“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.
Tough fight but they are right
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing, News /byLenore and Skip Schloming of the Small Property Owners Association play in rough waters, where landlords are seen as the Grand Exploiters. SPOA represents folks who own 5, 10, maybe 50 units and don’t get the big state support enjoyed by big developers. They’re essentially small business owners, many of whom buy in urban areas because they can build up equity and grow.
In addition to fighting back on ever-more ingenious attempts to reinstate rent control, SPOA is pushing some ideas that make eminent sense–and could actually do something for the low-income market and the homeless.
First, from a recent newsletter:
Currently, the state’s rent withholding law allows tenants to stop paying rent and be safe from eviction for any reported defect in their apartment under the state’s sanitary code. Well-intentioned, but it can and is gamed. Why not put in place a rent escrow law that requires tenants to escrow any rent they claim to be withholding because of defects. The landlord can’t access the rent, but the tenants also have less incentive to game the system. This would make many more landlords open to low-income rentals, increasing the supply.
Then the Schlomings note the increase in homelessness in Boston notwithstanding that we are in year 8 of the city plan to end homelessness. They argue that the cost of maintaining a subsidized unit, according to the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, is over $1,900 per month, while
That kinda makes a lot of sense, don’t you think? After all, homelessness is not just a matter of shelter but also of providing robust support to address, to the extent possible, the issues that led to that situation in the first place.
3 trillion and counting
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /by Liam DayOf note today, a milestone somewhat akin to watching your car’s odometer hit 100,000 miles: President Bush will submit to Congress his 2009 budget proposal for the federal government, the first ever to exceed $3 trillion.
I don’t think you need to be fiscally conservative to blanch at that figure.
The 100,000 student mark
/0 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /byA number of states have now reached or are approaching the 100,000 student mark in terms of enrollment at charter schools.
With the number of charter schools in places like LA, DC, Detroit, and New Orleans growing fast, they are increasingly a key part of the urban education landscape. Consider that almost two-thirds of New Orleans’ students are now in charters, and that they constitute the following percentage of students in other cities:
Massachusetts has the highest performing charters in the nation, thanks to a robust application process that protects the public dollar, and a review process that ensures that charters not up to grade are closed. Unfortunately, in the Bay State they still only amount to around 22,000 out of just under one million students.
Boston’s charter schools easily outperform their peers. Unfortunately, they are stuck with a cap limiting them to minority status.