MORE THAN 15 years ago, Robert Gaudet, then a senior policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts’s Donahue Institute, who had extensively studied school performance across the state, offered a pronouncement that was jarringly blunt, but backed by plenty of evidence. “Middle schools are the great disaster of the education system,” he said. US school […]
Boston
Posted inEducation
Boston is hemorrhaging school-aged kids
IT’S ONLY A FEW WEEKS until students head back to school. In Boston, if this year is like last year, and like many others before that, there will be fewer of them in classrooms this fall. Boston has been booming economically, a fact reflected in big population growth in recent decades. The city now claims […]
Posted inOpinion
3 policy pathways for the Boston Public Schools
EVERY BOSTON CHILD deserves access to a high-quality education. Despite years of discussion about the need to close achievement and opportunity gaps, this has been an unfulfilled promise to Boston children and their families caught in a system of “haves and have-nots” when it comes to high-quality school options. As a result, our city’s education […]
Posted inPolitics
Boston mayor’s race looks tight
FOR THOSE WHO thought a new poll in the Boston mayor’s race — the first in almost two months — might clarify where the contest stands, it has. But not in a way that provides a clear picture of who is likely to advance from the September preliminary election to the one-on-one final in November. […]
Posted inPolitics
Trump made gains in urban areas of Mass.
VOTING TRENDS THAT showed shifts in heavily Hispanic communities in Massachusetts toward President Trump in this month’s election are also apparent in other urban areas, including huge swaths of Boston, results that seem to defy expectations that four years of often racially-charged rhetoric from the president would further depress his already weak standing in communities […]
Posted inUncategorized
Nonprofits keep making in-lieu-of-tax payments to Boston
BOSTON’S MEDICAL, educational, and cultural nonprofit institutions have taken a huge financial hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but most of them continued to make voluntary tax payments to the city this year. Twenty-four of the 47 nonprofits assessed by the city as part of its payment-in-lieu-of-taxes program paid about the same amount as they did […]
Posted inOpinion
A third path for Boston’s School Committee
Students versus teachers. Teachers versus parents. Parents versus administrators. Administrators versus everyone. In a COVID-19 world, this “us versus them” mentality just doesn’t work anymore. We’ve seen it happen a lot recently, with talks over the past few months around reopening the Boston Public Schools and in discussions concerning the McCormack Middle School. As parents, […]
Posted inEconomy
Depoliticizing the development process in Boston
CALLS TO ABOLISH the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) go back almost to its creation. City Councilor Michelle Wu is the latest to take up the quest to rid the city of one of its most hated bureaucracies (which many know by its former name, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA). Last year, she […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Boston granting relief to businesses that pay rent to city
WITH THE PANDEMIC shutdown wreaking havoc on hundreds of businesses across Boston, city officials are stepping up to provide relief to one group of enterprises with a direct tie to municipal government. Between businesses housed in city-owned buildings and those that operate on property owned by the Boston Planning & Development Agency, dozens of businesses […]
Posted inUncategorized
Fireworks rattle cities, draw wild theories
THERE’S SO MUCH about life over the last few months that was impossible to predict, even after the pandemic began to reshape nearly every facet of our daily existence. For residents of cities across the country, one new development has become a loud reminder of what strange times we’re in. “Did you have ‘mystery fireworks’ on […]