Education

Frederick (Rick) Hess, an education scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, led a team of experts in evaluating a seven-year comprehensive reform of the San Diego school system. He presented the team’s findings at Pioneer Forum June 9, 2005. The Forum also included remarks by Nonie Lesaux, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of the San Diego review team members, and Thomas Payzant, Boston schools superintendent, who once served in the same capacity in San Diego. Excerpts of all three participants’ remarks follow.

This paper proposes specific policy changes that could result in a more efficient, effective, and equitable system of public education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although collaboratives are local organizations focused on meeting local needs in a cost-effective manner, the state needs to take a leadership role in fostering their development and utilization.

Drawing from a telephone survey of 1,000 public school parents in the ten largest school districts in Massachusetts, this paper critically examines public school parents’ knowledge of and interest in alternative schooling options.

This paper reports on the state of civic education in Massachusetts, focusing particularly on the performance of charter schools in preparing their students for responsible citizenship. Data were collected in an extensive, original survey project that included schools from across the entire state.

"Standards-based education reform in Massachusetts" was provided in February 2001.

"Staying the course on MCAS" was provided in December 2000.

School vouchers and expanded parental choice in education was provided in October 2000.

This report is an initial effort to provide systematic information on teacher contracts in Massachusetts. In the summer of 1999, the Pioneer Institute solicited copies of the current contract from all districts in the state. From those that responded, 40 districts were selected to reflect the diverse makeup of the Commonwealth. Although there was no attempt to make the sample statistically representative, the three largest urban systems were included, along with a sample of suburbs and small towns.

This paper applies the charter school idea to public higher education. It makes the case that deregulation coupled with a charter or agreement with the state will enable institutions to operate more efficiently and will produce higher quality educational results. The argument is based on research comparing highly regulated institutions with more independent colleges across the country, as well as interviews with a number of educational, public policy, and political leaders in Massachusetts. The authors draw on the history of Michigan as well as the more recent experience in New Jersey.

This study updates the work done by Armor and Peiser. The author gathered data for two additional years of the interdistrict choice program and similar data for the state’s charter school program as well. This update, for the most part, confirms the demographic findings of the initial study with regard to interdistrict choice. The racial impact on sending districts continues to be negligible. The impact on some of the receiving districts was to increase racial diversity; this positive effect continues and is increasing. Clearly, more minority students are taking advantage of the interdistrict choice program.