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Education
November 4, 2015

What True Education Reform Leaders Think About MCAS & Charters

An op-ed in Tuesday’s Boston Globe urges Massachusetts policymakers to adopt the Common Core-aligned PARCC test because MCAS is supposedly too outdated to help prepare our schoolchildren for future success. But as Pioneer has argued in our recent book, and numerous reports,...
Education
October 29, 2015

How UMass can cut the $11 million

Yesterday, the Statehouse News Service reported that UMass President Marty Meehan announced UMass needs to cut $11 million because the Legislature did not include this sum in their supplemental budget bill.  Meehan is upset that his lobbying efforts did not yield state...
Education
October 21, 2015

5 Reasons Students will Love the New Higher Ed Bill

Expanding scholarships, savings incentives, refinancing loans, collaboration efforts, and finding a new funding formula are all a great start, but could more be done? Tuition and fees at UMass have gone way up, average student debt for UMass Amherst graduates has hit...
Education
October 15, 2015

Pathways to Equal Opportunity: Vocational-Technical Education & the Liberal Arts

A century ago, two prominent African-American educators, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, initiated a national debate between proponents of vocational-technical education and those who favor liberal arts as the best means of achieving equality of opportunity. This debate continues today. Please...
Education
September 23, 2015

Statement on 2015 MCAS Results and Preliminary, Incomplete 2015 PARCC Results

The release of 2015 MCAS results together with a patchwork of preliminary 2015 PARCC testing results provides little new information to help Massachusetts choose between the two tests. PARCC supporters claim the test’s rigor is evidenced by the fact that fewer students...
Education
September 16, 2015

The Impact of UMass Tuition and Fee Hikes on Student Debt

Student debt has reached astounding levels.  At nearly $1.2 trillion, outstanding student debt is nearly the highest form of debt in the country, second only to mortgages.  The situation has become a salient issue, not only part of a national conversation but...
Education, Opportunity
September 2, 2015

UMass Tuition Hikes: Why Not Cut Costs?

And shouldn’t in-state students be the top priority? WRKO’s Boston.com Morning Show Host Kim Carrigan interviewed Pioneer’s Mary Connaughton about the findings in this post. Listen here. Just two days ago, the Boston Globe highlighted an important issue regarding UMass tuition and fee...
Education
September 1, 2015

Op-ed: Big money pushes PARCC and Common Core

Each year, much is written and said about K-12 education when students head back to school. That will be especially true this fall, as the education policy community eagerly awaits a decision by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education about whether to...
Education
August 18, 2015

How Massachusetts Promoted Achievement Before Common Core & PARCC

Before the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) officially decides to adopt PARCC’s testing system in place of the testing system that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) developed in the 1990s and early 2000s, local school committees,...
Education, Opportunity
August 12, 2015

Problem: Overpriced Textbooks, Solution: Opensource Material

Last week, NBC news announced that textbooks prices have risen 1,041% since 1977, three times the rate of inflation according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As if tuition costs weren’t already exorbitant. For the 2014-2015 academic year, the average private four-year...