CERF Blog

The No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002. Among other things, it required standardized testing of students, beginning in 2003. The scores are used to evaluate the quality of the schools. It sounds reasonable. Congress certainly thought so. It was co-authored in the Senate by Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH), while… Read more

DJ is one of my dearest friends.  He was one of the first people to befriend me when I moved to a new city as a high-school junior.  He was there for the debriefs after high-school dates, and I was there for his.  He was there for an awful lot of firsts, none of which… Read more

Raghu Rajan has a piece on income equality and its impact on the recent financial crisis.  It’s the same theme he addressed in depth in his excellent recent book, Fault Lines.  As income inequality increases, politicians come under pressure.  They have three possible ways to address the problem: fix the underlying problem, wealth transfers, or… Read more

Our governor wants a constitutional amendment to require that 10 percent of state revenues go to higher education. This sounds good, but it really is bad policy in several ways: One of our current problems is that there are so many spending mandates in California that our policy makers have very limited freedom to respond… Read more