Looking back on things, there is no doubt in my mind that my freshman year chairmanship of the speaker’s Task Force on Health Insurance Partnerships for Local Governments was designed to keep me out of trouble. After the Crandon Mine fiasco, it was a wise appointment by Speaker Scott Jensen to keep me busy, studying what was perceived as an impossible issue, that of health-care costs. It was well known that the skyrocketing costs of local government health insurance was steadily rifling up the... more

I worked on two very important pieces of public policy during my first session in the Wisconsin legislature. One, I fell in to quite accidentally; the other was no doubt intended to keep me out of trouble and busy. My strength in politics lies in the fact that I dislike the injustice of politics. Instead, I am wired to solve problems and look at the system as a whole. Dollars and cents do not factor into my judgments, unless it has to do with cost analysis and fiscal impact on families and on jobs.... more

Is it true that the only problem with America’s schools is too many poor kids raised in less-educated families? According to a new study, from researchers Eric Hanushek (Stanford University), Paul Peterson (Harvard University), and Ludger Woessmann (University of Munich), the answer is a clear no. Parental education has long been shown to be the best family background indicator of a student’s readiness to learn at school, and the United States’ comparatively low proficiency rates are often... more

Upon entering the state and federal capitols across the United States and walking the hallowed chambers of the legislative bodies, you may see formal seating assignments that determines who someone is, what that person will be, and what he or she will be allowed to accomplish. Those who wield power in their respective front rows make these decisions. “In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle... more

As a Doctoral Student in the Leadership Studies concentration, Terri McCormick’s proposal was accepted to participate in the Public and Nonprofit Division’s Doctoral Consortium at the 2014 Academy of Management annual meeting in Philadelphia in August. The 74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management The 2014 Academy of Management Annual Meeting is the premier conference for more than 10,000 students, academics, scholars, and professionals in the scholarly management and organization... more