Arthur Lupia, a chaired professor of political science at the University of Michigan, has just released a commentary on the so-called “new voters,” who were trumpeted by the media as the cause of Obama's election. . . .
Today’s San Francisco Chronicle reports that 42 of California’s 58 county district attorneys are opposing President Obama’s nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal appeals court in San Francisco. . . .
In today's Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds has an excellent piece on how much revenue can be expected from the Obama tax rate increases to pay for Obamacare. . . .
A new study on gender differences in academic achievement, offering what it calls “good news for girls and bad news for boys,” finds that, overall, male students in every state where data were available lag behind females in reading, based on an analysis of recent state test results. . . .
Reading scores stayed flat for 4th graders and rose only slightly for 8th graders on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, results that some find disappointing after years of intensive attention to improving the reading skills of American students. . . .
The health care debate over the last year has included criticism of the practices of health insurance companies, particularly those selling policies to individuals. Is this criticism valid? . . . .
Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam, responding to political criticism on a study they wrote on Canadian government stimulus attempts, have written an useful piece on why many economists think government spending tends to have a multiplier that is less than one (via fellow TSE blogger John Palmer). . . .
The U.S. Department of Education this week named only two small states—Delaware and Tennessee—as first-round winners of the unprecedented competition known as Race to the Top for shares of $4 billion to support a highly detailed education reform agenda established by the Obama administration. . . .
Rading scores for fourth- and eighth-grade students held mostly steady last year, continuing a stubborn trend of minimal improvement across most racial, economic and geographic groups. . . .
