“”Lottery-based studies of urban charter schools consistently show that charters improve students’ academic achievement and some longer-term outcomes, particularly among Black and Latinx students, students with disabilities, and low-performing students,” concludes a 2021 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Sarah Cohodes and Katharine Parham of Columbia University.”
…
“”Overall, the big charter networks are seeing college success rates that are anywhere from three to five times the rates for low-income students nationally,” Richard Whitmire wrote for the education publication The 74 in 2017. “The most successful networks are all in the 50 percent range — half of their alumni earn bachelor’s degrees within six years. Nationally, 9 percent of the students from low-income families meet that mark.”
Not every charter school achieves such success, of course. Like any other venture, some charters go off the rails, are run into the ground by poor management, or just fail at their mission. Teachers’ unions, having wandered far from the days of Albert Shanker’s advocacy of charters, are more than happy to point to charter schools that don’t do a good job. But that’s part of the attraction of charters; when they fail, as some institutions inevitably do, it’s easier to close one independently managed school and move its kids to competitors than to shut the doors of a traditional district school that has a near-monopoly on students in a geographic area.”
…
“In December 2021 polling by EdChoice, 90 percent of charter school parents report being very or somewhat satisfied with their children’s schooling, compared to 78 percent of district school parents (96 percent of private school parents and 88 percent of homeschool parents report being satisfied).”
“Police being able to keep what they seize is one of the primary motivators for fine and forfeiture abuse, and it’s obvious to everybody except for the mayor and the police department that’s what was happening in Brookside. Without that incentive, the police would not be sniffing around every single car it comes across for a potential score.”
“In New York, where I live, real per-pupil revenue has increased by a mind-boggling 68 percent between 2002 and 2019. Public schools in the Empire State are now shelling out more than $30,000 per kid. That’s more than double the national average, and it doesn’t even include the $16 billion extra that New York’s system got in combined federal and state COVID-19 relief funding.
Yet New York’s public schools are still as terrible as the Mets, the Jets, and the Giants, with only a third or fewer of students up to grade level in eighth grade reading and math, according to their scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), widely considered the gold standard for judging school outcomes. Those scores aren’t much different than they were 20 years ago.
In fact, $30,000 a year puts the lie to the argument pushed by unions and progressives that more money will fix schools. More money hasn’t helped the rest of the country boost their scores either. According to NAEP, whatever minor improvements in reading and math that were made for students ages 9 and 13 since the early 1970s have flattened since the early 2000s. We’re paying more for the same results.
None of this is a mystery. The connection between bigger spending and good outcomes is weak at best, whether we’re talking about comparisons among U.S. states or international ones.”
“Residents of Fort Mill, South Carolina, had to wait 18 long years for construction to start on a hospital that state regulators determined in 2004 was necessary—and then proceeded to hold up in an absurdly long legal battle that eventually went all the way to the state Supreme Court.
Hopefully, that saga won’t ever be repeated.
The state Senate voted 35–6 on Tuesday to repeal most of South Carolina’s Certificate of Need (CON) regulations that require hospitals and other health care providers to obtain permission from the state before expanding facilities, buying new equipment, or offering new services. Often, those regulations gave de facto veto power to existing providers, which lobby health policy bureaucrats to block the approval of new competition.
That’s exactly what happened in Fort Mill, where plans for a new 100-bed hospital were tied up for more than a decade and a half, in part because a rival hospital wielded the state’s CON laws in an attempt to block the new facility, as Reason previously reported.”
…
“If the bill becomes law, the Charleston Post and Courier reports, it would clear the way for 28 projects that are currently tied up in legal battles despite having won preliminary CON approval. Another 34 projects awaiting review by the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control would be able to proceed as well. The paper estimates that those delayed projects represent more than $1 billion in health care investment in the state.”
…
“that doesn’t include the loss of projects that never materialized in the first place.”
…
“As part of his emergency order issued when COVID-19 first struck in March 2020, Gov. Henry McMaster (R) suspended enforcement of CON regulations—making South Carolina one of several states to do so because of the pandemic. When it became obvious that the sky wasn’t falling in the absence of those rules, some state lawmakers rightly began to question whether they were needed in the first place”
“Even on the day two years ago that the trade deal was inked, there was skepticism that China would live up to its pledge to spend $200 billion more on U.S. goods and services.
But a new study finds China didn’t even spend an additional dime on U.S. products.”
…
“China agreed to buy at least $227.9 billion of U.S. exports in 2020 and $274.5 billion in 2021, for a total of $502.4 billion over the pact’s two years, he noted. In reality: U.S. exports of covered goods and services to China over the two years totaled $288.8 billion.”
“Europe is on the brink of war. The United States and its allies are convinced that Russia is planning an invasion of Ukraine, and they are threatening “devastating” sanctions should it take that step. Moscow vehemently denies any such plans, while maintaining that Kyiv is preparing for an assault on the Donbas separatists in Eastern Ukraine. Russian military maneuvers in Crimea, Western Russia and Belarus unnerve the West, while NATO plans a buildup of forces along its long frontier with Russia stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Meanwhile, a fitful round of diplomacy preserves hope that the crisis can be defused without military conflict — although the leaked “confidential” U.S. response to Russian demands to halt NATO expansion underscores how far apart the two sides remain.
Is there a diplomatic resolution that will bring enduring peace and stability to the troubled region of Eastern Europe? There is, but getting there requires understanding the essence of the current crisis. It is not simply about Ukraine. It is about the broader European settlement at the end of the Cold War 30 years ago, which Moscow contends was imposed on it at a time of extreme weakness and fails to take into account its national interests. The subsequent eastward expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions — notably NATO, a political-military organization designed to contain Russia, and the European Union, an economic community that Russia can never join — in Moscow’s views jeopardizes Russia’s security and prosperity. A revived Russia is determined to halt, if not reverse, that process, using all necessary means.”
…
“the path forward is treacherous, but it exists. It will take flexibility and creativity on both sides to navigate it successfully. The risk of a war that would prove catastrophic for Europe, and first of all Ukraine, and threaten escalation to a nuclear cataclysm should concentrate minds.”
…
“We see four elements to a solution. First, restrictions on military operations along the NATO/Russia border. Second, a moratorium on NATO expansion eastward. Third, resolution of ongoing and frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space and the Balkans. And fourth, modernization of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which created a pan-European forum and articulated agreed principles of interstate relations to undergird East-West detente.”
“With American consumers spending freely and many supply chains still snarled, year-over-year inflation may have notched yet another four-decade high in January.
The factors that have accelerated prices since last spring remain largely in place: Wages are rising at the fastest pace in at least 20 years. Ports and warehouses are overwhelmed, with hundreds of workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s busiest, out sick last month. Many products and parts remain in short supply as a result.
And reports indicate that the expiration of stimulus checks and other government aid has yet to slow Americans’ appetite for shopping.”