Archive for January, 2008
Ok, maybe I didn’t pay as much attention to the NH primary as I should have. But the Globe’s Derrick Jackson brings us another of his unique insights today. After a brief bit of throat-clearing about Obama ‘defending’ Hilary’s likability, he rips into the former First Lady :
But this pales next to the steady drip, drip, drip of stereotyping from the Clinton camp of a lazy, drug-using, Muslim black man who believes in fairy tales.
Mr. Jackson is the early leader in the Globe Op-Ed page’s yearly “Did-They-Really-Just-Say-That” competition. James Carroll is disqualified (see this week’s entry — Football reveals the rotting heart at the core of America).
January 15th, 2008
It certainly has been a busy one, both nationally and here at Pioneer. We are set to release a short policy brief on the inequities in Unemployment Insurance in Massachusetts and are gearing up for an education event Tuesday to discuss issues around student test data, including MCAS, TIMSS, the state’s data warehouse and the need to use data to guide professional development and inform classroom practice. For that reason, I saved up my thoughts this week for one weekend post. Here goes; from lightest to most serious.
1) This week’s sign of the apocalypse - According to The Week (a periodical I’ve trumped here before) a Colorado inmate is suing the prison where he is incarcerated because he was badly hurt when trying to escape from it. I’m sorry; that one was just too good not to pass on.
2) The other election - Yes, there was another heartbreaking election this week and my boyhood hero Jim Ed Rice fell just 16 votes shy of election to baseball’s Hall of Fame. To make matters worse, the only player who achieved election this year was hated Yankee reliever Goose Gossage, who, if you remember correctly, during an era when some sort of curse seemed to plague the Red Sox, enticed Jim Ed to fly out with two on and one out in the bottom of the ninth in 1978’s historic one-game play-off.
3) Tackling the important issues - University of Georgia President Michael Adams stepped up to address the most pressing issue in higher ed today: the lack of a playoff system for college football’s Bowl Championship Series. It seems he felt his school’s team had been unfairly excluded from competing for a national title. Never mind that, according to statistics provided by the Boston Globe’s Derrick Jackson, only 29% of the African-American players on that team are graduating from school, a school whose president seems to think winning games is more important than closing the persistent achievement gap between black and white students. I wonder that other educators don’t try a similar sleight-of-hand: focus the public’s attention on ephemera so that they don’t notice their children aren’t learning.
January 12th, 2008
Passed on by a friend is the shocking bulge in hiring for grades K-8: In the past year, there were 52,000 new K-8 students nationwide, and 42,500 new K-8 teachers hired.
The National Education Association today released its annual report, Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007…
Teacher hiring is completely out of control.
Yes, believers in the eternal teacher shortage, you read that correctly. A trend that was obvious after last year’s edition of Rankings and Estimates is now glaring. The last of the Baby Boomer’s kids are working their way through high school and they are not being replaced. NEA estimates that K-12 enrollment grew by only 0.3 percent in 2006-07, but the demographic implications are only clear when you separate elementary enrollment from secondary.
Grades K-8 Enrollment 2006-07= 29,758,808 (+51,958; +0.2%)
Grades 9-12 Enrollment 2006-07= 19,133,765 (+113,079; +0.6%)
Looks like we should be hiring a greater percentage of high school teachers, right? But we’re not, not even close.
Grades K-8 Classroom Teachers 2006-07= 1,856,567 (+42,541; +2.3%)
Grades 9-12 Classroom Teachers 2006-07= 1,317,787 (+10,175; +0.8%)
That’s right. America hired 42,541 extra elementary school teachers for 51,958 extra elementary school students. That’s one extra teacher for every 1.2 extra students. This is not a new trend, only an accelerated one. In the last 10 years, K-8 enrollment has risen by a cumulative 4.1 percent. But the K-8 teaching forced has risen by a cumulative 17.1 percent.
If the national picture seems insane, consider California. NEA estimates a 48,031 student decrease in K-8 enrollment for 2006-07, but an increase of 9,284 K-8 teachers.
NEA estimates K-8 average salaries increased 4.2 percent in 2006-07, which means we are paying a premium for all those extra teachers. So while NEA decries the failure of average salaries to match inflation, the fact that public school districts can so massively increase the number of teachers at the bottom end of the scale, while still increasing the average salary by a substantial amount, is a testament to the ability of government to appropriate money for education.
Why can’t teacher salaries go up? Might have something to do with hiring too many.
January 11th, 2008
This space has been a supporter of in-store limited service clinics in the past. And the state’s Public Health Council, despite some misgivings, just approved the regulations which will allow these clinics to begin opening. And good for them, they approved blanket regulations, not just case-by-case waivers, which would tied the process up in red tape.
But then, Mayor Menino steps into the frame with a vociferous and very public condemnation of the clinics. Its not clear to this writer why he’s so focussed on the issue.
Sure, these clinics bring up some clear issues about our healthcare delivery system — discontinuity of care, fragmented recordkeeping, etc. But, guess what, these problems exist today and will exist tomorrow, regardless of the clinics.
In the meantime, they offer an alternative source of care at a time and place that is convenient to a lot of us, at no cost to the government and with the potential to move a lot of low-acuity patients out of the hospitals.
January 11th, 2008
that Federico Fellini directed a allegorical history of Yugoslavia incorporating the cast of Animal House? Sure you did.
Time permitting, I urge you to view the best film you’ve never heard of — Underground, playing Thursday at the Brattle Theater.
January 9th, 2008
Passed on by Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform:
Some great news from Washington DC — and by a 10-3 vote! (courtesy of the Center for Education Reform):
The Council of the District of Columbia approved the Public Education Personnel Reform Act late this afternoon, 10-3, after several hours of deliberations. The act would give D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee the authority to turn around the district, including cutting ineffective or unproductive personnel in central administration. A majority of the Council embraced this historical landmark reform, recognizing the need for drastic change within the D.C. Public School System. This act shall take effect after final approval by Mayor Adrian Fenty and a 30-day period of Congressional review.
In DC they mean business. Back home, we are still debating MCAS and charters. And the number of urban schools on the federal watch list continues to climb.
January 9th, 2008
The Globe’s Juxtaposition Desk is really on the ball this morning. Right below an investigative piece on alleged abuses of the firefighters’ pension system, there’s a bit about Councilor Maureen Feeney’s wish for a “New England-style town meeting” in Boston.
Great idea. Once the Convention Center is packed with ordinary Bostonians - all, presumably, asking for better services or lower taxes - please get some representative of the firefighters or the city up on the dais. And please, someone wave a Pioneer White Paper on pension abuse and mismanagement at that public servant. Ask if the city can distinguish citizens’ interests from those of its employees.
I promise that Research Director Steve Poftak will autograph that White Paper, if not some other part of that brave Bostonian.
January 7th, 2008
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