MORE ARTICLES
Why The Best Public Schools Are The BestJune 13, 2024 - 2:37 pm
Massachusetts Legislature Procrastinates Once AgainJune 13, 2024 - 10:45 am
Study Finds Prevalence of Entrepreneurship Tied to Regulatory Environment, Portion of ImmigrantsJune 13, 2024 - 12:00 am
Sheldon Novick on Henry James, American Women, & Gilded-Age FictionJune 12, 2024 - 11:58 am
Protectionism’s Bipartisan Embrace: Who Pays When Imports Cost MoreJune 11, 2024 - 10:48 am
Cape Cod: The Struggles of Year-Round ResidentsJune 11, 2024 - 10:13 am
An Open Letter to the Governor’s Transportation Task ForceJune 5, 2024 - 1:57 pm
USAF Academy’s Jeanne Heidler on Henry Clay & Congressional StatesmanshipJune 5, 2024 - 11:42 am
Universal Savings Accounts: Designing Tax Incentives that Pay to SaveJune 4, 2024 - 11:15 am
Israeli Harvard Student Maya Shiloni on Campus AntisemitismMay 29, 2024 - 4:14 pm
Causes of Boston's Bus Problems
/2 Comments/in Blog, News /byToday’s Globe has an op-ed decrying the problems with the buses taking kids to the Boston Public Schools — they’ve been plagued with delays since school started. The article points out two potential causes of the problem — issues implementing a new routing software system and resistance/noncompliance by the drivers union. (Given that their union has seen fit to traffic in the coarsest forms of racially-charged attacks in the past, it can’t be ruled out.) Other issues, that might not be obvious to non-residents are: 1) Broad eligibility: Any elementary school child over a mile away from their school (or with an intervening major thoroughfare between them and school) is eligible. That’s a lot of kids. 2) Huge coverage area: […]
Feds giving a safety net to Massachusetts’s safety net hospitals?
/1 Comment/in Blog, Blog: Healthcare, Healthcare, News /byTwo of the most prominent “safety net” hospitals in Massachusetts are facing sizable budget gaps again this year, and are turning to the feds to bail them out. Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) have long received, in part because of their emphasis on the under- and uninsured, greater political assistance in propping up their balance sheets. The desired Medicaid waiver amendment would be worth $86 million this year for CHA and $90 million for BMC. These institutions play an important role in Massachusetts, but the new slug of federal dollars undermines the viability of Massachusetts health reform by introducing new annual bailouts. A key accomplishment of the Massachusetts experiment was a deal to leverage public money […]
Ed Glaeser slips on a banana peel
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byEd Glaeser is a brilliant economist and someone who cares deeply about local, state and federal policies that impact housing, segregation, crime, the growth of cities and the role of innovation in reviving urban landscapes. He has done a ton of work with us, spoken at Pioneer events, and we look to him as a leading intellectual — as does just about everybody. All that throat-clearing is necessary because in today’s Globe, Ed slipped on a banana peel. Looking to weigh in with a timely piece on what is becoming a key issue in the gubernatorial debate — the standards and MCAS debate — Ed makes four assertions that are questionable at best and wrong at worst. Here’s wrong assertion […]
Can Big City Superintendents Fix the Schools?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byWhen Adrian Fenty was elected as the mayor of Washington DC, he worked relentlessly to gain control of the DC school board. After all, the DC public schools cost so much more than your average public school and they were among the nation’s worst performers. In 2007 he appointed Michelle Rhee as the Public School Chancellor, who immediately took some of the toughest actions one could imagine to turn around the schools, including mass principal and teacher firings, numerous school closures, strict accountability measures, and strong outreach to recruit new energetic teachers and lots more foundation funding for her school (and really district) “turnaround” efforts. Above are just some of the magazine cover and lead article pictures of Michelle Rhee. […]
The Texas standards controversy: You decide
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Common Core, Blog: Education, Jim Stergios, Related Education Blogs /byGilbert King notes in his blog that Ironically, it was textbooks that brought Thurgood Marshall to Texas more than sixty years ago. Heman Marion Sweatt was an African American mail carrier in Houston who wanted to become a lawyer, but was denied admission to the University of Texas law school in 1946 on the sole basis of his race. With the NAACP representing him, Sweatt sued the University of Texas on the grounds that the state had no law school that would admit blacks. That’s because Thurgood Marshall went on to represent Sweatt, seeing in the case an opportunity to take up a civil rights case that could have broad impact on the law of the land. This spring, after […]