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Study Finds Results of International Assessments Confirm Quality of MCASSeptember 30, 2024 - 10:47 am
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From Stress to Success: How Daniella Transformed Her Son’s Learning with ESA FundsSeptember 12, 2024 - 11:46 am
AFC’s Denisha Allen on School Choice & Black Minds MatterSeptember 12, 2024 - 9:54 am
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Budgeting Innovation?
/2 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakIf you deal with budgets regularly, you know the pain of trying to get through those last final steps of balancing spending and revenue to the penny. But our friends at the State House may have delivered a new innovation — the negative expenditure. What’s that? It’s a spending account with a negative number, which has the virtue of canceling out actual spending. If you download the FY12 budget line items from the state’s website, you find an account — 1599-0015 Intergovernmental Secretariat Budget Team Savings Reserve — with an amount of -$25 million attached to it. That account doesn’t exist in the budget the Legislature posted on-line nor does it exist on the initial detail page on the State […]
Are We Fighting Health Care Costs or Health Care Spending?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare /byLiberal blogger Matt Yglesias over at Slate recently made a great point about the difference between health care costs and spending. It is one that I hope local pols on Beacon Hill will keep in mind as they consider payment reform legislation that will regulate by price controls. The health care system in the United States has a lot of problems, but I think people are sometimes too pessimistic about it. This happens largely through slippage between the phrases “health care spending” and “health care costs.” Everyone knows, for example, that economy-wide spending on tablet computers has surged over the past three years. But nobody says “tablet costs are skyrocketing.” What happened is that iPads came on the market, followed by […]
Evaluate teachers with a single or multiple measures?
/0 Comments/in Oped: Common Core, Oped: Education, Opeds /by Editorial Staffhttp://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/01/evaluate_teachers_with_a_singl.html Back in July, I wrote a series of posts on teacher evaluations, outlining why the Massachusetts law that was passed, with much fanfare a “bold, pioneering teacher-evaluation system,” was not likely to lead to much improvement for teachers or for students. There are many other reasons to doubt the boldness or pioneering-ness of the new Massachusetts teacher evaluation system. There’s the small ball criticisms like The law required evaluations 18 years ago, and few school districts have fulfilled their requirements for that time – so what makes this different? By the time the evaluations go into effect (three years hence), the MCAS will be a thing of the past, with the state having promised to move to an unknown […]
Fare Hikes, Service Cuts and MBTA Mismanagement: A Recent History of the T
/0 Comments/in Oped: Better Government, Oped: Transportation, Opeds /by Editorial Staffhttp://hingham.patch.com/articles/fare-hikes-service-cuts-and-mbta-mismanagement-a-recent-history-of-the-t On Tuesday January 3 the MBTA outlined two proposals to reduce the over $161 million budget deficit projected for Fiscal Year 2013 in a presentation to legislators. Both proposals included fare hikes, the reduction of services and a complete elimination of the commuter boat subsidy. As the Senator representing the South Shore, I know this will have a negative effect on my district. I am frustrated with the MBTA’s proposal, especially the elimination of the commuter boat subsidy. The Hingham Commuter Boat has been a means of public transportation that I have supported since its inception. In fact during the years of negotiations over the construction of the Greenbush Commuter Rail Line from 2001 to 2007, I strongly advocated for […]
Can the MBTA Learn From Germany?
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakParticipate in the transportation conversation long enough and you hear a familiar refrain: Why can’t we be more like Europe? Europe being shorthand for an enlightened land of high-speed rail, pervasive bike use, and public transit everywhere. (There’s notable less interest in the widespread use of private concessionaires for roadways, but that’s another post.) With the MBTA’s current financial struggles in mind, a recent study by two scholars — Ralph Buehler from VPI and John Pucher from Rutgers University — of the German public transit system yields some interesting results. During a period where US transit systems expanded their coverage area faster than ridership, German systems reduced their coverage area while seeking to increase ridership on higher volume routes. They […]