by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. The Indiana legislature will likely consider expanding statewide pre-kindergarten programs for children at risk. Informing the discussion will be an extensively studied 1960s pre-K experiment, the Perry Program from Ypsilanti, Mich. Its findings suggest we reexamine a forgotten goal of early education. In the Perry Program, researchers assigned 123 three-year-old children from low-income black households to either a control group or a treatment group. Those in the treatment group participated in…

Resolved: That all Indiana students should receive the best possible education. The problem is that this obviously worthy goal is pursued at the statehouse with a failed assumption — that our school districts operate the same way, apply the same standards with the same parental support, all with the same bureaucratic apparatus supervising the same assembly line of interchangeable teachers. That all is a figment of John Dewey’s imagination. As such, it is being exposed…

by Andrea Neal For 30 years, he was a dominating figure on the Indiana frontier, at first resisting the white man’s encroachment and later giving in to the inevitable. The historian Calvin Young called him “one of the greatest Indian chiefs of all time.” “Some day we will recognize him as our first great Hoosier and an American of national importance,” wrote Otho Winger, historian and Manchester College president, in 1942. Indeed, Miami Chief Little…

YOU MAY not have heard this good news about the Indiana economy: The state has avoided as a whole the mistakes that result in local housing bubbles. And this, among other reasons, is why Indiana remains a relatively good place to live. This was not intentional, alas, as will be explained, but it nonetheless gives us an advantage. Wendell Cox, a public-policy consultant who writes on this topic for The Indiana Policy Review, describes the…

by Randal O’Toole The Carmel Chamber of Commerce says that Indianapolis needs a regional transit system — which inevitably means higher taxes — so Indianapolis can compete with communities such as Minneapolis and Salt Lake City. In fact, since 1990, the Indianapolis urban area has grown more than twice as fast as the Minneapolis or Salt Lake urban areas, and faster than any other major urban area in the Midwest, so Indianapolis seems to be…

by Andrea Neal Indiana became a state in 1816. Its political values, moral compass and physical boundaries were shaped by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The ordinance spelled out how new states would be added to the Union and the rights that would be guaranteed to citizens. John J. Patrick, professor emeritus of education at Indiana University, calls the ordinance “a brilliant policy for governing a vast area north and west of the Ohio River…

“What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?” — Thomas Sowell by Craig Ladwig It seems this week that the entire Eastern Seaboard has risen up to warn us against overreacting to what is viewed as the forgivable excesses of a determined government searching for a common good — sacrifice is the price of progress, reasonableness is only fair, omelets are made with broken…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. For those of us of the Jewish or Christian faith, the prophet Micah provides a succinct summary of our personal and social obligations in the eye of the Almighty: “. . . and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8 KJV). I have an obligation to respect the rights of my neighbor, including her…

“Joe Biden (@VP) has a little more than 179,000 followers. But fakers.statuspeople.com reports that 27 percent are fake. It reads like an official Twitter account, with very little personal engagement.” — Bill Murphy, Jr., www.ink.com, May 29, 2013 CAREER POLITICIANS have met their match, but it may not be health care, the shutdown or even the debt ceiling. I bet on Twitter. They are embarrassingly bad at it. Marketing experts tell us that users of Twitter…

by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. For the use of the membership only Building on recent fast-food strikes, an Indiana University law professor, Fran Quigley, a leader of the “Raise the Wage Indiana” movement, made an appeal for higher minimum wages in the Indianapolis Star. His reasoning, though, runs counter to my work experience as a young man and that of many others he professes to help. Quigley trots out the usual advocate research, plus celebrity endorsements…