The editorial page of today’s Globe takes up a favorite theme of Pioneer: the use of data to drive performance through measurement and benchmarking. On April 25th, you can see the cities working on this, at Pioneer’s Center for Economic Opportunity conference in Worcester. It promises to be a great event. Register quickly as the RSVPs are coming in early and strong.
The Globe editorial highlights the Rappaport Institute’s good work on this subject, but it is also a rather ironic and tough statement on the Governor’s focus on “the rhetoric of hope” rather than the nuts and bolts of ensuring high quality services. Entitled “Together we can manage better,” it opens with what is possible and what other states are already doing:
Public managers in some states, notably Washington (A-) and Maryland (B), are making a serious study of ways to improve the operation of state government. They have adopted the so-called PerformanceStat model first used by New York City police to map and target crime hot spots. The method uses precise data to analyze achievements and glitches on the delivery of state services. Top officials, including governors, attend regular meetings where participants follow up on previous findings and set specific targets for future performance. It’s not the stuff that might normally raise the pulse of politicians or the public. But it means that what government does gets measured – and can then be improved.
But it touches a nerve:
For Governor Patrick, the appeal should be even greater. The PerformanceStat strategy is, above all, a way to establish clear and attainable goals. That plan of action mostly eluded the Patrick administration during its first year in office.
And it closes with a pop:
Patrick’s rhetoric of hope isn’t much of a management tool. Data might work better.
The Boston Zoning Commission voted yesterday to approve the City Council’s measure to cap students renting off-campus apartments at 4 per unit, without regard to its size. (Read the Globe’s front page article here.) Now I’m sympathetic to what motivated this measure in the first place: I’m pretty sure if my wife and I lived in Allston or Mission Hill, next door to the noise and the revelry, we’d be annoyed as all get up too. Nevertheless, what this measure will most likely not do is bring rental rates in the neighborhoods around the city’s colleges and universities back down to what proponents might call an affordable level. As some of the displaced students would (hopefully, if they paid attention during their Intro to Econ lectures) be able to explain, constricting supply tends to inflate prices, not the other way around.
“Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets” was provided in March 2008.
Download Report: Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets
“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.
The editorial page of today’s Globe takes up a favorite theme of Pioneer: the use of data to drive performance through measurement and benchmarking. On April 25th, you can see the cities working on this, at Pioneer’s Center for Economic Opportunity conference in Worcester. It promises to be a great event. Register quickly as the RSVPs are coming in early and strong.
The Globe editorial highlights the Rappaport Institute’s good work on this subject, but it is also a rather ironic and tough statement on the Governor’s focus on “the rhetoric of hope” rather than the nuts and bolts of ensuring high quality services. Entitled “Together we can manage better,” it opens with what is possible and what other states are already doing:
Public managers in some states, notably Washington (A-) and Maryland (B), are making a serious study of ways to improve the operation of state government. They have adopted the so-called PerformanceStat model first used by New York City police to map and target crime hot spots. The method uses precise data to analyze achievements and glitches on the delivery of state services. Top officials, including governors, attend regular meetings where participants follow up on previous findings and set specific targets for future performance. It’s not the stuff that might normally raise the pulse of politicians or the public. But it means that what government does gets measured – and can then be improved.
But it touches a nerve:
For Governor Patrick, the appeal should be even greater. The PerformanceStat strategy is, above all, a way to establish clear and attainable goals. That plan of action mostly eluded the Patrick administration during its first year in office.
And it closes with a pop:
Patrick’s rhetoric of hope isn’t much of a management tool. Data might work better.
The Boston Zoning Commission voted yesterday to approve the City Council’s measure to cap students renting off-campus apartments at 4 per unit, without regard to its size. (Read the Globe’s front page article here.) Now I’m sympathetic to what motivated this measure in the first place: I’m pretty sure if my wife and I lived in Allston or Mission Hill, next door to the noise and the revelry, we’d be annoyed as all get up too. Nevertheless, what this measure will most likely not do is bring rental rates in the neighborhoods around the city’s colleges and universities back down to what proponents might call an affordable level. As some of the displaced students would (hopefully, if they paid attention during their Intro to Econ lectures) be able to explain, constricting supply tends to inflate prices, not the other way around.
“Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets” was provided in March 2008.
Download Report: Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets
Ouch from the Globe on state performance
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byThe editorial page of today’s Globe takes up a favorite theme of Pioneer: the use of data to drive performance through measurement and benchmarking. On April 25th, you can see the cities working on this, at Pioneer’s Center for Economic Opportunity conference in Worcester. It promises to be a great event. Register quickly as the RSVPs are coming in early and strong.
The Globe editorial highlights the Rappaport Institute’s good work on this subject, but it is also a rather ironic and tough statement on the Governor’s focus on “the rhetoric of hope” rather than the nuts and bolts of ensuring high quality services. Entitled “Together we can manage better,” it opens with what is possible and what other states are already doing:
But it touches a nerve:
And it closes with a pop:
Supply vs. Demand – and Demand is winning
/0 Comments/in Blog, Housing, News /by Liam DayThe Boston Zoning Commission voted yesterday to approve the City Council’s measure to cap students renting off-campus apartments at 4 per unit, without regard to its size. (Read the Globe’s front page article here.) Now I’m sympathetic to what motivated this measure in the first place: I’m pretty sure if my wife and I lived in Allston or Mission Hill, next door to the noise and the revelry, we’d be annoyed as all get up too. Nevertheless, what this measure will most likely not do is bring rental rates in the neighborhoods around the city’s colleges and universities back down to what proponents might call an affordable level. As some of the displaced students would (hopefully, if they paid attention during their Intro to Econ lectures) be able to explain, constricting supply tends to inflate prices, not the other way around.
Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets
/0 Comments/in Public Testimony /by Steve Poftak“Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets” was provided in March 2008.
Download Report: Testimony to the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets