Acting no more, Paul Cellucci got a shorter, snappier title.
The Patriots, after a Bay State fumble, are getting a new gray-flannel home.
And students and teachers across the state got new, high-stakes tests. Few were happy with the results.
In 1998, the crime rate continued its incredible shrinking performance. Real estate prices raced toward parts unknown. And a Kennedy did something a Kennedy seldom does: He stopped running.
Here, in no particular order, is a look at the Top 10 local news stories of 1998:
1. Dread of the class. As accountability became education's newest buzz word, the state's new certification tests for teachers left some candidates red-faced - in embarrassment or rage - and advocates for tough teaching standards apoplectic.
Fifty-nine percent of would-be teachers failed the state's first test in April; almost half of aspiring Massachusetts teachers flunked the exam in July; and 45 percent failed in October.
Cellucci blamed the low scores on the colleges and universities that train future teachers; by fall, officials had insisted on a series of additional tests for admission to teacher education programs and for prospective teachers.
And students didn't do much better.
More than half of public school students who took rigorous, new statewide tests last spring performed poorly.
The hottest new term in the state's education lexicon became the MCAS - the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System - a battery of tests that struck fear into the hearts of fourth-, eighth-, and 10th-graders from Cape Cod to the Berkshires.
While some education specialists decried the tests as cold, objective measurements of skills that would hamper self-esteem, state officials said they will insist that the exams be used as a condition of high school graduation in 2003.
2. Farewell, Foxborough. If there was a happier New Year's Eve celebrant last night than Patriots owner Robert Kraft, they must have consumed some really incredible champagne.
Kraft is still counting his money after lawmakers in Hartford - accomplishing in a month what Bay State legislators were unable to do in years - handed him one of the richest deals ever assembled for a National Football League franchise.
As Connecticut Governor John Rowland cheered from the sidelines, the state's General Assembly agreed to build a $375 million stadium near the banks of the Connecticut River in Hartford, anchoring a downtown redevelopment program for a city whose schools are crumbling, but whose hopes are high.
''Thank you, guv,'' Kraft said after the deal was easily approved on Dec. 15, cinching plans to move the region's pro football franchise from its spartan stadium on Route 1 in Foxborough to a state-of-the-art complex at the nexus of Interstates 84 and 91 in the nation's insurance capital.
Kraft had warned Massachusetts lawmakers that if they didn't approve a new stadium deal, he would move the team.
They didn't. So he did.
3. Daddy dearest. The law called it kidnapping. But the victims called it a desperate gesture of love. They unflinchingly stood by their dad.
The Stephen Fagan kidnapping case was a drama worthy of a B-grade movie, whose characters include a father with an alias and a shady past, and a mother, denied her now-estranged children, bent on justice.
Fagan, free on bail, has said he took the girls from their mother's home in North Adams and to Florida nearly 20 years ago and changed their identities to protect them from his ex-wife, Barbara Kurth, accusing her of neglect and alcoholism.
Kurth, who won custody of the girls after fending off similar charges by Fagan 19 years ago, has appealed for a reunion with her daughters, whom she has not seen since they were 2 and 5 years old.
Now young adults, Rachael and Lisa Martin have stood steadfastly by their father, who ultimately assumed the identity of Dr. William S. Martin and pretended to be an Ivy League-educated psychiatrist and philosopher. Both have said they aren't interested in speaking to their mother until the criminal case against their father is resolved. The case is pending.
4. Columnist calamity. In a year of national journalistic blunders that provoked corrections, retractions, and resignations, the Globe made some ignominious news of its own.
Marquee Metro columnist Mike Barnicle was forced to resign in August after repeated questions about his credibility. Two months before that, Metro columnist Patricia Smith quit after acknowledging she fabricated characters and quotes in four 1998 columns.
Barnicle's departure capped a tumultuous two-week period in which he was asked to resign, then successfully fought to keep his job, and then ended his 25-year career at the paper when he was unable to verify facts in an Oct. 8, 1995, column about two children being treated for cancer at Children's Hospital.
5. Sticker shock. The Massachusetts residential real estate market sailed to heights dizzying enough to make sellers smug and buyers befuddled.
By mid-summer, sales of existing, detached single-family homes were up nearly 11 percent from the previous year. The average price for a house for the first half of 1998 hit $212,693 - and it was even pricier in Boston, where the demand for upper-end homes drove the average home price to $282,032.
Amid low mortgage rates and the biggest housing boom since 1987, sellers told stories of homes being snapped up hours after the for-sale sign hit the front lawn, or of multiple offers at or above the asking price. Stratospheric prices in Boston made Ashland, Framingham, and Natick popular new ZIP codes.
6. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. After a race that inspired few, and appalled many with its electronic attack ads and face-to-face shouting matches, Cellucci was elected to the State House's corner office in his own right.
The former No. 2 man to Governor William Weld held off a surging Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, defeating the Democratic nominee by 4 percentage points and providing the state GOP's only Election Day victory.
Cellucci laid claim to the state's economic boom, saying he was a co-architect as Weld's lieutenant. He promised a fiscal discipline to foster continued prosperity.
Harshbarger tried to argue that the state needed a new leader, vowing to bring compassion and new ideas to Beacon Hill. But without a single captivating issue, the race descended into a quagmire of personal assaults and angry exchanges reminiscent of a schoolyard brawl. Did not! Did so!
7. Au revoir, au pair. The case of a British former au pair, whose story unfolded as a made-for-TV whodunit and perhaps derailed the state's bid to restore capital punishment, concluded with Louise Woodward's return to England.
The state's highest court, capping a 16-month ordeal that fed an international debate about child care and just punishment, upheld Woodward's manslaughter conviction in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. She was freed to go home instead of being sent back to prison.
The Eappens, expressing disappointment, filed a wrongful death suit against Woodward, whose 1997 conviction for second-degree murder was reduced by Middlesex Superior Court Judge Hiller B. Zobel. He substituted a manslaughter verdict and - stunningly - sentenced Woodward to time served: 279 days.
Some observers say the chief legacy of Woodward, who returned to her hometown in England, may be a death-penalty reversal at the State House. Two days before her guilty verdict, the House voted to institute capital punishment. A week later, after some believed her second-degree murder conviction unjust, the House reversed itself.
8. Quiet's in the streets. Murders are relatively rare. People feel safe in their neighborhoods at night. Community policing, authorities insist, has taken firm hold.
Like US cities from New York to Los Angeles, Boston's crime rate has been driven to near record lows by a humming economy, low unemployment, tougher sentencing laws, a diminished market for crack cocaine - and the cops on the beat.
''We used to talk about the good old days, when the streets were safe,'' Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. ''Boston is enjoying the good old days right now.''
According to police, the summer of 1998 was one of the safest in Boston, which recorded drops in homicides, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies, and car thefts.
A telling barometer of street-wise security? Throughout Boston neighborhoods, people worry more about their cars being broken into than any other crime, according to a police survey.
9. The final frontier. It is an earthen jigsaw puzzle - about 1,000 acres of land across the Fort Point Channel from the Financial District, some of the most valuable real estate on the East Coast. But the city struggled to make sure the development of the area, known as the Seaport district, turns out right.
Late last year, an interim master plan for the Seaport was widely criticized for allowing skyscrapers too close to the water's edge. So the Boston Redevelopment Authority went back to the drawing board, collecting comments from local architects and urban planners, and meeting extensively with the nearby South Boston residents.
The payoff is a new master plan to be unveiled Monday that seeks to create a new Boston neighborhood with lower buildings, parks, and ''civic destinations'' for residents and tourists alike, and extensive residential development so the area doesn't shut down at 5 p.m. like the Financial District.
Yet the work isn't done; critics say the ''working port'' will be squeezed out of existence under the new master plan, and tensions remain on truck routes, public transportation, open space, and the affordability - or likely lack thereof - of all those new condos with a view.
10. Joe walks away. The year dawned with the news of his brother Michael's death on a Colorado ski slope. Within 11 weeks, Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II said he had acquired a new appreciation for life's vagaries and his own vulnerability.
And so on a Friday afternoon in March, he announced he would not seek reelection to a seventh term in Congress from the storied House seat once held by his uncle, John F. Kennedy.
His decision to return to run Citizens Energy Corp., the nonprofit firm he founded 18 years ago, was the latest and most dramatic twist in Kennedy's recent political past. Once a favorite to become Massachusetts' next governor, Kennedy quit the gubernatorial race in mid-1997 amid reports that Michael Kennedy had a sexual relationship with a teenage baby sitter and charges from Joe's ex-wife that he had verbally bullied her to get an annulment.
Anthony Flint of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
