Our 2021 annual report to you— our donors and friends— carries two clear messages.
First, the pandemic has not deterred Pioneer from significant victories in our strategic focus areas— education, healthcare, and economic opportunity.
Nationally, Pioneer followed up on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2020 Espinoza decision by working on the ground with local partners in 10 states. All 10 passed laws expanding or establishing new educational choice programs. Pioneer’s life sciences policy team was essential in the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary’s recommendation to avoid discriminating against the elderly and disabled when it comes to access to treatments.
In Massachusetts, Pioneer’s efforts yielded a state settlement with Catholic and Jewish Day schools, new investment in vocational-technical schools, permanent telehealth flexibility, removal of bureaucratic barriers for thousands of physicians, modernization of sales-tax collections, and more.
Pioneer’s government transparency work led to improvements in the state’s reporting on Covid cases and deaths in long-term care facilities. Importantly, we provided thought leadership on the constitutional tax amendment that will be on the ballot in November 2022.
Second, under our five-year strategic plan, we are transforming Pioneer, making big institutional changes to enhance Pioneer’s impact locally and nationally in 2022 and beyond. Understanding the challenges ahead, we are redefining the think tank model, developing new capacities, including the creation of PioneerLegal, a new 501(c)(3) public interest law firm focusing on education, government transparency, and economic freedom.
More institutional change is underway. We are
This institutional capacity-building will make Pioneer more effective and better positioned to drive strategic policy improvements in our priority areas.
In 2022 and beyond we will see continued growth across America in our education and life sciences initiatives, areas where the Institute has a comparative advantage.
None of this work or impact is possible without you. We are grateful for your trust and investment. We are excited by the opportunities for impact that our new capacities make possible. We are building for impact now and in the future, and we ask for your continued – and we hope, enhanced – generosity in 2022.
Pioneer Institute presents its 2021 Annual Report,
“New Capacities, Accelerating Impact.”
2021 Annual Report: “New Capacities, Accelerating Impact” by Pioneer Institute on Scribd
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Publications: Research Papers, Policy Briefs, Testimony, & Event Transcripts
Media Hits: Articles, Interviews, & Editorials in Newspapers, Trade Journals, TV, & Radio in Massachusetts & Across the Nation
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America’s kids deserve a high-quality education that equips them for a successful life: well-educated teachers and learning environments that meet them where they are and keep them intellectually engaged, whether in-person or through online learning. In 2021, inspired by the landmark Espinoza decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, Pioneer helped advance a follow-on case, Carson v. Makin, and tax-credit scholarships that make private and religiously affiliated schools affordable for hundreds of thousands of low-income families. Pioneer also promoted Catholic, Jewish, and other private schools, balanced history and civics instruction, as well as vocational-technical education, an important public choice and workforce training option.
In 2021, Pioneer highlighted the benefits of religious education, publishing a book on Massachusetts Catholic schools’ success and distributing a state policy toolkit across the country on programs to expand access to private schools. The Institute also supported the plaintiffs in the Carson v. Makin Supreme Court school-tuition case, as well as special needs students denied federal funding because they attend religious schools.
Highlighting Catholic Schools
During National Catholic Schools Week, Pioneer launched a book, A Vision of Hope: Catholic Schooling in Massachusetts, co- edited by Pioneer senior fellow Cara Candal, to help promote the benefits of Catholic education in other states. Pioneer advertised the book through webinars in partnership with National Catholic Educational Association, Catholic University of America, and Thomas More College featuring nationally syndicated columnist and Pope St. John Paul II biographer George Weigel, U.S. Supreme Court plaintiff Kendra Espinoza, and Boston Catholic Schools Superintendent Tom Carroll; traditional media coverage in First Things, EWTN, Catholic World Report, Catholic News Service, The Pilot and RealClearPolicy; and social media campaigns garnering 2 million impressions. Against the tide of Catholic school closures across the country, these schools have increased by 4,000 students in Boston, and by 14 percent across Massachusetts.
The Court’s
willingness to hear
this Maine case…
holds the promise
of furthering our
framers’ original
vision of schooling
firmly grounded in
religious liberty.”– Jamie Gass, Associated Press
Aided by Pioneer’s research…
Advancing the Rights and Liberties of Religious Parents
The landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision, Espinoza v. Department of Revenue, dealt a major blow to Blaine amendment barriers to school choice in 40 states, and the Court is set to hear a similar case, Carson v. Makin, brought by parents in Maine who were denied state tuition assistance for local, faith-based
schools. Pioneer filed an amicus brief which has played a key role in
developing the fact base for the plaintiffs’ counsel at the Institute for Justice, and helped publicize it through its podcast, a virtual policy briefing with the plaintiff’s lead counsel, and media appearances in RealClearPolicy and the Associated Press.
Pioneer is also working with Catholic and Jewish Day school leaders, actively seeking plaintiffs to litigate on Massachusetts’ special education laws and regulations, as state officials continue to use anti-aid amendments to discriminate against religious school students and families. Pioneer’s research estimated that up to $300 million in federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding was improperly withheld from these schools over several years. The Institute joined forces with religious groups on follow-up research, paired with a webinar, that revealed similar behavior in other districts across the country. This information and advocacy helped these Massachusetts schools win a $3.8 million settlement.
The “Year of School Choice”
2021 has been called the “Year of School Choice,” after nearly 22 states passed laws to expand or establish private choice programs, including vouchers, education tax credits, and education savings accounts.
Pioneer is proud of its role in that wave, with the launch of an education tax credit scholarship toolkit, authored by EdChoice’s Jason Bedrick. Paired with an animated explainer video, website, and social media campaign garnering nearly 200,000 views and 2.5 million impressions across all platforms, it was targeted at policymakers, advocates, and church groups in ten of the states that won legislative victories. Bedrick was interviewed about the toolkit in The 74, a national education policy publication; and it was featured in RealClearEducation and WGBH.
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Editorial Staff2020-02-28 10:42:542023-08-26 14:08:15Citizen Stewart on Changing the K-12 Education Power StructureInvesting in Our Future Workforce: Vocational-Technical Education
Since 2007, Pioneer has supported expanding vocational- technical schools in Massachusetts, and PioneerEducation director Jamie Gass was the 2009 recipient of an award from the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators (MAVA). In 2022, the Institute will publish a book co-edited with MAVA and a policy toolkit aiming to export lessons from the Bay State’s nation-leading voc-tech schools to strengthen both school choice and workforce development in key industries post-COVID.
Pioneer released a pair of reports, covered by The Boston Globe and featured in RealClearEducation, recommending improvements at Boston’s only voc-tech school, Madison Park. The reports were cited by candidates in Boston’s mayoral election. Pioneer also published a Commonwealth magazine op-ed touting voc-techs’ innovative
approaches to address pandemic-related restrictions, and their 2-percent enrollment increase at a time when public schools saw a
5-percent decline. Pioneer also developed an interactive online hub for families, distributed through a social media campaign that has generated over a million social media impressions. Governor Baker recently announced an additional $18 million over the next three years for expansion of vocational education efforts across the Commonwealth
Civics 2.0
Contentious debates across America about history instruction in classrooms signal an urgent need for rigorous, balanced content in our shared civic past and founding principles. Pioneer is proud of our decades-long initiative to strengthen history and civics content through public forums, student essay contests, opinion polls, research, and media appearances. More recently, Pioneer has produced podcasts covering every major American era, with guests such as Pulitzer Prize winners Gordon Wood and David Hackett Fischer, and has published op-eds on the best (and worst) approaches to civics content. Pioneer’s Jamie Gass served as a panelist in online events with FreedomWorks that reached 50,000 viewers, a student event at Boston College, and as a judge in the We the People national student competition. He also curated hundreds of curriculum materials on history and government, promoted online and via email. As the nation grappled with critical race theory debates, Pioneer held a virtual policy briefing on race relations with AEI Senior Fellow Gerard Robinson and produced a podcast episode with Robert Woodson, Sr., of The 1776 Unites project.
Patients should be at the center of every aspect of America’s healthcare system. Pioneer’s efforts aim to increase access to life-saving therapies, enable more convenient and affordable care, and highlight accurate information about public health risks. In 2021, Pioneer expanded its Life Sciences Initiative— which will further expand in 2022— advancing policies at the national, state, and local levels to encourage faster development of cutting-edge treatments for widespread and rare diseases. The Institute also helped enhance telehealth during and well beyond the pandemic. And its scholars’ work prompted state officials to provide more accurate reporting about Covid prevalence, especially in eldercare facilities.
Aided by Pioneer’s research…
“The disconcerting aspect of ICER’s report is the authors’ obvious lack of knowledge about how businesses work. This is particularly troubling because ICER is based in Boston, the most important cluster of life sciences companies in the world.”
– William Smith, in RealClearHealth
Biomedical innovations are transforming and extending human lives, and the U.S. leads the world in incubating new treatments for cancer, chronic illnesses, and rare diseases, as well as Covid-19 vaccine development. Pioneer’s work in the life sciences aims to support the policy environment that would foster these advancements, such as the elimination of regulatory barriers to future innovations and reimbursement options that drive innovation.
In 2021, Dr. William Smith published a report on the impact of cost-effectiveness methodologies such as the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) on cancer patients. The study generated nearly half a million social media impressions, largely among Washington, D.C. policy and healthcare influencer audiences. He also gave a briefing on Capitol Hill, and presented before the American Society
Across America, runaway inflation, persistent unemployment, the Covid virus, and governments’ often-inconsistent responses to these challenges are creating economic uncertainty. Small businesses struggle to reopen at full capacity. Larger firms face supply-chain problems, material shortages, and more. Families, especially those living at or near the poverty line, are hardest-hit by spiraling prices. Against this backdrop, here in Massachusetts, union-backed special interests have convinced the state legislature to place questions on the November ballot that would raise taxes on job creators, family businesses, and many retirees by 80 percent, and place new restrictions on employers of gig workers— both of which would be inimical to job growth. Pioneer Institute has taken the lead to educate the public about the negative impacts of these measures, especially on average citizens and disadvantaged communities. As we advance these efforts in 2022, especially as public attention focuses on these important debates, we remain deeply grateful for your support of our scholars’ work.
A Leading Voice Opposing the Graduated Income Tax
The graduated income tax proposal is a top issue facing the Commonwealth in 2022. Pioneer is working proactively to counter proponents’ false “tax fairness” narrative, and prevent a return to “Taxachusetts.”
In 2021, Pioneer drove the topic into the spotlight, releasing 17 reports by Pioneer research director Greg Sullivan and researcher Andrew Mikula, analyzing the measure’s harmful impact. These reports raised concerns about wealth migration to low-tax states, exacerbated by increased worker mobility; lessons from high-tax states that are shedding jobs; and misleading claims that a ‘yes’ vote will lead to significant new revenues for education and transportation.
This extensive research was released with infographics and videos that generated nearly five million social media impressions. The Institute submitted public testimony to the legislature as it was preparing to vote on adding the question to the ballot. Pioneer’s research and related activities earned over 500 media mentions, with op-eds featured in The Boston Globe, RealClearPolicy, The Chicago Tribune, and all major Greater Boston radio and TV outlets. Videos from a virtual policy briefing featuring tax experts from Stanford and Ernst & Young and moderated by the editor of The Boston Business Journal earned over 250,000 video views across Pioneer’s platforms. Pioneer also launched a new Massachusetts- focused web and social media presence, Taxachusetts, which built a healthy following of deeply-committed citizens and reached nearly 1.5 million Bay State residents.
“With billions of dollars already migrating to New Hampshire under the Commonwealth’s current 5 percent income tax, imagine the wealth drain that would ensue were Massachusetts to adopt a top rate of 9 percent.” – JIM STERGIOS, THE BOSTON GLOBE
Getting Back to Work
Reliable and affordable transportation, whether on roads or rails, is essential to economic recovery and growth. Pioneer continues to advocate for a public transit system that operates efficiently and provides a safe and reliable commuting experience for the Bay State’s 1.3 million riders.
In 2021, after Pioneer released a statement objecting to major proposed service cuts, the MBTA board deferred voting on them. Two Pioneer studies published in 2019 recommended how to address the T’s chronic inability to spend available state and federal capital funds, noting that the system had left more than 40 percent of capital funds unspent from 2015–18. The MBTA has since implemented many of Pioneer’s ideas, and capital delivery has tripled.
Road congestion in the Bay State has long been an obstacle to attracting and retaining qualified workers, and will likely return to pre-Covid levels. Pioneer’s Mary Connaughton has been a leader in the effort to ensure that planned changes to the Allston I-90 Interchange have the least impact on drivers. In 2021, Pioneer won a victory when the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) reversed its original position and decided to move forward with an all-at-grade design for the “throat” area, as Connaughton has been recommending for two years in research, op-eds in The Boston Globe and regional outlets, television and radio appearances, public testimony to MassDOT, and open letters to the Governor and other top policymakers.
Helping Hardest-Hit Industries
Pioneer’s 2020 studies on hardest-hit industries and sales tax collection included dozens of specific recommendations aimed at helping businesses in retail, restaurant, hospitality and other sectors recover from the pandemic shutdown. Many of those ideas came to fruition in 2021. Governor Baker included a provision in the $626 million economic development package that limits commissions that companies such as Grubhub and DoorDash can charge restaurants. He announced a plan to invest in broadband internet in underserved areas with low-income residents. He also signed into law a modernization that will speed up the timetable for sales tax
remittance and collection from large businesses, at a time when state sales tax revenue was plummeting. In addition, Pioneer called for the legislature to stop delaying implementation of the charitable tax deduction that was supposed to go into effect in 2020. The Governor relaunched an effort to keep the legislature from again deferring it.
Massachusetts voters will decide in November whether to formally classify “gig workers,” such as Uber and Lyft drivers, as independent contractors. Thousands are employed in the Commonwealth, many from immigrant communities, and they enjoy the flexibility to make their own schedule. Pioneer will work to support them and educate the public about the impact of this measure.
Bay State citizens and taxpayers want a government that shares their priorities, responds to their needs, and spends their hard-earned dollars wisely. In 2021, Pioneer continued its long tradition of serving as a crucial resource to policymakers, the media, and the public; holding officials accountable for their decisions; and exposing wasteful spending and abuse of power. Whether it was welcoming Boston’s new mayor, unearthing a legislative pension giveaway, or promoting alternatives to federal loan forgiveness, Pioneer informed the conversation, with useful data and solid solutions.
Protecting the Public Trust
When the Massachusetts legislature quietly forwarded a proposal for a pension credit to “essential workers,” Pioneer swiftly responded, with a statement and a report revealing the true costs and comparing it to other states’ practices. A pension credit, unlike a one-time bonus, rewards workers based on their compensation and seniority rather than their Covid risk exposure. It also would add nearly $2 billion in liabilities to public pension funds. The vaguely worded eligibility standards could apply to all public employees, even if they worked only one day in the office starting the week prior to the Covid shutdown. The report received coverage in Forbes, RealClearPolicy, The Boston Herald, The Howie Carr Show, Bond Buyer, and WBUR.
After over a decade of advocacy for reforms to public records laws, including a 2016 open letter to Governor Baker urging him to remove his office’s exemption, Secretary of State William Galvin recently filed legislation that would accomplish this. Pioneer has requested that he extend it to the legislature and the administrative operations of the judiciary.
Aided by Pioneer’s research…
Pioneer is proud to present a new vaccine tracker, the newest tool in our COVID-19 tracking project. Pioneer distilled the vaccination data down to those who are either fully vaccinated or partially vaccinated, by all the demographic categories published by the DPH. Use the new tool below to compare rates among groups, by municipality and by county. We will update the data every week. Click here to visit our COVID 19 Vaccine Tracker.
With so many deaths occurring at long-term care facilities, in Massachusetts and other states, Pioneer has added a new COVID-19 tracker, with data from the state’s weekly Public Health Report. This data includes any nursing home, rehabilitation center or other long-term care facility with 2+ known COVID-19 cases and facility-reported deaths. This tracker includes the number of licensed beds, ranges of case numbers, deaths, and deaths per bed for 320 facilities. Pioneer will update the tracker weekly. Click here to visit our Long-Term Care Facility COVID Tracker.
View the count & rate (per 100,000) of confirmed COVID-19 Cases in Massachusetts by City/Town, updated each Thursday. Click here to use our Mapping COVID19 tool.
Pioneer’s new tool, called “COVID Unemployment Tracker,” provides an interactive look at how economic shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are affecting jobs and lives across the state of Massachusetts. Click here to use our COVID19 Unemployment Tracker.
Find out how your local public schools perform and compare them with districts across the state. Click here to visit Mass Report Cards.
Find out what state employees earn, how much state retirees are receiving in pension benefits and what the payments are to the people and companies that do business with the state. Click here to visit Mass Open Books.
Explore job and business trends across Massachusetts, geographically and by industry. Click here to visit Mass Economix.
Ranking the states on Statements of Financial Interest (public financial disclosures). Click here to use our Financial Disclosure Tool.
Are you a local official that wants a way to benchmark your community against its peers or are you a resident that want to know more about your town’s finances? The information you need will be at your fingertips in just a few clicks. Click here to Mass Analysis.
Why re-invent the wheel? Visit this innovative clearinghouse where best municipal practices are shared by local leaders and thinkers. Our document archive may have just the answer you’ve been looking for! Click here to visit Muni Share.
Learn how much debt your community’s public pension system is saddled with and how many years it will take to repay it. We’ve graded each of the state’s 105 public pension systems – what grade did your town get? Click here to visit Mass Pensions.
Learn how the MBTA’s performance stacks up against its peer transit agencies. Which agency is the most efficient? Do some modes of transit perform better than others? How can the MBTA improve? Find out here. Click here to visit MBTA Analysis.
Recommendations for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu
Pioneer executive director Jim Stergios sent an open letter to newly elected Mayor Michelle Wu, offering to serve as a “constructive partner in generating ideas, sharing data and policy experience,” and outlining the Institute’s top priorities, with a focus on turning around the Boston Public Schools. In the run-up to the election, Jamie Gass and Pioneer Senior Fellow Charlie Chieppo published an op-ed in Commonwealth magazine calling attention to the school district’s deplorable condition, noting that “over 30 percent of the system’s students attend schools ranked in the bottom 10 percent statewide.” They pointed to a 2020 audit that prompted calls for state intervention, and demanded reforms to improve accountability.
Chieppo also appeared on WBUR’s Radio Boston and partnered on an op- ed with Cicero Institute’s Judge Glock, to address the controversial “Mass and Cass” homeless encampments that were growing into a humanitarian crisis. Their policy solutions included expanding access to treatment facilities for those with mental illness and drug addiction, and endorsed Mayor Wu’s decision to enforce the public camping ban.
PioneerLegal
In 2022, the Institute is launching a separate 501c3, PioneerLegal, New England’s premier nonprofit, non-partisan, public interest law firm that defends and promotes educational options, accountable government, and economic opportunity through legal research, amicus briefs, and litigation. PioneerLegal will be a powerful addition to the policy landscape— and an innovative and attractive venue for legal professionals across the region.
Pioneer understands the urgency of communicating its message to ever broader audiences.
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