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But Did He Go To Handshakes?

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The Governor has used his site visits to make a point in the past, most recently dropping in on the Excel Charter in East Boston during the ed reform debate, raising the ire of Speaker DeLeo whose district is very short distance away. So I read with interest today about his eating tour of Quincy — grabbing a slice at Napoli’s, eating some lunch at Nick’s. Maybe a message to gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill, who hails from Quincy and has been holding a number of events there?

Psst, it's no secret, but that doesn't make it easy

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Shared by Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform is a short, but hard, list of what it takes to have a successful inner city school, from David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism): 1. Tell students exactly how to behave and tolerate no disorder 2. Require a rigorous, college-prep curriculum. 3. Align curriculum with state standards and specify performance outcomes. 4. Assess students regularly and use the results to target struggling students. 5. Keep students busy in class with a clear plan and a variety of assignments. 6. Build a collective culture of achievement and college-going. 7. Reject the culture of the streets. 8. Be vigilant about maintaining school culture. 9. Extend the school […]

A must read from Hirsch

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This piece by ED Hirsch in the American Educator is a tour de force. (You can also listen to the podcast he did to publicize the book for NRO. I know many states have looked to choice as the single answer to educational challenges. In Massachusetts, we took a more comprehensive view of reform, which bundled choice through charters with accountability and setting really high academic standards goals. The results you know: In a decade we went from 11th in the country to 1st, and from mid-range on the international math and science tests to among the top 5-6 “countries” (along with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). Our charters also perform at a higher level than those in many other […]

MoveOn.org opposes health care bill

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About three hours ago, MoveOn.org asked its members to undertake a letter-writing campaign to the Senate. No, not in support of the health care bill, but in opposition. Wow. What a difference a year makes.

MassDOT Apps Are Coming!

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There’s a new app available for you IPhone users (who aren’t participating in Operation Chokehold in an hour) that lets you figure out when buses are arriving on certain MBTA routes. I’m not sure if its the first app out or not, but MassDOT has been doing some fascinating work reaching out to the developer community and providing them with data feeds. I was recently reading MassDOT’s 90-day implementation report (yep, I’m cool.) and was struck by a passage on data. As part of a discussion about outsourcing the 511 service, it notes their efforts to move “toward a vision of government as a wholesaler of information rather than a retailer.” That’s a mouthful coming from a public sector entity. […]