THE PIONEER BLOG

Tom Nash

Basic information about IEP access lacking in Massachusetts public schools

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Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), geared at students whose educational needs fall outside the norm, are crucial to the academic success of tens of thousands of Massachusetts children. But because IEPs can be costly for public school systems, students on the cusp of need can easily fall through the cracks. If parents suspect their child needs an IEP to perform to his or her potential and the school has not raised the issue, the parents can request that the school district perform an evaluation.  If the district finds the child to be within norms, no IEP is proposed.  Parents can then get an independent evaluation at a cost of about $2,000 or can challenge the school to pay for it, but […]

Sandra Stotsky

Wanted: Internationally Benchmarked Standards in English, Mathematics, and Science (by Sandra Stotsky)

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The many flaws in Common Core’s standards are finally beginning to be discussed in state after state, especially the damaging expectation that all American high school students should be prepared for college, whether or not they are willing or able to do the reading that college coursework requires.  The hidden problem with such an expectation is that it can be achieved on tests of college-readiness only when empty skills (e.g., find the main idea) are applied to non-demanding texts and when performance tasks are subjectively evaluated (e.g., how well does Jamie show “critical thinking” or collaborate with peers when solving a problem). That is why Common Core’s standards were intentionally not internationally benchmarked.  Other countries expect “college-ready” students to know […]

Joshua Archambault

Oregon Medicaid Results: Half Full or Missing the Point?

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Much as been written this past week about the second year results of the Oregon Medicaid lottery experiment. (See Avik Roy’s post at Forbes for a clear and full background.) I believe the results from this study will drive many future decisions about Medicaid and how it is structured given the methodological uniqueness of the program. While the results have largely been spun in the direction of how one views the ACA, the real debate in the Medicaid program should be how to best use public dollars in order to assist low-income families and the disabled. From my perspective, it is not a matter solely of the amount of money being spent, I (along with Avik) would be happy to continue spending if we knew we […]

Jamie Gass

Anti-Common Core News Round-up (May 3): Daily Caller, Heritage, AFT, Ed Week, Wash Times, IN, MO, NY, WI, ID, TN, AZ

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As opposition to Common Core national  education standards picks up steam across the country, with more grassroots activism and movement among state and national political leaders, we’ll do our best to bring you the latest news on this front. See today’s round-up below: DAILY CALLER: Common Core a common enemy for some conservatives, liberals HERITAGE: Indiana Reconsiders Common Core AFT: Weingarten sparks dialogue on Common Core standards   Education Week: Paul Horton takes down Common Core advocates’ “conspiracy theory” sound bite   IN: Pence Says He Won’t Prejudge Common Core, But Favors Pause   Washington Times: Critics join common cause to block Common Core school standards   MO: Critics question Common Core education standards at St. Louis County meeting   MO: […]

Editorial Staff

What Anti-Common Core Activism in Tennessee Portends

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Across the country, from Florida to Michigan, Colorado to Alabama, and many states in between, legislators and governors are taking steps to withdraw from Common Core. Nationally, US Senators Ted Cruz, Chuck Grassley, Rand Paul and others are working to de-fund it, citing federal law prohibiting the government from directing education standards and testing at the state level. Opposition is growing among a broad spectrum.  Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, the second largest teachers union in the country, said earlier this week: “The Common Core is in trouble. There is a serious backlash in lots of different ways, on the right and on the left.” On Tuesday, Pioneer Institute participated in a rally in Tennessee, a public hearing about the major […]

Sandra Stotsky

A stress on informational reading in the English class will not develop “critical” thinking (by Sandra Stotsky)

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One of the sales pitches for Common Core’s English language arts standards is that a heavy diet of informational reading in the English class will increase “critical” or analytical thinking. But how are teachers and parents to know that black is white and freedom is slavery?   Reading researchers know there is absolutely no research to support the idea that increased study of “literary non-fiction” or “informational” texts in the English class will increase students’ level of analytical thinking.  No one tells us how reading “informational” texts could necessarily stimulate “critical” thinking better than literary reading–or stimulate it at all.  In fact, the opposite outcome is likelier: reducing the study of complex literature in the secondary English class to make way […]

Sandra Stotsky

Do “cold” readings of our historical documents “level the playing field”? (by Sandra Stotsky)

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Two of the many bizarre ideas that the “chief architect” of Common Core’s English language arts standards has mandated in our “national standards” or told teachers outright are the notion that teachers should do “cold” readings of historical documents like the Gettysburg Address and that doing so “levels the playing field.”  Both ideas suggest the thinking of someone who has never taught in K-12.   Worse yet, they contribute to historical illiteracy. Aside from the fact that context-free reading was not developed or promoted by Yale English professors Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren as a reading technique for historical documents, no history or English teacher before the advent of Common Core would approach the study of a seminal historical document […]

Joshua Archambault

ACA’s Alice in Wonderland Twist: HHS Unilateral Delay of Regulations

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A recent decision by HHS illustrates the arbitrary nature by which some implementation decisions are being made at CMS while highlighting the problem of a top-down approach in Obamacare. After months of small businesses anxiety in surrounding the impact of fewer rating factors due to an ACA mandated one-size-fits all policy, the Federal government recently pulled a piecemeal delayed implementation of the regulations out of thin air. (Background on the rating issue can be found in this post). One is now left to wonder if there is a legal rationale for such a decision, and begs the question if other states should be making similar appeals to HHS to forestall regulations that will spike premiums for many younger individuals 30-100 […]

Jim Stergios

Upholding the Spirit of Boston

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We at Pioneer are thankful that our loved ones are safe.  That may not be great solace to our great city and to the celebration of the revolutionary spirit that we all hold dear — and that was dirtied on Marathon Monday.  This attack caused death and injury in a way that shocks us all. For the foreseeable future, the attack will change Boston and our Patriot Day reenactments of defining battles and the ‘shot heard round the world,’ as Emerson later put it.  We will see more police, and more troops, patrolling the course and the final destination — we will see perhaps fewer runners. A day after the horror, we begin to focus on understanding who, how and […]

Jim Stergios

Open the Boston taxicab “market” to competition

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The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team has done a great job uncovering the Kafka-esque maze of half-million-dollar medallions, bribes, and indentured servitude that we call the Boston taxicab “market.”  Oddly, little has been said in that paper’s pages on how to fix things, with the exception of a good letter, noting, INSTEAD OF tinkering with the medallion system of taxi regulation, Boston should junk it and create entirely new regulations that foster highly competitive, innovative, state-of-the-art taxi services and Jeff Jacoby’s wonderful piece that opened with SO THE mayor of Boston, channeling his inner Captain Renault, is shocked — shocked! — to find that Boston’s taxi industry is a rigged and pitiless racket. Yesterday’s Boston Herald included a smart piece by Con Chapman, which […]

Joshua Archambault

Untold Story of Small Biz Delay under ACA, Just Déjà Vu from Massachusetts

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The revelation that the Obama Administration will delay the roll out of the “choice option” for small business until 2015 came as a huge surprise to many, including Joe Klein at Time, however anyone familiar with the Massachusetts experiment will feel a strong sense of déjà vu. In a 2010 paper I authored for the Heritage Foundation, I documented the delayed and failed effort by the Massachusetts public exchange (Connector) to offer real choice and savings to small businesses. My report suggested the experience served as a warning to other states. I suppose I should have targeted  it toward the federal government instead. Small companies should be even more uncertain of the law now that the cost–saving mechanism they were […]

Joshua Archambault

Will Mass Unmerge Insurance Marketplace Because of ACA?

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I have written numerous times about the impact that the ACA will have on small businesses in Massachusetts, and the predicted “extreme premium increases.” According to a recent InsideHealthPolicy.com story, the state is discussing unmerging the individual and non-group markets to avoid this unintended consequence of the ACA. States had to let CMS’ Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight know by Friday (March 29) if they plan to merge their small group and individual insurance markets, with state sources and policy experts indicating that the vast majority of states will keep the markets separate, at least in the first year. Merging the two markets would create more complexities and potential market destabilization during an already difficult implementation process, sources suggest. A source in […]

Mary Connaughton

What would you do with a half-billion dollars?

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The next time you’re watching those dollars ring up at the pump, think about this: for every gallon you pump, the federal government gets 18.4 cents and the state government gets 21 cents for gasoline taxes. Did you know you’re also taxed another 2.5 cents per gallon to reimburse costs related to underground storage tank removal? Based on the state’s own estimate, that 2.5 cents translates to about $75 million per year.  With the 2.5 cent tax in place for the last 10 years, that’s about $750 million collected. The department of revenue claims that only about $209 million of the tax collected so far went towards clean-up. Is the difference a blank check for the State House? If so, […]

Jim Stergios

The state’s economic strategy is selling us short

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Megan Woolhouse’s piece entitled “Shut Out” in the Boston Globe told the story of several long-term unemployed Massachusetts residents.  It was powerful in part because of the writing and the reality of people who are doing their best to keep looking for work, but also because the story so often goes untold in the press. Even after many announcements about how well we are doing as a state, we have to keep in mind that Massachusetts is still 100,000 jobs short of even our 2001 employment levels.  If the Commonwealth had grown at the same pace as the rest of the US since 1990, we would have 450,000 more jobs in the state; we’re currently above 3 million total, so it’s a […]

Editorial Staff

150 Years of Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom

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This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, American historical texts whose significance far exceeds their immediate practical impact, fundamentally transforming the moral purpose of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863 in the third year of the war (though it was announced shortly after the Battle of Antietam in September, 1862) states: “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” [message_box title=”Join Us on April […]