Emily Corwin reported on economics for the StateImpact New Hampshire blog until the project merged with the New Hampshire Public Radio site in July 2013. She is now NHPR’s Seacoast Reporter. You can follow her on Twitter at @emilycorwin, and find her stories on NHPR.org.
New Hampshire has one of the highest motorcycle registration rates in the country. Why do people people love to ride in the Granite State? Scroll down to see what each Laconia rally attendee thinks New Hampshire has to offer, and check out our U.S. map of motorcycle popularity.
Robert S. Donovan
On Monday the Nashua Telegraph published an article with some scary numbers: 78% of freshmen at Nashua Community College coming from Nashua public high schools require remedial coursework. This is higher than the national community college remediation rate, which is close to 60% — and it doesn’t include those students who frequently require remediation because they’ve been out of school for a long time. The Telegraph describes efforts of district and college administrators to address the problem of college unpreparedness, mostly focusing on the quality of high school instruction.
While college unpreparedness is surely a legitimate concern, studies from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) show that high rates of remediation may have more to do with poor placement testing than poorly prepared students. CCRC studies show that high school grades and GPAs more accurately predict college readiness than placement tests alone. Large-scale simulations of placement testing revealed that “a quarter to a third of students assigned to remedial classes based on standardized test scores could have passed college-level classes with a grade of B or better.”
Studies also suggest that remedial classes aren’t getting anyone ahead – even those students who aren’t prepared for college level coursework. Perhaps because re-taking middle and high school level classes is so discouraging for a student’s morale, only 10% of remedial students graduate from community college within three years. Additionally, remedial classes increase the cost and length of college education, because remediation credits don’t count toward graduation. The cost of remediation to schools is estimated at around $2.5 billion dollars annually, nationwide.One study showed that supplementing college-level courses with concurrent supporting classes was a less expensive and more effective way to assist underprepared students than remediation, allowing students to earn credits toward graduation upon registration. Just this month, Connecticut’s governor Dannell Malloy signed into a law a bill that would do away with remedial coursework altogether in that state, instead implementing the concurrent classes supported by research from the CCRC.
flickr_irwinadam
Do New Hampshire politicians only put on their New Hampshire Advantage glasses when it’s convenient?
The Nashua Telegraph has an editorial today urging Granite Staters to “resist distortion” of New Hampshire’s business image by candidates during election season. “Let’s guard against those candidates who would distort the state’s business-friendly reputation for sheer political expediency,” the Telegraph states, which is “pretty much what happened two years ago, when Republican nominee John Stephen spent a good part of the campaign lambasting Gov. John Lynch for presiding over a state that sports ‘the highest business tax rate in the nation.'”
The Telegraph refers to a much-reported survey from the Kauffman Foundation and Thumbtack.com — published May 8th — to suggest that New Hampshire is already one of the nation’s most business-friendly states. Continue Reading
Kara Oehler / Mapping Main Street
Carolyn Dube of the Merrimack Patch has a story today about two vacant properties in Merrimack that have been designated by the state as Economic Revitalization Zones.
“This is one of few financial incentives we’re allowed to give in New Hampshire,” Community Development Director Tim Thompson told Dube.
It works like this. First, a town applies for Economic Revitalization Zone designation from the state. Once the zone is designated as such, businesses who qualify can apply for the tax credit. According to Merrimack Patch’s Carolyn Dube, a qualifying business must “create new jobs in the community and, either make significant repairs or alterations to the property, or to the equipment on the property.”
Read more on the Merrimack Patch.
The five hottest items on StateImpact this week are:
Bev Norton
Like a lot of Americans, Michael Dingman stores his cars in his garage — only his garage holds 50 cars, in addition to a whole lot of other items he’s been collecting over the years. This weekend, nearly 50 of his classic Fords, including V-8 Fords, Mercurys, Lincolns and woodies go up for auction in Dingman’s 50-car garage in Hampton, New Hampshire, not far from his farm in Kensington.
It’s hard not to be inspired by the former director of Ford Motor Company’s love of all things Ford, or his affection for the more than 1,000 neon, porcelain and tin signs spanning the 1930s through the 1960s — also up for auction this weekend. The video below, produced by RM Auctions — the Ontario-based auction company hosting this weekend’s event — features Michael Dingman as he nostalgically reviews the items he’ll be parting with.
The Background:
As StateImpact reporter Amanda Loder reported last month, on the morning of Tuesday, April 24th, the 26-year old newlywed and father-to-be Ben Harris was “doing a routine task at the Portsmouth plant–pumping a plastic keg full of compressed air so that he could clean it.” The keg exploded, fatally wounding Harris. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began an investigation, and Red Hook began their own as well. But more than a month later, the cause of the explosion is still unknown.
What’s New:
Although OSHA is still investigating, Red Hook brewery has hired an independent investigator to get to the root of the blast. As Fosters Daily Democrat reports,
“The incident raises eyebrows in the brewing community because Redhook officials said it involved a plastic keg, rather than a traditional stainless steel keg — the industry standard for several decades.”
Fosters continues: “the keg involved in the accident was not owned by Redhook or any other brewery under the Craft Brew Alliance umbrella, the company has said. The keg was delivered to the brewery in error as part of a delivery of empty keg returns.”
The obvious question is: why did Red Hook receive a plastic keg in error? We’ll keep you posted.
It’s not every day that the US Secretary of Education calls me wanting to talk, but on Tuesday afternoon that’s just what happened. When I asked Secretary Duncan what he wanted to talk about, he said, “college affordability.”
Phillip Taylor
Earlier that day he, Vice President Joe Biden, and Consumer Financial Bureau Director Richard Cordray kicked off a new project to convince universities to adopt a universal “Know Before You Owe” financial aid shopping sheet — designed to make it easier to compare college costs and financial aid offers. Too often, he said, families and students confuse grants and loans, aren’t informed about the cost of housing and meal plans, and aren’t able to accurately compare offers from different schools. The idea is that if all colleges were to use a well-designed, universal financial aid award sheet, fewer students would take out loans they couldn’t pay back. Continue Reading
Come November, Granite Staters will be voting on an amendment to the state constitution banning a personal income tax. The amendment would need to receive the support of two-thirds of voters in November in order to become law. While New Hampshire is already one of the nation’s nine states without a personal income tax, the amendment would require another amendment be passed — including the requisite two-thirds of popular votes — in order for an income tax to be reconsidered.
Keep your eye on State Impact as we cover the lead up to the popular vote this fall.
Osmium
A trend has taken off in cities from Los Angeles, to New York City, to London, in which restaurants and retailers set up shop in an empty storefront for as short as a weekend to as long as six months.
Organizations like Popuphood, in Oakland, Calif., works with retailers, landlords and city government to give a shot in the arm to local economies, get businesses into empty storefronts, and shoppers in contact with regional up-and-coming retailers.
This coming weekend the mens’ clothing retailer Osmium will be setting up shop in an empty storefront in downtown Portsmouth. In creative marketing campaign probably inspired by the TV show America’s Next Top Model, the business will be hosting a photo-shoot competition in which shoppers model and compete for Osmium merchandise.
Learn more at SeacoastOnline and on Popup Republic.
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