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Examining Our Community Colleges
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakCommunity Colleges are a popular topic these days – with two research reports (here and here) being issued in the past weeks. The first came from the Boston Healthcare Careers Consortium. It was released with a host of ‘stakeholders’ taking credit. This report has its share of consensus-speak but a few items jump off the page. First, the K-12 preparation level for many students is stunningly low – in Bunker Hill Community College’s entering 2009 class, 98% of students needed a remedial placement for at least one discipline (reading, English, and math) and over a third needed placements for all three. More importantly, the paper digs into the lack of coordination across the community college system – different requirements for […]
National standards will define local curricula
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byI don’t know why (well, actually, I do) the national standards project reminds me of France. Yesterday the quote from Jean Cocteau, today … Cardinal Richelieu. Armand-Jean du Plessis, later known to us as Cardinal Richelieu was responsible for expanding the reach of weak-willed King Louis XIII by weakening the regional noble powers and instituting a system of administrative enforcers (intendants). The good Cardinal made possible the Sun King, the king who went so far as to say L’etat c’est moi. A shrewd and cruel strategist, Richelieu defined the term eminence grise; in reality, he was bolder than a simple strategist waiting in the shadows. He earned himself the moniker of Red Eminence, red being of course the bright royal […]
Myths about National Standards: Myth #2
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byThe French painter, poet, novelist, director, etc., Jean Cocteau noted the following about our need for myths: Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort. With education so rife with mediocrity, those satisfied with the status quo often resort to myth for comfort. Some schools don’t perform well, the myth goes, because poor and minority kids cannot excel; there’s the myth that if we only added more class time everything would be fine; there’s the myth that classroom size always or even most of the time matters. And, of course, […]
Questions for the AG on Health Reform 2
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, News /byAttorney General Coakley spoke this afternoon at MAHP’s annual conference. I wanted to offer a few thoughts and questions. Video can be found here. I like the AG’s focus on transparency and health literacy, but I am not sure these actions alone move us towards fully engaged consumers when they still have employer sponsored insurance that covers most costs. What is their motive? Other questions: 1)Why are providers responsible for giving pricing information when insurers have that data? 2)What is the value of bringing everyone around a benchmark average price for a service? That does not reward low-cost/high quality service, it does the opposite, and allows higher cost/ lower quality service to remain. 3) Will rejections of provider contracts be per procedure, […]
The Dog That Didn’t Bark — Chelsea Housing Authority and the Auditor
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakIt feels like a familiar story – an obscure public sector entity with a clueless (or worse) board of directors fails to do their job and the executive director makes off with bags of money. Except this time, the setting is the Chelsea Public Housing Authority rather than the Merrimack Valley (see here and here). Briefly, the Director of the Authority managed to pay himself $360,000 per year (far more than any other Housing Authority director in the state) while claiming that he was only making $160,000. His explanation for lying to the state and federal government: He’s a ‘rebel’. Once he figured out his days were numbered, he got the Authority’s bookkeeper to write him checks cashing out his […]