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Day 3: Modernize state agencies to encourage local school reform
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byIn a recent blog, I noted how bloated the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has gotten, even as the state cuts local aid to schools. The DESE has grown diffuse, has protected its personnel and added highly compensated deputy and associate commissioner positions, and shared in none of the cuts made to actual programs (METCO, Special Education funding, etc.) and schools. It’s important to send as much money of our education budget to schools (and frankly to get superintendents to do the same). It is just as critical to ensure that the state office is supportive of reform and not simply a compliance office. The current state of play is this: We’ve created a web of nominal education […]
Thought Experiment
/2 Comments/in Blog, News /bySubstitute “Pioneer Institute” for “Health Care For All” in the following State House News report (subscription required) and ask yourself if there would be radio silence in the press and blogosphere (BlueMassGroup, call your office!!) on this: The documents also reveal a cozy relationship between the Patrick administration and Health Care For All, a consumer advocacy organization that often support the administration’s health care policies. In an email exchange on March 24, Health Care for All official Georgia Maheras repeatedly asked Insurance Commissioner Murphy how the group can be “helpful” in responding to his pending decisions on health insurance rates for small businesses. “If you expect to do anything ‘newsworthy’, can we be helpful with our blog or media at […]
Day 2: Strengthen the objective MCAS test
/7 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byWhen Governor William Weld signed the Education Reform Act, no one thought that within a short few years more than 90 percent of Massachusetts’ students would be passing the MCAS. Nor did anyone then believe that our 4th- and 8th-grade students would soon rank among the top-scoring nations on the Trends in International mathematics and Science Study exams. Notwithstanding the state’s educational successes, critics of the MCAS—and of other elements of our accountability system such as a district and school audit system—remain. New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang castigates the MCAS for causing kids to drop out—wrongly, as can be seen in the percentage of dropouts [updated: in their senior year] who have already passed the MCAS and for reasons presented […]
Day 1: Strengthen the richest liberal arts standards in the nation
/2 Comments/in Blog, News /byThe future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens. That’s President Obama singling out Massachusetts as a model for the rest for the United States on March 9, 2009. He went on to say: The solution to low test scores is not lower standards – it’s tougher, clearer standards. Standards like those in Massachusetts, where 8th graders are now tying for first – first – in the world in science. The president was right in 2009, before his agenda on standards morphed into the usual “the feds know best” attitude. Academic standards and objective assessments for teachers and students are the major drivers of the overall improvement we’ve witnessed in Massachusetts’ district schools. They are also a major […]
Countdown to World Class Schools
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byThe next two years are going to see the roughest state and local budgets in memory. While we have to balance the books, I am hoping that whoever is governor from 2011 will understand that there is a lot we can do even in a tight fiscal environment to pick up the pace in our schools. For 12 days, I’ll lay out actions that are possible even in a time of constrained budgets. One set of actions each day. Consider it something of a countdown, a Countdown to World-Class Schools, that will summarize what could–no, what should–be the agenda for the incoming governor. A Little Background Enactment and partial implementation of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) have improved […]