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Hitting the Reset Button

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has a provocative piece in today’s Wall Street Journal that argues that “my fellow governors and I are likely facing a permanent reduction in tax revenues.” Daniels is running a budget surplus through close financial management and lots of innovation (e.g., the tollway deal) and reforms. In the WSJ op-ed, he has a message for Massachusetts. The “progressive” states that built their enormous public burdens by soaking the wealthy will hit the wall first and hardest. California, which extracts more than half its income taxes from a fraction of 1% of its citizens, is extreme but hardly alone in its overreliance on a few, highly mobile taxpayers. Both individuals and businesses are fleeing soak-the-rich states already. […]

Painful Reading

You know that feeling you get when you are watching a particular genre of murder mystery and everyone in the audience sees the criminal lurking but the clueless protagonist has no idea? That’s the feeling you get when you read the SEC’s Inspector General’s report on their decade-long, multi-office, multi-inquiry bungling of the Madoff investigation. All throughout the document, you read about how close they came to revealing his fraud but always fell short. The problems seem to fall into three main categories — 1) inexperienced staffers who did not understand investment operations and strategy (a bad thing if you are an enforcement officer at the SEC), 2) a remarkable lack of follow-through on basic inconsistencies or easily verifiable assertions […]

Closing Sprinfield’s Achievement Gap: Innovative Ways to Use MCAS Data to Drive School Reform

Innovative Ways to Use MCAS Data to Drive School Reform Author(s): Dr. Kathleen Madigan, Theodor Rebarber, and Dr. Bruce Bean — Publication date: 2009-10-19 Category: Education Abstract: Business leaders, educators, policy makers, and civil rights advocates are increasingly dedicated to fundamental reform to close the achievement gap that limits hope and opportunity for students from historically disadvantaged groups. Substantial gaps in academic achievement between groups of students based on race, ethnicity and similar factors should have no place in American society in the 21st century. For those students facing such deficits, the effects can be profound. They dictate which students receive the preparation necessary to succeed in their choice of college and work, and which ones continue to be left […]

Serious Charge by Kevin McCrea

Mayoral Candidate Kevin McCrea levels a serious and inflammatory charge on Blue Mass Group today — “There are many fine public schools, but serious inequities continue because our “lottery” is not genuine, and politically connected people get their children the schools they want. Does it surprise anyone that Mayor Menino, Councilor Flaherty and Councilor Yoon were all just “lucky” and their progeny ended up in their first choice of schools?” I’ve been a long-time observer, critic (see here and here), and participant in the Boston Public Schools lottery process. I’ve never heard anyone provide credible evidence that the BPS lottery process is anything but on the level. It can be difficult to understand and frustrating, but not fixed. If McCrea […]

It's not cool to….

…use colonoscopy metaphors (third para, first sentence) about someone with Crohn’s Disease. Really, it isn’t.