THE PIONEER BLOG

Joshua Archambault

Governor, When is Excessiveness Excessive?

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The state senate is trying to decide whether to override the governor’s veto of provisions that were included in the state budget that …narrow the amount of time the insurance commissioner has to review [health insurance] rate-hike proposals to 30 days from 45 days. In addition, if the commissioner fails to make a judgment within 30 days, the proposed rate hikes would automatically take effect. These provisions were included in the budget in response to the Division of Insurance’s denial of 235 of 274 increases proposed by insurers for plans covering individuals and small businesses, last April. However, the madness of this debate from the Administration comes in the next paragraph of the State House News Services ($) story: Under […]

Jim Stergios

Setting the Record Straight

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When blogging, sometimes you shorthand — summarize too quickly. In yesterday’s blog, I suggested that Rick Hess, American Enterprise Institute scholar and EdWeek blogger, has been straddling the fence on things like national standards and assessments, generally giving the US ED the benefit of the doubt on debates concerning whether the education department is overstepping its bounds, whether one-size-fits-all national education strategies actually work, whether the national standards were any good and whether the national assessments will be a qualitative step forward. That’s pretty accurate on the national standards and assessments, where Rick is sympathetic to the case for common standards, but wonders if it is going to get bungled. He’s in wait-and-see mode. It’s less accurate on the US […]

Steve Poftak

Mr. Commissioner, Open This Road!

/0 Comments/in , /by Steve Poftak

One of the great mysteries of urban life is the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s penchant for blocking a lane on Storrow Drive for events. For events ranging from charity walks to radio station concerts to the Fourth of July celebration, DCR blocks a lane of traffic stretching from the esplanade to at least the first ‘rest pull-off’ on the westbound side of the Storrow. The impact of the lane closure typically backs up traffic onto the Leverett Connector and back into the tunnel , creating delays of a half hour or more in some instances. The stated rationale for the practice is visitor safety, with the row of parked cars serving as a barrier between vehicles and participants. In […]

Joshua Archambault

Wishful Thinking On Romneycare & Obamacare for Employers

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Over at the left-of-center blog The Incidental Economist, Austin Frakt has picked up the misplaced logic of those on the left to compare the experience of Massachusetts and extrapolate it to the national level, especially for employer behavior. Perhaps some wishful thinking. By pointing to recent state data on employer offer rates for insurance, it seems to prove that employers under a mandate system at least still offer insurance. But I am not sure offer rates are a good indicator of much, especially in a down economy. Weaker companies go under and push up the rate. Plus if you look at historical data, offer rates have always been higher in Massachusetts compared to most of the rest of the nation. […]

Steve Poftak

Whoa! What Did DeNucci Know?

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The Lowell Sun’s Peter Lucas weighs in on the Merrimack Special Education Collaborative scandal (see my previous comments here and here) and performs a bit of (unknowing?) jiu-jitsu. The piece is driven by an internal leak from the State Auditor’s office where a DeNucci loyalist lets slip that the report leaked by Bump was actually conducted under the former Auditor: Although an investigation of the program covering 2008 to 2010 had been conducted by former state Auditor Joseph DeNucci, and a draft report written up, you would never know it. That audit, conducted before Bump took office in January, apparently sat on a shelf until Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, who had conducted a parallel investigation with DeNucci, released his explosive […]

Jim Stergios

National standards’ process and substance abuse

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For a while it looked like all of thinking Washington was gaga over US Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s agenda. The only opposition that stirred was from the teachers unions which came out this summer with their shortlist of 13 things they hated about the US Education Secretary. While Secretary Duncan may have seen that as a badge of honor, but there were in fact several items the unions noted that were spot on criticisms—specifically related to intrusions into personnel decisions, forcing federal experiments on states, and the Secretary’s silver-bullet-osis. Then came Secretary Duncan’s announcement that he would circumvent the legislative process needed to get the No Child Left Behind Act reauthorized and instead would dole out “waivers” to states that […]

Taylor Armerding

Unions Have A Right to Fight – Legally

/0 Comments/in , /by Taylor Armerding

Unions have plenty of rights. They have the right to strike, and to picket the employer with whom they are aggrieved. They have a right, as striking Verizon workers did in Massachusetts this past week, to have a giant, inflated rat at their pickets, if they are dumb enough to think that is going to bring them some public support. They have a right to shout insults and obscenities at those who cross the picket line to go to work, although it has always mystified me why they think acting like elementary school bullies earns them any respect. But they do not have a right to commit crimes – to sabotage equipment, to threaten those who don’t agree with them, […]

Jim Stergios

Arne Duncan gets sent to the principal’s office

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US Education Secretary Arne Duncan is losing his allies fast. As the Huffington Post noted in early July, At its annual meeting in Chicago, The National Education Association’s Representative Assembly passed Saturday New Business Item C., a strongly worded piece that comprehensively lists the NEA’s grievances with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan EdWeek’s Stephen Sawchuck summarized it this way: With a few minor amendments, the NEA’s Representative Assembly today passed New Business Item C, a.k.a. “13 Things We Hate About Arne Duncan.” One of its sponsors said that unions are tired of being attacked, and they are “especially upset that the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Duncan are part of the problems we face every single day.” No one […]

Jim Stergios

Krugman, Comfy Pillows and Rick Perry

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Paul Krugman, economist polemicist extraordinaire, took out a very lightweight hammer and cushy tongs on Rick Perry’s job creation claims: Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular. And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and […]

Jim Stergios

Science for Consumers

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The Massachusetts department of education (DESE) is under way with a revision to the state’s science standards. Context here is that we have had strong science standards in place since 2006, which served as the basis for students preparing for 2010—the year in which the new MCAS Science test became a graduation requirement. There’s nothing wrong with a review—the state is supposed to update its standards every few years, and to improve them. I wish as it did, the state would also inch up the passing grade for the MCAS—deliberately but so that over a five-year window, the passing grade was more like 230 than 220. It would be more meaningful. And the kids can do it. But it’s time […]

Joshua Archambault

Massachusetts is 1st in the Nation on Health Care Cost!

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However, this gold medal is one we wish we could return. Kaiser Family Foundation released a report this week that documents the wide ranging differences in health insurance premiums across the country. Massachusetts led the pack with an average individual insurance premium topping $437 per person per month. This is almost double the national average. It should be noted that this report does acknowledge the many factors that lead to high insurance costs, such as  cost of living, patient cost-sharing, generosity of benefits, the base cost of care, age-based demographics, and cost control efforts. As a result, most of the Northeast is considered expensive. From a long term health policy perspective, the report will provide a baseline to measure changes […]

Steve Poftak

Thinking Snow? SnowCOP Technology

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What? You aren’t thinking about snow right now? Well, while you swelter, city workers are busy fine-tuning their snow removal technology. Yes, you read that right– Technology. If you think ‘snow removal technology’ just means plows and salt trucks, then meet SnowCOP, Boston’s snow removal data system. Each plow driver, public and private, carries a GPS-enabled phone which feeds data in Boston’s SnowCOP. The data is plotted onto a map of the city, which is broken down into 200 snow zones. The map shows the current location of the vehicles, as well as color coding each street to show whether it has been plowed in the last hour, two hours or longer. This lets Public Works Department (“PWD”) managers know […]

Jim Stergios

False Alarm on Science

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In a nicely timed alarm, the state’s department of education is noting that kids aren’t learning science as well as they are learning reading and math. You can never rest on your laurels, but this strikes me as alarmism of the worst kind. An article in the MetroWest Daily News notes, On the 2010 MCAS, for example, 36 percent of 10th graders in the state scored below proficient on the science and technology exam, compared to only 24 percent on the math and 22 percent on English. The problem is that in the next breath, MWD’s Scott O’Connell suggests that those results on the first science MCAS that counts as a graduation requirement constitutes a crisis: Globally, American students are […]

Jim Stergios

Do exam schools add value?

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Historically, many of Massachusetts’ political and economic leaders have built their success on the education received at the city’s historic exam schools—Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O’Bryant High School of Mathematics and Science, which in total enroll about 5,300 grade 7-12 students. They have received accolades from the usual sources of school rankings, and led other states to follow our example, with New York City building on its own historic grade 9-12 exam schools (Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn Technical High School) by establishing in 2002, the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, and Queens High School […]

Steve Poftak

Start-Ups Needed. Desperately.

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Massachusetts has had some good short term news, creating jobs at a faster clip than the rest of the country. (Although, given the weak manufacturing data and general market weakness, I’d be concerned about popping the corks prematurely.) But our state has a long-term problem. Massachusetts takes a long time to recover from recessions — It also took us almost two and a half times as long as the rest of the country to regain the jobs we lost in the ’90-’91 recession. We never fully recovered from the 2001 recession, while the rest of the country created millions of jobs before the 2007 recession hit. In the diagram below, you can see that the national number of jobs (the […]