The Heartland Institute

Why aren’t American students proficient in mathematics? Teens graduate from high school unprepared for college math and with a strong antipathy to the subject. Most graduates require extensive remediation. There is a dearth of K-12 math skills across the nation. Why is the United States, long a global education leader, suffering ...

The speech in the attached PDF was delivered by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast on February 23, 2013, at the Eighth Annual Wisconsin Conservative Conference, Bluemound Gardens, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. An excerpt is below: In 2016, in time for the next presidential election, every child now in high school will be eligible ...

Property owners won a major victory when a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled against the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to seize a family-owned motel because of 15 drug-related arrests involving lodgers there between 1994 and 2008. The Justice Department never alleged the hotel’s owners or their employees had anything to ...

At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in San Diego (January 4-6, 2013), Harvard professor of economics Benjamin Friedman said, “The standard models we teach … simply have no room in them for what most of the world’s central banks have done in response to the crisis.” Friedman advises sweeping aside the ...

Global warming alarmists are desperately seeking to minimize the damage presented by a recent survey of geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. A recent survey of more than 1,000 geoscientists and engineers reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies found only 36 percent agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental ...

The Indiana Senate on Thursday passed Senate Bill 193, a measure providing for public hearings around the state to reconsider adoption of Common Core education standards. The vote was 38-11, with all Republicans and three Democrats voting for the bill. It now moves to the Indiana House. House Education Chairman Robert Behning ...

As states begin implementing the federal health care law, many, such as Kansas, are still debating whether to expand their Medicaid programs in order to receive a larger federal subsidy. If Kansas expands its Medicaid program to individuals at 100 to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, the federal government will provide ...

Political leaders in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina are working toward the elimination of their states' income taxes. Jonathan Williams of the American Legislative Exchange Council works with legislators in those and other states around the country. He discusses income taxes and the reasons some states' leaders ...

There’s a meme being pushed on the right by a few Rick Scott supporters that he waved the white flag on Medicaid expansion as a quid pro quo for “privatizing Medicaid”, which amounts to a waiver for managed care. As Phil Klein notes, that’s Scott’s claim: “[Scott] said he was swayed to back the expansion by the Obama ...

College students are about to wake up to the fact that there is a huge price they will have to pay under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For them, ObamaCare will be anything but affordable. Consider the situation in New Jersey, the only state that currently requires all college students to have healthcare ...

With Americans having fewer babies and fewer immigrants arriving since the 2009 recession, education institutions had better brace for change, a new study finds. The number of high school graduates dipped in 2012 for the first time in decades, and it is likely to stay down until 2019, according to a new report by the Western ...

With no-fault auto insurance premiums that are among the highest in the nation, Michigan lawmakers should act to grant consumers more choice and to control the sky-rocketing cost of medical claims, a new policy study from the R Street Institute finds. The report from R Street Senior Fellow R. J. Lehmann comes on the heels ...

In 1998, Florida and Nevada had the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth grade reading test. In 1999, however, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) instituted a series of reforms, including tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, grading schools from A-F, ending social promotion from third grade, a robust system ...

Steve Stanek speaks about the Marketplace Fairness Act on the Nationally Syndicated Lars Larson Show. ...

Friday's ed news 1. Alabama withdrew from Common Core testing recently, but state legislators say that's not enough. They want the entire program out . 2. If teachers like unions so much, writes Larry Sand , why do unions bully them into joining? 3. A suburban Minneapolis school district will save $2 million in two years by ...

The New Hampshire legislature voted its first private school choice program into law in 2011, but a new majority in the state House of Representatives may now repeal it. In addition, the program is facing a lawsuit. “A number of [education] tax-credit programs have never been challenged in court, [such as those in] Florida ...

As President Obama’s health care law goes into effect, restaurants across the country are preparing for the new expense of meeting informational requirements under the law which are likely to prove costly without any certainty of health benefits. Section 4205 of Obama’s law requires restaurants and similar retail food establishments ...

Over the past few years many states have passed so-called Amazon taxes that have produced very little revenue and in some cases have been overturned in court. At the same time Congress has tried to expand states' ability to tax purchases made online and from mail-order catalogs by neutering the physical presence standard. Only ...

Global warming alarmists are attacking the integrity of scientists, desperately seeking to minimize the damage presented by a recent survey of geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. A recent survey of more than 1,000 geoscientists and engineers reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies found that only 36 percent ...

Florida Governor Rick Scott has decided to go along with the Obama administration's expansion of Medicaid, the most significant state under Republican control to do so. Peter Suderman explains the background: It’s a dramatic reversal for Scott, a former health care executive and outspoken opponent of ObamaCare who spent an estimated ...