THE PIONEER BLOG

Steve Poftak

MassDOT, Scorecards, and the Gas Tax

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In my last post, I put together a model of what MassDOT communicating results to the public might look like. (And I know it’s not perfect — weigh in below with suggestions for improving it.) But getting this part right is the foundation of any discussion of a gas tax. It has to look like a contract — you taxpayers pay this, and MassDOT will give you value in return. Without refocusing the transportation agency on consumer-centered metrics, why would the public think that an increase in the gas tax will lead to service improvements?

Jim Stergios

Inspector Clouseau-style accountability

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I noted two weeks ago that recent MCAS data don’t tell a pretty story on urban achievement gaps. Since 2007, the Commonwealth’s performance on national (so-called NAEP) assessments is not so great, flatlining for almost every subject and grade tested. (Note: Stay tuned for the latest round of NAEP data, which is to be released this fall.) The Commonwealth’s Board and its Department of Elementary and Secondary Education sure have lots of task forces, committees, and extra-long board jawboning sessions. (Board meetings have almost doubled in length; I’ll let you decide if the same can be said on substance.) I certainly wish some of the words and time of these officials would go toward programs that have a record of […]

Steve Poftak

Unemployment – It’s Worse Than You Think

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Massachusetts has done relatively well (or maybe less bad is more apt) in terms of unemployment. Our current rate is 7.4 percent, far better than the national average of 9.1 percent. But even with a rate of 7.4 percent, that means we’ve got about 130,000 more unemployed people than our pre-recession level of unemployment. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics.

Steve Poftak

Whose Money Talks in Mass Politics?

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The Occupy protesters still have a variety of viewpoints represented but a clear theme is a rejection of corporate influence that they view as having taken over politics. At the same time, the success of the protests in generating attention has attracted the labor movement, which sees a popular vehicle for their goals. If you’d allow me to take the focus down to the specifics of Massachusetts politics for a moment, I’d urge the OccupyBoston folks to think long and hard about what influence money has over politics here and who wields that influence. Take a look at the top 20 PAC donors in Massachusetts from 2010 – 16 of the top 20 PACs were labor-related. Put another way, from […]

Steve Poftak

Boston About Results 3.0

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The grandiose promises of politicians frequently disappoint. Initiatives launched with tremendous fanfare lose momentum as their champions turn their interest elsewhere and move onto other things. So its nice to see exactly the opposite happening in Boston. The city has been talking about its performance management system, Boston About Results, for a number of years. It initially was introduced in 2006 and first appeared as a series of goals and measures in the city budget. Then it progressed into a section of the city website with additional information and graphics for a variety of measures in each department (see BPS example here). As a long-time observer, I was pleased to see the additional data but still felt that improvements could […]

Jim Stergios

Steve Jobs on education in America

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Tip of the hat to Whitney Tilson for passing around excerpts from an interview Steve Jobs gave in 1995, during which he talked extensively about his view on education and what should be done to fix it. SJ: I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life, but I don’t know how to do that. Nobody knows how to do that. But it pains me because we […]

Jim Stergios

Life Lessons From Steve Jobs

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In a blog post entitled Bill Gates doesn’t like the liberal arts, Steve Jobs does, I noted that unlike Gates’ view that higher education spending should be a lot less about liberal arts and much more focused on job-producing disciplines, Steve Jobs believed the liberal arts were critical to business in an age of hyper-communication: It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices. That post closed with File under: Who would you rather talk with, go to the museum with, go to a concert with, share books with… […]

Steve Poftak

Musings on the Occupy Movement in Boston

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OccupyBoston has captured lots of media space with their occupation of the Greenway, but I’m still searching for the point. It has tapped into the collective unease over the state of employment in this country. Faced with flat or declining incomes over time (with compensation increases being consumed by healthcare) and the effects of the recession – high unemployment, widespread underemployment, and declining workforce participation – many are either unemployed or deeply insecure financially. The physical protest itself raises questions about the coherence and potential longevity of the movement. The protesters (from my highly unscientific inspection and reading of news coverage) appear to be mostly white 20-something males. (Side note: News photographers seem to have a knack for catching the […]

Jim Stergios

Is student achievement in Massachusetts falling flat?

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The short answer that will come in this and blog posts in the next days is, in important ways, yes. So why the image of a big churn? Let’s start with the immediate news of this past year’s MCAS data and what they tell us. The Globe’s Peter Schworm, in a piece entitled MCAS scores appear stuck in stubborn income gap, nailed it in three places: Educators have made only modest gains in narrowing the gulf in achievement between low-income students and those who are better off… The percentage of [low-income] 10th graders who were proficient at English, for instance, rose from 48 in 2007 to 69 this year. In math, the figure climbed from 47 percent to 56 percent… […]

Jim Stergios

Dumb and Dumber – Proposed Bill

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You can agree or disagree on most bills in the State House. The merits of casino gambling bill? Is it a third-world job creation strategy or an opportunity we are missing? The upcoming pension reform? Reasonable incremental improvements or a half-fix after lawmakers added billions in future pension costs this summer to free up $1 billion in immediate program money? But every so often you bump up against some really bad ideas—and unfortunately many of them happen to be in education. Whole language instruction, weakening academic standards, and weakening teacher tests are the usual sort of items you have to fight against. But even after the Wisconsin and Massachusetts collective bargaining changes, on Tuesday a hearing will be held on […]

Joshua Archambault

Obama Admin Rethinking Massachusetts Model? Part 2

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My now monthly blog post wondering if there will be agreement soon between the Obama Administration and the Patrick Administration on a multi-year extension of the Massachusetts health care waiver. As a review, the Massachusetts MassHealth 1115 waiver from the federal government allowed the 2006 health reform to become a reality. The waiver was last negotiated by the Patrick Administration in 2008, and was extended until June 30, 2011 at that tome. Quietly this summer, the new deadline was pushed back three times, and is set to expire again tomorrow. The Boston Globe’s Liz Kowalczyk and Chelsea Conaboy were kind enough to ask CMS Administrator Dr. Don Berwick about it in a recent interview: Berwick would not comment on negotiations with Massachusetts over […]

Steve Poftak

Pull Back the Curtains

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Local news over the past few years has had plenty of stories about state government — corruption scandals, employee benefit reforms, and spending battles. Wouldn’t it be useful to have a way to dig behind the headlines and get the facts about where the state spends its money, what it pays employees, and what are the actual pensions received by state retirees? Now you do — www.massopenbooks.org — provides detailed salary, pension and state disbursement data. The disbursement data has multiple layers to filter down to what really interests you, and plenty bubbles up. Did you know the state spent $6.5 million on office furniture in 2009 or $7 million in the same year for interns at UMASS? Salaries reveal […]

Steve Poftak

Learning From A Tragedy

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On the afternoon of January 9, 2009, the brakes on Ladder Company 26 failed and it ran down Parker Street in Mission Hill, cutting across Huntington Street, and crashing into a building, taking the life of Lt. Kevin Kelley and injuring the driver and several other passengers. Following the accident, the City commissioned an outside study of the Boston Fire Department’s fleet management practices that put forward some harsh findings about the BFD and provided a clear set of recommendations. The study found that the fleet’s management was largely haphazard, as evidenced by a vicious cycle of poorly qualified mechanics who either did questionable work or were unable to properly judge work done by outside vendors, so firefighters became reluctant […]

Jim Stergios

Over Confidential

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Being a litigious society, we have all received emails from lawyers that include signature sections with name, position, organization, street address, floor, suite, city/state/zip, email, fax, phone, favorite non-profit or case, favorite quote, serial number, favorite cereal, and so on. That’s lots of information to share, but below it is 15 miles of confidentiality verbiage as to why this is protected, privileged, blahblahblah communication. It makes you laugh in the private sector, but it’s not something you expect in the public sector. Let me share two items I noticed just this morning in various communications with our public servants (state and local): CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic transmission is for the intended recipient only and may contain information that is privileged, […]

Jim Stergios

Proven Approaches to Dropout Prevention

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Tomorrow the state’s Joint Committee on Education will meet to discuss a raft of proposals to address Massachusetts’ inability to bring down its dropout rate. It’s about time. The problem is that few of the proposals actually do much more than beef up a cadre of coaches and support staff for at-risk kids. Perhaps that can help, but the data in reports like The Silent Epidemic are pretty clear in noting that kids drop out for two reasons: – Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested […]