Blog

On January 31, 1996, Pioneer Institute Executive Director James A. Peyser delivered an address to the Boston Economic Club in which he proposed radical reforms to the structure of public education. After 30 years of stagnation and decline, only fundamental structural change can bring about lasting improvement in public education.

On January 11, 1996, Mackinac Center for Public Policy President Lawrence W. Reed addressed a Pioneer Forum on the course of education reform in Michigan.

On November 27, 1995, Professor James Q. Wilson delivered the keynote address at a dinner to honor the winners of Pioneer Institute's fifth annual Better Government Competition. In his address, Professor Wilson discussed the problems of illegitimacy and proposed that young, pregnant, unmarried girls who wish to establish an independent household at public expense be given this support only on the condition that they live in a family shelter or group home managed under private auspices, including religious groups.

In our November 1995 Policy Dialogue, "Responses to a Harvard Study on School Choice: Is It a Study at All?" we gathered nine school choice experts to critique a draft manuscript of Who Chooses, Who Loses? Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of School Choice, edited by Harvard Professors Richard Elmore, Gary Orfield, and Bruce Fuller.

On August 3, 1995, Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld delivered an address to a Pioneer Institute Forum in which he announced a massive downsizing and restructuring review of state government. In the following pages, Pioneer Institute has reproduced an edited transcript of the speech. My hat is off to Pioneer for sponsoring this delightful event. It's extremely generous of you to even let me in the door. Charlie Baker, Steve Wilson, Jim Peyser -- I make a point of stealing somebody from Pioneer every chance I get.

In August 1995, Pioneer Institute hosted a roundtable discussion on welfare reform in Massachusetts. The roundtable was held as a preamble to an upcoming book by Joe Loconte on the role of community organizations in the provision of social services.

A draft of a book entitled School Choice: The Cultural Logic of Families, the Political Rationality of Institutions, soon to be published by Teachers College Press, is receiving a lot of attention in new papers and in education circles- due to a widely circulated Harvard press release.

Pioneer Institute recently organized a roundtable for school officials to discuss their experiences with inter-district public school choice. The participants exchanged view s on the current state of the choice program in Massachusetts.

On May 23, 1995, a Pioneer Institute Forum addressed the debate currently raging over the proposed construction of a combined sports/ convention facility, or "megaplex," in Boston.

On January 23, 1995, Pioneer Institute Academic Advisory Board member, Professor Brigitte Berger, testified in Washington, D.C., before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight regarding welfare reform.