By Liam Day
May 11th, 2008
Deeming Paris Hilton a threat to all California drivers, that state’s senate just passed a law making it illegal for people to drive with a dog on their laps. The bill is now pending in the house.
As I am sometimes guilty of this infraction - my wife and I own a little Maltese (please keep the Liam Day-Paris Hilton comparisons to a minimum) - the blurb on it in The Week caught my eye.
This particular piece of legislation make sense to me. It truly does; but what it doesn’t do is go far enough. While we’re legislating the topic, we might want to be as comprehensive as possible.
Here is my list of the driving habits I think a comprehensive piece of driving behavior legislation needs to ban (based on a partial list of the things I too often do or have done while driving): bending back the opening on a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee lid, drinking coffee, eating, chewing tobacco, lighting a cigarette, smoking (both the chew and the cigarettes were phases), looking for a CD in the car door, changing the CD in the player on the dashboard, tuning the radio, and talking on a cell phone (though, because I’m not so stupid I’ve done it while driving, not texting).
All of these actions, even if only for a moment, distract our attention from the road. I might even add to the list daydreaming. (Two poems I’ve written came to me while driving long distances, are, in fact, about driving long distances, and I’m pretty sure that, as I was playing with word choice and line breaks in my head, I wasn’t entirely focused on the road.)
Come to think of it, we might as well throw in legislative language on not doing the crossword while driving, as Paul Giamatti’s character does while navigating the Los Angeles freeway in the opening shots of Sideways.
As an enforcement mechanism, I suggest check points at 2 mile intervals on every major highway in the country. If local and state police are not manned to undertake such a large task, then I would empower the National Guard. Having lived in Northern Ireland, I can tell you that having an M-16 pointed at your face as you drive through a military check point is no big deal. Really.
By Jim Stergios
May 9th, 2008
From the May 8th Hartford Courant, Arielle Levin Becker reports that Connecticut is moving in massachusetts’ direction on teacher testing, even as we wring our hands on whether our own reform was a good idea:
Aspiring early childhood and elementary school teachers will have to prove they know how to teach reading on a test the State Board of Education has added to Connecticut’s teacher certification requirements. The change, which was made Wednesday, comes amid worries about stagnating or declining student reading scores statewide and concerns that not all state teachers know the mechanics of teaching reading.
CT Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy said:
“This sends a message to teacher preparation institutions that they need to make sure they have a focus on the art and science of teaching reading.”
Yup. And, uh, how about this?
The test will be required for certification for early childhood and elementary school teachers beginning July 1, 2009. Massachusetts requires the same test for certification, and state officials said that having teacher preparation programs in both states aligned to the same standards could help bring Massachusetts teachers to Connecticut.
Are we still leaders in ed reform, or have we lost our will?
By Jim Stergios
May 9th, 2008
The Washington Policy Center has a great overview of the online learning programs established in their state. In Washington it came unanimously in 2005, with support from homeschoolers as well as the Washington Education Association (their version of the MTA).
WPC provides some nuts and bolts on the program:
- 6,600 students in Washington are enrolled in full-time online learning through programs run by local school districts.
- Over a dozen school districts in Washington State offer these programs. School officials typically select a private educational company to provide day-to-day online instruction to students.
- A family selecting an online learning program needs to have; 1) an adult or guardian at home to work with the student, 2) a computer with access to the internet, and 3) a letter from the student’s home school district. All online education teachers are certified educators.
- Younger students spend only about one-quarter of their time on a computer. They also work from printed textbooks, workbooks, flash cards and other instructional materials. Some high school classes are conducted live online… Online programs also include social events, outdoor adventures, field trips and graduation ceremonies.
But the most important data point is this: “Full-time online programs are attracting families who had previously rejected public education… Almost half, 45%, of one district’s online students were not previously attending public schools.”
Is this a way to capture some of the dropouts across the state–and in many of our Middle Cities the numbers reach 40 percent?
By Jim Stergios
May 8th, 2008
Retraction of a spicy blog and apologies to all concerned regarding a previous posting where I noted that the Governor has not visited a charter since his inauguration and that he was a no show for a meeting with Secretary Spellings.
Kyle Sullivan (Governor’s Press Sec.) just informed me that it was Secretary Spellings who canceled on the Governor the night before their scheduled meeting. Seems the Secretary wanted to meet with the Globe editorial board instead.
Again, apologies to the Guv and an open invitation to take a tour of some of our wonderful charter schools that are closing the achievement gap.
By Jim Stergios
May 8th, 2008
Ah, I feel like I am in a lounge chair in Somerset circa 1993 looking across Narragansett Bay and thinking… why don’t they have the Pacheco law. Well, dumb ideas take a while to travel, so it took 14 years for Leviathan to nose its way across the Bay.
From Reason’s Privatization Watch comes a good summary of the battle lines drawn int eh Ocean State. Gov. Carcieri has been looking to close a half billion budget deficit. He was looking to close some programs and to outsource others. In response, the legislature thought it was a good idea to keep him from doing any of that. They passed an anti-privatization law, which (surprise to all of us in the Bay State) put all kinds of regulatory obstacles in front of the Governor’s path.
Doesn’t that sound a tad reminiscent of the Weldian days of yore?
including requiring a series of detailed notifications and cost-benefit analyses before the
governor can proceed with any plan to replace state employees with private contractors. According to Brian Stern, the governor’s chief of staff, “At this point, we feel that it is not possible to comply with the privatization statute as written.”
The law additionally allows unions, individual employees, or even state program recipients such as hospital patients, to appeal privatizations to the Superior Court.
Lots of red tape. Too bad they don’t have State Auditor DeNucci to do their bidding. Anyway, the RI Courts will take care of that and keep any plan in red tape for years.
By Jim Stergios
May 7th, 2008
Seems that the blue mass groupers have a hook caught in the gill regarding our clarity on the Governor’s undoing of education reform.
Let’s say right up front: We’ve worked well in the playpen with folks in the Patrick administration from day one on consolidating the locally managed pension system, the (first-year, ahem) down payment on the state’s $13 billion long-term health care liability, reforms to increase home ownership in our inner cities, the recent transportation reforms, water conservation and much, much more. There is a lot of talent in the administration.
We have also opposed lots of stupid stuff by this Guv, but that is our job. We have opposed the structural irresponsibility of his FY09 budget. The biotech giveaway. The corporate tax hikes (also a fave move by former Governor Romney, who raised them even more — but, as mom used to say, two wrongs don’t make a right, especially when you’re giving corporate welfare to a single industry and when revenues are hitting record highs).
Most of all, we oppose Guv Patrick’s gutting of education reform. The blue mass groupies wonder why that is. Oh, groupies, let me count the ways…
- He has eliminated educational accountability (the reason for Sec. Spellings’ visit)–see the Globe editorial “School Reform Held Back” on just this point.
- By making appointments like that of Ruth Kaplan, the Guv introduces such wonderful ideas as “families don’t always know what’s best for their children” and charter schools are too focused on college preparation.
- The Guv could not make a proclamation in honor of National Charter School Week. He, to my knowledge, has not visited a single charter school since his inauguration. His board chair (Reville) attacked a SABIS International proposal to create a 1300-student charter to serve the Brockton/Randolph region. (Note Reville, in a previous life, called the SABIS school in Springfield one of the state’s best.) Charters (and to some extent pilots) are viable ways to close the achievement gap, and he is paying no attention. Worse, he is seemingly anti-charter.
- He played politics with the commissioner’s search for ten months, and it was an uphill battle the whole way to get Mitch Chester in (the first out of state commish in 20 years, strong accountability background, etc.).
- He restructured the board of ed in a way that diminished its independence, effectively erasing a 170-year legacy of a board of ed with policy distance from the executive branch. (That was, ahem, Horace Mann’s legacy, btw.) As the Globe noted, he “has managed quietly to concentrate nearly all of the power over state education policy in his office.”
- Reville was on the record supporting waivers for teacher testing — another key element of the 1993 education reform act. Also, see here. (He has since backed away from that after public pressure.)
So the bluemass groupies have asked if Pioneer supports Reville’s comment that school-based merit pay should be considered? Yes. Thank you. We agree. Pioneer over a course of years has done events and produced work supportive of a wide variety of merit pay options for teachers.
See, we agree!
By Liam Day
May 7th, 2008
Norman Mailer once wrote,
Politics is not an art of principles but of timing.
At the time, he was referring to Ed Muskie, but might as well have been describing Newton Mayor David Cohen, who just asked for a 28% pay increase even as construction costs on the most expensive school building project in the state’s history have ballooned to $197 million and the city is asking its residents for a $12 million override.
In fairness, he has not had a raise since entering office almost 10 years ago. Still, if it were me, I don’t know. I might ask for the raise, say, next year.
By Liam Day
May 7th, 2008
First the American Federation of Teachers tilted that way, then local districts began implementing it and then, what’s worse, some local districts even began implementing it in conjunction with local unions. Now, at long last, it appears some education leaders in Massachusetts are finally open to the idea.
Yesterday, current chair of the state Board of Education and incoming Ed. Secretary Paul Reville discussed the need for a differential system of compensation for public school teachers. As reported by the Globe:
“The larger challenge is to take on the monolithic pay notion and differentiate pay based on skill, knowledge, and assignment, and establish a concept that everyone doesn’t have to be paid in the same lock step and lanes,” said Reville, who will become Patrick’s education secretary in July.
Now, he did not go so far as to advocate merit pay for individual teachers based on their students’ performance on the MCAS, but, nonetheless, it’s a start.
This is an issue quite close to my heart. As a teacher, I was never so frustrated by anything as by the fact that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how well I did my job, I was getting paid exactly the same as everyone else in my building, even if they raced the kids out of school at the end of the day and their idea of class prep was photocopying endless reams of worksheets.
To attract and retain the best teachers, we need to implement merit pay. No ands, ifs or buts. And for a model of how it can be implemented, we need only look to Denver, where a system of merit pay that combines individual teacher bonuses with bonuses based on the performance of entire schools was implemented with support from the teachers’ union. That radical right-wing rag, Time Magazine (Are you catching my sarcasm? Good, ’cause I’m laying it on pretty thick.), ran a cover story on it just this winter.
Merit pay is clearly an idea whose time has come.
By Jim Stergios
May 7th, 2008
John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama provides some sobering thoughts on the climate debate in a transcript from a forum held by the Center for the American Experiment.
I’ll limit myself to one nugget referring to the San Joaquin Valley:
[If] you want to return the climate back to what it was in the 19th century, you need to depopulate the [San Joaquin] valley and return it to a desert.
This is what the science shows. That’s the only way. Controlling greenhouse gases from automobile emissions will do nothing. Climate models confirm this. If greenhouse gases were causing the climate change in California, then the mountains, not the valley, should show it first. But we actually see the opposite occurring: Whereas nothing at all is happening in the mountains in terms of temperature change, everything’s happening in the valley. That’s an indication that what is happening is not due to greenhouse or carbon dioxide warming.
This is a very interesting and unorthodox read that points to land use as a huge contributing factor to climate change. Interesting thesis — would love comments with any information people have on this line of thinking.
By Jim Stergios
May 6th, 2008
Margaret Spellings, Secretary of the US (I repeat, the US) Department of Education, came to town to discuss accountability and also in concert with National Charter School Week. She came to visit the Edward Brooke Charter School in Boston and probably expected that during her visit, there would be, as was past practice, a charter school proclamation from the Governor. Or at least a greeting from the Governor.
Not this year. And not from Governor No Show. No proclamation. No show at the Brooke Charter this morning. No show at a roundtable discussion held at the State House.
No proclamation for charters even though they are closing the achievement gap the Governor so often talks about. Take these stats from the Brooke Charter and stick ‘em in your graduation cap:
• 76% African-American, 21% percent Latino
• 75% of our 8th grade students scored advanced or proficient in Math, making us the 4th-highest ranked non-exam public school in all of Boston, ahead of Boston Latin Academy and John D. O’Bryant.
• 45% of our 8th graders scored advanced and proficient in science, making us the 4th-highest scoring school in Boston, placing us ahead of all three Boston exam schools Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and John D. O’Bryant School.
Shall I interpret those numbers for you? They. Mean. That. Brooke. Charter. Is. Dramatically. Outperforming. Both. Boston. And. The. State. In. ELA. Math. And. Science. (2007 MCAS.)
What’s all that mean? Why won’t the Governor embrace the choice he so benefited from? Ahem, ahem. Not for me to ascribe motives. He just happened to be out of the building when Secretary Spellings came for a visit. Probably out talking about the achievement gap…
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