Blue Mass Group

Fresh on the heels of the New York Times debate pitting Bill Gates against Steve Jobs over the value of a liberal arts education, Pioneer held an event on Tuesday on this very topic: “The Liberal Arts & Closing Achievement Gaps,” featuring VA Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson, MA Senate President Tom Birmingham, and a distinguished panel that included Charles Barone, Director of Federal Policy, Democrats for Education Reform,  E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Chairman and Founder, Core Knowledge Foundation, Monty Neill, Interim Executive Director, Fair Test, and Tony Wagner, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Here is a link to some pics, we’ll have a video link next week.  

http://www.facebook.com/album….

Read Jim Stergios’ Boston.com blog on the Gates-Jobs debate, in which he notes that the national standards Gates is pushing “lopped in half Massachusetts’ emphasis on literature in K-12 grades.” http://www.pioneerinstitute.or…

Steve Poftak, our Director of Research, had an op-ed (co-authored with John Miller) in yesterday’s Boston Globe: “Commuter Rail – Off Track.” Check it out:

http://www.boston.com/bostongl…

Jim Stergios had an op-ed in yesterday’s MetroWest Daily on “Why Jobs Are Leaving”: http://www.metrowestdailynews….

Jim also answers questions regarding teacher pensions, following his appearance on Chronicle a few weeks ago:

http://boston.com/community/bl…

Tuesday, Pioneer board members Kerry Healey, former Lt. Governor, and Kathleen Madigan, DC-based education researcher, had an op-ed in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette on “Women, History and the MCAS”:

http://www.telegram.com/apps/p…

They have another version in today’s Fall River Herald News: http://www.heraldnews.com/arch…

Pioneer welcomes Taylor Amerding, formerly of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, to our blog. Click here to read his latest post: http://www.pioneerinstitute.or…

Lastly, don’t forget to submit an entry to our Better Government Competition for your chance to win $10,000. The deadline is this Monday, April 4th, and here are the details:

http://www.pioneerinstitute.or…

We hope that you’ll visit us at: http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/  

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- Attending our events

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