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Military-run schools lead every U.S. state in NAEP scores and even outperform educational juggernauts abroad—despite half of their students living at the poverty line. “Lessons from Military-Run Schools: America’s Secret Weapon in Education” argues that, rather than embracing new fads and experimental programs, American public schools ought to be studying the DoDEA playbook. 

Researchers are predicting revenue shortfalls for the City of Boston due to the collapse in office values. Boston’s budget continues to grow, making it crucial to understand how revenue will keep up.

The gap between the energy Massachusetts produces and the amount it consumes results in a reliance on out-of-state energy sources, making the Commonwealth vulnerable to price volatility and supply disruptions. While consumer prices continue to rise, clean energy production provides an avenue for the state to be more energy self-sufficient.

Twenty years ago, saying that Louisiana and Mississippi had something to teach Massachusetts about education would have given rise to laughter. Well, it’s no longer a laughing matter. After years during which Massachusetts was celebrated as a national leader in education, we...

At first glance, Massachusetts appears to be a national model for criminal justice reform, boasting both the nation’s lowest incarceration rate and a low crime rate. However, a deeper look at the numbers in US DataLabs reveals a surprising paradox: Massachusetts also has one of the highest rates of life sentences in the country—and leads the nation in the percentage of life sentences without parole. 

A system that offers voters limited electoral choice has the potential to undermine democracy. When candidates don’t face primary opponents or general election challengers, it is harder to hold them accountable to the will of voters. The lack of political competition can have broader implications: when compromise becomes scarce, governance suffers.

Two major education provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), signed into law on July 4, 2025, garnered a lot of ink and debate—a federal School Choice Tax Credit and an excise tax on the investment income of private universities with large endowments.

As Steven Wilson argues in his new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, “central to a liberal education is the pursuit of truth, however elusive.” Indeed, the quest for truth, and knowledge of it, is enshrined in the slogans of most universities, including my own—the University of Chicago—as a reminder of our purpose. It seems absurd to suggest otherwise, to propose educating students in anything but rationality, logic, and ultimately, truth; but absurdity has taken hold in education.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal policy sought to stabilize the economy and job market. Today we still see the effects on public employment, where some states have experienced recovery at differing rates.

What is the relationship between public transportation usage and CO2 emissions in Massachusetts? To investigate this question, this blog uses a peer group of the only nine states with over 100 million total public transport trips in 2023, which are referred to as ‘high transport states’ throughout the blog.