“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
16 Years Later, Merger Savings Realized!
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byAs we contemplate a major shake-up of our transportation system in order to capture efficiencies, it’s worth pondering some cautionary tales from state government.
Today’s Herald brings news that the State Police are considering the consolidation of barracks, particularly in the Boston area (a region with barracks in Government Center, Boston, Brighton, and South Boston, as well as Milton and Framingham a bit further out.). This duplication is due in part to the merger of the MDC police with the State Police in 1992.
The state police union is implacably opposed (I’m not shocked), but I’d note that many of these barracks are in absolutely shameful physical condition.
But the larger lesson is: realizing even obvious efficiencies in state government is harder than it looks.
The Governor's choice on charter schools
/1 Comment/in Blog, News /byThe Governor’s proposal on charter schools does two things: It increases the cap on commonwealth charter schools for a single year in districts falling in the state’s lowest performing districts, and it changes the funding formula in a way that puts equitable funding for charters at risk.
The proposal ostensibly creates 4500 new charter seats, but stipulates a range of sub-groups that must make up 80 percent of the charter student body, including low-income, limited English proficient or special education students, or students determined to be at risk of dropping out. In addition, LEP and SPED enrollments in each new charter must exceed the sending district’s average by 5%.
The one-year limit on the time to create any new charter schools makes this proposal difficult to implement. The process would require regulations, public comment and perhaps, as noted below, legal challenges given its many restrictions.
The proposal further imposes a series of quotas on charter schools, which currently select students by lot. Many questions on this, so look for more of what it all means, if anything, in practical terms. (It is worth considering whether such restrictions are legal under civil rights law.)
My take? Keep the lotteries and forgo the quotas. Charters aren’t exam schools. Lotteries without quotas are fair and transparent. Lose the one-year time limit.
On financing, the Governor has frozen charter tuition payments at 2009 levels (for per-pupil amounts and number of students), and he separates out the charter funding into a separate line item. You could put a bullseye on that line item. All of which means:
– In the short run, there will be no funding for new schools and new students in FY10
– In the long-run, this creates a potentially separate and unequal source of funding for charters, exactly what the entire Education Reform Act of 1993 was designed to remedy.
Remember that our journey from a pretty good state on national assessments to the best in the nation was begun from a court case about unequal funding. It is hard to believe that this is the Governor’s intent.
Making this proposal workable is going to take a lot of work. Making it good will take even more.
Additional Assistance is Gone?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byThe Governor’s Budget was released today (well, some of it anyway, it’s four hours after the formal release and none of the companion bills are available yet).
One really surprising finding was the elimination of Additional Assistance, a roughly $380 million piece of local aid. To see who gets what currently from this line item, look here.
In principle, this is a good idea. Additional Assistance stands out among a variety of local aid programs as having almost no rationale for the distribution of aid (unlike lottery and chapter 70 education aid). But as a practical matter, it’s a pretty big pill for certain municipalities, like Boston ($164 million of a $2.1 billion budget), to swallow, particularly in a single gulp.
In reality, this is a challenge for the House and Senate, who will face inexorable pressure to put at least some of the money back in the budget, requiring cuts elsewhere.