MORE ARTICLES

Stay Connected!

Receive the latest updates in your inbox.

LATEST ARTICLES

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 […]

Is the job picture improving?

/1 Comment/in , /by

I confess to being stumped by the contradictory information circulating today. From a survey of households, you get evidence that unemployment is dropping: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of unemployed dropped by 12,000 while the number of employed grew by 13,900, resulting in an 8.4% unemployment rate. From a survey of employers, you get evidence that jobs are being eliminated: From August to September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of jobs declined by 20,900. What gives here? Could it be that people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce? I don’t think so — the first link, the survey of households, actually shows the labor force expanding by 1,900 during […]

Obama must do better on charters

/0 Comments/in , /by

It looks like voters across the country, and in a number of races possibly even in Massachusetts, may be voting out congressional leaders who breathed life into many of President Obama’s signature laws. In education, many of his priorities will likely be affected, but polling from Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance suggests that his support for charter schools is not at all affected by his plummeting approval ratings. As noted in a study we just released, Opinion polls conducted between 2008 and 2010 by Education Next and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance show that support for charter schools among the general public is reasonably strong and on the rise. Of a representative sample of nearly […]