by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Gov. Jerry Brown refers to the California state budget, riddled with earmarks and creative accounting, as a “pretzel palace of incredible complexity.” If a governor is challenged by the complexity, what hope does the ordinary resident have in getting a handle on state revenue? There will be a cost, however, if Hoosiers ignore what went wrong in the Sunshine State. California’s state deficit is projected to grow from $3.4 billion…

(For release June 20 and thereafter, 661 words) by Andrea Neal A battle is brewing on the education reform front over Indiana’s embrace of Common Core — a set of Math and English standards being implemented across the country to govern what is taught and tested from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The debate is half policy, half politics. On both counts Indiana officials’ defense of the Core is perplexing. Leading policy experts on standards and…

A Change of Guard The tour of duty of the earring-wearing, socially hip, corporately charmed editor of the Star is over. Indications are that his replacement, Jeff Taylor, understands that it has become easier, not harder, these past few years for government to lie to a newspaper’s readers. (April 10) — That politicians are liars should not be news to a journalist, of course, but neither is it mere polemic. It can be statistically demonstrated:…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) is encouraging state-supported institutions to: 1) increase graduation rates; and 2) ensure that students graduate in four years. The broader goal is to generate more college graduates in Indiana and more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical) grads in the mix. As higher education is state-supported, such mandates from the overseers of higher education seems appropriate — he who pays the piper calls the…

by MARYANN O. KEATING, Ph.D. Imagine, if you will, a small island economy; you may call it Pennsylvania, Virginia or Indiana. Assume that the population of the island is steady with 100 residents, two born and two dying each year. Sixty residents are in their prime years, working at home or in town; the remaining inhabitants are disabled, children or elderly. Each year a certain amount of eggs, corn, fruits and vegetable enter the domestic…

by ANDREA NEAL In Chicago, teachers are poised to go on strike over a pay metric they think is unfair, longer school days they’d rather not work, and class sizes they consider unreasonable. The Florida Education Association is challenging a proposal that ties teacher evaluations to student test scores, one of several factors used to determine merit pay awards. The Massachusetts Teachers Association wants to keep off the November ballot an initiative that would make…

by CECIL BOHANON, Ph.D. In May 1988, Professor James McGill Buchanan, the 1986 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, told the graduating class at Ball State University that he “had never been attracted to the romantic nonsense that government or politicians know what is best . . .” He encouraged the students to “nurture a skepticism uniquely Midwestern in its origins that questions the authority of politicians, governments and institutions.” Although Dr. Buchanan cautioned…

Dave Bego. The Devil at Our Doorstep. CreateSpace, North Charleston, S.C., 2012. $14.95 The difficult thing about fighting for free markets is that our successes are invisible or are projected beyond the political horizon — and, maddeningly, so are the failed promises of our statist opponents. That, however, is lessened with publication of Dave Bego’s “Devil at Our Doorstep.” The failures of American unionism are found there in weapons-grade detail. More importantly, Mr. Bego is…

by MARYANN O. KEATING, Ph.D. Steve Jobs, the computer pioneer, warned Barack Obama that there can be no effective educational reform unless teachers are treated as professionals, not like workers in an assembly line (“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson). James Buchanan, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, noted that education is a unique activity: Those who consume it do not purchase it; those who produce it do not sell it; and those who finance it do…