Pioneer Research

On July 25, 1996, Pioneer Institute held a forum that focused on the state and direction of the Boston Public School System. The forum was co-sponsored by the Boston Private Industry Council. Our panelists represented viewpoints that ranged from a positive appraisal of the city's current school reforms, to the opinion that only a fundamental restructuring of the system can bring real progress. Though the panelists have obvious policy differences, they share one characteristic: each is a Boston parent.

On May 30, 1996, Pioneer Institute board member and former Secretary for Administration and Finance Peter Nessen, now a special advisor to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on health care issues, addressed a Pioneer Forum about the then- proposed merger between Boston City Hospital and University Hospital.

On April 19, 1996, Pioneer Institute held a forum to preview our new book, Bilingual Education in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes. For 25 years, the Commonwealth has mandated a single approach to teaching students with limited English proficiency (LEP) in Massachusetts public schools, called transitional bilingual education (TBE), despite the fact that there is virtually no reliable evidence to support its effectiveness.

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.