Local accountability in schools lacking, says report

Study urges stronger goal-setting by districts and schools

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

Please Support Gateway City Legislative Leaders

Your advocacy can make a difference

Dear Friends: In the final days of this Legislative session, two items hang in the balance that have great importance to Gateway City economic development efforts. The first is the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP). After years of advocacy by Gateway Cities mayors, this market-rate housing production tool is finally doing exactly what it was

Gateway Cities discover the power of food

Fresh veggies, koshari turn food deserts into oases

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEN RICHARDSON FOOD HAS ALWAYS LOOMED LARGE in the life of Dimple Rana. While growing up in Revere, she helped her parents, immigrants from India, work in Indian grocery stores in Somerville. Later, she helped manage convenience stores owned by her family. But working retail wasn’t her ambition. She promptly left Revere after

Juicing regional economic development by improving labor mobility

A look at Gateway City residents earning the Boston wage premium

A startling percentage of households migrating from Boston to the Gateway Cities are low-income and transit-dependent. For these residents, finding living wage work may now hinge on whether they can make the commute back to Boston. Data from the American Community Survey show that Gateway City residents who are able to find and get to

Voc-tech tension

Massachusetts vocational schools are a big success story, but are they shutting out those who might need them most?

KELSEY CLARK, A SENIOR at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, is showing a visitor work from her graphic design portfolio. There is a pointillism-style poster she drew for assignment to promote a rock concert (she says it left her practically drawing dots in her sleep). A brightly colored infographic poster that she

Accurately measuring a school’s contribution to student growth

ESSA Strategy Call

Our first weekly ESSA Strategy Call focused on Gateway City priority 1: A formal accountability system that creates a level playing field for urban districts when describing performance by isolating each school’s contribution to student learning.  Accurately capturing school performance is largely about the model Massachusetts adopts to statistically control for demographic variation across schools.

Jobless rates dropping all over MA

Of 10 metro areas in US with biggest declines, 7 from Bay State

NEW ECONOMIC DATA suggest the state’s labor market is nearing full capacity, which is translating into employment gains across the state and not just in metropolitan Boston. A group of Massachusetts economists released a MassBenchmarks report on Wednesday suggesting tight labor market conditions are likely to lead to worker shortages in some occupations and high

Testimony on the Baker-Politio economic development bill from the Gateway City perspective

Benjamin Forman Testimony Regarding House Bill 3983

The Joint Committee for Economic Development & Emerging Technologies held a hearing on April 5th to review the Baker-Polito administration’s economic development bill. Filed in January, the $918 million package provides funding to implement the administration’s economic development strategy. MassINC Research Director Ben Forman submitted the written testimony below in support of Gateway City provisions

Secretary Jay Ash 

Speaks on private nonprofit economic development organizations

MassINC released new research on the role of private nonprofit economic development organizations in Gateway City growth and renewal at event held in Lawrence on December 8th. Cohosted with the Lawrence Partnership and the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, the forum brought together business and economic development leaders from across the state. In

Monitoring the fiscal health of Gateway Cities

Gateway Cities can’t make progress toward renewal if they’re bogged down by insurmountable structural budget deficits. With state finances under increasing strain, it is unlikely that cities and towns will see the kind of local aid for municipal government that they once enjoyed. This makes it all the more imperative that we find strategies like Transformative Development
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