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
Will Brownsberger — Transparency Champion
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byToday’s Globe story on the state’s huge legal expenditures on behalf of former Speaker DiMasi and his staff buries a nugget deep within. The data comes from a spreadsheet that Rep. Brownsberger had requested from the Comptroller, then posted on his website. It’s a truly impressive posting — Brownsberger displays a very impressive grasp of the minutiae of state budgeting and his analysis in the later worksheets is fascinating. It’s this type of thoughtful inquiry, made with a desire for hard data rather than political calculation, that we need more of. If you’d like to see more information along the lines of what Rep. Brownsberger has presented, check out our website, www.massopenbooks.org. If you go to the disbursements section, you […]
Getting Healthy
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byBoston Mayor Thomas Menino made his first public appearance in several weeks today at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast. He’s been laid up since the election with a serious knee/quad injury. The Globe profile of his recovery noted that City Hall staffers were ferrying document out to house twice a day (be sure to hit Tutto Italiano while you are out there). All kidding and policy issues aside, we offer our good wishes for his recovery. In the meantime, the famously in-charge Mayor (who generally does not encourage subordinates to draw attention to themselves. See Bratton, William and several others) has had to delegate some of his public role. It seems odd to read about another city official […]
How to stop investment in urban areas
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byGreg Peterson knows the development world and related environmental issues about as well as anybody I know. (Full disclosure: I often sought out his advice when thinking through puzzles at the state’s environmental affairs office.) I have been hearing an earful from folks involved in clean-ups as part of the 21E program run by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The short version is that that state in the 1990s moved to a partially privatized program where Licensed Site Professionals (LSPs) were allowed to audit and certify compliance with the state’s clean-up standards. The program allowed the state to turbo-charge clean-ups–something that is necessary if we are serious about revitalizing our older industrialized cities. Together with the 1998 Brownfields […]
The Cake Is Baked, Convention-Center Style
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /bySunday’s Globe brought a supportive editorial asking for a careful look at the Mass Convention Center Authority’s planning process around doubling the size of the BCEC. It introduced a new line of argument — the larger size is needed to attract life science conventions, our expanded center will attract classier conventions than Vegas, and somehow being the site of life science conventions will result in innovations being spread around the world that benefits Boston’s reputation. That’s a pretty delicate reasoning chain, particularly during a recession when taxpayers will look skeptically at a follow-up request for $1 billion in funding, or perhaps more. Its intriguing to look at the data on our existing convention calendar (pulled 12/7 off the MCCA’s event […]
Growing discomfort with P21?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byEdWeek‘s Stephen Sawchuk gives a wide-ranging look into the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (subscription req.) After seven relatively quiet years of work, P21 is facing a vocal chorus of detractors of its initiative, primarily from among advocates for a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. (“Backers of ’21st-Century Skills’ Take Flak,” March 4, 2009.) “The closer we look, the more P21’s unproven educational program appears to be just another mechanism for selling more stuff to schools,” Lynne Munson, the president and executive director of Common Core, a Washington group that advocates a stronger core curriculum, wrote in a recent blog item. Ken Kay, the president of P21, may consider that criticism to be a “cheap shot.” I haven’t looked at […]