Cascade CounterPoint

Full text: January 21-27 is  National School Choice Week , the world’s largest annual celebration of parental choice and effective education options for all children. In 2024,  183 Oregon schools and organizations  will participate in National School Choice Week to raise awareness about K-12 education in our state. The landscape of  options for Oregon students  includes district public schools, pu...

Full text: In 2023, eight states passed universal or near-universal educational choice laws. Education Savings Accounts, vouchers, and education tax credits are different policy approaches; but the goal of each is the same: to put parents “in the driver’s seat” of their kids’ education. A strong majority of voters agree that parents should be able to choose among schools and resources they believe...

Full-text: During the holidays, the Oregon Department of Energy quietly updated a chart it maintains showing where Oregon’s electricity comes from. The chart shows that from 2012 through 2021, Oregon’s dependence on fossil fuels increased from 44.7% to 46.3% of annual electricity consumed. This may come as a surprise to people who thought Oregon was phasing out fossil fuels. Indeed, the Oregon leg...

Full text: Christmas came early for children and parents in Pennsylvania when the state legislature expanded funding for their K-12 education tax-credit programs in mid-December. Almost 80,000 lower-income children receive scholarships to attend private schools chosen by their families through Pennsylvania’s two school choice programs. The approved increase reportedly will fund about 35,000 more s...

Full text: Nationwide polling this year revealed seventy-one percent of voters say parents should “have the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.” State policymakers should note it’s increasingly important to families to match their children’s educational needs with school environments that...

Full text: The New York Times published an editorial November 18 regarding learning losses experienced by K-12 students since the COVID-19 pandemic. The editorial board’s recommendations are predictable: spend more money, combat chronic absenteeism, and increase teacher compensation. CATO education policy analyst Colleen Hroncich takes a more incisive approach. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money...

Full text: At the Portland Public Schools board meeting last week, the Portland Association of Teachers and the school board members were united on one issue: They all blamed the state legislature for the November teachers strike. However, parents should be aware of the following sections of the new PPS contract: “Bargaining unit members who participated in the strike will receive their full pay f...

Full text: For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, the conventional wisdom was that cars were gas guzzlers and the environmentally correct way to travel was via transit. That is no longer the case. Last month the Federal Transit Agency (FTA) released its 2022 National Transit Database. According to Oregon economist Randal O’Toole, the results show that transit used more energy per passenger-...

Full-text: Oklahoma’s Parental Choice Tax Credit Program is the first universal, refundable tax credit for K-12 education expenses.  Education Tax Credits: Restoring Trust in Families , a new  report published by yes. every kid. , explains how education tax credits can be a direct, unbureaucratic approach to expanding education options for all students. “Personal education tax credits,”  the repor...

Full text: The homeschool landscape is changing. Our approach to school funding should, too. A recent Washington Post study found that homeschooling is booming in popularity. In districts with available data, the homeschool population has grown on average 51% since the 2017-2018 school year. Homeschooled students  do not come from one ideological, racial, political, or religious background . The r...

Full text: Last August, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade issued a Request for Proposal for services to identify and mitigate “harmful information online as it relates to elections” (to see the full RFP document, click HERE ). The Secretary is concerned with what she refers to as “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation”, or MDM. According to the RFP, the selected vendor...

Full text: It’s time to end home equity theft in Oregon. In Oregon, if a property has unpaid taxes, the county can legally seize and sell the property, and keep the proceeds. Pacific Legal Foundation found  that, most of the time, property owners’ tax liabilities are minuscule compared to the value of their homes: 75% of homes seized by Oregon counties had tax debts less than the price of a 10-yea...

Full-text: A long-standing question about taxpayer-funded school choice programs like vouchers, education tax credits, and Education Scholarship Accounts is whether such programs would cause tuition to rise at private elementary and high schools. A new study by the Heritage Foundation shows that school choice programs have kept elementary school costs from increasing in their states and had no imp...

Full-text: North Carolina has become the ninth state to enact universal school choice for K-12 children. The  Opportunity Scholarship Program , created in 2013, offers vouchers applicable to private school costs, including tuition, fees, transportation, and necessary expenses. In September, the General Assembly  expanded eligibility to all families  through an income-based system. Lower-income hou...

Full-text: Lawmakers and activists across the country continue to push for massive increases in renewable energy, and here on the West Coast, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has unveiled a plan for large scale offshore wind farms.  Representative David Gomberg of Oregon’s 10th district hosted a listening session on September 28th in Newport to hear the thoughts of his constitu...

Full-text: Portland’s TriMet transit agency and the Metro regional government have long tried to shape the city’s growth and transportation landscape. But it’s abundantly clear the current transit model is woefully outdated, a relic of the early 1900s. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this situation, accelerating trends like telecommuting, job dispersion throughout the suburbs, and increased car...

Full-text: Have you heard of “No-School November” ? Portland Public School (PPS) students could be away from their desks for a long time this fall. The district is bracing for a potentially imminent teacher strike at the behest of their union. This is a classic example of how taxpaying families have lost power in public education. Despite the union’s heavy demands, including a 23 percent hike in t...

Full-text: TriMet’s Blue rail line to Hillsboro opened on September 12, 1998. Westside MAX was unlike any light rail line previously built in America: It was deliberately routed through vacant land with the expectation that it would be a catalyst for so-called “Transit-Oriented  Development” (TOD). TriMet planners claimed, “The success or failure of the public’s nearly $1 billion investment in Wes...

Full-text: As K-12 students return to school, more than four-fifths of them will attend a district public school. However, recent polling by EdChoice shows that only 29% of parents say their zoned public school would be their first choice, and about one in four parents say parental choice is one of their top three K-12 education issues. Here are three ways Oregon can expand options for K-12 studen...

Full-text: 2023 has been an outstanding year for school choice. Utah, Iowa, Arkansas, and Florida enacted universal school choice programs for K-12 students. Families who opt into these programs may use a portion of their state education funds to pay for education costs including tuition or other education services. Indiana expanded eligibility for its school choice programs , making its voucher p...

Full-text: A June 2023 RealClear Opinion Research survey of registered voters shows public support for school choice has increased seven points since 2020. Seventy-one percent of voters—up from 64% three years ago—say parents should “have the right to use tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.” Support f...

Full-text: Earlier this year, Oregon lawmakers proposed legislation allowing voters to reconsider their 1980 decision to effectively ban construction of new nuclear power plants in the state. The bills never received a hearing. That was unfortunate, because state law requires electricity generation in Oregon to be 100% emissions-free by 2040. In order to phase out coal and natural gas, utilities w...

Full-text: Metro is the regional government of the greater Portland region. It is tasked with managing regional issues like transportation, land use, and public parks. Metro’s Regional Mobility Policy guides the region’s transportation investments toward its goals—directing investments in roads, bridges, bike lanes, light rail, and more.  One of Metro’s proposed policies for 2023 is the use of con...

Full-text: During the 2023 session, the Oregon Legislature passed Cascade Policy Institute’s bill to ease state-level restrictions on taking the GED . Governor Kotek signed HB 3068 into law August 1. General Educational Development (GED) tests are standardized exams that measure proficiency in science, mathematics, social studies, and language arts. When passed, the GED provides certification that...

Full-text: Metro’s 2023 Regional Transportation Plan calls for expanding many different high-capacity transit lines but includes no mention of reducing the most costly ones. As of this spring, the WES commuter rail from Beaverton to Wilsonville only sees 450 daily boardings. That is only 225 riders, assuming a round trip. To put that in perspective, the least popular of the five MAX rail lines, th...