Happy New Year from Pioneer Institute

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Milly Arbaje-Thomas, President & CEO of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO) and Roger Hatch, co-author of Pioneer’s report, METCO Funding: Understanding Massachusetts’ Voluntary School Desegregation Program.

Pioneer Institute projects that the state will refund approximately $3.2 billion to taxpayers due to a state law sponsored by Citizens for Limited Taxation and voted on by taxpayers in 1986 that caps the amount of revenue the state can collect in any given year.

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Rafael Mangual, Manhattan Institute senior fellow, about his newly released book, Criminal (In)Justice, examining where crime is occurring in the U.S., what types of crimes those in the prison systems have committed, and the tradeoffs faced by society when considering defunding the police and reducing prison populations. 

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Ilya Somin, author and George Mason Law professor, about the newly released report on all court challenges to the 2020 presidential election entitled, Lost, Not Stolen, exploring what its authors intended to achieve, what its readers can learn from its findings, and whether such intra-party scrutiny can serve to reassure voters that their concerns about election integrity have had their day in court.

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar, author, and senior fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, about the changing makeup of the court, and how this term’s most high-profile decisions reveal the judicial philosophies that comprise the current bench.

Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of Massachusetts business leaders think business associates will leave the state if a constitutional amendment appearing on the November ballot to hike taxes is successful, according to a survey conducted by Pioneer Institute.

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Arif Panju, a managing attorney with the Institute for Justice and co-counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court school choice case, Carson v. Makin; and David Carson, the lead plaintiff. Panju shares the key legal contours of Carson v. Makin and the potential impact of the Court’s decision in favor of the plaintiffs.

This week on “The Learning Curve," Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Kerry McDonald talk with Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He shares his background working with curriculum expert E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who has emphasized the importance of academic content knowledge in K-12 education as well as civic education to develop active participants in our democracy. Pondiscio explains some of the findings of his book, How the Other Half Learns, on New York’s Success Academy charter schools network.

A new study published by Pioneer Institute finds that issuing pension obligation bonds (POBs) to refinance $360 million of the MBTA Retirement Fund’s (MBTARF’s) $1.3 billion unfunded pension liability would only compound the T’s already serious financial risks.