OKPOLICY.ORG
What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.
This week at OK Policy, we reported that June General Revenue (GR) collections came in $66.2 million, or 13.0 percent, above the official certified estimate. While revenues are on an upwards swing, they still face a steep upward climb and will have little, if any, impact on the current year budget.
Also this week, we detailed the toll of budget cuts to education on programs promoting high-quality teaching and schools. If Oklahoma is to have any chance of improving our students’ educational performance, we need to support excellence in our teachers and administrators. Read an interview on OK Policy’s Blog with Dr. Thomas Benediktson about the University of Tulsa’s new focus on urban education.
You can watch a preview trailer of the film Panic Nation on our blog. The film addresses Oklahoma’s HB 1804 in depth, which at the time it passed in 2007 was seen as the most restrictive state immigration law in the country:
In the Know, Policy Notes
- The Georgetown Health Policy Institute released a paper detailing Medicaid’s role in caring for children with special health needs.
- The National Employment Law Project issued a report documenting widespread hiring discrimination against the unemployed.
- Health Beat explains why raising the eligibility age for Medicare would increase the nation’s health care costs.
- Bruce Bartlett explains how we risk repeating the mistakes of 1937 that prolonged the Great Depression.
- Demos discusses how public sector job losses are hurting the economy.
- 6 – Number of federal district courts that have upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional; 2 have ruled all or part of the health care reform law unconstitutional
- 7 to 15 – Percentage points by which students of Nationally Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) outscored students of non-NBCTs on year-end tests, 2004
- 1,203 – Number of concealed carry license applications denied by the State of Oklahoma in 2010. 247 were denied because of a pending criminal case or a previous criminal conviction
- 80,000 – Oklahoma’s jobs deficit – or the difference between the number of jobs Oklahoma has and the number it needs to get back to pre-recession levels
- 54 percent – Percentage of Oklahomans who do not think crime is a problem in their community, 2010
