AFTER DECADES OF being overlooked, the importance of teaching US history and civics in public schools is at last gaining momentum. At the same time, the American Rescue Plan will bring an influx of tens of millions of dollars into Massachusetts schools. The confluence of these two events could transform civics education, but turning potential […]
Tom Birmingham
Posted inEducation
Charter schools leading the way with in-person instruction
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has created unprecedented challenges for countless sectors of society, including our schools. The data are clear on the academic and emotional price remote learning exacts on students. At the same time, many parents aren’t convinced it’s safe to send their children back to school, and teachers share that concern. Massachusetts charter public […]
Posted inEducation
Voc-tech schools thriving despite pandemic strictures
HANDS-ON EDUCATION plays a critical role at Massachusetts regional vocational-technical high schools, where students alternate weekly between academics and shop classes. Given that reality, you’d think the schools would be particularly hard hit by the switch to hybrid models under which students are in a physical school building only half the time. But thanks to innovative approaches […]
Posted inEducation
Mass. schools must recommit to knowledge-based curriculum
LONG BEFORE OTHER states, Massachusetts understood that a democratic republic can’t endure without a good public education system. Its constitution, written by John Adams in 1780, requires that it “cherish” education. The Bay State’s native son Horace Mann pioneered the common school movement, and it was also the first state to have compulsory education for all […]
Posted inEducation
Don’t mess with success of voc-tech high schools
OUR ECONOMY IS changing faster than ever before, and no part of the Commonwealth’s system of public education has done a better job of keeping up with those changes than vocational-technical high schools. Expanding them would provide more opportunity for students and give employers the talent they need to keep growing. It hasn’t always been […]
Posted inEducation
Career and technical high schools are jewels of ed system
A RECENT VISIT to Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School demonstrated why career and technical high schools are rightly considered a Massachusetts success story. But it also serves as a reminder that we must not let them become victims of their success. Greater New Bedford Regional Voc-Tech gets most of its 2,139 students […]
Posted inOpinion
Charter school debate is not over
TWO YEARS AFTER an ill-conceived ballot campaign in which Massachusetts voters rejected raising the cap on charter public schools, the political impulse is to assume this debate is settled. But as long as the conditions charters have so successfully addressed continue to persist in traditional public schools, so will the debate. To provide families with […]
Posted inEducation
Falling short on school standards and funding
AS MASSACHUSETTS MARKS the 25th anniversary of a landmark Education Reform Act that propelled us to the head of the national class in public education, the Commonwealth’s latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are mildly encouraging. But they alone cannot erase what has been nearly a decade of troubling news on […]
Posted inOpinion
Time to lift up Boston’s voc-tech high school
“SUCCESS IS TO BE measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life,” said Booker T. Washington, the famous turn-of-the-20th-century black educator, “as by the obstacles… overcome.” February is both Black History and Career and Technical Education month. No figure in America’s past bridged those two worlds like Booker Washington, who was […]
Posted inOpinion
Our schools ignore US history at our peril
ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO, as a member of the Massachusetts Senate, I co-authored the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Drafting a complex bill with such far-reaching consequences requires significant compromise, but one thing my counterparts in the House of Representatives and then-Gov. Bill Weld all agreed upon was the importance of educating students about our nation’s history. […]