Politics: A Trivial Pursuit

MCAS: Almost overnight it has become a household term in Massachusetts. Yet the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System remains misunderstood by many students, teachers, and parents. What, is the MCAS meant […]

With our 1991 publication Every Child a Winner!, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE) presented the Commonwealth with a challenge to elevate standards of academic achievement for all students. […]

The Connecticut charter tree and the Georgia peach will soon have to compete for pocket space with the Massachusetts man and his musket. In early February, the Massachusetts state quarter […]

In layman’s terms, they’re addenda to the state’s annual budget. In Beacon Hill lingo, they’re called “outside sections,” sections of the budget law outside the actual appropriations. But in State […]

Ah, the Registry. It’s the state agency everyone loves to hate. But Massachusetts drivers may just have to start looking for a new public-sector scapegoat. That is, if the new […]

The latest configuration of the presidential primary season–we’ll be voting on March 7, the same day as California, New York, Ohio and four other New England states–makes the Massachusetts balloting […]

Joanna Lau remembers one of the first big defense industry meetings she ever went to, in the early ’90s. When she entered the room, she was the only woman in […]

Last fall’s Governor’s Council battles to confirm Margaret Marshall as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court and the appointment of Francis Spina and Judith Cowin to the state’s highest […]

Deep in the heart of the vast, 175,000 square foot production floor at the Riverside Manufacturing Co. in New Bedford, where sewing machines clatter and pressing machines spew out steam, […]

BRAINTREE—It’s easy to get lost in the details of the 17-month political melodrama that rocked town hall here. There was, for instance, the town administrator secretly getting paid more than […]

Massachusetts has become increasingly dependent on foreign immigration for its labor force. The Changing Workforce: Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts, a report by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor […]

Machines stamp, whir, and grunt loudly in Plant B of the Acushnet Rubber Co. in New Bedford. The stench of rubber fills the vast space of the century-old factory, as […]

With this issue, we are pleased to announce several changes in the staffing of CommonWealth. First and foremost, we welcome Robert Keough as editor. A distinguished journalist and researcher, Bob […]

Not quite a year ago, Eric Fehrnstrom wrote a remarkable mea culpa for Boston magazine. Entitled “The Other Side of the Hill,” the essay traced Fehrnstrom’s journey from political reporter […]

I write this nearing my 36th week of pregnancy, when words like “sleep” or “concentration” or “breathing” can only be uttered with derisive little quotation marks around them. Forgive me, […]

Is the American entertainment industry allergic to ethical reflection about its use of violent images? If so, what might the effects be on the nation’s youth? Such questions have become […]

Ed Moscovitch’s proposal for a statewide property tax to fund the costs of a basic education in each community in the Commonwealth has two important policy objectives: to sustain the […]

There’s a debate brewing over whether to change the state’s school funding formula. Common wisdom (as reported in The Boston Globe) is that the aid formulas in the 1993 Education […]