It was hardly a surprise when the state Board of Education voted in June to require high school students to pass one of several new MCAS tests in science in order to graduate. Pressure had been building for such a move, not only within the state but also in Washington, DC. In January, Gov. Mitt […]
Millicent Lawton
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Senate President Birmingham shows off his erudition online
Almost two months before the DOE’s online conference, Senate President Thomas Birmingham launched the State Senate E-vents by personally engaging in a 32-minute chat with students at Everett High School. It was the first in what’s billed as a series of online discussions about public policy between senators and schoolchildren. The September 26 exchange, an […]
Posted inEducation
Education Commissioner David Driscoll holds a current event
The streaming video made Commissioner David Driscoll’s face look like it was melting, and the thread of conversation in the chat room was hard to follow. But other than that, the Department of Education’s interactive forum went off without a hitch. The November 15 Internet event, or “e-vent” as it was called, was the first […]
Posted inEconomy
New Economy New Philanthropy
Not long ago, at an estate-planning seminar, a Boston money manager told this story: He paid a call on an older couple who lived on Cape Cod. They had a modest home and kept the heat too low for his taste. But in their bank account, the money manager discovered, they were sitting on several […]
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Summer school scenes
Like a lot of other students in the Boston public schools this past summer, 15-year-old Christine Dihigo needed a little push. By her own admission, Christine, a self-confident girl with a dramatic flair for reading aloud in class, “didn’t care” about doing well in ninth grade last year at Brighton High School. As a result, […]
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Pay hike for prosecutors
The Legislature may have granted the wish of the Commonwealth’s assistant district attorneys for more pay, but in doing so law makers have opened a budgetary Pandora’s box for their bosses. Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley had planned to raise the entry-level salary for assistant prosecutors in her office to $30,000 for the first […]
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Tapped Out
The signs posted all over town proclaimed, “Water Ban in Effect.” But it was hard to take them seriously. July in Massachusetts was unusually cool and wet, and Franklin, an I-495 suburb southwest of Boston, seemed to have plenty of water: The trees and grass were green, water came out of the tap, and–for Pete’s […]
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Massachusettss overseas sales force
Gov. Paul Cellucci and other state officials have caught flak over the years for their frequent trips and trade missions to foreign countries. But some state workers who promote Massachusetts businesses overseas never have to pack their bags for exotic locales. They’re already there. In March, Gov. Cellucci personally opened the new Massachusetts Trade Office […]
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Dwyer leads lawyers lobby for legal aid
The crowd assembled inside the State House to lobby for more legal aid for the needy didn’t exactly fit the stereotype of poor people’s advocates. These were no law students in borrowed neckties or aging hippies in Birkenstocks. The clean-cut gang of 120 who walked the halls one day in May wore fancy suits and […]
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Banking on sick leave
There’s nothing like providing a job benefit one worker at a time. But that’s the way it is when it comes to supporting some government employees during an extended illness. A law passed five years ago was supposed to put an end to all that, but bills to create so-called “sick-leave banks” for individual civil […]