Archive for February, 2008
Picking up on Fred Siegel’s piece on the politics of hope and the reality of Governor Patrick’s moves to undo education reform (= giving in to special interests), Mickey Kaus from Slate asks
Isn’t it incumbent on those prominent NEA-bashing neoliberal Obama supporters to explain just why his term as president won’t quickly descend into a Patrick-like interest-group quagmire? Jon Alter, this means you! And Charles Peters as well. … P.S.: Patrick could function as Obama’s wrang-wrang, Vonnegut’s term for a pioneer who by his bad example steers others away from a false course. Before neolibs go into a permanent campaign swoon, shouldn’t Obama send them at least a subtle signal that he understands this?
Kaus then needles “Hope= casino gambling?”
If Patrick becomes Barack Obama’s wrang-wrang, and the Governor’s undoing of education reform in the nation’s number one state gets national traction, well, … watch out.
February 29th, 2008
Tough article on Barack Obama and the politics of hope from Fred Siegel in the February City Journal. The reason for Fred’s less-than-hopeful take on Barack? The record thus far of Governor Deval Patrick.
Fred calls the politics of hope a bust in Massachusetts, and here is why:
Bay State journalist Rick Holmes describes Obama and Patrick, fellow Harvard Law School graduates, as “peas in a pod.” Patrick is the Obama campaign’s national cochair. Obama’s presidential campaign has modeled itself on Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign. Patrick’s 2006 campaign slogan was “Together we can,” while Obama’s is “Yes we can.” The brilliant Chicago political operative David Axelrod has managed both men’s campaigns. Both candidates have made persistent appeals to “the politics of hope.”
So Clinton’s criticism seems an opportune moment to ask how Patrick’s inspirational rhetoric has translated into governing a state where Democrats control both houses of the legislature—the likely scenario for Obama, too, should he take office. Patrick’s governorship is the closest thing we have to a preview of the “politics of hope”—and that governorship has been a failure to date. As Joan Vennochi observes in the Boston Globe, “Democrats who control the Legislature ignored virtually every major budget and policy initiative presented by a fellow Democrat.” Patrick’s record in office, Vennochi concludes, “shows that it can be hard to get beyond being the face of change, to actually changing politics.” His stock has sunk so markedly that Hillary Clinton carried the state handily against Obama in the Democratic primary despite, or perhaps because of, Patrick’s support for his political doppelgänger.
In one area, however, Patrick has achieved some of his goals. In thrall to the state’s teachers’ unions, he has partly rolled back the most successful educational reforms in the country. Most states gamed the federal testing requirements that were part of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. But Massachusetts, thanks to Republican governors William Weld and Mitt Romney, created the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability to ensure that the state’s testing methods conformed closely to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—federal tests that are the gold standard for measuring educational outcomes. In 2007, Massachusetts became the first state to achieve top marks in all four categories of student achievement. One of Patrick’s first efforts as governor was to eliminate the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability.
Patrick hasn’t delivered reform, much less the transformation that both he and Obama promise.
Yup. The Patrick administration’s moves to cave in to union interests and put at risk the enormous progress of Massachusetts’ schools and students seem to be gaining national notice. The gutting of accountability, the packing of the Board of Education and Tuesday’s clearly politicized move against a promising new charter school are not hope. But they will be this Governor’s legacy.
The question Fred poses is whether they are a harbinger of things to come on the national stage. Read and form your own opinion.
February 29th, 2008
The old grey lady warns today:
New Jersey’s problems are magnified by a long history of irresponsible borrowing and spending. In a self-destructive gimmick, the state seriously underfunded its pension plan and used the money to pay for current spending programs. As a result, Mr. Corzine said, the state’s annual debt service now exceeds what it invests in higher education.
Fiscal Year 2008 operating budget spending on these items for Massachusetts? $1.77 billion on debt service versus $950 million on the UMASS system and the state and community colleges.
Update: The wiseguys over at Beyond Red & Blue laud my strong support for public higher education in the above post. I was hoping to focus more on our relative debt level… 
February 28th, 2008
Yes, it is truly an — ahem — independent Board of Education. Yes, we will continue to hope that it will continue to be objective. Cough, cough.
The SABIS proposal for a regional school to be located in Brockton was recommended by the Commissioner of Education and Department of Education staff. Unlike many other states, Massachusetts has a strong application process that weeds out weak applications. This protects public dollars and has given the Commonwealth the best charters in the country.
The proposed SABIS school was to serve 500 students to start and grow by a grade a year until it served 1300 students. SABIS is a known entity in Massachusetts. It runs a successful charter school in Springfield. Just ask the hundreds and hundreds of parents who have their kids on the waiting list to get in.
But a funny thing happened at the Board of Education meeting. For the first time ever, a school recommended by the Commissioner and staff of the Department was rejected by the Board.
Why? Is it because there is no real need in Brockton? While Brockton School Superintendent Basan Nembirkow is pretty accomplished, the district only has 49 percent of its 10th graders performing on the MCAS math test in the advanced or proficient categories (as opposed to a statewide average of 67 percent).
You would think that parents and kids should be given a choice, especially the choice of a proven charter school operator. But Superintendent Nembirkow, the Patriot Ledger reported, was “ecstatic.” Of course, the core concern was that funding for charters follows the child. If Brockton parents chose SABIS over the Brockton schools, then Superintendent Nembirkow would lose funding.
Hmm. Competition, it seems, is a difficult concept to accept.
The Boston Herald tried to put on a game face, noting that 3 out of 4 is not bad. It noted “a reasonable fear among supporters that the board would find an excuse to put off a decision…”
It will be interesting to watch the new Patrick Board of Education in action. And, in fact, for your viewing pleasure, we will be posting parts of the Board of Education meeting. There were some real nuggets, such as Patrick appointment Ruth Kaplan’s complaint that SABIS was too focused on testing and getting kids into college.
Keep an eye out in the coming days.
February 28th, 2008
Just a few months ago, a wise man said the proof of success in reforming the auto insurance market would be the entrance of major national firms like Geico and Allstate.
Well, there’s at least one firm entering the market — Progressive announced yesterday that it will start selling policies on May 1. No doubt the entry is part of a right-wing free-market plot.
To give credit where its due, the Patrick administration, through appointee DOI Commissioner Nonnie Burnes, have stood up to withering criticism on this issue to push for less regulation of auto insurance.
Two interesting sidenotes - AG Martha Coakley has been an outspoken opponent of these reforms. And she’s also arguably the most popular politician in the state. Let’s see how these reforms work out and how her stance affects her.
Lastly, your loyal correspondent is one of those supposedly hapless inner city drivers who will be crushed by these reforms. I’ll be watching my car insurance bill closely.
February 26th, 2008
My colleague, Jamie Gass, the cynic that he is, predicted after reading my last post that Barack Obama would backtrack on charter schools and vouchers. And, sure enough, he was right. From an Obama campaign statement Jamie forwarded to me:
There have been misleading reports that Senator Obama voiced support for voucher programs in an interview with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers, and expressed his longstanding skepticism in that interview.
Still, as Democrats for Education Reform does, contrast that statement with Hilary Clinton’s response to Mr. Obama’s orginal comments (see my last post). As reported in the New York Sun:
Senator Clinton had a strong response, saying she opposes vouchers because they hurt public schools and could also open up the possibility of using taxpayer dollars to finance dangerous schools including training grounds for ‘jihad.’
Plainly speaking, this is demagoguery of the worst kind. Nothing else.
February 23rd, 2008
Kudos to the state’s planning agencies for coming together to do a great service for communities and businesses statewide. The Massachusetts Association of Regional Planning Agencies has cobbled together the basic premises for effective local permitting in its A Best Practices Model for Streamlined Local Permitting.
The document lays out ways to improve communication, standardize procedures and how to implement expedited permitting for select sites, per legislation (Ch. 43D) passed in 2006.
Timely and helpful work.
February 19th, 2008
I like Barack Obama. I like the rhetoric he uses and the hope he embodies and, unlike some people, I believe rhetoric is as important as policy. More important even, for rhetoric defines the parameters in which policy operates. In a sense, rhetoric sets strategy, whereas policy only defines the tactics to achieve the strategy outlined by rhetoric. To refer to a prior post of mine
a leader must possess clearly stated strategic goals that are based on deeply held principles and from which he or she refuses to waver.
A candidate’s rhetoric helps define the strategic goals he or she seeks to achieve and from which he or she refuses to waver.
That being said, rhetoric without policy is empty. I want a candidate who has some idea how to achieve his or her strategic goals, especially when they are as lofty as Obama’s. To that end, I was more than pleasantly surprised to read the following quote from the Democrats for Education Reform website in Slate Magazine:
At a Manhattan fundraiser I attended last April, a local charter school operator asked Obama why it was so hard to be a charter school person in the Democratic Party. His answer was thoughtful and measured, but he - not the person who asked the question - identified the teachers unions as the obstacle on the political side. He noted that the American public was hungry for change and that the unions’ leadership was going to have to decide whether they want to be in on it, or be completely left behind.
According to Democrats for Education Reform, Mr. Obama went even further:
if studies end up showing that children are benefiting from vouchers, he (Obama) wouldn’t allow his skepticism to stand in the way of doing something to help them.
“You do what works for the kids,” Obama said.
In many ways, Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency is a fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. His campaign has, as he has so often exhorted audiences on the campaign trail to do, transcended race. It is yet another reminder of the success of the civil rights movement in this country.
Despite that success, however, and despite Mr. Obama’s success so far in the primaries, racial inequality persists in America, and specifically in the area of education, where it is manifest in a racial achievement gap, an achievement gap maintained by the unequal access of poor, minority parents to educational options for their children.
Mr. Obama’s rhetoric sets out a goal of racial transcendence. I applaud. I also applaud the policy tools he appears open to use to achieve it - supporting charter schools and vouchers. It seems that Mr. Obama has identified worthy strategic goals and is unwilling to let special interests deter him from achieving them, exactly, in fact, what a leader should do. Let’s hope that, if elected President, he follows through.
February 18th, 2008
In 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.
February 18th, 2008
I’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.
Language comprehension is a slow-growing plant. Even with a coherent curriculum, the buildup of knowledge and vocabulary is a gradual, multiyear process that occurs at an almost imperceptible rate. The results show up later.
Consider the eighth-grade NAEP results from Massachusetts, which are a stunning exception to the nationwide pattern of stagnation and decline. Since 1998, the state has improved significantly in the number of eighth-graders reading at the “proficient” or “advanced” levels: Massachusetts now has the largest percentage of students reading at that higher level, and it is No. 1 in average scores for the eighth grade. That is because Massachusetts decided in 1997 that students (and teachers) should learn certain explicit, substantive things about history, science and literature, and that students should be tested on such knowledge.
The sure road to adequate progress in reading is adequate progress in knowledge. Congress and the states should note that the best tests to “teach to” are subject-matter tests based on explicit content standards for each grade. Massachusetts’s results confirm that this is the best way to measure and to achieve real progress in reading. The revisers of No Child Left Behind, and all who are connected with our schools, need to be cognizant of — and do something about — the critical knowledge connection.
February 17th, 2008
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