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Do we misdiagnose younger students as ADHD?
/2 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /byThe PreventDisease.com website highlighted a couple of studies strongly suggesting that the answer is yes. The two studies in question are: The importance of relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: Evidence based on exact birth dates, by Todd E. Elder is available in the Journal of Health Economics. Measuring Inappropriate Medical Diagnosis and Treatment in Survey Data: The Case of ADHD among School-Age Children, by William N. Evans, Melinda S. Morrill, and Stephen T. Parente is also available in the Journal of Health Economics. ADHD is a frequently diagnosed behavioral disorder among American students. As the PreventDisease.com folks note, “currently there are no neurological markers for ADHD.” (An excerpt from a great Frontline investigation can be found here.) The website summarizes […]
If the feds pay, the states will play
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byDon’t worry, Governor Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Murray and Massachusetts Education Secretary Reville have repeatedly said. If at any point we realize that the final testing products being developed by national consortium groups are not as rigorous as the MCAS, we can simply back out. We can simply back out, even after spending a big chunk the of $250 million in Race to the Top funds to train teachers and buy textbooks in line with the new national standards. We can back out even though we, as a state, have committed on paper to adopting the national assessments. Sigh. Then there is the question of whether national standards can realistically be considered voluntary with federal money in the balance. I suppose […]
American as baseball, apple pie and primary care doctors?
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare, News /byHarvard Medical School recently announced an anonymous gift of $30 million to create a center to “transform primary care medicine.” What I was hoping to read next was a vision for a metamorphosis of the role of primary care doctors. Instead the Boston Globe article went on to say the school hoped to “fix the nation’s shortage of primary care doctors by raising their status.” The news story reignited a discussion– that I have been having with myself– over the reasons such a high importance has been placed on primary care doctors in the American health care system. In policy discussion after policy discussion, primary doctors might as well be lumped into the same camp as baseball and American pie, […]
Globe's Puzzling Emphasis on Clean Energy
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byToday’s Globe endorses Deval Patrick for Governor, an expected and surely welcome recommendation. My quibble is with the Globe’s overemphasis on clean energy. (Obligatory Throatclearing: Clean energy is undoubtedly important, for many reasons.) Why is clean energy mentioned 8 times in a roughly 1100 word endorsement? The clean tech industry in Massachusetts is, at best, 10,000 to 15,000 jobs (or here), with the prospect of adding 5,000 or so jobs in the next five years. And I suspect that those numbers include a lot of HVAC tech and energy/power automation companies that were around long before the ‘green energy’ wave became high profile. The growth in jobs is welcome and should be encouraged but in an economy with 3 milllion […]
Teaching the district a lesson
/0 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /byWe’ve seen this movie all too many times. There was the kerfluffle when the Boston Teachers Union opposed allowing Teach for America fellows into the Boston Public Schools. More recently, there was the story about teachers in Bridgewater and Raynham who opposed letting volunteers staff the libraries so they could keep them open. Those were two that made the papers. Often stories of union pressure don’t. The pressure tactics go under the radar screen… except when they get especially egregious. Fast-forward to a report a couple of weeks ago by Brian McGrory entitled Teachers Need a Lesson. After the usual throat-clearing about teachers (“I’m a huge fan of teachers, and fully understand that most public school teachers are conscientious, hard-working […]
Is the job picture improving?
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /byI confess to being stumped by the contradictory information circulating today. From a survey of households, you get evidence that unemployment is dropping: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of unemployed dropped by 12,000 while the number of employed grew by 13,900, resulting in an 8.4% unemployment rate. From a survey of employers, you get evidence that jobs are being eliminated: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of jobs declined by 20,900. What gives here? Could it be that people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce? I don’t think so — the first link, the survey of households, actually shows the labor force expanding by 1,900 during […]
Obama must do better on charters
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byIt looks like voters across the country, and in a number of races possibly even in Massachusetts, may be voting out congressional leaders who breathed life into many of President Obama’s signature laws. In education, many of his priorities will likely be affected, but polling from Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance suggests that his support for charter schools is not at all affected by his plummeting approval ratings. As noted in a study we just released, Opinion polls conducted between 2008 and 2010 by Education Next and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance show that support for charter schools among the general public is reasonably strong and on the rise. Of a representative sample of nearly […]
Running the Numbers for Gloucester
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byToday’s Globe has a piece on Gloucester’s issues with schools, which encompass fiscal pressures and the controversial launch of a new charter school. It intrigued me enough to dig into some of the data that is available. A few observations: • State Department of Revenue figures show Gloucester’s school spending going from $27.2m in 2000 to $31.3m in 2009, a relatively modest increase of 15%. Yet other town spending goes from $27.3m to $49.6m over the same period, an increase of 82%. Health insurance costs account for about $7m in increased costs, but what is the rest of it? Is it indicative of the town’s priorities? • From 2000 to 2009, Gloucester’s population has been stable, declining by only 30 […]
ObamaCare blowback
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare, News /byGreat piece in the Boston Globe titled “ObamaCare blowback” by Jeff Jacoby outlining the litany of actions that opponents of the national health care law have highlighted to express concerns about new regulations. It certainly has been interesting to watch how the bill has played out on the campaign trail. Predictably most Republican candidates have attacked the new law mercilessly, and if they flip the House come November, they better have a good plan B to explain to the American people why they are unable to repeal the law. Even with huge GOP gains, the White House health care team will breathe a sigh of relief when they know the House Republicans stay below 290 and/or the Senate Republicans stay below 67. Both […]
2 Things Every Prospective Boston Public School Parent Should Know
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byFor young parents in Boston, anxiety is beginning to build around the Boston Public School lottery, the mechanism by which the district assigns students to various schools. I’ve discussed the subject in some depth previously. From hearing anecdotal reports and seeing the evidence on our local school listserv, I wanted to pass on two vital pieces of info. First, at every school you visit, every parent should be asking “How many kids in last year’s entering class were siblings?”. The BPS resists issuing this data, and to my knowledge, only released the data publicly in a single year (2005). They also released 2008-9 data for the West Zone to me after multiple requests. The reason it is important is that […]
How big of a deal was the 2010 ed reform law?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byBack in January 2010, there was a lot of hoopla around the passage and signing of the new Achievement Gap law. At the time: “We are standing up for children,’’ Patrick said before an upbeat gathering of educators… And Education Secretary Paul Reville released this statement: Last week, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Governor Deval Patrick signed historic education reform legislation which will forever alter the landscape of public education in Massachusetts. The most significant piece of education reform legislation since the 1993 Education Reform Act, the Achievement Gap bill signals the beginning of a new chapter in education reform. With hindsight (and time to unpack the law’s provisions), the answer is that the achievement gap law was a […]
Rhee Out in DC
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byGot sad news in the middle of a screening of Waiting for Superman last night. Somewhere right after the section on how bad the DC schools are, I got a text message that Michelle Rhee would be stepping down today. Yup. Today Michelle Rhee is announcing that she is resigning in a “mutual” decision aimed to refocus the schools on kids and learning, rather than on the tug of war that might ensure between her and newly elected Mayor Vincent Gray (above, at right). The Washington Post is reporting She will be replaced until at least the end of the school year by Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, a close associate. Rhee and presumptive mayor Vincent C. Gray recently reached a […]
Pension Protest Style Points
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byI am increasingly dismayed at the lack of style at American (and especially Boston) protests. Seems we have gotten in the habit of going “military” with protesters being dolled out in the equivalent of uniforms. The old “sea of humans” and “huddled masses” thing just doesn’t cut it in a 21st century world where fashion never sleeps. A quick sampling of comparables we might want to start emulating. We’ll stick to pensions, because of the number of countries where pension protests are occurring, and especially the ability to get the French to weigh in on this important question. First, the Aussies: The Brits show that their former colonies are still hundreds of years behind in character (and they have gotten […]
"Race to Solvency" for our cities?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byA press release from the Milken Institute notes: Vallejo, Calif; Harrisburg, Penn; the entire state of Illinois; and, of course, California…they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Across the United States, we’ve got a full-blown state and muni budget mess on our hands. To find a way forward, the Milken Institute and the Kauffman Foundation brought together a diverse group of state and local officials, union representatives, experts from the capital markets, money managers, academics, public-sector attorneys and representatives from bond rating agencies. The report, Ensuring State and Municipal Solvency, lists a number of potential reforms, including the establishment of rainy-day funds, agency consolidations, and control boards for states and municipalities. Yup. We got those things. Have helped, but not […]
Mid-terms and the national education debate
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byThe national standards may have been approved in nearly 40 states, but the fact is that after the mid-terms the policy conversation is going to change dramatically. So much so that there are good political reasons to wager that this effort at developing national standards will collapse, as did similar attempts under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As the Gucci Gulch types inside the Beltway admit, the road to implementation will require getting a lot of things — very big things — right. Big things like professional development, changes in ed school curricula and teacher certification. These big things raise big questions about how the federal government will motivate states to keep moving in lockstep with the its priorities […]