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Jeffrey Meyers on Edgar Allan Poe, Gothic Horror, & HalloweenOctober 30, 2024 - 11:44 am
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Study Published by Pioneer Institute Shows Massachusetts Learning Loss Among Nation’s WorstOctober 24, 2024 - 10:31 am
U-TX at SA’s Catherine Clinton on Harriet Tubman & the Underground RailroadOctober 23, 2024 - 11:30 am
Award-Winner Tom Segev on Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben-GurionOctober 16, 2024 - 11:59 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds MCAS, Education Reform Have Significantly Improved Academic AttainmentOctober 16, 2024 - 11:46 am
McAnneny October Monthly Musings – Ballot InitiativesOctober 11, 2024 - 2:17 pm
Homeschooling with Hope: Katie Switzer’s ESA ExperienceOctober 10, 2024 - 11:24 am
Lynch Foundation’s Katie Everett on School Finance Model for Catholic Schools & School ChoiceOctober 9, 2024 - 11:30 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds Wide Range of Approaches to Compliance with MBTA Communities LawOctober 6, 2024 - 9:12 pm
Mary Z. Connaughton Joins Pioneer Institute as Director of Administration and Finance
/in News, Press Releases /byMary Z. Connaughton Joins Pioneer Institute as Director of Administration and Finance
An education in history
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byOn Monday, a Globe editorial noted that THE STATE’S new education reform law has been, by some measures, a highly utilized weapon. Turnaround efforts for the lowest-performing schools are proceeding apace, and the charter school community has responded eagerly to the challenge of expansion. But not every provision of the new law, approved in January of last year, has been fully utilized: Hopes that innovative school-transformation plans would bubble up from the community level have yet to be realized. The 35 Turnaround efforts and the robust response from charter school operators have, in fact, led to big steps forward, even though success is by no means assured. Turnaround efforts around the country have had disappointingly low rates of success. And […]
Voc-tech schools lowering the dropout rate
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byThis is the fifth and final leg of my series on the tremendous progress being made in our regional vocational-technical (VTE) schools in Massachusetts. These schools have changed markedly in the past ten years, as they moved from a stance of opposition to the major pillars of Massachusetts’ landmark education reform law of 1993. By embracing accountability and the high-quality academic standards the state developed in the late 1990s, the regional VTEs were able to nurture students in an individual way that made sense given their interest in academics as well as career preparation. The unique vocational-technical education attributes of close adult relationship, individualized instruction to recognized benchmarks, and student choice and commitment to programs studied have combined to great […]
Pay-to-play is rampant in Boston
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog /byInteresting juxtaposition in the news of the week. Sal DiMasi, the former Massachusetts House Speaker, is now on trial for allegedly taking thousands of dollars in payoffs from software company Cognos, in exchange for steering state contracts its way. Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Tom Menino persists in publicly demanding payoffs – ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands – from a select group of local nonprofits, in the form of payments in lieu of taxes worth 25 percent of what they would owe if they were not tax-exempt. Yes, they are tax exempt. The law says they owe no property taxes. But, apparently, since Boston is a city of men, not laws, Menino is putting the hammer down on […]
Jobs for kids? Try cutting the minimum wage
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog /byThe Boston Globe remains an unapologetic public-relations arm for government at all levels. Yet another story in today’s paper unquestioningly feeds us the government line that government funding is a requirement for kids aged 14-21 to get summer jobs. It opens with the obligatory anecdote – the teen who suggests that if government hadn’t provided a job for him, he would have spent last summer either idle or hanging out on the street, getting in trouble. See, your tax dollars are hard at work not only transforming the lives of teens, but cutting crime! It bemoaned the fact that funding for YouthWorks, the state jobs program, has declined from $8 million to $6 million this year – largely because one-time […]