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K-12 enrollments down, number of teachers up

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Our Education Intelligence Agency operative once again comes in with some very interesting material to consider. With the Census Bureau’s release of data, EIA has produced a set of tables on enrollment, staffing and spending in public school districts across the country, and growth/decline since 2001-2. The state-by-state comparisons show that teacher hiring has outpaced enrollment growth in 38 of the 50 states. In Virginia, student enrollment grew by 5 percent, and the number of K-12 teachers increased 20. In Massachusetts, enrollment statewide declined 1.5 percent, and the number of teachers has increased over 6 percent. (The overall US average is 2.7 percent growth in enrollment and 5 percent growth in K-12 teachers.) Nothing necessarily good or bad in that, […]

Walking the Walk

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A number of state legislators did not accept an automatic pay raise last year, citing economic conditions. But did you know that Senator Steven Panagiotakos of Lowell has forgone most of the payraises since 1994. It’s cost him close to a quarter of a million dollars. Impressive.

Well, that's going well….

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A bit of weirdness in today’s Globe article on the final meeting of the MBTA board of directors: Board members had also been expecting to hear a report from the MBTA’s chief of operations, Richard Leary, in response to safety concerns raised by the federal government about a fatal crash on the Green Line in May 2008. Board members voted last month to require Leary to deliver the report before the board dissolved. But Leary, who is eligible for retirement, did not show up at the meeting, and the T’s interim general manager, William A. Mitchell Jr., said he did not know where Leary was. “He has been nonresponsive on coming forward,’’ said Janice Loux, a board member who has […]

Cleaning up my emails

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No, not those emails, silly. No reference to new computers or troubled staffers moved to campaigns. (Note that the Kineavy emails are now available online.) Instead, I am talking about the great suggestions for reading that get passed to me. Here is one, and it comes from Mike Antonucci, who suggests an article by Mike Petrilli in the new edition of Education Next entitled Disappearing Ink. Ed Next is a great magazine, but Petrilli’s article stood out in my mind, because we interact with reporters an awful lot. And the landscape is changing very fast. And Petrilli is right to delve into the question of whether we can have a good public debate about education when the pressures in the […]

This is dumb smart growth

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While Pioneer has done quite a lot of work on water pricing and on wetlands regulatory reforms, given the fiscal crisis and President Obama’s call for school reform, we have set environmental issues a little to the side for the moment. Over the next few months, I’ll post a few questions on environmental issues, which any gubernatorial candidate will need to weigh. So, basic question on smart growth. I understand the politics of targeting $50 million a year for open space protection. I also understand the shortcomings, such as goal-setting based on dollars out rather than environmental significance (i.e. agricultural value, habitat protection, or drinking water source protection). But in the term “smart growth”, there is, well, growth. Land protection […]