Elementary and Secondary Education

Where have all the children gone?

Economy/ Education

Where have all the children gone?

Students are disappearing in western and central Mass.

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EVERY 10 YEARS, the Massachusetts Legislature must go about the arduous task of redistricting our House and Senate districts. Because of the continued shift in population within the state, each decade the districts creep farther toward Boston. The same is also true whenever Massachusetts loses a congressional seat.  In 1962, we had 14 congressional districts.(...)

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Moving beyond MCAS

Education/ Opinion

Moving beyond MCAS

Current measures of school quality are incomplete, inaccurate

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HOW ARE THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS in Massachusetts doing? Are they nurturing engaged thinkers who value learning? Are they expanding the way young people see the world? Are they fostering creativity? We want schools to do a great deal for young people. Yet most states, including ours, measure school quality chiefly through an absurdly narrow instrument:(...)

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Invest in young children now

Education/ Opinion

Invest in young children now

Pre-K programs help parents and build workforce of future

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Four years ago, after 20 years of a corporate career that I absolutely loved, I hung up my business suit and pursued a very different calling. It began when my husband Phil and I started looking for a preschool for our children. We visited programs , talked to preschool teachers, and tried to imagine our kids sitting(...)

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AP courses are bridge to college

Education/ Opinion

AP courses are bridge to college

Classes can also help narrow the achievement gap

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GREAT TEACHERS NOT ONLY LOVE to teach, they love to learn how to be even better teachers. That’s why over 520 teachers from Massachusetts and across the country gathered recently this summer to sharpen their skills at teaching Advanced Placement courses that provide high school students the chance to earn college credit. For the teachers,(...)

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The Download

Another hit for football

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We may be known as home to the reigning NFL champions, but Boston is also the center of research efforts that have methodically plowed through the defensive line the multibillion-dollar industry erected against the idea that the repeated head injuries its players are subject to exacts a devastating human toll. The NFL conceded the problem(...)

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The Download

For Jackson, tight squeeze to Walsh’s left

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Marty Walsh is out of touch with issues affecting working-class people and those in the city’s less affluent neighborhoods. He’s more attuned to downtown development than down-on-their-luck constituents, and he hasn’t been willing to confront the city’s long-festering race issues. If that sounds like a tough case to make against Boston’s workaday mayor, a recovering(...)

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Letters to editor, Summer 2017

Education/ Opinion/ Summer 2017

Letters to editor, Summer 2017

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PREP SCHOOL CLAIM SPECIOUS While I applaud Michael Jonas’s commitment to presenting all sides of the ongoing debate that surrounds  the operation and performance of Massachusetts’s public vocational- technical high schools, I must respond to some of the opinions shared in the article (“Voc-tech tension,” Spring 2017). The idea that the Commonwealth’s public vocational schools(...)

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Where Mass. ranks on education tests

Education/ Opinion

Where Mass. ranks on education tests

At K-12 and college levels, state does well

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IN THE SEASON OF GRADUATIONS, it is worth looking at how Massachusetts and Boston stack up against international competitors in education. According to global university rankings and international school achievement tests, Massachusetts ranks near the top in global education excellence. According to the respected Academic Rankings of World Universities (the Shanghai rankings), when population is(...)

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Why Lowell is torn over new high school

Education/ Politics

Why Lowell is torn over new high school

Rebuild downtown, or move to the fringe of suburbia?

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MEETINGS OF THE LOWELL CITY COUNCIL are typically sparsely attended affairs, characterized by amicable discussions among councilors and unanimous votes. This has all changed in recent weeks, as the city grapples with whether to rebuild its sole public high school at the downtown site it’s occupied nearly since the city’s founding or to build a(...)

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