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Kansas: Keep your Race to yourself

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Kansas is not applying for Race to the Top funds, according to the Lawrence Journal World: KANSAS BOARD DECIDES NOT TO APPLY FOR RTTT PHASE 2 FUNDS — In a 9-0 vote, the Kansas State Board of Education chose not to apply for up to $166 million in federal Race to the Top funds this spring because of some of the competition’s caveats. Interim Commissioner Diane DeBaker said the state fared poorly in the first round of applications because it does not have an alternative system for teacher certifications, no statewide system of evaluations for principals and teachers, and teacher pay is not tied to student performance. Board member Sally Cauble said Kansas’ system of local control works against it. […]

MBTA: Walking the Tightrope

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On the face of it the MBTA and its new General Manager Richard Davey are to be praised for taking action against 8 managers accused falsifying maintenance records at 3 garages. Could this actually be the beginning of reform? Ah, but in the 18’th paragraph of The Globe’s story on the subject, one of the disciplined managers asserted (anonymously) that recording phantom maintenance is longtime standard procedure. If one recalls (as I do) 30 years of stories of greed, dishonesty and contempt for the public at the MBTA, the claim is to be taken seriously. The larger question is, Is the MBTA not too big not to fail? Until 1964 the Metropolitian Transit Authority ran buses and rapid transit in […]

Who's Milquetoast? The envelope please…

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So some of you did not get the reference to Caspar Milquetoast, even though I provided the wikipedia link. Hmm. Ok, the envelope please… Jesting, of course…

Watering down Milquetoast

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Jamie Vaznis in today’s Globe presents a bombshell: The state’s second-largest teachers union organization, which represents teachers in Boston and other big cities, has decided to boycott Massachusetts’ application for the Obama administration’s innovative educational fund, possibly jeopardizing $250 million in grants. Massachusetts lost points on its Race to the Top application because it only got buy-in from about 2/3 of the local teachers unions. In the first round of RttT, the state application received support even from key federation units. While it is devoutly to be wished for, the Obama administration is wrong to insist on union buy-in. Unions may not be the buggaboo they are often made out to be – often the superintendents are worse enemies of […]

A missed opportunity to fix small business insurance

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Small business insurance has been a mess in this state for a while. The health care reform act of 2006 was supposed to help make it work better. It did not. Julie Donnelly of the Boston Business Journal notes that Fallon and some other insurers in the state are seeing the small business market as costing them a lot of money. And they could pull up stakes. That might be the “nuclear” option as Fallon put it, but the sad thing is that the governor could have taken a different approach from his current “wallpaper” policy. Patrick circa 2010 is saying essentially who cares about the cost of health care, let’s set the price. That is akin to someone who […]