At a Pioneer Forum held March 18, 2004, Frederick (Rick) M. Hess, the author of a new book titled Common Sense School Reform, outlined his prescriptions for making schools more effective. Respondents were Mark Roosevelt, managing director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and an architect of the Commonwealth’s 1993 Education Reform Act, and David P. Driscoll, Massachusetts’ commissioner of education. The discussion was moderated by Charles Glenn, professor of educational policy at Boston University. Excerpts of each speaker’s remarks follow.

Massachusetts is home to the most restrictive state privatization law in the nation. Since the so-called Pacheco law was enacted in 1993, only six state services have been contracted out to private service providers, while similar efforts have dramatically expanded in other jurisdictions. A Pioneer Forum on competitive contracting was held to mark the release of a new White Paper “Competition and Goverment Services: Can Massachusetts Still Afford the Pacheco Law?” Speakers included two co-authors of the paper, Geoffrey Segal and Adrian Moore of the Reason Public Policy Institute, Senator Marc Pacheco, author of the law, John Parsons, general counsel and director of privatization for the state auditor’s office, and Charles Chieppo of Pioneer’s Shamie Center for Restructuring Government. The remarks of each are excerpted below.

Pioneer Institute partnered with the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation on a study finding the MBTA cannot afford any of its planned expansion projects without additional state funding. Speaking at a forum on the study’s release were Michael Widmer, MTF president; Charles Chieppo, director of the Shamie Center for Restructuring Government at Pioneer; Thomas Finneran, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; James Scanlon, the Commonwealth’s acting secretary of transportation; and David Luberoff, associate director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The remarks of each are excerpted below.

A recent Pioneer Institute White Paper examined the state of civic education in Massachusetts, comparing the performance of district, charter, and private— including parochial and secular private—schools in preparing students for responsible citizenship. To mark the study’s release, Pioneer sponsored a Forum with the author, David Campbell, a research fellow at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance. Commentary was provided by former Congressman Mickey Edwards, John Quincy Adams lecturer in legislative politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; Jay Greene, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute; and Diane Palmer, Massachusetts coordinator of “We the People” Center for Civic Education. The remarks of each are excerpted below

A recent Pioneer Forum titled “Build More or Manage Better? Subsidized Housing in Massachusetts” marked the release of a Pioneer White Paper of the same title. The paper’s co-author, Howard Husock, director of case studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School Government, summarized the study’s findings. Commentary was provided by Thomas M. Finneran, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; Aaron Gornstein, executive director of Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association; and Sandra B. Henriquez, administrator of the Boston Housing Authority. The remarks of each are excerpted below.

Pioneer Institute recently issued a White Paper examining its use in the Commonwealth. In conjunction with the Federalist Society, Pioneer held a Forum featuring the paper’s author, Michael Malamut of the New England Legal Foundation. Also speaking were Gideon Kanner, professor of law emeritus at Loyola University and a national authority on eminent domain; Jason Barshak, who as an Assistant Attorney General has defended the Commonwealth in civil ligitation stemming from eminent domain takings; and James Masterman, an attorney in private practice specializing in eminent domain cases. The following excerpts each’s remarks.

Electronic government—the far-reaching potential of the Internet to improve government services and enhance citizen outreach—was explored at a recent Pioneer Forum. Speakers were Massachusetts Secretary for Administration and Finance Stephen Crosby, a former high-technology business executive who is overseeing the Commonwealth’s “e-government” efforts, and Janet Caldow, executive director of the IBM Institute for Electronic Government, a resource for government in developing strategy, policy, and implementation of electronic services. An edited transcript of their presentations follows.

Jonathan Walters, senior correspondent at Governing magazine (www. governing.com), spoke September 20, 2000, at a Pioneer Forum in connection with the release of a White Paper he authored titled “Toward a High-Performance Workplace: Fixing Civil Service in Massachusetts.”

Dr. Jerome H. Grossman spoke June 12, 2000, at a Pioneer Forum in connection with the release of a Pioneer White Paper he authored entitled “The Economic History of Health Care in Massachusetts 1990-2000.” The paper explores the economic forces shaping health care in Massachusetts today and offers market-based recommendations. Dr. Grossman served as Chairman and CEO of New England Medical Center from 1979 to 1995. Currently a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Chairman and CEO of Lion Gate Management Corporation, a health care information technology and consulting firm , he was named to the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences in 1983 and served as Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute in 1996.

Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, delivered the third annual Lovett C. Peters Lecture in Public Policy on April 4, 2000. A provocative speaker, Dr. Williams is widely known as the author of a syndicated newspaper column and a radio talk show guest host.

On January 20, 2000, Pioneer Institute sponsored a Forum on a proposal for charter colleges, publicly funded institutions of higher education managed independent of most state controls. In a Pioneer Institute White Paper, two prominent academicians argue that such operational freedom may enable institutions to operate more efficiently and produce higher quality educational results.

On December 3, 1999, Pioneer Institute sponsored a Forum on the impact of school choice programs in Massachusetts. The forum focused on an update to a 1997 study on the interdistrict choice program, which permits students to attend participating out-of-district schools.