MORE ARTICLES
Becket Fund’s Eric Rassbach on Loffman v. CA DOE, Religious Liberty, & SchoolingNovember 27, 2024 - 10:30 am
Pioneer Institute Statement on Vocational-Technical School AdmissionsNovember 26, 2024 - 8:00 am
FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing – Forecasting of Revenues is Tricky BusinessNovember 25, 2024 - 8:00 am
CUNY’s Carl Rollyson on William Faulkner & Southern LiteratureNovember 20, 2024 - 10:36 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds Massachusetts Saw Four-Fold Loss of Income to Net OutmigrationNovember 19, 2024 - 11:25 am
Massachusetts Job Market Bears WatchingNovember 18, 2024 - 2:10 pm
NH Gov. Chris Sununu on School ChoiceNovember 13, 2024 - 2:02 pm
Five Reasons Why Project Labor Agreements Are Bad Public PolicyNovember 12, 2024 - 9:27 am
Statement of Pioneer Institute on MCAS Ballot Failure and State of Education in MassachusettsNovember 6, 2024 - 2:01 pm
Dr. Helen Baxendale on Great Hearts Classical Liberal Arts Charter SchoolsNovember 6, 2024 - 12:08 pm
Legislature Skips Plan Design
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Legislature is rolling out a “Municipal Relief Act” today, shepherded by Committee Chairs Representative Paul Donato and Senator Jamie Eldridge. Unless I’ve missed some grand strategic plan to insert plan design on the floor, this Act is an embarrassment. Everyone agrees that healthcare costs are killing local governments. By my estimation, its gone from roughly 6% of local budgets to over 12% over the last ten years — no other municipal department is growing like that. One potential avenue to controlling healthcare costs is joining the state employee’s insurance pool, the GIC, but many municipalities either object to that or don’t think it will save money. The next option then is to give municipal managers greater control over health […]
Randi blah-blah-blah?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byCentral Falls (RI) School Superintendent Frances Gallo is moving to fire all that city’s high school teachers as part of corrective action mandated by RI education commissioner Deborah Gist. The CF high school and five schools in Providence would be affected. “We need to be able to move this school,” Gallo said Tuesday afternoon. “We are persistently in the low-performing category and therefore we have options we must look to.” Gallo said that the 74 teachers can re-apply, but their job descriptions would be different. Under the termination-of-teachers reform model, no more than 50 percent can be re-hired. I know CF really well having spent my youth next door, having relatives there, knowing folks who were police officers and teachers […]
Charters and disadvantaged students
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byWe’ve had some long discussions with legislators and the media over the past few years about “disadvantaged students” and how they fare at charters. As we often note, the number of poor and minority students in charters are higher on statewide comparisons; and they are well within the range on “sending” district to charter comparisons. And their students by and large do far better those in district schools. But the question raised during the recent legislative debate was, well, how about Limited English Proficient (LEP) and Special Needs (SPED) kids. A new study out by Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak and Walters takes a micro-look at this question by focusing on the KIPP Academy in Lynn, a school that is mostly […]
Calling Glenn Koocher
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byI am pretty sure you have seen the number of online tools Pioneer has created for citizens interested in government transparency and civic engagement on issues like government performance, regionalization, the quality of our schools, etc. Here is a breath of fresh air blowing north from Rhode Island. I was going to say Rhode Island of all places, but then remembered that I am a former Rhodey guy… MassOpenBooks MassReportCards MassCityStats MassHousingRegulations The Regionalization Clearinghouse The GIC Cost Estimator (general, Revere, and there are other community estimators – just ask) So, we were very interested to see that the RI Association of School Committees now puts all their collective bargaining agreements on-line for members — something that could help communities […]
The missing link – student data and teacher performance
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byDan Willingham’s good piece in the Boston Globe on what makes for effective accountability in our schools chided the lack of detail behind the Obama administration’s Race to the Top criteria seeking to “hold teachers accountable for student scores.” There are ways of making accountability work. The two key elements are evaluations that take place over long periods of time, to increase stability, and evaluations that are conducted by people who are knowledgeable and are known by teachers to be knowledgeable. Unfortunately, neither element is part of the Obama administration’s plans. Data is super-important, but how we use it matters. So where does MA stand on the use of data, you might ask. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a […]