“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.
Two connections are missing
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byIn a number of articles in the Boston press on the Governor’s plan to pump $40+ million into biotech firm Shire (The Globe’s Todd Wallack and AP) and on the forward movement of the $1 billion biotech plan (The Globe’s Matt Viser and the Herald’s Christine McConville), two connections are missing.
Sure, the “picking winners and losers” trope is being heard, though not with the seriousness it requires. It should be noted that during a recent Joint Committee on Long-Term Debt hearing on the biotech bill, the Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Dan O’Connell noted that the state might even consider investing in certain companies if the state could hold a stake in the company… Guys, if you want to get into that line of work, go work for Bain. They are better at it than you could ever dream of being.
But, now, for the two connections reporters are not making: It’s not just that the Governor is looking to pump a billion dollars into a single industry, but that in order to do it, he is looking to increase business taxes by $300 million. Raise taxes on many, and give out goodies to one. Doesn’t that strike anyone as worth writing about?
Second, the payback on the Shire deal, even if all goes very, very well, is probably something on the order of 10 years. That is truly a visionary way of dealing with the $1.3 billion structural deficit in the Governor’s budget. Key question: Has any reporter asked for the payback numbers from Shire or from the administration?
It is worth noting that if the Shire numbers are our guide to understand the level of corporate welfare needed to create the state’s goal of 250,000 jobs, then we are talking about $17.5 billion.
That’s a big supplemental.
ED Hirsch on education in Massachusetts
/0 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /byI’ve always been a little perplexed by the claims that teaching to the test is “narrowing” the curriculum and thereby not giving kids access to a liberal arts education. The fact is if a student cannot read, do math or perform at a minimal level in science, it is hard to believe that he or she will be able to access a liberal arts education.
And, in fact, Massachusetts is known nationwide for having the curriculum frameworks — the basic material from which the MCAS is drawn — that have the strongest academic content. Don’t ask me. See an op-ed in the WaPo entitled The Knowledge Connection from education guru E.D. Hirsch.
The Dome does not get it
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byBut Steve Bailey does. Not because he mentions Pioneer’s work in yesterday’s column on business costs and unemployment insurance (UI), but because he is the one reporter who understands that the freeze on UI does absolutely nothing to reduce the cost of UI. As Bailey summarizes:
Bailey noted earlier in his piece that
Right you are, again, Mr. Bailey. The UI rate freeze was passed without a roll-call vote to protect individual legislators from union backlash. And you think the Dome is capable of wrestling with big questions like the cost of housing and health care?