Editorial Roundup: New England

Hearst Connecticut Media. June 1, 2023.

Editorial: Allow Parole Board to do its job

For a place that is well down the list of most dangerous states in America (near the bottom, by most accounts), crime accounts for an outsize share of public debate in Connecticut. Most people in this state are not in danger of being victimized on a regular basis, and yet we often talk as though we were.

The issue of crime came to the fore again recently with the question of prison commutations. The state Parole Board increased the number of people who were being released before serving their full sentences, which followed a near-total shutdown of the process during the COVID pandemic.

The board was acting as it was supposed to. There is a process, a long and arduous one, before a prisoner can qualify for a commutation, and no one pointed to any dangers to the public by shortening certain sentences. Still, complaints from victims’ families, amplified by legislative Republicans and rewarded by Gov. Ned Lamont, led to a pause in the commutation process.

Victims and their families deserve to be heard. Their trauma cannot be minimized. There are, however, other considerations that are of value to the state, including reducing the enormous expense of keeping people incarcerated long after the likelihood of committing further crimes has decreased to near zero. It is not good enough to lock people up and simply forget about them.

In response to Lamont’s commutations pause, which included replacing the head of the Parole Board, state legislators have looked to further formalize the commutations process. This shouldn’t have been necessary, but it’s worthwhile if it allows the Parole Board to start functioning again. Here, too, however, legislative Republicans have put up roadblocks, appealing to emotion and vowing to block the reforms.

The irony is that if Senate Republicans are successful and reforms fail, it would resort back to the Parole Board to make the rules regarding commutations, which is supposedly what had opponents riled up in the first place. This was pointed out by Republican state Rep. Craig Fishbein, who is about as far from a liberal as you’re going to find in Hartford but who has worked successfully with Democrats to move the legislation through the House.

There’s not much time left in the legislative session. With no limit on debate, opponents of a bill can simply talk something to death, knowing that when the clock strikes midnight that all the work that has gone into crafting legislation will go for naught. That could be where we’re headed with parole reforms.

Whatever happens legislatively, the important work of the Parole Board must not stop. There are many strategies to fighting mass incarceration, and individual commutations are not the most efficient means of doing so. But they remain an important tool. It does no one any good to keep people imprisoned if they are capable of contributing positively to society, including in their families and communities.

This does not disrespect families. Victims and their loved ones should be part of the process, and they have been. They simply can’t be the entire process.

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Portland Press Herald. May 26, 2023.

Editorial: Lawmakers should use child tax credit to boost next generation of Mainers

A proposal for a state-level credit would put it into the hands of the people who need it most.

Maine lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to use surplus funds to get relief to the people who need it most. One way to do that is sitting right in front of them.

L.D. 1544, a bill from Rep. Mo Terry, D-Gorham, would provide extra support for low-income parents by expanding the state’s child tax credit from $300 to $350 per child and making the credit fully reimbursable, meaning even the poorest families could take advantage.

Expanding the state-level credit would help cover some of what was lost when Congress failed to renew the federal child tax credit extension, which was also made fully reimbursable in 2021 – and helped drop the child poverty rate nationwide by about 46%, to its lowest level ever.

The success of that simple policy showed, without a doubt, that child poverty exists because we as a country have chosen not to implement a proven solution to it. The policy delivered additional money to 61 million children in 36 million households, temporarily lifting nearly 4 million kids out of poverty.

In Maine, the federal child tax credit dropped child poverty by an astounding 40%. Research has shown that the money went toward basic needs such as food, utilities, housing, clothes and education.

While the state-level credit proposed would not be so generous, it would lift an estimated 3,500 Maine children out of poverty. By being fully refundable, it would bring extra resources to 73,000 children whose parents now make too little to qualify for the credit. Those families would have a little more breathing room in their finances – something that can make all the difference in the world when it comes to the health of a family and its children.

The credit would also be an investment in Maine.

“The child tax credit has such a transformational impact on children’s lives that every dollar spent on the credit has a ten dollar return on investment to society in the form of increased future earnings, better health, improved educational outcomes and reduced involvement with the criminal justice system for impacted children,” the Maine Center for Economic Policy said in testimony in favor of the bill.

And while much of the debate over the bill has centered on its support for young families with children, it also would help out others who are often left with little help. The credit would apply to all caregivers with dependents, so that grandparents who are looking after grandkids would qualify, as would parents with adult dependents.

For some, this money may represent an energy bill paid or a home repair completed, “or simply some added peace of mind that comes with a financial security net,” the Maine Council on Aging said in support of L.D. 1544.

The bill passed the Taxation Committee with a divided report, with one Republican joining Democrats in favor. Republicans, as a whole, have been pushing income and sales tax cuts as a way to give Mainers relief from high costs. However, in the only detailed plan members have released, Maine House Republicans proposed reducing the lowest tax bracket from 5.8% to 4.5%, ostensibly to get tax relief to the poorest working Mainers.

The problem is, such a change would be of little to no benefit to Mainers making under $25,000 a year, while those making more than $150,000 a year would enjoy the largest reduction.

With so many needs not being met for Mainers on the lower end of the income scale, it would be a waste of resources to give more to folks that already have enough.

Instead, lawmakers should use a child tax credit to get money where it will do the most good: in the hands of people who need it to build better lives for themselves and their children, so that the next generation of Mainers can flourish.

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Boston Herald. June 1, 2023.

Editorial: Budget woes could swamp top-heavy UMass ship

University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan used a sailing analogy to describe the institution’s coming fiscal squeeze.

The university system, Meehan said, is sailing into some “very strong headwinds,” with lower birth rates affecting enrolment, more competition for students, and people questioning whether a college degree is worth the money.

The USS UMass, however, is in danger of running aground even in calm waters, thanks to its overloaded cargo hold.

As the State House News reported, salary and fringe benefits constitute 60% of UMass’s expenses in fiscal 2024, an increase of $186 million compared to the fiscal 2023 projection. A Boston Herald deep dive in to state payrolls revealed that most of the state’s top earners are employed by UMass. One chancellor took home over $1 million. A year.

No wonder people are questioning whether they should take on the financial burden of a college education – knowing that a good chunk of their tuition is going to line the pockets of highly-paid college administrators does take the shine off a prospective diploma.

It’s this lower supply of students battling the higher demand of salary costs that threatens to scuttle the UMass yacht. Their solution?

“Addressing these challenges will require active management and continued advocacy for a change to the cost-sharing arrangement with the commonwealth,” said.Joe Skrzek, assistant budget director at UMass.

A “change to the cost-changing arrangement” is a nice way of saying “give us more money.”

Skrzek crunched the numbers: Overall enrollment at UMass is slated to decrease by 0.3% in fiscal 2024, capping a three-year downward trend, said. That’s fueled by a 1% drop in undergraduate students and a 2% drop in in-state students — though the percentage of graduate, out-of-state and international students is projected to rise, as well as those pursuing continuing education.

If less revenue is coming in, why not, as we have pointed out often, trim the fat?

According to Meehan, UMass has managed to save more than $100 million through procurement strategies to prepare for the looming hurdles.

That’s a good start – but that still leaves the problem of administrative bloat. It’s not the rank-and-file employees who slog through the day-to-day running of the university system, or who try to whip up enthusiasm for Chaucer among undergrads. It’s the top tier that won the paycheck lottery.

“We’ll continue to focus on financial accountability and work toward maximizing cost-saving initiatives through shared services to help offset some of the budget challenges that we’ve discussed and keep the university financially strong,” Skrzek said.

And of course, appealing to Beacon Hill to pump up the budget.

We’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to make its decision on President Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt. If that doesn’t go through, prospective college students will have to take a long hard look at what they’re paying for.

It doesn’t look like smooth sailing.

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Boston Herald. June 1, 2023.

Editorial: A pro-MCAS voice emerges

The new coalition is focused on improving the exam, not ending it as a graduation requirement.

With all Democratic control on Beacon Hill, teachers unions have launched a (renewed) push not just to eliminate the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement, but also to end the state’s ability to take over chronically underperforming districts. Under their favored legislation, it would be left up to the state’s many school districts to determine whether their students had achieved sufficient competence in math, English, and science to graduate.

And what of statewide educational standards? Well, a 26-member commission, with a dizzying array of membership requirements, would study alternative ways of assessing students and schools. By the end of August 2024 it would be charged with… filing a report.

Here’s what this legislation really boils down to: An effort to strip the state of its ability to ensure basic educational quality and accountability, while camouflaging that goal with the creation of a bureaucratic commission that will supposedly recommend alternative approaches. No wonder it has inspired supporters of MCAS to organize in its defense.

Although this bill goes by the name Thrive Act, it might better be labeled the False Guise Act. Why? Because one of the principal anti-MCAS arguments of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and its close (and financially dependent) ally Citizens for Public Schools has been rendered inoperative. As this page has reported, their claim that since its inception as a graduation requirement, the MCAS exam has been the sole factor keeping some 50,000 otherwise qualified students from graduating appears to vastly overstate the true number of students who fall into the category. The test required for graduation is pitched to a 10th-grade level; if students don’t pass as a sophomore, they get several more opportunities. According to 2015 to 2019 data compiled by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, of the high school seniors who didn’t pass the MCAS in those years, between 72% and 74% also failed to complete their local district’s graduation requirements.

But though the supposed “facts” upon which MCAS opponents were basing much of their argument have changed, their anti-accountability objectives haven’t. They still want to eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement and to end the state’s ability to put failing districts in receivership, an important last-resort option to protect students in those districts.

And, of course, in MTA speak, the state’s highly successful education reform effort — which married big new infusions of state money with statewide curriculum standards and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System — is “the 30-year experiment with test, punish and privatize.” The American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, meanwhile, urges its members to help end “the harm caused by the high-stakes, punitive use of standardized tests, such as state takeovers and denying students high school diplomas.”

No matter that the sustained, bipartisan education-improvement commitment has made Massachusetts the recognized national leader in public education. And that takeovers — while certainly no panacea — are needed as an option in cases of chronically mismanaged or underperforming districts that have shown they are not adequately educating their students.

At this point, alert legislators should be viewing union claims about the MCAS with pronounced skepticism.

Meanwhile, lawmakers should take notice of a new coalition, Voices for Academic Equity, that is determined to play a pro-MCAS role in the education policy space. This group includes the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, four teachers groups — Teach Plus, Teach for America Massachusetts, The Teachers’ Lounge (a professional network of educators of color), and Educators for Excellence — Mass Insight Education, Democrats for Education Reform, Boston Schools Fund, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, the National Parents Union, and the Education Trust Massachusetts. It also includes Paul Toner, who was president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association from 2010 to 2014, during an era when the MTA was considered a productive partner in educational improvement.

This coalition understands the value the MCAS brings as a uniform statewide standard of assessment but wants to make the test less intimidating for students, even while rendering their MCAS results a more timely tool for helping individual students.

Among its suggestions: Offer parts of the exam in other languages, thereby reducing a possible hurdle for students who are English language learners. That certainly could be done with the math and science exams. Indeed, the state already offers the 10th-grade math test in Spanish and biology and introductory physics in Spanish and American Sign Language. According to the report, 31 states as well as the District of Columbia offer native language exams, usually in math or science, but sometimes also in social studies and reading and language arts.

The coalition also calls for involving more educators of color in developing the test to ensure that it doesn’t include culturally biased questions.

Its report says the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should identify areas where large numbers of students struggle and determine the best educational strategies to address those weaknesses. MCAS results should also be used to identify students who need tutoring or additional education time during the school year or who would benefit from summer education programs, it adds.

The coalition also plans an effort to educate policy makers and citizens about the value and uses of the MCAS. One of those, of course, is the need the MCAS fills for a uniform statewide assessment of student performance.

Ed Lambert, a former state representative and mayor of Fall River, who is now executive director of MBAE, points out that the MCAS has provided crucial data that have allowed educators to identify and address achievement gaps.

“You wouldn’t know that we have achievement gaps if it weren’t for the MCAS,” he said. “How can you attack inequity if you are not going to collect data?”

That’s a good question, and one lawmakers should consider as they listen to the usual suspects argue that the MCAS itself is somehow an instrument to oppress students of color rather than a tool to make sure they get the solid high school education they deserve.

As far as the MCAS is concerned, the smart approach is to improve both the test and its use — and not to eliminate it as a graduation requirement.

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