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Competition in Education: An Update of School Choice in Massachusetts

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Author(s): — Publication date: 2000-01-01 Category: Education Abstract: Excerpts from the Pioneer Forum marking the release of Pioneer’s White Paper “Competition in Education: A 1999 Update of Interdistrict Choice“

Baker-Levy Smackdown, Part Two

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Paul Levy runs Beth Israel, an academic medical center (and a good blog in his spare time). Charlie Baker runs Harvard Pilgrim, one of the state’s largest health insurers. They’ve chatted online from time to time and their latest exchange covers a few of the hot topics in healthcare. Charlie notes that people in Massachusetts use academic medical centers (read as higher cost providers) disproportionately more than other states. And that several of these centers are aggressively expanding. Paul responds that many of these centers are effectively neighborhood hospitals, that many people perceive them as providing higher levels of care, and that there is not enough good quality, current data available.  He’s right, but we’d point to our 2004 report […]

Who will improve our health care blues?

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Today’s Globe editorial lays out the health care riffs of the Democratic presidential bluesmasters, noting some pretty big refrains: $90 to $120 billion for John “Pretty Boy” Edwards and $50 to $65 billion for “Sweet Talk” Barack Obama. Seems everyone’s in love with the Massachusetts mandate. Edwards, the Globe reports, would require that everyone obtain health insurance, a national version of the individual mandate that takes effect in Massachusetts July 1. Businesses would have to offer insurance or make contributions (amount not specified) so workers could get it on their own. When I hear riffs like these, it makes me want to run, or to stay in tune, uh, go “down to the station, suitcase in my hand.” I have […]

Today, I want to be…

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Veronique de Rugy of the American Enterprise Institute. Why? I’ve long been a booster of small business creation and the need for government to improve the general business climate. The problem is the debate has morphed into a maniacal focus on access to capital. That is important, but the folks in the small business cheerleading squad, generally because they lack strong experience in business creation (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing…), ignore the numbers. Along comes Veronique with a tremendous article in the Cato Institute’s magazine Regulation, which deconstructs the practices of the multi-billion dollar Small Business Administration. (The SBA provides government-sponsored loans and loan guarantees, as well as technical assistance and advocacy to and for small […]

School choice saves public education, in Edmonton and Boston

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Edmonton, Alberta’s Angus McBeath is back in town this week, which is good news for the Commonwealth’s public school students – though it’s too bad they won’t get to see him. Pioneer is reintroducing Mr. McBeath to education policy leaders in Springfield and Holyoke, and at the Boston Foundation and BU, and his message deserves to be heard: Teaching is the most important paid work in society. – Angus McBeath, from 2005 Lovett C. Peters Lecture in Public Policy As the Superintendent of Edmonton’s public schools, Mr. McBeath presided over dramatic systemwide reforms. Each school’s performance was measured, and that data was made available to parents, who could then choose any school they wanted for their child. District funding followed children […]