Media clips
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A new study reports that there is no evidence that school vouchers — which use public dollars to pay for private school tuition and are favored by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — offer students significant academic advantages and are a proven education reform strategy. The study comes at a time when DeVos and President Trump have made clear that expanding school “choice” is a priority, arguing that traditional public schools are failing too many students and that parents should have choices. Trump has said he wants to spend $20 billion to help states expand voucher programs, and the people who administer the only federally funded voucher program currently operating, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, say they expect to get more federal money soon to expand by “hundreds of new students” for the 2017-2018 school year.
The Washington Post March 1, 2017 -
Education secretary Betsy DeVos has been a champion of school vouchers for decades, and has claimed students don’t benefit from better funding of public schools. But a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that vouchers do not improve student achievement in any meaningful way.A significant body of research on vouchers over the past 15 years has found that there is not enough evidence to support the claim that vouchers significantly improve student achievement, wrote Martin Carnoy, Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Economics at Stanford University. In some cases, vouchers exacerbate issues that hurt students’ quality of education, such as racial and economic school segregation and a flow of inexperienced young teachers into schools.
Think Progress March 1, 2017 -
The feared correlation between Trump and Buy American doesn’t withstand scrutiny, Robert Scott with the Economic Policy Institute said.
Scott is the senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research with EPI, an economic policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. “This has been done many times before and have largely been successful,” Scott said. “I think the blather you hear about isolationism and nationalism is just editorializing from the defenders of the old neo-liberal order of advocates and lobbyists for trade and investment deals, ad infinitum. They have refused to accept the fact that a significant share of the American populace no longer believe that those deals are in their best interest.” If the campaign raises awareness about U.S.-made products and influences buying behavior, that’s just the power of advertising, which has fueled the media for generations, Scott said.
Bloomberg BNA March 1, 2017 -
Unlike Ms. Moske, many Americans are not ready for retirement. “Nearly half of families have no retirement-account savings at all,” says a report by the Economic Policy Institute, an independent nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States. The median retirement savings figure among all working-age families in the United States is just $5,000; the median among families with savings is $60,000.
The New York Times February 27, 2017 -
Since the recession, incomes for college grads have recovered, while less-educated Americans have seen their incomes decline 3 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The income gap between college grads and high school grads now stands at 56 percent, the widest since 1973, the EPI found.
CBS Moneywatch February 26, 2017 -
Up to 20 million Americans could lose their health care insurance if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is repealed, according to government estimates. But that wouldn’t be the only consequence of a repeal, according to a January 2017 report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
ATTN: February 25, 2017 -
About 504,000 Missourians would lose coverage, the Economic Policy Institute estimates. In the 16-county St. Louis metro area, about 200,000 people bought health insurance policies on the federal or Illinois health exchanges, many of them family policies…The EPI estimates that repealing Obamacare would cost 14,077 jobs in Missouri. Given the size of the health care sector in the St. Louis economy, it’s safe to say 6,000 or more jobs would be lost here. The Census Bureau estimates that Missouri gained only 10,000 new jobs in all of 2016.
St. Louis Post Dispatch February 25, 2017 -
Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is now below 5% and there are more than 1 million fewer unemployed people than there were a year ago, all is not rosy in the labor market. There recently were 1.4 unemployed workers for every job opening — or to put it another way, there were 14 workers looking for work for every 10 job openings — according to a report released in February by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that studies low- and middle-income workers.
Market Watch February 25, 2017 -
“There’s been just countless cases of labor trafficking and worker abuse and workers not being paid the wages they’re supposed to be paid,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at Economic Policy Institute. Costa said a better approach would be to get rid of temporary visas altogether and only bring in foreign workers to fill labor shortages. “You wouldn’t keep them on a temporary status for very long,” he suggested. “You’d put them on a quick path to residence and citizenship.”
Marketplace February 24, 2017 -
House Republican leaders and President Donald Trump have said repeatedly that they are intent on repealing the Affordable Care Act, which has extended coverage to 20 million people. The timeline for the repeal is still up in the air, but a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute argues that repealing the ACA could leave U.S. taxpayers with a hefty check, and in 2019 alone, reduce job growth by 1.2 million and federal spending by about $103 billion.
Next City February 23, 2017