MORE ARTICLES

Stay Connected!

Receive the latest updates in your inbox.

LATEST ARTICLES

If the feds pay, the states will play

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Don’t worry, Governor Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Murray and Massachusetts Education Secretary Reville have repeatedly said. If at any point we realize that the final testing products being developed by national consortium groups are not as rigorous as the MCAS, we can simply back out. We can simply back out, even after spending a big chunk the of $250 million in Race to the Top funds to train teachers and buy textbooks in line with the new national standards. We can back out even though we, as a state, have committed on paper to adopting the national assessments. Sigh. Then there is the question of whether national standards can realistically be considered voluntary with federal money in the balance. I suppose […]

American as baseball, apple pie and primary care doctors?

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

Harvard Medical School recently announced an anonymous gift of $30 million to create a center to “transform primary care medicine.” What I was hoping to read next was a vision for a metamorphosis of the role of primary care doctors. Instead the Boston Globe article went on to say the school hoped to “fix the nation’s shortage of primary care doctors by raising their status.” The news story reignited a discussion– that I have been having with myself– over the reasons such a high importance has been placed on primary care doctors in the American health care system. In policy discussion after policy discussion, primary doctors might as well be lumped into the same camp as baseball and American pie, […]

Globe's Puzzling Emphasis on Clean Energy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Today’s Globe endorses Deval Patrick for Governor, an expected and surely welcome recommendation. My quibble is with the Globe’s overemphasis on clean energy. (Obligatory Throatclearing: Clean energy is undoubtedly important, for many reasons.) Why is clean energy mentioned 8 times in a roughly 1100 word endorsement? The clean tech industry in Massachusetts is, at best, 10,000 to 15,000 jobs (or here), with the prospect of adding 5,000 or so jobs in the next five years. And I suspect that those numbers include a lot of HVAC tech and energy/power automation companies that were around long before the ‘green energy’ wave became high profile. The growth in jobs is welcome and should be encouraged but in an economy with 3 milllion […]

Agenda for Leadership 2010: Hit the Ground Running – Pioneer Institute?s Agenda for Leadership for 2010 and Beyond

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by Editorial Staff

Pioneer Institute’s Agenda for Leadership for 2010 and Beyond Author(s): James Stergios — Publication date: 2010-10-27 Category: Better Government Abstract: Whoever wins the election this November will need to make tough decisions about policy, budget priorities, and the role of government. Massachusetts has lost 300,000 jobs over the past decade, has exhausted its rainy day and stimulus funds, and faces a billion-dollar structural budget deficit. Hit the Ground Running, Pioneer Institute’s 2010 Agenda for Leadership series, is a must-read for newly elected officials seeking fresh but practical ideas for effective government across seven major policy areas: education reform, health care, job creation, government transparency, transportation, rebuilding our cities, and managing the budget. Agenda for Leadership 2010: Hit the Ground Running

Teaching the district a lesson

/0 Comments/in , /by

We’ve seen this movie all too many times. There was the kerfluffle when the Boston Teachers Union opposed allowing Teach for America fellows into the Boston Public Schools. More recently, there was the story about teachers in Bridgewater and Raynham who opposed letting volunteers staff the libraries so they could keep them open. Those were two that made the papers. Often stories of union pressure don’t. The pressure tactics go under the radar screen… except when they get especially egregious. Fast-forward to a report a couple of weeks ago by Brian McGrory entitled Teachers Need a Lesson. After the usual throat-clearing about teachers (“I’m a huge fan of teachers, and fully understand that most public school teachers are conscientious, hard-working […]