The Heartland Institute

As the national unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and out-of-work individuals struggle to find jobs, government employment continues to climb in 18 states, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Private-sector employment for the nation as a whole fell by 6.9 million jobs between the December 2007 ...

Greg Forster, a senior fellow with the Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice, said the Obama administration s August 2 deadline for states to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative comes from people in Washington sending a clear signal that if you don t get with the program, you re going to be in trouble ...

School choice supporters in North Carolina will have to wait at least another year to see their top priorities voted on by the General Assembly after legislators begged off raising the state’s charter school cap and passing an education tax credit during the short summer session. Disappointed by legislative leaders’ lack of ...

Despite nearly two-thirds of U.S. states choosing to sign on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, Minnesota has decided to opt out of the math portion of the national curriculum frameworks. The Gopher State was among the first to join the voluntary effort by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief ...

Yet another test-tampering scandal has erupted, this time involving teachers at Normandy Crossing Elementary School in suburban Houston, Texas. When test results came back, many were amazed at astonishing improvement in state science test scores. The scores were so good, Galena Park Independent School District officials decided ...

Arizonans this May overwhelmingly approved Proposition 100, a three-year, one-cent increase in the state sales tax rate that was sold as a way to avoid cuts to education funding. Despite the tax increase, public education funding in Arizona remains at risk. Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hiils), chairman of the state House Appropriations ...

North Carolina has joined at least 22 states adopting a newly developed set of national curriculum standards for public schools. When fully implemented, the Common Core State Standards Initiative will guide the development of everything from teachers lesson plans to final exams. Backers say the national frameworks will make it ...

With little public discussion or opposition, 23 states have adopted voluntary national reading and math curriculum frameworks ahead of an August 2 deadline imposed by the U.S. Department of Education. New Hampshire, Georgia, Connecticut and Rhode Island are the latest states officially to embrace the common core standards, all ...

Fifteen years after first allowing North Carolina s citizens to establish charter schools, state legislative and policy leaders finally may be ready to allow some growth in the number of these innovative schools of choice. But North Carolina s charter school community is far from satisfied with the growth plans lawmakers have ...

California s State Assembly education committee has approved a bill by State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to protect teachers from layoffs in the state s worst-performing schools. Steinberg, leader of the state Senate, says his bill is a response to the layoffs of nearly 22,000 public school teachers over the past two ...

A Chicago social service agency director desperate to keep his operation going asked Tom Begley for a $75,000 loan. Before Begley could finish due diligence, the agency closed, a victim of the biggest deadbeat in Illinois: the state government. In the two years since then the state has become an even bigger deadbeat. Illinois ...

Colorado lawmakers must again abide by revenue limits in the state s Taxpayer Bill of Rights constitutional amendment. After being suspended for five years, the revenue limits in the state s TABOR went back into effect July 1. Voters passed the TABOR, a constitutional amendment designed to limit government tax revenues and give ...

Round two of the federal government s $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant competition may be underway, but several states have already abandoned the track. Two states Tennessee and Delaware received $600 million in the competition s first round, leaving several runners-up disappointed and disillusioned about the process. U.S. Secretary ...

The Keep Our Educators Working Act remains in legislative limbo as President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Democratic congressional leaders attempt to drum up public support for the $23 billion education jobs bailout bill. The Senate rejected a $140 billion unemployment benefits package which included the education ...

Spending within one s means might be a quaint notion to many in government these days, but in Indiana state government it s become the standard way of doing business. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), who took office in 2005, insists on fiscal discipline. One of his chief fiscal disciplinarians is Budget Director Christopher Ruhl. Budget ...

Illinois faces a $4.6 billion deficit for fiscal year 2011, and unpaid bills from previous years total almost $6 billion, after Prairie State lawmakers left Springfield with few answers on how to address the state s looming budget deficit. The General Assembly ended up approving a general appropriations bill at the end of May ...

For the second time in as many years, the North Carolina Department of Revenue is forcing large families to produce copies of their children s birth certificates and Social Security cards or forfeit their tax refunds. There s one difference this time: Tax auditors have doubled the number of families up for review this year ...

A bipartisan group of governors and state school superintendents gathered in Georgia earlier this month to unveil the final draft of proposed national math and English curriculum frameworks. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is the latest attempt to impose order on the supposed chaos wrought by 50 states and the District ...

Harley-Davidson Inc. s announcement that it might move its operations out of Wisconsin to cut $54 million in manufacturing costs has many people pointing to the state s onerous tax laws, in particular a policy enacted in February 2009 known as combined reporting. Combined reporting requires companies like Harley, with operations ...

The Illinois Policy Institute s transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org, highlights many examples of state government workers receiving average annual wages much higher than the average statewide wage estimates for the same position. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the average annual wages in 2008 for ...