“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.
CitiStat: Don’t make a sham of it
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byPioneer is on the cheering squad, promoting CitiStat programs. We are featuring CitiStat in our April 25 conference on revitalizing Middle Cities (rsvp to jfenton@pioneerinst.wpengine.com.)
Pioneered by cities such as Baltimore and Somerville, CitiStat is a way for city leadership to use data to improve delivery of traditional city services.
Dedicating its spring lineup of events to stat programs, the Rappaport Institute just released an excellent brief on the pitfalls setting up CitiStat. Professor Bob Behn has observed stat programs all across the country and came up with 7 ways that these efforts often get it wrong, turning opportunities to produce results into “symbolic shams.”
Come to our conference to learn more!
NYC charter to pay teachers more than lawyers
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Education, Blog: School Choice, Jim Stergios, News, Related Education Blogs /byBut the unions don’t like this idea. A proposed New York City charter school is to pay teachers $125,000. There is even thought of adding incentive pay for high performance.
The idea is that the higher salaries will be made possible by becoming more efficient and by reducing the number of support staff.
According to the Friday New York Times, the head of NYC’s principals’ union, Ernest A. Logan,
Self-interest I get. May not approve, but I get it. Then there is pure self-preservation–that domain is reserved for Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. She commented that
Mike Antonucci, in today’s Education Intelligence Agency communique’, makes a good point:
Will it work? Let’s try.
The Choice to Go Negative
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byBy Obama? No, Silly. The New England Patriots.
The Boston Globe dedicates a full page of its sports section on Monday to a relentless unpacking of the short and undistinguished life of former Patriots videotape intern/employee Matt Walsh, who may shortly testify about the team’s videotaping activities.
Former sportswriter and current enterprise reporter Bob Hohler discovers that Mr. Walsh frequently puffed up his various internships on his resume, was a real jerk in college, and has bounced around as an assistant golf pro (or is that assistant to the golf pro?) for the past few years.
I love the Pats (even if Coach Belichick’s “it takes two to argue” defense of Spygate got to be a bit old). But I can’t help but think that members of the Patriots front office assisted the Globe in this effort. And I can’t help but question the Globe’s decision to dedicate so many column inches to such a low level staffer.