School Information System
Newsletter Sign Up |

Subscribe to this site via RSS: | Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas

June 27, 2008

Education is Massachusetts Governor Patrick's Test

Adrian Walker:

Thomas Birmingham's phone has been ringing a lot this week, in the wake of Governor Deval Patrick's plan to overhaul public education.

The former state Senate president was one of the last people to take on the task of reforming education in Massachusetts, in 1993. It was a valiant effort, but ultimately not enough.

"I don't think anybody thought in '93 that a bright day had dawned and that we would move on because all our education problems had been solved," Birmingham said yesterday.

The overriding issue then was the wild disparity between different communities in spending on education. But that emphasis proved simplistic.

The achievement gap was not nearly as well understood as it is now. "I think perhaps the disadvantages that poverty imposes were beyond what we might have accomplished, that it is a harder problem than we realized," he said. "We smuggle a host of issues into schools that are not educational."

Related: Fearing for Massachusett's School Reform and Mike Antonucci on Patrick's plan for a statewide teacher agreement.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 27, 2008 11:01 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas