TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago a broad coalition of legislators, business people, education experts, and state officials put together and passed a wide-reaching education reform law. That law reflects a set of shared beliefs—basically, that a combination of increased funding, state testing tied to graduation requirements, new state curriculum frameworks, charter schools, and increased authority for superintendents […]
Edward Moscovitch
Posted inEducation, Opinion
Teachers are not to blame
in the past few months, President Obama, Gov. Deval Patrick, and the press have practically made “education reform” synonymous with “firing teachers.” The president praised a Rhode Island school superintendent for firing high school teachers. Patrick proposed legislation to make it easier for superintendents to dismiss teachers in underperforming schools. The US Department of Education […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
Ed reform erosion
in 1993, the state passed an education reform law with a funding formula that closely followed proposals I developed with the late Jack Rennie and the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. The formula’s foundation budget established spending goals for each district; based on those spending goals and local property wealth and personal income, the formula […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
No magic bullet
gov. patrick, the Boston Globe, MassINC, the Boston Foundation, the business community, and President Obama are all supporting charter schools as a key step toward school improvement, but a careful look at the data suggests that these schools offer no magic bullet for school improvement. In general, charter schools (and Boston pilot schools) perform no […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion, Politics
Ed reform’ missing piece
when massachusetts passed its education reform law in 1993, everyone expected that the combination of greatly increased funding and high-stakes testing would produce dramatic gains in student achievement. Since then, state aid to public schools has tripled, with most of the new money going to inner-city schools, and the MCAS exams have been put in […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
A court decision on school financing is a chance to revisitand improveeducation reform
The coverage in the press gave a misleading picture of the school finance decision handed down by Judge Margot Botsford in April. The judge did not say that the state needed to throw out its current system of funding schools nor did she say that we needed to divert millions of dollars from wealthy districts […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
Where education reform has failed changing schools
State education aid is up $2 billion from what it was in 1993, the year the state’s education reform law was enacted. While there’s little doubt that school programs are richer in countless ways and that quality education is now at the top of everyone’s radar screen, by any honest reckoning we haven’t got $2 […]