Charles Chieppo

Jul 20, 2024 | bostonherald.com | Charles Chieppo

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Feb 1, 2024 | bostonherald.com | Charles Chieppo

If you like excess, one-party states are the places for you. Whether you prefer Marjorie Taylor Greene’s calls for red states to secede or the Squad’s class warfare slogans, they’ve got it covered. Of late, the Massachusetts version of one-party excess is playing out in a series of illegal teacher strikes, the most recent in Newton. If, as union leaders assure us, the strikes are “for the children,” their timing sure is curious.

Jun 19, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Mark Williams |Charles Chieppo

The MBTA Retirement Fund is going over a cliff, and the reasons why are well known. But neither the T nor its unions are in a hurry to do anything about it. The new MBTA Retirement Fund Actuarial Valuation Report shows the fund’s balance as of Dec. 31, 2022, was $1.62 billion — about $300 million less than what it was just 12 months earlier. Its liability — the amount it will owe current and future T retirees — is over $3.1 billion, meaning the fund is about 51 percent funded.

Jun 11, 2023 | telegram.com | Charles Chieppo

School systems in half of the commonwealth’s 26 Gateway Cities perform in the bottom 10% of districts statewide. Among them, Worcester, Brockton, Fall River and New Bedford have large waitlists for charters as well as room for more charter public schools under state caps. Charter schools have a record of improving academic performance in urban areas. The solution seems obvious ‒ until politics enters the picture.

Apr 26, 2023 | commonwealthmagazine.org | Michael Jonas |Stephen J. Woerner |Sam Drysdale |Charles Chieppo

YOU DON'T EXACTLY need to ace reading comprehension on the MCAS to understand where a new education coalition is going with the report it issued this week on the state's standardized testing system. Start with its title: "Toward a better MCAS." Or the press release promoting it. "New report highlights changes needed in MCAS," reads its headline.