OKPOLICY.ORG
The Weekly Wonk is a summary of Oklahoma Policy Institute’s events, publications, blog posts, and coverage. Numbers of the Day and Policy Notes are from our daily news briefing, In The Know. Click here to subscribe to In The Know.
This week on the OK Policy blog, we shared some of the secrets hidden in the FY2015 state budget. Our breakdown of the budget can be found here, and our suggestions for filling the budget hole can be found here. We explained why repealing Common Core could mean greater federal control of Oklahoma schools.
In a guest post, OK Policy Research Fellow JeVonna Caine discussed barriers to growing the state’s supply of primary care physicians. We welcomed our two newest board members, NBC Oklahoma bank chairman Ken Fergeson and Edmond Public Schools superintendent David Goin.
In his Journal Record column, Executive Director David Blatt wrote that upcoming painful cuts to the state’s health care system are an avoidable disaster. Earlier this year, we suggested ways in which lawmakers could avoid such cuts. Policy Director Gene Perry talked about the reasons behind the state’s budget shortfall with the Associated Press.
Watchdog.org included analysis from OK Policy’s analysis in its discussion of misleading strategies used by lawmakers in designing this year’s state budget. Our discussion of the FY2015 budget can be found here.
- 8,922 – Number of female students in Oklahoma who took AP exams in 2013, compared to 6,903 male students.
- 35.4% – Percentage of Oklahomans without consistent access to the Internet as of July 2011.
- 340,395 – Total number of veterans living in Oklahoma as of September 30, 2013.
- 13.6% – Percentage of Oklahoma community college students in 2011-12 that earned an associate’s degree within three years of enrollment as a new freshman.
- 790 million – Pounds of dairy milk produced by Oklahoma cows in 2013, which is about 92 million gallons of milk.
Policy Notes
- Vox shares six reasons teen birth rates are plummeting across the country.
- A report by Demos examines why raising wages and improving schedules for women in the retail industry would benefit America.
- The Brookings Institute discusses side effects to watch out for now that the US’s five largest private health insurers are planning to release a huge trove of health care cost data to the public.
- A new study shows that Medicaid expansions in previous decades have reduced the rate of high school dropouts and increased college attainment.
- The Associated Press discusses how states’ questionable efforts to boost their post-recession economies is widening the wealth gap.
