When it comes to drug cases, Judge Sydney Hanlon knows what she’s looking at. As presiding justice of Dorchester District Court, she runs Boston’s busiest community court, with 8,636 criminal complaints filed there last year. In narcotics charges, only one court in the city and three others in the state see more action than hers. […]
Robert Keough
Posted inEducation
This is only a test
It’s springtime, which has come to mean not only balmy weather and blooming flowers but MCAS testing in our public schools. In April, fourth-, eighth-, and 10th-graders took their tests in English composition. In May, these students will sharpen their Number 2 pencils for subject-matter tests in four areas: English Language Arts and Literature; Mathematics; […]
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Wormtown News
To talk with anyone privy to or affected by the sale of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette to the New York Times Co., which also owns The Boston Globe, is to come away with the impression that the creation of this regional newspaper powerhouse is, in essence, a non-event. After all, the T&G already went […]
Posted inUncategorized
Exporting Clout
For most lobbyists, mystery is the name of the game. After all, how do you justify those high hourly fees to corporate clients if getting your way on Beacon Hill isn’t some high (if not black) art? But Judith C. Meredith, dean of human service lobbyists, has always given it away. Of course, she has […]
Posted inEducation
Ted and Nancy Sizer on Schools and Morality
Schools teach more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. And we’re not just talking electives. In the way teachers and administrators conduct themselves, in the work they do and don’t do, in what they expect and what they tolerate in student behavior, schools teach lessons far more powerful than any formal curriculum. So say Theodore R. […]
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Dishing the dirt
Not quite a year ago, Eric Fehrnstrom wrote a remarkable mea culpa for Boston magazine. Entitled “The Other Side of the Hill,” the essay traced Fehrnstrom’s journey from political reporter to political actor. His move from State House bureau chief for the Boston Herald to spokesman (and assistant state treasurer) for Joe Malone was not […]
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Order In The Courts
Last fall’s Governor’s Council battles to confirm Margaret Marshall as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court and the appointment of Francis Spina and Judith Cowin to the state’s highest court turned out to be every bit the sideshow one might expect from a court system long considered something of a circus. The courts stand […]
Posted inPolitics
Alan Wolfe on politics and the public mood
The hoopla over the millennium has come and—thankfully—gone. But as the odometer of our times has turned over to zero-zero, there is no denying that we have begun a new age: a new year, a new decade, a new century. The question is, what kind of age is it? The Vietnam War in the ’60s, […]
Posted inEducation
Special Education
Massachusetts is no longer in a class by itself when it comes to special education. According to figures from the federal government, Massachusetts for the first time does not lead the 50 states in special-ed enrollment. Rhode Island has taken over that distinction, with the Bay State runner-up and three other states close behind. This […]
Posted inPolitics
Governors Proclamations
Nurses Hall in the State House is all decked out, chairs lined up before a podium, people milling around eyeing the spread of fruit, baked goods, and soft drinks for the reception to come. The cameras are rolling as Gov. A. Paul Cellucci descends the stairs, scribbles his signature, then hands out pens as souvenirs. […]