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Transparency — Bring it on

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On Friday, my old agency released a report entitled “Measuring Health Care Quality and Cost in Massachusetts.”  The report can be found here:  http://www.statehousenews.com/qualitycost.pdf.  This report is full of really useful information on quality and costs for various procedures at hospitals in Massachusetts.   Unfortunately the report received very little press and consumers probably don’t even know it is available.  The information can also be found on the consumer website, developed by the Health Care Quality and Cost Council.  This new report allows you to see a profile of a  hospital’s indicators on one page and allows you to compare all hospitals in the state (compared to the website which only allows you to compare 4 hospitals at a time).   This is […]

Charter opponents have no more legs to stand on

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So the unions and superintendents tried the argument that charters do not serve as many disadvantaged students. We dismantled that argument. While charters don’t serve as many special needs kids and English Language learners, both categories designated by adults, they serve many more minority and poor students. So, then the Mass Teachers Association cries out about high attrition in a handful of high-powered charter schools in Boston. But they forget that choice schools are about parents making choices. And, oops, they forget that in fact there is more attrition in the Boston Public Schools. And, uh, ooh, ah, they forget that in the charters they are pointing fingers at there is only a dropout rate of 10 percent, which is […]

Defining Political Capital

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Thursday’s Globe relates that Mayor Tom Menino is considering a number of new initiatives. He states that there is a particular opportunity to get things done now: “I have the political capital to do it right now that I haven’t had in the past,’’ Menino said. So, winning 17 of 22 wards with 57% of the vote provides an opportunity that winning every single ward in the city with 76% (2001) of the vote and 67% (2005) of the vote does not?

More on the US DOE Inspector General's report

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I have been at a meeting in North Carolina with budget watchdog and fiscal conservative groups for the last two days. Lots of great ideas, but clearly being from Massachusetts sets you apart from other folks in some ways. One example is how Governors have used their stimulus money. When I discussed with them how we cut deep into our education budget and plugged the hole with stimulus dollars, they said, hey, your Governor’s being fiscally conservative. I disagree because I think you have to prioritize education. The Governor definitely does, as I have noted, if he wants to assert, as he did in a recent video (now pulled?), that he has made “extraordinary efforts to invest in… education.” I […]

Will He Make History?

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Tom Menino already has by ensuring that he will be mayor of Boston for 20 years. 20 years. Boston has been an American city for only two and a quarter centuries. 20 years is a long time. Things have gotten better over those two decades, and there is a promise that the Mayor has made to use his “political capital”, as he put it, to make major changes. To make history. We are rooting for the mayor, and we hope that he can use the 15-part series that we did together with the Boston Municipal Research Bureau on the major issues facing our fair city as buoys as, in his final four years, he takes the ship of city government […]