MORE ARTICLES
NYT’s Anupreeta Das on Bill Gates, Microsoft, & Tech BillionairesAugust 28, 2024 - 12:03 pm
Harris’ Tax Vision: Policy & PoliticsAugust 27, 2024 - 3:23 pm
Poll: State Voters Overwhelmingly Support Ending Public Records Exemption, Auditing the LegislatureAugust 26, 2024 - 10:45 am
National Alliance’s Starlee Coleman on Public Charter SchoolsAugust 21, 2024 - 1:14 pm
How Has Employment Changed In Massachusetts?August 20, 2024 - 4:03 pm
How Has Transportation Been Changing In Massachusetts?August 20, 2024 - 2:31 pm
Digital Privacy Divide: Can Law Enforcement Google Where You’ve Been?August 20, 2024 - 11:40 am
American Bar Association Elects President of the Pioneer Law Center as Vice Chair of Judicial DivisionAugust 20, 2024 - 9:30 am
Pioneer Institute: 340B Hospitals Does Not Necessarily Translate to Charity CareAugust 19, 2024 - 12:49 pm
Wrap Up of the Massachusetts Legislative Session – Or Is It??August 14, 2024 - 1:53 pm
Why go down this road again
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /byMore on the Patrick administration’s moves to gut education reform. The Patrick proposal creates a Secretary of Education. It gives the Secretary broad budgetary power, reducing the Commissioner of Education to being a department head. It stacks, packs and racks up the members of the Board, so that the power starts from the Governor, flows through the Secretary and leaves the Commissioner and Board to rubber stamp. Once upon a time, in a not far off time, the current Chairman of the Board, S. Paul Reville, did not think this such a good idea. For the full testimony see here. The testimony was provided in June 2003, when a previous Governor proposed a weak Secretary (no real budgetary power, no […]
Transportation and Technology
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byA tip of the pen to the newly created Metrowest Regional Transportation Agency. Have you ever waited endlessly at a bus stop for a bus that never came? They’ve used their GPS capability to provide a real-time map of all their buses, which is viewable by rout. Would that larger transit system would utilize technology in the same way.
To tell the Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth
/0 Comments/in Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /bySome people have noted that Pioneer is overstating the risk to education gains posed by the Governor’s proposal to “pack the board.” Some even take exception with the term “pack” which clearly refers to FDR’s notorious attempt to jam through legislation that could not pass muster at the Supreme Court. Well, none other than Governor Patrick’s pick to be Chairman of the Board of Education has opined against the major elements of the Governor’s plan: “So, Horace Mann and generations of subsequent leaders in the State House saw fit, for well over a century, to insulate educational policy from the ebb and flow of politics. This as accomplished by putting some distance between the chief policy making entity, the Board […]
MATCH School inspires my home town
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byThe Mayor of my home town (Cumberland, RI), Daniel McKee, is engaged in a very interesting experiment. As Ed Week noted, if McKee: and a coalition of other Rhode Island town leaders have their way, they’ll ditch public education’s current bureaucracy and start over with a clean slate. It’s just not clear yet exactly what they will be able to write on it. The plan, as Mr. McKee and his Coalition of Communities Improving Rhode Island were planning to announce it late last week, is to set up a regional, mayorally headed network of charter schools—something that charter school experts say has never been attempted in quite the way the coalition is proposing. Yes, the Cumberland teachers union rep is […]
Some Good Bridge News
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byYou may recall our recent report — Our Legacy of Neglect — that examined the condition of the Longfellow Bridge and the condition of our state’s assets. MSNBC has done an enterprising bit of reporting on national bridge inspection standards and come up with some shocking results — massive numbers of bridges go uninspected for more than two years at a time (the absolute maximum recommended time between inspections). The good news is that Massachusetts has none of these bridges, although some other states (Illinois, Arizona) look pretty shabby. Sadly, we are still in the top 3 for structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges (at more than 50%) but we have improved by .6% in a year! Finally, if you […]