By Steve Poftak
August 12th, 2010
This space has been a big proponent of regionalization, with a strong preference for organic, self-directed regionalization. For the towns surrounding Lawrence, they may not have that luxury.
When we looked at the attempt to regionalize fire services on the South Shore in the report linked above, one unexpected finding was that some communities already received an implicit subsidy based on mutual aid agreements (and were loathe to enter into a regionalization agreement that caused them to have to pay up for what they were getting for free).
The City of Lawrence appears to be doing something similar. It has cut back its fire department staffing to what appears to this layman to be extraordinarily low levels. As a result, other towns are regularly responding to calls.
This past weekend,
Fifteen on-duty firefighters were recently left to battle two multiple-alarm fires in quick succession, necessitating help from surrounding fire departments. Firefighters from 12 other towns were called in with the first fire, and, just hours later, firefighters from 14 towns were called in for the second.
In total, since the budget cuts took effect,
Lawrence has summoned help from other communities six times, compared with nine times all last year.
There may be some subsidies in mutual aid agreements but, as the name suggests, there has to be some mutual benefit. We’ll see how long Lawrence’s neighbors will accept this state of affairs.
By Steve Poftak
August 12th, 2010
One of the card-carrying members of this town’s great and good, Judy Meredith, contributes the following to a Blue Mass Group discussion of Matt Amorello’s arrest:
thanks for this ernie (6.00 / 4)
so sad for Matt, not a bad fellow at all.
I suspect too many police officers are high school bullies who were too stupid for community college and lacked the self control required by organized crime.
by: Judy Meredith @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 09:09:01 AM CDT
I include the entire comment (despite the awkward formatting) so no one can say its taken out of context.
This space has not always had a great relationship with the public safety community (examples here and here), but I’ve always strived to keep the tone respectful. Having had the good fortune to get to know a number of police officers as fathers, mothers, and neighbors, it makes me cringe when I read generalizations like this from people who supposedly know better.
Aside from the unfair smearing of an entire group of people, she’s also wrong. Thanks in no small part to the Quinn Bill, large numbers of police officers are not only smart enough for community college, but hold bachelors, masters, and law degrees.
By Samantha Levine-Neudel
August 9th, 2010
Jim Stergios is Rocking the Schoolhouse again on Boston.com.
Check out what he has to say about the second round of Race to the Top funding. You won’t be disappointed!
By Steve Poftak
August 6th, 2010
One of the nifty things about using the Globe Reader application is that I get to see the regional editions of the paper.
This week’s Globe North edition has a fascinating account of the differences between Lynn and Salem. Each community has certain assets, received public funds for development activities, and chose certain strategies.
The results are quite different. If you are interested in urban development, I encourage you to give the piece a read.
By James Williams
August 5th, 2010
Long-term, direct debt held by the public has enlarged by 4.56 percent annually in the Commonwealth from 2002 to 2009. That increase trails closely behind total revenue growth of 4.65 percent over the same time period.* Bond caps have been placed on long-term debt to contain the growth of capital investments somewhat, and, in 2009, a new fiscal policy established a ceiling on public debt service – a limit of 8 percent of budgeted revenues. While the cap and ceiling are in place to ensure “stable and sustainable” levels of debt that grow in proportion to revenue, per capita debt is not likely to decrease any time soon.
Click here to see a current map of per capita state debt across the country: CNN – Your share of the State debt†
Source: Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2009, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. www.mass.gov/osc
*Determined from the Fund Perspective, which includes accrual for Medicaid and tax revenue, as well as compensated absences, claims and judgments.
†Moody’s Investment Service is the original source, which accounts for debt by its own methodology. The 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report has not been released yet.
By Jim Stergios
July 30th, 2010
Countdown to World-Class Schools summarizes 12 actions the incoming governor can take to make our schools the best in the world. All achievable. All for under $50 million.
It’s fascinating to watch the “moral” opposition to school choice (even public school choice) of officials who’ve benefited from private educations or now send their kids to private schools.
Certainly, President Obama, Governor Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Murray and Ed Secretary Paul Reville all attended pretty special schools, and the President and the Governor exercise this option to school their own kids.
Good for them. But don’t parents who have less money also deserve a similar option? (At right is a picture of Milton Academy, where the Governor went.)
I say this not because I am a product of a private school. I’m not. Went to public schools my entire life, and my children attend public schools. But I’d like the option, and I think parents of kids in lower performing schools want that option, too. Especially in places like Boston—the highest cost large urban district in the country, according to data released this week by the federal government.
(At right is Portsmouth Abbey where Secretary Reville went to school.)
There are other political and community leaders who see choice as the equivalent of Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” exhortation during the civil rights movement. That’s certainly the view of Anthony Williams, former mayor of the District of Columbia, and Kevin Chavous, a noted attorney, former member of the DC Council, and a national advocate for school reform. They see
- Barely half of the African-American and Latino students who enter high school graduate…
- Only 9 percent of District of Columbia students entering ninth grade graduated from college within nine years of beginning high school.
You can say the same thing of Boston, the highest cost large urban district in the nation. Williams and Chavous have some hurt words for opponents of school choice:
These naysayers—many of who are fellow Democrats—see vouchers as a tool to destroy the public-education system. Their rhetoric and ire are largely fueled by those special-interest groups that are more dedicated to the adults in the education system than to making certain every child is properly educated.
You can see more of Kevin Chavous speaking in Boston here.
Massachusetts was wise to test and prove a number of reforms that have worked. But while we have to advance these reforms energetically, how do you look a parent in the face and say, Well, for half a century we’ve been trying to fix the schools, so trust us. Your kid’s in the second grade, right? Just wait about six or seven years and we the adults will get this right.
Wrong. We need public and private school choice. The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunities (METCO) provides 3,000 Boston and Springfield students a chance to be educated in surrounding towns. Almost all METCO students graduate high school, and 90 percent go on to college. In Boston, there are five times the applications for METCO as there are seats.
METCO works for kids, so we should expand it. Surely, students from Brockton, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, New Bedford and Randolph could benefit from a real option. We should also take the opportunity to improve METCO by requiring more transparency for the program and urging the administration to stop cutting funding for METCO. Over the past three years deep (not “press release” cuts, but deep and real) cuts in METCO have hampered the program.
Then there is private school choice. (At right is the emblem of St. John’s prep, where Lieutenant Governor Murray went to high school. Note that they play under the respectable name of “Pioneers.”) A survey of private schools in Massachusetts close enough geographically to serve inner city students demonstrated that the majority would be open to accepting students if offered a government scholarship between $4,500 and $6,500, or well below half the average cost of a public school education.
What holds up change is the combination of the remnant of 19th- and early 20th-century “Anti-Aid” and “Know-Nothing bigotry” against Irish Catholics and the interests of adults in the public school system (i.e., superintendents, school committees and union leaders—often affectionately known as The Blob). Combined, these two factors prevent any re-evaluation of Know-Nothing Massachusetts Governor Henry Gardner’s Anti-Aid amendment from 150 years ago, nor its update in 1917. We are after all a progressive state.
Other states have had success circumventing these restrictions on private school choice by creating a tax benefit to non-profits and corporations that offer scholarships to parents without means whose children are in schools they are not satisfied with. There are a few key components to making this work:
- These would have to be tax credits to the poor, not tax deductions, which are not terribly meaningful.
- Eligibility for charity scholarships would have to be based on need.
- The value of the scholarships would have to come close to the cost of tuition, because they would be targeted at the poor.
- In order to pass constitutional muster, the tax benefits would have to be available for both private school tuition and, for those students in public schools, high activity fees.
- The state would have to provide a transparent regulatory framework and oversight to ensure that the money is used for the stated purposes.
But all those are details. The first step is to get a tax credit bill in support of private school scholarships passed.
By Samantha Levine-Neudel
July 27th, 2010
Have you been keeping up with Jim’s Rock the Schoolhouse blog?
You can find it right here or on Boston.com.
By Steve Poftak
July 27th, 2010
Today’s news reports that Curt Schilling has accepted the deal offered by the state of Rhode Island and is relocating his company there. (Our previous thoughts on the topic and Curt’s response is here.)
The Herald’s report describes state economic development officials as being on the defensive. They shouldn’t be.*
Schilling’s got every right to get the best deal for his company. And the loss of jobs (roughly 200 from the website, it appears) is acutely painful.
But, if you look at the big picture, as Pioneer has — here and here — you see that firm relocation has a negligible impact on job creation. Of course, you hate to see any jobs go, but the reality is that what matters more is getting existing companies to expand and new companies to start here. Luring companies into the state or paying them not to leave is just not where the vast majority of jobs occur. If you take job loss or creation in absolute terms, firms coming into the state or leaving it account for less than 2% of total jobs.
*Did I just give the Patrick Administration’s Economic Development secretariat some cover here? I did. Must be because I’m politically compromised.
By Steve Poftak
July 27th, 2010
One tip for aspiring data hounds — always ask for weighted data.
What do I mean?
What’s the on-time performance for commuter rail?
In NY, it’s 96%! Huzzah, right?
Wrong, that’s on the basis of trains, not weighted by passenger. Anecdotal evidence suggests rush-hour trains (which are packed with people) have a much higher rate of delay.
By not weighting on-time data by passenger, NY’s on-time performance fails to tell the whole story and fails the credibility test with the most important user group of all — the customers.
By Jim Stergios
July 27th, 2010
For Aristotle, virtues required wisdom, the ability to find balance between extremes. So, famously, he noted that courage was neither cowardice nor charging ahead with a devil-may-care attitude. Regulations require that kind of balance even in a virtual age.
Virtual learning is a huge untapped opportunity in Massachusetts. Some people consider its potential to individualize instruction and address some portion of the ever-present classroom problem of kids learning at different paces as game-changing. The conversation sometimes feels like the conversation on stem cell research–perhaps overblown, perhaps not. The fact is we are early in finding out.
The issue of the pace at which kids learn is an important one. Many kids are bored because teachers have to adjust lessons to take into consideration the needs of all kids in the classroom. Other kids need a level of direct interaction that isn’t possible with a single teacher in a classroom, even with after-school hours and even with the addition of a teacher’s aide. Then there are many high school kids who need to work; without greater flexibility in the last two years of high school, they may consider dropping out.
Virtual learning, whether online supplements for traditional learning styles or outright “virtual schools”, is increasingly a way to ensure much more time on task, a flexible schedule, and new capacity without hiring an unsustainable number of teachers.
State Representative Will Brownsberger notes that even though Massachusetts “is a hot bed of educational innovation in its universities, it’s light years behind when it comes to online K-12 learning.” The January 2010 Act Relative to the Achievement Gap exorts the state to get a move on in pushing virtual learning in Massachusetts.
The Florida Virtual School is the example many people point to (full disclosure: Julie Young and FLVS won Pioneer’s 2008 Better Government Competition). FLVS is not a simple distance learning option, with correspondence-style courses and videoconferencing, as you can find in rural western US states, Alaska and parts of Canada. FLVS is a completely internet-based model that provides students in rural as well urban settings everything from AP classes, summer intensive work and remedial support to a full-fledged K-12 curriculum. FLVS is a statewide school system funded on a “pay for performance” basis. Rather than focusing on “seat time,” it aims for students’ mastery of their subjects.
The numbers show that it is working. FLVS’ course completion rate has consistently remained above 80%, with 80,000 students completing 100,000 course enrollments (each enrollment equivalent to one semester’s work). These students range in demographics and in terms of needs—from emotionally and physically handicapped students to the academically advanced. Minorities comprise about one third of FLVS’s population, exceeding the national online learning participation rate among minorities by about 20%. Among AP students, minority participation was at 39% in 2006-2007.
Given the fact that many high school students drop out because of a frustration with school work (too difficult or too boring) and the need to work, expanding. You can see some FLVS student activities here.
Paul Peterson and Harvard Business School’s “disruptive technology” guru Clayton Christensen are really impressed with FLVS but they note that there are many models out there and new ones to be developed. In Los Angeles there are charter schools experimenting with an “integrated” technology approach—which basically means that they know that improving their students’ study habits, knowledge, and skills will require intensive, even one-on-one, instruction over a longer day. Technology can help bridge the gap in resources and engage students in way that really takes hold, especially if coordinated with teacher activities in the school.
The fact is we have a lot to learn about online learning. And we need to let it develop, in much the same way we’ve let the internet thrive without a heavy hand of regulation.
Enter the proposal for a Massachusetts Virtual Academy at Greenfield. The district had looked at a number of virtual learning models, including the FLVS. It proposed setting up a statewide virtual high school. I can’t judge the merits of the proposal, but the immediate question became money. If students in Worcester or other districts enrolled in the Greenfield virtual school, they would have to divert $5,000 per child (well below the $13,400 statewide average for educating a child) from their local school budget.
The problem is that when money enters the picture, those with interest hold onto their wallets. The Department of Education’s response was to develop regulations–regulations that protected districts across the state. The Board of Education just approved these regulations, which require any particular virtual school attract a minimum of 25 percent of its students from within its local district, and that the virtual school enroll no more than 500 students. Any time a school wants to operate outside of those regulatory guideposts, proponents will need to step before the throne, kiss the Commissioner’s ring, and seek special dispensation.
These are some of the most restrictive regulations in the nation. Marty Walz, who was key in advancing the January 2010 school reform package, is not impressed. Speaking to the Globe, she noted that the regulations may contradict the spirit of the recent reform law:
These proposed regulations will certainly make it more difficult for some school districts to open a virtual school, and to me that is moving in the wrong direction.
The state bureaucracy has to stop protecting the status quo. At this early stage in the game, the state should allow more students to access a virtual school and it should not tether the virtual world to location. In addition, in the process of seeking high-performing charter school operators, the state should seek out several proposals that will integrate virtual tools into instruction. Given their flexibility, charters may be able to fashion new school-based uses of virtual learning that are more than simple add-ons.
Crossposted at Boston.com’s Rock the Schoolhouse.
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