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A world without public sector unions?

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The Cato Institute just released a brief history of public-sector unionization and some recent data. The recommendation is as you might predict–a ban on collective bargaining in the public sector–but that is hardly an extreme position unless you think North Carolina and Virginia alien territory. After all, they do in fact ban it. Yeah, I know. But it is worth a read!

Let Them Eat Cake

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Please, please, my friends at the Greenway — don’t get too precious about vetting what foods are healthy enough to be sold on the Greenway. You need to draw people, put whatever people want to come and eat. I’m all in favor of healthy, local options on my own dime but you need an infusion of people, not a monument. This quote gives me pause: “You can imagine people squeezing fresh lemons or fresh oranges,’’ said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. “You can imagine high-end grilled cheese sandwiches with local cheese as the centerpiece of really good bread.’’ I can also imagine families and workers that would rather have something tasty and affordable. And […]

Border Tolls Are Coming

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I’m not sure how much of this is political theater or unrelated events, but both Connecticut and New Hampshire are pretty seriously considering border tolls. It seems pretty certain that Massachusetts would respond by putting up a border toll on I-93 (seeing as how the Pike tolls largely act like a border toll now on the short piece of I-84 in our state). Drivers are not going to like it, but it will leave each state with more transportation money. The last piece of the puzzle would be a move to open-road tolling, which seems to happening here.

Kudos to Anne Wass

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Jamie Vaznis leads the Globe with a story that really needs a lot of attention — no matter what your view is. We’ve said it many times before: High academic standards are the lifeblood of high student achievement in our public schools — all of our public schools. We love public charters because they are effective delivery mechanisms, but would we want charters without high academic standards? No thanks. That’s one of the principal reasons why charters in other states often are as ineffective as their district school peers. You’ve seen my view on standards in many a blog post, so let’s applaud others for theirs — and let’s hope they remain strong on this issue. First kudos go to […]

NY Times decades behind on standards

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The editorial on the national standards in today’s New York Times is uninformed as to beggar belief. “National School Standards, At Last” argues that: The countries that have left the United States behind in math and science education have one thing in common: They offer the same high education standards — often the same curriculum — from one end of the nation to the other. The problem with the proposed national standards is not that they would be uniform, though there are good reasons to fear what they would mean for states like Massachusetts, which have used federalism to push ever higher. The principal problem is that the proposed standards are not high at all. The Times goes on to […]