September 1st, 2002
Category: Education, Report
This is the first Calvert Institute study to be issued in 18 months, and reflects the work of a reconstituted Board and new Executive Director. The Institute intends to continue to reproduce in Maryland proposals for market-based reforms that have not received serious discussion, though its basic thrust will seek to promote better government by […]
September 1st, 2002
Category: Education, Special Report
Your editor had a look at the federal case file in that most macabre of all cases, Vaughn G. v. Board of Commissioners, involving special education in Baltimore City.(84 Civ.1911 (D.Md.)),which has lasted for 18 years, created two new bureaucracies, cost an estimated $50 million,and provided a Special Master with a $200,000+ salary (To assuage […]
August 1st, 2002
Category: Gambling, News Series
The recent discussion of slot machines at race tracks makes it appropriate to focus on Maryland’s existing gambling enterprise: the lottery. Critics of gambling have done little to see to it that gambling revenues are distributed so as to compensate the jurisdictions in which they are raised, which are also the jurisdictions which suffer any […]
February 1st, 2002
Category: Education, Report
Kalman R. Hettleman is an independent Baltimore education consultant. He was Secretary of Human Resources during the Hughes administration, and is a former member of the Baltimore City School Board. The following discussion of the costs of the Vaughn G. lawsuit is excerpted by permission from a 55-page report, “Still Getting It Wrong: The Continuing […]
May 1st, 2000
Category: Issue Brief, Urban Affairs
If exodus is a measure of livability, then only a handful of cities are as unlivable as Baltimore. And the people leaving are just the sort of folk Baltimore must keep. They are the ordinary, middle-class types without whom no city can function. But the municipal authority’s response to these individuals’ verdict on the city has been – nothing. Baltimore is home to public employees and welfare recipients a-plenty.
September 1st, 1999
Category: Efficiency in Government, Issue Brief
As Maryland moves toward the 21st century, an expanding population demands ever better services and ever more schools – without more taxes. How to pull it off? The answer is for local governments to pay less for services, leaving funds available for purchasing additional services in other areas. The easiest means of doing this is to subject service providers to the rigors of the market by making them compete with each other.
April 1st, 1999
Category: Book Review, Education
The French are smart. They have two words for education, not one. One word means “instruction.” It is what people get when they go to Harvard law school or a school for hairdressers. At both places, people are taught facts, concepts and useful skills. The other word means “education.” It suggests the training one gets […]
April 1st, 1999
Category: Fiscal, News Series
The National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C., has just released its annual rating of the “taxpayer friendliness” of all members of Congress. Maryland’s U.S. Senators, Democrats Paul Sarbanes and Barbara Mikulski, ranked absolute bottom on the NTU scale. Between them, Sarbanes and Mikulski scored a combined average of 8 percent, out of […]
April 1st, 1999
Category: Education, News Series
There is a widespread perception that there is a nationwide shortage of classroom space. Education proved to be an issue of serious voter concern in Maryland’s 1998 election, with both gubernatorial candidates feeling compelled to make promises to hire at state expense over 1,000 new public school teachers (despite spotty evidence that reduced class size […]
April 1st, 1999
Category: Education, News Series
Five minutes into any discussion on the subject of teacher certification you’re bound to hear the analogy: “If you needed heart bypass surgery, wouldn’t you insist on having a licensed surgeon perform the procedure? Well, then, you certainly wouldn’t want an uncertified teacher instructing your child, would you?” But is an uncertified teacher with a […]