By Steve Poftak
September 1st, 2010
(Blog series so named for William Bulger’s admonition about the three most deadly words a politician can say: Let me explain.)
The gubernatorial candidates are sniping at each other over property tax issues. And Blue Mass Group poster “JohnK” has weighed in with a measured assessment of the claims and counterclaims, entitled “CHARLIEBAKERFAIL” or some such thing (they must be using a template at this point).
The latest salvo comes from the Patrick Campaign, which is trying a very delicate semantic pivot — that property tax increases have decreased under the GOV.
They put up this chart, which I can’t recreate. But from this DOR data, I get directionally the same results. (I’d note that I’m using “Total Tax Levy” to determine increases, if I’ve made an error using this, I hope someone sets me straight.)
One thing, I’d note is that the take from property taxes comes from two sources — existing properties and new growth. If the ‘decrease in the increase’ came from a slowdown in new growth, that’s not a good thing.
I grabbed a spreadsheet off of DOR’s website that tracks the role of new growth in the property tax base.
What you see is that taxable new growth (the blue line) has tailed off in the past few years. No surprise right? Homebuilding and commercial property development have taken it on the chin in this recession.
What you also see is that with an existing tax base growing inexorably at something close to 2.5%, even consistent levels of new growth in nominal dollars (never mind decreases) have less and less of an impact on property tax growth rates. (The red line is amount of new growth applied to tax base as a percentage of previous year’s levy limit)
So, the big takeaway? I’d be hesitant to take credit for a decline in property tax increases if the driver was a lack of growth and not relief for the average homeowner.
By Steve Poftak
August 31st, 2010
(I guess this is my introduction to middle age — this is a ‘back in my day’ post)
Now, I take a back seat to very few people in the privileged upbringing department — leafy green suburbs, high quality schools — but the new Newton North high school does give one pause.
I respect the desire to have the best for your kids (although I’m not happy with the negative incentives that ‘free’ state money provided), but this school is a bit much.
Look at all the stuff: A regular theatre and a ‘black-box theatre’ (whatever that might be)? The large flat screen TVs at various stations? Two gyms? Elliptical machines? and on and on.
I hope the edifice complex on display here does not obscure the one thing I hope they got right (and curiously absent from any public officials comments) — getting really good teachers.
And another observation — having seen a fair number of public and private institutional buildings at various stages, the finish of the exterior of this building, with its multiple materials and textures, and numerous decorative bends and turns, strikes me as a maintenance headache in the future.
By Samantha Levine-Neudel
August 26th, 2010
Jim Stergios was on WRKO’s Tom & Todd show talking about how the Race to the Top is really a Race to the Bottom.
Check out his assessment of the grim situation here.
Also check out Jim’s Boston.com blog Rock the Schoolhouse for more information on this hot topic.
By Jim Stergios
August 26th, 2010
This morning on the Todd and Tom show on WRKO, Joe Battenfield (who was sitting in for Todd Feinburg) noted that the Governor’s office is claiming that Pioneer’s view of the national standards issue is a result of politics. What they are suggesting is that because Charlie Baker was Pioneer’s first executive director 20+ years ago, we are running defense for him. You can listen to the whole interview here (it’s not too long, clocking in at 10 minutes). My response was
Ho-Hum.
What I noted was that it’s hard to say that when on the day of the Board of Education’s vote to scrap the state standards, we did a press release with Tim Cahill — not Charlie Baker. Does that mean Pioneer is shilling for Tim Cahill? Of course not. No more than we were shilling for Governor Patrick when we helped him craft the Bridge Repair program a couple of summers ago.
Then there are the little details like four major papers undertaken on the topic of state and national standards from January 2010 to July 2010. Dozens of papers on standards in the past half dozen years. The Governor has not been able to respond to the facts so he attacks Pioneer? Man, that is a funny one.
The big picture here is that the Governor could have been a game-changer for education in Massachusetts, but instead he sided with the adults in the system, at the expense of the core business of teachers and schools:
Bringing high-quality academic experiences to kids.
He sacrificed our standards for 33 cents a day per student in Race to the Top funds. He hitched our wagon with places like Mississippi, West Virginia and Ohio, so that each time we want to improve our standards, we will have to negotiate it out with them.
That. Is. Not. Smart. And that is not leadership.
The Governor has no doubt some accomplishments to boast of, but he has not turned out to be the self-described “education governor.”
By Jim Stergios
August 24th, 2010
The Race to the Top grants have been made and Massachusetts will receive a total of $250 million, to be distributed over a four-year period.
That’s good for MA. Very good. Though we should remember at what cost the money came and also take the opportunity to ask a few meaty questions. Let’s start with the questions:
- Why the late August release? It’s not a great news cycle. And the decisions were supposed to be announced in mid-September — that would be perfect with the kids back at school and lots of parents thinking about education.
- How did Massachusetts get the highest score of all the states? After all, they had strong unions support (unlike Massachusetts, where the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers declined to support Massachusetts’ application), and they passed a law to evaluate teachers and to use student performance as a portion of that evaluation (unlike Massachusetts where we outlined aspirations around teacher evals and employing student achievement data). (Like Massachusetts, New York passed a law to lift its charter school cap and they adopted the national standards.)
- How is it that so few western states got funding? One wonder what California will do now that it did not get the RTT funding: Will it decide to undo its decision to adopt the national standards?
On the benefits, we should keep all of this in context. We spend through state and local expenditures $9 billion every year on K-12 education. This grant totals $250 million in one-time money. It will come over four years. That works out to about 33 cents a student per day.
The money is going to help in a crisis, but it is not going to be enough to do a lot of good, especially because so much of it is going to go to professional development, textbooks, and adjusting all the districts to the new national standards. That’s going to cost tens of millions of dollars. So subtract all that out.
Which brings me to my basic point. We’ve spent well over $90 billion since the start of education reform in 1993 making hard decisions and putting into place a nation-leading reform based on (1) high academic standards, (2) accountability for students, teachers and schools, and (3) charter schools.
That reform took us out of the Minor Leagues (a competition with other states) and put us in the Majors (a race against the top performing nations). Since 2007
- The state has undone accountability, killing off the state’s independent school auditing office and the US History graduation exam. Then they introduced “soft skills” into the MCAS. Through this grant process they have committed Massachusetts to new tests that aren’t even defined yet.
- The state included many more strings on charter schools, even as they lifted the cap.
- The state, as part of the Race to the Top grant process, has ditched our nation-leading K-12 standards.
So, after $90-plus billion and many years of reform, and many years of success, what’s left of the edifice built in 1993? Was all that worth 33 cents a day per child?
So, for today, celebrate. But remember the cost of being penny-wise and pound foolish.
Crossposted at Boston.com’s Rock the Schoolhouse blog.
By Jim Stergios
August 24th, 2010
Patrick Anderson at the Gloucester Times reports today that Superior Court Judge Richard Welch III found that
the case presents “considerable evidence” that the state education commissioner and Board of Education “blatantly ignored and violated state law when granting the GCA charter for political reasons.”
And more:
While he dismissed the parents’ argument that the commissioner is legally bound to follow the recommendation of his Charter School Office, Welch — echoing state Sen. Bruce Tarr and state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan — said there is no evidence Chester made any attempt to independently judge the application against the established criteria.
“… There is a strong factual showing that the Commissioner, despite his affidavit to the contrary, did not perform his own independent evaluation of the GCA application but, to the contrary, ignored the state regulations and caved to political pressure to recommend the project to a Board eager to approve at least one charter application regardless of its merit,” Welch wrote.
Welch denied the bid by a group of local parents to keep the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School from opening, but the finding on the way Commissioner Chester acted may explain why personnel in the state’s charter school office, which provides technical assistance and provides recommendations to the Commissioner on new charter approval, is heading for the exits. Three people in the office have announced their departure in just the last three months.
By Steve Poftak
August 23rd, 2010
Quick, who is your Governor’s Councillor?
Chances are that you have no idea. I’ve said in the past that its time for this vestige of our colonial past to go, but still it remains.
In the 2nd race, the current councillor, Kelly Timilty, faced a challenge the last time around but prevailed 66% to 34% over Robert Jubinville. In that race, Timilty faked an endorsement from Governor Patrick and ended up paying a fine after the fact for her actions.
Well, Jubinville is back and he’s not pleased. Check out the mailer I received over the weekend. Pretty rough stuff – cheating and stealing, etc. Curious where they got that shot of Timilty.
By Jim Stergios
August 19th, 2010
Jobs is a tough issue for the Governor these days, given the news of job losses coming out of Wonderland. But then there’s the announcement today, which Robert Gavin reports about in the Globe:
The state gained more than 13,000 jobs in July, while data revisions showed that employment growth in June, nearly 3,000 jobs, was far stronger than initially estimated, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported today. The state unemployment rate held steady at 9 percent.
David Guarino is tweeting about a pep rally the Governor is going to hold at 4:30 to celebrate the jobs numbers. And Doug Rubin is tweeting
Globe: “MA added jobs for 6th consecutive month as MA economy continued a broad recovery that is outpacing nation as whole” #magov #mapoli
Job creation is great but as Pioneer has shown repeatedly, the month-to-month fluctuations will only be something to celebrate when we make up the hundreds of thousands of job lost in the past decade. That’s not a political statement — that’s a story about what is essentially a “lost decade” in Massachusetts for employment. The need to change the way we do business is staring us in the face. It’s as close to Massachusetts as Russia is to Alaska, to paraphrase Sarah Palin.
See the jobless reports in New Hampshire, where
The statistics released by New Hampshire Employment Security in late July show that the state’s unadjusted unemployment rate fell in June to 5.7 percent — making it the fifth month in a row of economic improvement.
You read that right. See John Nolan’s piece in Foster’s Daily Democrat:
New Hampshire now has the fourth lowest unemployment rate in the country behind North and South Dakota and Nebraska.
Elsewhere in the United States (which posted a 9.6 percent rate in June) life is much tougher, with 16 states still mired in double-digit unemployment rates.
New Hampshire’s unadjusted jobless rate of 5.7 percent, contrasts, in New England, with that of Rhode Island (11.6 percent), Connecticut (8.9 percent) and Massachusetts (8.8 percent). Maine fared a little better in June with a 7.7 percent jobless rate, while Vermont is just behind New Hampshire with 5.9 percent.
So, on a regional basis, we’re doing better than li’l Rhodey, about as well as Connecticut, and behind Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
By Jim Stergios
August 17th, 2010
FEDERALISM
DIRIGISME
Huh? You’d think that I have that backwards, with the freedom-loving, federalist heritage that Americans love so much.
Try this chart published in the August 12th Economist showing central (for us federal) government spending as a percentage of overall public spending.
Statists and dirigistes is what we are. Makes you want to head across the pond, raise a glass of champagne and celebrate France’s undying commitment to liberte’!
By Steve Poftak
August 17th, 2010
I must admit to an unhealthy fascination with the state auditor’s race. Besides Guy Glodis’ bus, you’ve got an interesting cast of characters (and conflicting voter bloc loyalties) on both ballots.
So, I was interested to see this yard sign duo cropping up around the Suffolk & Norfolk District:
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