 waiver from the federal government allowed the 2006 health reform to become a reality financially. The waiver was last negotiated by the Patrick Administration in 2008, and was extended until June 30, 2011. From SHNS this morning ($): HIGH-STAKES MEDICAID TALKS DRAG ON: Secretive negotiations between the Patrick administration and the Obama administration over the distribution of billions of dollars in Medicaid funding have failed to produce an agreement and will continue into December. The outcome of the talks, which are occurring as Washington looks […]
Taking Commuter Rail In-House?
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: MBTA, Blog: Transportation, News /byBad idea. At least that appeared to be the consensus at commuter rail forum held this morning by A Better City (to mark the release of their paper on commuter rail). The event was structured around the idea of a public-private partnership as the next step in the operation of commuter rail. (The existing contract with MBCR expires in 18 months) I raised the issue of the Patrick Administration’s interest in possibly pulling the commuter rail operation back in-house. From March of this year: Lt. Gov. Tim Murray said the MBTA, a state agency, is eyeing a potential takeover of commuter rail operations when the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company’s contract expires in June 2013. “We’re going to look at […]
Examining Our Community Colleges
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakCommunity Colleges are a popular topic these days – with two research reports (here and here) being issued in the past weeks. The first came from the Boston Healthcare Careers Consortium. It was released with a host of ‘stakeholders’ taking credit. This report has its share of consensus-speak but a few items jump off the page. First, the K-12 preparation level for many students is stunningly low – in Bunker Hill Community College’s entering 2009 class, 98% of students needed a remedial placement for at least one discipline (reading, English, and math) and over a third needed placements for all three. More importantly, the paper digs into the lack of coordination across the community college system – different requirements for […]
National standards will define local curricula
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byI don’t know why (well, actually, I do) the national standards project reminds me of France. Yesterday the quote from Jean Cocteau, today … Cardinal Richelieu. Armand-Jean du Plessis, later known to us as Cardinal Richelieu was responsible for expanding the reach of weak-willed King Louis XIII by weakening the regional noble powers and instituting a system of administrative enforcers (intendants). The good Cardinal made possible the Sun King, the king who went so far as to say L’etat c’est moi. A shrewd and cruel strategist, Richelieu defined the term eminence grise; in reality, he was bolder than a simple strategist waiting in the shadows. He earned himself the moniker of Red Eminence, red being of course the bright royal […]
Myths about National Standards: Myth #2
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byThe French painter, poet, novelist, director, etc., Jean Cocteau noted the following about our need for myths: Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort. With education so rife with mediocrity, those satisfied with the status quo often resort to myth for comfort. Some schools don’t perform well, the myth goes, because poor and minority kids cannot excel; there’s the myth that if we only added more class time everything would be fine; there’s the myth that classroom size always or even most of the time matters. And, of course, […]
Questions for the AG on Health Reform 2
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, News /byAttorney General Coakley spoke this afternoon at MAHP’s annual conference. I wanted to offer a few thoughts and questions. Video can be found here. I like the AG’s focus on transparency and health literacy, but I am not sure these actions alone move us towards fully engaged consumers when they still have employer sponsored insurance that covers most costs. What is their motive? Other questions: 1)Why are providers responsible for giving pricing information when insurers have that data? 2)What is the value of bringing everyone around a benchmark average price for a service? That does not reward low-cost/high quality service, it does the opposite, and allows higher cost/ lower quality service to remain. 3) Will rejections of provider contracts be per procedure, […]
The Dog That Didn’t Bark — Chelsea Housing Authority and the Auditor
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakIt feels like a familiar story – an obscure public sector entity with a clueless (or worse) board of directors fails to do their job and the executive director makes off with bags of money. Except this time, the setting is the Chelsea Public Housing Authority rather than the Merrimack Valley (see here and here). Briefly, the Director of the Authority managed to pay himself $360,000 per year (far more than any other Housing Authority director in the state) while claiming that he was only making $160,000. His explanation for lying to the state and federal government: He’s a ‘rebel’. Once he figured out his days were numbered, he got the Authority’s bookkeeper to write him checks cashing out his […]
Myths About National Standards: Myth #1
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byBeing half Greek and long a admirer of Classical Antiquity, I do have a soft spot in my heart for mythology. When it comes to public policy, myths have far less utility, as perhaps the myths about the fate of modern-day Greece shows all too clearly. When it comes to American education, the myths that are bandied about most frequently these days are related to the “Common Core” national standards. Proponents make a number of important claims about them: They’re internationally benchmarked. They’re aligned with workplace needs and also college readiness. They don’t dictate state curricula; and they’re voluntary. Each of these assertions by proponents of the Common Core is highly questionable and in some cases outright false. Friends in […]
What a Deal: State $. No Oversight?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakImagine getting money from the state on a no-bid basis. Even better, a state law names you as the sole entity eligible to get the cash. If you are lucky enough to be BDC Capital, you don’t have to imagine. As recently as 2008, the program it runs, the Capital Access Program, got $5 million in the life sciences bill. BDC Capital (known as the Massachusetts Business Development Corporation) receives money from the state and other sources and supposedly uses it to support small businesses. And someone is looking out for them, an attempt to open the program to other providers in the last Economic Development bill was dropped in conference. I say ‘supposedly’ above, because no one cares to […]
Pressley’s Victory and Connolly’s Regrets
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakThe more you look at Ayanna Pressley’s first-place finish in Tuesday’s at-large race, the more impressive it looks. As I noted previously, she was able to hold onto a lot of votes from the 2009 at-large election that had much higher turnout (she held onto 90 percent of her ’09 votes with only 57 percent of the total turnout). Now, the exact same people didn’t necessarily vote for her in each election, but I think it’s a useful proxy for a candidate’s popularity and GOTV effort. In fact, in a number of cases across the city (79 of 254 precincts), Pressley exceeded her vote totals from ’09. And it was relatively spread out across the city from a demographic standpoint, […]
Does Mass. Exclude Low-Achievers from National Education Tests?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs, Transparency /by Jim StergiosLast week, in reporting the national test results on how our public schools are doing, I noted that while It is wonderful that Massachusetts has maintained its lead nationally, … [o]ur students are no longer improving at the rate they were and in fact their performance has largely flatlined. On the scaled scores for the Commonwealth, the loss of momentum is very clear with no change on the 4th and 8th grade math scores, and a slight increase on the 4th and 8th grade reading scores (which amount to scores that are statistically unchanged). Let me share an additional reasons to be concerned and it starts with a solid piece from Nirvi Shah of EdWeek entitled “How Many Students With […]
What will adoption of national standards cost Massachusetts schools?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs, Transparency /byIt’s always struck me as odd that with all the talk about federal money coming from the federal Race to the Top effort to support state implementation of national standards (the so-called Common Core), no one has done a solid cost estimate for what it will cost. Let me say that again: We have at the state and federal level changed policies that are far-reaching for our states, districts and schools, and yet we have had no idea what it will cost to do so. McGraw-Hill’s February 2011 Education Brief notes that States and districts are unsure what the true cost of implementing Common Core will be and worry that the money needed will not be available in state or […]
Brief Thoughts on Tuesday’s Election Results
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakMonster win for Pressley: She topped the ticket unequivocally. In the last at-large race, 354 votes separated the two ticket-toppers (Connolly and Murphy). This time around, Pressley beat her closest competitor (Arroyo) by more than 2,000 votes with closer to 50,000 fewer voters to work with. City-wide for Pressley?: Pressley ran strong citywide, with the notable exception of South Boston. I’ll take a deeper dive into those numbers later this week and draw some conclusions about the results, particularly who gained votes where.
Preserving Benefits Trumps Public Safety
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /by Taylor ArmerdingPolice union leaders are forever claiming that their highest priority is public safety. But the evidence says otherwise – it is more about money, even if that means cannibalizing their ranks. As the Boston Globe reports, a lawsuit brought by Boston police went before the Supreme Judicial Court this week. And if the union wins, the likely outcome will be cuts in police staffing throughout the state. The suit is over funding for the Police Career Incentive Pay Program, more commonly known as the Quinn Bill, which has drained public safety funding since 1970. It is one of the reasons that police base pay, which the unions regularly cite to claim that officers are underpaid, is such a fiction. In […]
Focus group, dog and pony show, or both? Early Results from Health Connector FOIA
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Transparency /byIf government agencies had nothing to hide, perhaps they would follow public records laws. I’ve written before about how non-responsive state agencies can be to public record requests, and in particular to requests dealing with Evergreen Solar, and it now appears somebody has been listening. Eight days after my blog post on the delayed Evergreen Solar request, and just 175 days after it was originally filed, I finally received 66 pages of responsive documents. The Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development kindly waived potential fees. Shortly before that I received the results of another overdue request, this one to the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector for the results of early focus groups the state used to shape the simple Gold/Silver/Bronze selection now […]