Guest Post - Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education

March 6, 2012

Massachusetts’ Students Will Benefit From Review of Teacher Prep Programs

Imagine what would happen if The Boston Globe reported tomorrow that doctors who went to medical school were no better than those who didn’t? Or that there were some medical schools that regularly graduated more effective doctors than others, but […]

March 1, 2012

Why Mentoring Youth is Good for Business and Education

By Rich Greif, Director of Marketing & Partnerships and Zeeba Khalili, School Partnership Associate, Mass Mentoring Partnership Massachusetts’ future depends on today’s youth developing the 21st century academic, professional, and interpersonal skills critical to success in our evolving economy. Yet […]

February 14, 2012

Value of Evaluation: A Teacher’s Perspective

When Will started the school year in my ninth grade Math class at Chelsea High School he had significant gaps in his math skills. He is one of the 16 million children in our country growing up in poverty and, […]

January 23, 2012

The Critical Role of Community Colleges in Workforce Development

The connection between education and economic development is one that employers have emphasized for many years. In fact, it is the reason MBAE exists – to provide every child the excellent education they need to prepare for the demanding jobs of an […]

December 12, 2011

Progress on Data Systems Assessed

On December 1, the National Data Quality Campaign (DQC) hosted a webinar describing states’ progress toward implementing and using strong data systems to assess students’ educational performance (see the slides or watch the video). Each year for the past seven years, […]

November 15, 2011

Reading Success by 4th Grade

Springfield, Massachusetts is a trend setter in early childhood education! Cherish Every Child, an initiative of the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation, is a model for community collaboration to improve the lives of children. Project Director Sally Fuller […]

August 22, 2011

Mass STEM Plan a Model for Others

Last week, the National Governor’s Association convened the “Massachusetts Learning Lab for Developing a State STEM Plan” in Boston. STEM “Teams” from nine states attended to share experiences and learn from Massachusetts to develop strategies for developing and implementing STEM […]

April 21, 2011

Coalition Calls on House to Endorse W&M Municipal Health Insurance Reform

MBAE’s December 2010 study, “School Funding Reality: A Bargain Not Kept“, revealed that all of the $700 million in new Chapter 70 school aid from 2000 to 2007 was consumed by a $1 billion increase in health insurance costs over […]

December 17, 2010

Common Core Standards – Engaging Higher Education

One of the purposes of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, undertaken by that National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to create national standards for and assessments of student learning, is to strengthen the P-16 […]

December 17, 2010

12th Grade NAEP Information Targets Business Community

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as The Nation’s Report Card, was created by Congress to provide the public with information about the achievement of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 in core academic subjects, including […]

December 3, 2010

Missed Opportunity For School Cost Saving

The December 1 deadline has passed, and not one new municipality or school district signed on to provide employee health benefits through the state’s Group Insurance Commission (GIC) in fiscal 2012 – which means that hundreds of local government entities […]

October 21, 2010

Business Coalition Gets Results on STEM

In June of 2009, fifteen business and technology associations in Massachusetts joined to form the STEM Business Leaders’ Coalition and released a groundbreaking report, “Tapping Massachusetts’ Potential: The Massachusetts’ Employers’ STEM Agenda.” At the urging of EMC Corporation, the group, […]

October 18, 2010

Do we need more college grads?

One of the most important education reports of recent months is Projection of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, by Anthony Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Jeff Strohl, from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workplace. The study argues that […]

September 17, 2010

Higher education – some news about where Massachusetts stands

The new edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual almanac came out recently, and I thought it would be interesting to look at how Massachusetts stacks up in some of the statistics assembled there. There is, as always, a […]

August 5, 2010

Universities? Yes, but …

Six Massachusetts state colleges are to become, by act of the Legislature, state universities. Is this a good idea? Twenty years ago, when my job involved oversight of the state’s higher education master plan, I would have said (and did […]