ANY PARENT WHO has watched her child walk into school for their first day of kindergarten – or dropped her off at college some 13 years later – knows it is a day fraught with some amount of panic. You hope you have prepared her for the road ahead, but there is no way to […]
Education Reform Act
Posted inEducation
Renewing our commitment to public education
MASSACHUSETTS HAS A long and proud commitment to public education. John Adams, the author of our state constitution, saw public education as the spark that would set the fire of democracy alight. Horace Mann championed the once radical idea of a free public education for all children. The Commonwealth’s strong commitment to high quality public […]
Posted inEducation
Lawmakers must do right by low-income students
WE WANT WHAT all parents want. We want our kids to succeed, to lead happy lives, to contribute to their communities, to grow up to catch their dreams. We wake up each morning committed to doing everything we can to help them get there — just like all parents do. Yet, even as we work […]
Posted inEducation
Reform, revenue both needed in education funding formula
READING, WRITING, AND ARITHMETIC are the three Rs most of us remember from our grade school days – the foundation of our education. As the governor and Legislature revisit the state’s education funding formula, a different set of three Rs should guide the policy approach: revenue, reform, and results. The state has seen significant improvements […]
Posted inEducation
Local accountability in schools lacking, says report
MASSACHUSETTS HAS BUILT its school reform effort on a combination of new state funding and accountability measures that track student and district achievement, but that has largely let local districts off the hook for setting ambitious goals of their own and holding themselves and schools responsible for meeting them. That’s the conclusion of a new […]
Posted inEducation
Time to rethink education assessments and standards
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. – Socrates THIS PAST SUMMER saw the failure on the part of the Legislature to arrive at a compromise piece of legislation designed to begin the process of remedying the flaws to educational funding formula […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
Voc-tech schools are a Mass. success story
MASSACHUSETTS VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL high schools are like the person who toils for years, only to be termed an “overnight sensation” when he or she finally achieves recognition. For over a decade the schools have quietly compiled an impressive record, and the time has come to expand them. Voc-tech schools were once among the staunchest opponents of MCAS […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
The missing piece of education reform
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 […]
Posted inEducation, Opinion
End the charter school wars
IT SEEMS TO have become an annual ritual now, like taxes, the flu, or hurricane season. The charter schools war flares up to a point of intensity, sucking up all the oxygen in the education realm and consuming tons of good will and sometimes millions of dollars in the fierce clash of two orthodox cultures, […]