OPINION: STATE BOARD RAISES MCAS PASSING SCORE DESPITE 1/2 LEGISLATORS’ OPPOSITION
In August, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to raise the minimum score that this year’s freshman class, and classes following, will have to attain on the MCAS test in order to graduate. And against Commissioner Riley’s recommendation, they voted to increase the passing score further for classes starting in 2030. They […]
OPINION: TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL T
People are furious at the state of the MBTA: the fatality, the fire, the explosion, the derailments, the injuries, the delays, the actual and proposed cuts in service, the month-long closure of the Orange and Green Line. In 2009, two reports looked at Gov. Cellucci’s 1999 Forward Funding plan, which was developed with his Administration and Finance […]
OPINION: R.I.P. ROE?
Freedom is a constant struggle When my family moved to Massachusetts, my mother couldn’t legally get birth control or even learn about it. By the time I was in college, the Supreme Court had ensured that married women could get birth control, though unmarried women couldn’t. By the time our daughter was born, the Supreme Court had made birth control and abortion (within […]
OPINION: ONE TOOL AGAINST DISPLACEMENT, RENT HIKES, SPECULATION
“TOPA would allow communities to slow displacement and gentrification by removing some homes from the for-profit, speculative, escalating market, and making them permanently affordable.” Speculators are driving up prices, blocking new home-buyers, and promoting destabilization of neighborhoods, displacement of long-time residents, and gentrification. Is this inevitable? Those issues were the topic of my last newsletter. […]
OPINION: CASH SALES OF SOMERVILLE HOMES DRIVING DISPLACEMENT, GENTRIFICATION
Investors interested in maximizing profit regularly outbid homebuyers and jack rents on tenants
