Opinion
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Rewards, Education, and the Culture of Poverty
Opinion -For some children, a “culture of poverty” severely limits the opportunities they have to benefit from structured play and enrollment in out-of-school programs. -
Missouri Earns ‘F’ Grade on 2015 Welfare Reform Report Card
Opinion -House Speaker John Diehl, Sen. David Sater, Sen. Tom Dempsey,and Rep. -
How Rewarding Students Can Improve Educational Outcomes
Opinion -Review of Rewards: How to use rewards to help children learn—and why teachers don’t use them well, by Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, The Heartland Institute, 210 pages, $14. -
Virginia May Allow Homeschool Students on Public School Teams
Opinion -Virginia House Bill 1626 would give public schools the option of allowing homeschool students to participate in their athletic programs and other activities. -
Maryland Lawmakers Propose Cigarette Tax to Boost Budgets
Opinion -State lawmakers in Maryland are considering whether to raise cigarette taxes from $2.00 per pack to $3.00 per pack. -
Ohio House Passes Bill to Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests
Opinion -The Ohio House of Representatives has passed legislation to protect students from punishment when opting out of testing aligned with Common Core standards. House Bill 7 passed unanimously in February. -
Climate Science: Republicans Fight for It, EPA Director Doesn’t Understand It
Opinion -Climate Change Weekly #163 Within the space of a week, we’ve seen the two extremes, abject ignorance and informed commentary, on the state of climate science from different branches of the national government. In late February, Sens. -
Yucca Mountain Declared Safe for Nuclear Waste Storage
Opinion -The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined it would be safe to operate a nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The NRC completed the last two volumes of its five-volume safety evaluation in January. -
Same Rationing, Different Name
Opinion -One of the key features of government-run health care is rationing through politics, whereby elected officials and unelected bureacurats get to decide, indirectly at least, how much health care people can have and when they can obtain it. -
Congresswoman Calls for New Safety Rules on Detergent
Opinion -Rep. Jackie Speier of California is proposing a bill directing the Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue new rules establishing safety standards for liquid detergent packets. -
Life is Good in St. Louis
Opinion -The headline line in the Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked "Are St. Louis Area's Home Prices too Low?” This is could not possibly have appeared describing any major metropolitan area of Australia, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom. -
Health Benefit Mandates Are Unnecessary
Opinion -There are probably more myths about health care public policy than anyone outside the mathematics department at MIT can put a number to. I recently ran across one of the more uninformed myths, one that has led to a great deal of bad public policy. -
Lazy for a Living: Why Some Millennials Never Need to Work Again
Opinion -My grandparents were a part of the “greatest generation” and my parents’ generation ushered in the modern technological era, but it’s my generation—popularly referred to as the “Millennials”— that will bear the distinct mark of being the first group of -
Groundwater Regulation Stays With States
Opinion -The U.S. Senate has rejected an effort to repeal the provision of the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempting gas drilling and extraction from federal requirements in the underground injection control program of the Safe Drinking Water Act. -
Education Savings Accounts Catching On in Additional States
Opinion -Education Savings Accounts were first approved in Arizona in 2012 as a statewide reform. An ESA program underwent a fast implementation process in Florida in 2014, where this year 1,600 students received funds. -
Debunking An Old Myth
Opinion -I occasionally run into people who express some variation of the argument "without benefit mandates on insurance companies, they'd sell policies that don't cover cancer. -
Illinois Lawmakers Propose Penny Tax on Candy, Soda
Opinion -After their idea met with overwhelming disapproval in 2014, two Chicago-area lawmakers are again attempting to impose sin taxes and licensing requirements on the sale of sugary snacks and drinks, purportedly to discourage people from satisfying their -
Merchants of Doubt a Huge Flop at the Box Office
Opinion -The invaluable site for movie buffs who are also interested in the box-office business of film is BoxOfficeMojo. That site reports that “Merchants of Doubt” has earned $23,300 in the four theaters in which it opened on Friday. -
Sloan Kettering Corrects E-Cigarette Study
Opinion -Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers, led by first-author Sarah Borderud, claimed on September 22, 2014, that e-cigarettes did not help cancer patients quit smoking (media story here). -
Governor’s Report: NY Schools Are Failing
Opinion -New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is responding to a report on his state’s failing public education system by seeking implementation of several new measures. -
Iowa Coalition: Reform Pensions Now, Avoid Pension Problems Later
Opinion -A grassroots coalition of activists is pressing Iowa lawmakers to begin work on reforming the state’s five public pension programs and eliminate those programs’ unfunded liabilities. -
Concerns Cloud Obama Colorado Canyon “Monument” Designation
Opinion -Bypassing Congress, the Obama administration designated three new areas as “National Monuments.”In February President Obama designated three new national monuments. -
CPS Officials Pressured to Administer PARCC Tests
Opinion -Chicago Public Schools officials announced they will administer the Common Core-aligned tests to all students, after attempting to limit the tests to a small group of students for the first year of testing. -
Even Obamacare Website Calls the Tax Penalty a ‘Fine’ and a ‘Fee’
Opinion -On June 28, 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts announced his vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate provision, siding with the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) liberal cohort to obtain a 5–4 vote in favor of the Obama administration in
