State Senator Katherine Clark

By Senator Katherine Clark
As families and businesses across the state filed their tax returns in April, the Commonwealth was completing an important tax review of its own.  Last year, as part of the state’s budget process, the legislature established a Tax Expenditure Commission.  The Commission was charged with studying the state’s tax expenditures – the various exemptions, deductions, and credits in the Massachusetts tax code – and recommending ways to measure their effectiveness.… [more]

by Katherine Clark
During the last school year, nearly 8,000 Massachusetts high school students dropped out.  As with any pervasive challenge, the reasons are not always clear: some students left school to pursue work; others indicated they would transfer to another school, but never did.  But for the majority of these children, we really do not know why they dropped out or where they ended up.… [more]

Massachusetts has lost one third of its manufacturing jobs since 1990, and yet it has become conventional wisdom that the key to our competitive growth is increasing highly paid jobs performed by college graduates. But as the 2010 report Massachusetts Forgotten Middle Skill Jobs demonstrates, it is actually “middle skills” occupations, jobs that require more than a high school diploma but not a four-year degree, that make up the largest segment of job growth nationally and here in Massachusetts.… [more]

Last week I joined Governor Patrick and students and educators from around the state to celebrate the recent announcement that Massachusetts has been selected to receive a $50 million grant to expand pre-Kindergarten education. As part of the federal Race to the Top: Early Learning Challenge program, Massachusetts was one of nine states awarded grants to develop new approaches to early learning and close the school readiness gap.… [more]