Word: referendum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such is the spirit that moves former U.S. Senator and current Head of the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education Paul Tsongas to consider pushing for a referendum, which would be on the state ballot in November 1990, requiring Massachusetts to set aside 7 percent of its annual budget for education. The farsighted Tsongas plan deserves to be on the ballot and transferred into...
...referendum would earmark seven percent of the annual state budget for primary, secondary, and higher education. One of Tsongas' goals is to win back for public primary and secondary education some of the funds eliminated by another populist revenue control referendum, Proposition 2 1/2, which limited taxes on local property taxes...
...Human beings will do anything to survive," says Tsongas. "If the economic situation deteriorates every day...people will become more and more concerned. I think if the referendum were to run now we would do very well." Tsongas believes that by 1990, public perception of the link between our nation's education system and our ability to compete in the international marketplace will be even more apparent, translating into further support for the referendum...
...TSONGAS' referendum is a timely one, since more funding for state public education is desperately needed. Twenty percent of Boston's high school students find the educational experience so unsatisfying that they drop out. According to the latest round of national tests, those Massachusetts students who do stay in secondary school are steadily declining in math and science competence...
ALTHOUGH few would contest Tsongas' goal of increasing this country's economic competitiveness, some criticize the referendum as a means of achieving it. "The referendum is unsound, and for a sophisticated politician like Paul, remarkably simplistic," says State Rep. Stephen W. Doran (D-Lexington). He termed the referendum, which would automatically set the annual level of education expenditure, "an anti-government approach to government...