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Vitamin Parents Part 2: Twin Moms Converting a Decent Traditional School Experience Into a “Wow” Homeschool OneSeptember 26, 2024 - 11:50 am
Edward Achorn on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, & SlaverySeptember 25, 2024 - 11:45 am
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PRI’s Lance Izumi on The Great Classroom CollapseSeptember 18, 2024 - 7:20 am
Learning From California: Policy Lessons From Golden State ExodusSeptember 17, 2024 - 10:35 am
Is Massachusetts at a Turning Point – 10 Data Points That Give Me PauseSeptember 12, 2024 - 3:57 pm
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
New England Short Circuit: Distorted Incentives Drive Energy Prices Up and Reliability DownSeptember 10, 2024 - 10:30 am
From Garden to Table: How Alicia Garcia Reshapes Home Ec with ESAsSeptember 5, 2024 - 11:59 am
Do you feel safer in a hospital or on an airplane?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare /by Joshua ArchambaultThe World Health Organization released a report recently that led with the headline that you are more likely to die from a medical error than from flying in an airplane. Reuters take on the report: While being treated at a hospital, there is a one in 10 chance a patient will experience a medical error and a one in 300 chance that a patient will die because of the error. Meanwhile, the risk of dying in an airplane crash is about one in 10 million… Each year in the United States, 1.7 million infections are acquired in hospital, leading to 100,000 deaths, a far higher rate than in Europe where 4.5 million infections cause 37,000 deaths, according to WHO. More […]
The New Normal: Job Creation In Massachusetts
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakTrying to figure out the jobs picture in Massachusetts is a challenging task these days. There’s a steady drip-drip-drip of bad news – exemplified by State Street’s announcement this week that 850 jobs are leaving Massachusetts. At the same time, the most recent monthly jobs announcement for the state shows an increase of 10,300 private sector jobs over last month, (but the unemployment rate remains unchanged at 7.6%, reflecting a change in the denominator countering the effect of the increase). The job market in Massachusetts has been surprisingly dynamic for years, with roughly 17% of total jobs being created or destroyed in a given year (regardless of economic conditions). Massachusetts has had success creating lots of firms, but there are […]
The Relentless Quest for Expansion
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakSome familiar faces are once again calling for new revenues for our state transportation system(on SHNS, sub req’d.). Its been well-documented that the system is woefully underfunded and we’ll need new revenues sooner or later. But I can’t join in with the chorus right now. First, I don’t think the state is doing a good enough job telling us what they are doing with their money and if its making a difference (see previous post). Second, I’m highly skeptical that new revenues would be spent to remedy the massive maintenance backlog on our infrastructure before another dollar gets spent on expansion. Many of these same voices calling for new revenues and decrying the lack of maintenance were also the ones […]
Meet the Pillars of the Clean Economy
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakYep, your friendly MBTA bus driver and local garbage collector represent the two largest sectors of the “clean economy” according to a new report. The report, by the Metropolitan Policy Program at the prestigious Brookings Institution, totals up the employment of the “clean economy” sector. And, to be fair, is pretty upfront about its methodology and reasoning. What concerns me is that the incredibly broad contours of the ‘clean economy’ (which even includes the HVAC tech who allows me to keep my office at a cool, energy-sucking 62 degrees in summertime) are quickly conflated with ‘clean energy’, ‘cleantech’, ‘green economy’ and other buzzwords. Then the data about the size of the sector enters the policy discussion without an understanding of […]
Learning the Wrong Lesson
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by Steve PoftakCutting through the bureaucratese of the assembled emails and memos from MASSDoT in this weekend’s Globe was a chilling phrase: according to the District 6 (i.e. metro Boston) highway director, We don’t write things down because they trigger a formal event. The article proceeds to detail a confusing he-said, he-said, he-said over what the Transportation Secretary, Acting Highway Administrator, and District 6 Engineer knew about the falling light in the Big Dig tunnel and what they did about it. I won’t unravel that tale here. But the macro-point is that the culture deep within MassDoT remains one of opacity and concealment. The irony is that no one (well, almost no one) blames the current administration for issues related to the […]