I’ve been doing public policy research and writing for nearly 20 years, and during that time, I’ve seen a noticeable shift in how Oklahomans have come to view public education.
Brandon Dutcher
Posted inNews
Public education is changing
Today, “public education” is coming to mean something different: We want an “educated public” — and it doesn’t matter where that education takes place. Most students still go to the school closest to their house. But did you realize that in Florida, for example, nearly half the students (43 percent) go to a school other […]
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Touting marriage: Why knot?
Using Census Bureau data, researchers Patrick Fagan and Nicholas Zill have determined that only 4 in 10 Oklahoma teenagers (ages 15 to 17) have grown up in an intact married family (i.e., with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager’s […]
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Medicaid expansion is unaffordable
In like manner, I don’t recall Gov. Mary Fallin receiving open records requests from curious journalists when taxes were hiked in 2011 to prop up LBJ’s Medicaid program in Oklahoma. It was only when she decided in 2012 not to expand Medicaid that the watchdogs started barking. In any case, Gov. Fallin should be applauded […]
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Counterpoint: A matter of perspective
They say that as if it’s a bad thing. It’s not. As the Nov. 2 shellacking made perfectly clear, people want less government and more freedom. As one wag observed, that wasn’t an election — it was a restraining order. From Nov. 5 to 11, telephone interviewers for SoonerPoll asked likely voters: “Which would you […]
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Counterpoint: Flaming lib?
Five years ago in the monthly magazine I edit, I made the case that Gov. Brad Henry was decidedly left of center. Henry “cast a lot of votes during his 10 years in the Legislature, and he emerged with a lifetime conservative index rating of 17 percent,” I wrote. “That’s better than hardcore leftists Cal […]