As a shocking number of American children continue
to perform poorly in the core subjects of mathematics and English,
most Americans would be surprised to learn that their tax dollars
are funding education frills developed by regional laboratories of
the U.S. Department of Education. According to Diane Ravitch and
Chester Finn, former Assistant Secretaries at the Department of
Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI),
which oversees these laboratories, regional education labs are
nothing more than
A
collection--now ten--of smallish non-profit organizations, each
located in a different region, that undertake a mishmash of
research, dissemination, and technical assistance activities, aimed
mostly at state and local education agencies.... The program as a
whole has outlived whatever justification it once had.... The
putative beneficiaries are schoolchildren who need to learn more.
Yet the money actually goes to well-paid professionals functioning
as middlemen, sitting in comfortable offices distant from the
classroom, and devoting much of their energy to ensuring that their
federal gravy train does not halt on the tracks.
The
federal government can play an important role in gathering
information, conducting research, and disseminating valid findings.
There may not be a "magic bullet" for every problem in America's
failing schools, but educators have developed many effective
teaching methods that could be replicated in classrooms across the
country. Currently, OERI is in charge of this function. Its
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has gathered,
analyzed, and disseminated national data. But the remainder of
OERI's work is fragmented and highly vulnerable to politicization
and manipulation.
This
is especially true with respect to OERI's regional education
laboratories. These labs have been around for more than 32 years
and have received over $750 million in federal funding. Yet, by
nearly all accounts, what they produce has had little impact in
revolutionizing education in America's schools.
To a
great extent, reformers have been frustrated in their efforts to
improve the labs' effectiveness: The influence of lobbyists who
promote fanciful education projects has been too strong--and the
resolve of Congress has been too weak--for managerial and
substantive change to be implemented successfully.
Education research is best conducted by
private and independent organizations that are funded based on
their ability to translate research findings into successful
methodology and practice. The sole determinant in deciding whether
a program will be implemented in the schools should be an increase
in academic scores, not how much the educational bureaucracy or
lobbyists like the program. Yet the laboratories and the federal
bureaucracy rarely analyze how well programs are working.
Members of Congress interested in
streamlining the federal role in education should examine the
research conducted in OERI laboratories and demand more
accountability in return for the approximately $50 million the labs
receive from the federal government every year. The best way to
achieve this goal would be to allow the private sector, as well as
other agencies, to compete for funds targeted to the work of these
labs, and to base this funding on individual projects. Or Congress
could simply roll over the labs' funding into a block grant to
states, which then could set their own research priorities and hire
whomever they see fit to conduct the work.
WHAT FEDERAL EDUCATION LABS DO
The
largest portion of the federal government's role in education
research is administered through four programs of the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement, at a total cost of $510
million in fiscal year (FY) 1998. These programs include:
-
Regional Educational Laboratories
(10);
-
National Education Research Institutes
(5) in charge of 11 National Research Centers;
-
Educational Resources Information
Centers (ERIC); and
-
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for
Mathematics and Science, and Regional Consortia.
Regional education laboratories were
created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great
Society education initiative, the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA). The goal of the labs, according to the U.S.
Department of Education, is to bring "structure and cohesion to a
fragmented federal role in educational research and
development." They are
the Department's largest research and development investment. In
1996, Congress appropriated around $51 million for the labs, and
this is supplemented by funds obtained from grants and contracts
through the Department of Education and other federal, state, and
local sources.
Contracts to run the labs are awarded
every five years. The labs report to regional boards comprised
primarily of educators and, in many cases, the chief state school
officers.
A Snapshot of the Regional
Labs
-
The Appalachian Educational
Laboratory (AEL) is based in Charleston, West Virginia,
and serves Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. One of
the oldest labs, it specializes in rural education and houses the
ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. It
promotes the integrity of rural small schools in a global economy.
AEL received $4.1 million in FY 1996. It developed the well-known
Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking
(QUILT) teaching model and has studied the Kentucky Education
Reform Act of 1990 to analyze the effects of large-scale changes in
state policy on rural education. It also publishes Family
Connections, a weekly guide for parents used in 45 states and
available to more than 60,000
families.
-
The Mid-Atlantic Laboratory for
Student Success (LSS) is based in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, and serves Delaware, the District of Columbia,
Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. It specializes in urban
education and received $5.2 million in FY 1996. (An Eisenhower
Regional Consortium also is located in Philadelphia.) LSS runs the
Learning City Program, a broad school-family-community approach to
promoting the educational attainment of urban youth. Studies show
that students in the program achieve higher math and reading scores
on standardized tests, as well as higher levels of
self-esteem.
-
The Mid-Continent Regional
Educational Laboratory (McREL) is based in Aurora,
Colorado, and serves Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North
Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. It specializes in curriculum,
training, and instruction and received $4.2 million in FY 1996.
McREL has been heavily involved in developing national standards,
It also has developed a system to modernize the South Dakota
education system and has published The Systemic Identification and
Articulation of Content Standards and
Benchmarks.
-
The North Central Regional
Educational Laboratory (NCREL) is based in Oak Brook,
Illinois, and serves Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota,
Ohio, and Wisconsin. It specializes in technology education and
received $6.6 million in FY 1996. This lab has studied, among other
things, the Iowa legislature's early childhood programs to help
target state funding. It also
has developed 22 professional development programs and has
transmitted them to more than 23,000 schools across the region.
-
The Northeast and Islands
Regional Educational Laboratory (LAB) is located at Brown
University in Providence, Rhode Island, and serves Connecticut,
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode
Island, Vermont, and the Virgin Islands. It specializes in language
and cultural diversity and received $6.1 million in FY 1996. (An
Eisenhower Regional Consortium also is located in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, at the Eisenhower Regional Alliance for Mathematics
and Science Education Reform.) LAB is one of the newest labs,
having taken over another lab that was caught overbilling the
government. It currently is exploring strategies to implement
academic standards for English-language learners and to identify
math and science instructional practices that effectively address
the needs of diverse learners.
-
The Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory (NWREL) is based in Portland,
Oregon, and serves Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington
State. It specializes in school processes and received $5.2 million
in FY 1996. An Eisenhower Regional Consortium is located in
Portland as well. NWREL has developed Onward to Excellence, a
school reform model used by 2,000 schools over the past 14 years,
and a program on teaching students how to write well. It also has
trained thousands of teachers and assists schools
technically.
-
The Pacific Region Educational
Laboratory (PREL) is based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and serves
American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, the Northern Marianas Islands, the
Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. It specializes in language
and cultural diversity and received $3 million in FY 1996. PREL's
major function is the training and networking of remote island
teachers. It also attempts to integrate island culture into local
education and holds
the Pacific Education Conference, which draws about 1,200
participants each year. PREL has studied school finance, at-risk
students, and cultural learning in the Pacific.
-
The Southern Regional Vision
for Education (SERVE) is based in Greensboro, North
Carolina, and serves Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North
Carolina, and South Carolina. It specializes in early childhood
education and received $5.6 million in FY 1996. SERVE studies
site-based management in North Carolina and dropout prevention in
South Carolina. It also has helped develop a school board member
training program in Mississippi and has conducted a study of school
restructuring.
-
The Southwest Educational
Development Laboratory (SEDL) is based in Austin, Texas,
and serves Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Specializing in language and cultural diversity, it received $5.5
million in FY 1996. SEDL monitors a program to foster understanding
and plan for the education of students on both sides of the
border.
-
The WestEd Laboratory
(WestEd) is based in San Francisco, California, and serves Arizona,
California, Nevada, and Utah. It specializes in assessment and
accountability. WestEd received $5.5 million in FY 1996. Its
principal research effort has been a study of situational teaching,
a model now used by more than 4,800 teachers in
California. The lab
also engages in "whole school" reform, language and cultural
diversity, state alliance projects, and policy support and studies
programs. In addition to developing the Infant/Toddler Caregiver
Training Program, it has adapted the Success for All reading
program from the National Research Center at Johns Hopkins
University to serve students with limited English proficiency more
effectively. WestEd has helped more than 100 schools adopt and
implement the Success for All model, which is touted by OERI as one
of the top 16 lab projects, to meet local needs.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH FEDERAL EDUCATION
LABS
Although the ten regional laboratories
seem to be doing interesting work, their impact on education reform
has been small; in some cases, their work may have undermined
efforts at reform. Among the many problems associated with the work
of these labs are the following:
- Evidence of Waste and Abuse. A March 1998
audit of WestEd by the U.S. Department of Education's own inspector
general (IG) found that the lab did not comply with certain federal
laws and regulations in managing its Regional Educational Lab
contracts. The audit also found that WestEd's indirect cost
estimates negotiated by the Department of Education do not reflect
all of its indirect costs.
Specifically:
-
WestEd leased space to a radio station
and a computer facility in buildings purchased with federal funds
for educational research purposes and retained all subsequent
profits, totaling $627,000, from December 1994 to November
1996.
-
WestEd used "lease-purchase agreements
that resulted in excessive charges for furniture, equipment, and
building improvements. The interest portion of the lease-purchase
payments was excessive since WestEd had funds available in its
reserve to make cash purchases. WestEd also accelerated charges to
the contract for the purchases and charged interest to the contract
during periods when interest was an unallowable cost."
-
WestEd "improperly billed the contract
for indirect costs on work performed by subcontractors."
-
It also "gave the impression that
indirect costs remained fairly constant when in fact the indirect
cost rate increased 29 percent over the past three years. For
fiscal year 1996, WestEd's actual indirect cost rate was 45 percent
rather than its stated rate of 12.8 percent."
The inspector general recommended that the
department require WestEd to use federal funds and property
efficiently and for their intended purposes. The IG also required
WestEd to return approximately $131,000 in federal funds used for
unallowable interest, improperly computed indirect costs, and other
unallowable direct costs. In addition, the IG concluded that WestEd
should use the $2.6 million of accumulated rental profits to reduce
program objectives and expenses, leaving over $300,000 in rental
profits available for these purposes annually in future
years.
Another audit, on February 25, 1998, dealt
with the costs incurred by the University of North Carolina,
Greensboro, and the Southeastern Regional Vision for Education
under the U.S. Department of Education's Regional Educational
Laboratories contract. This
audit found that the university "could not provide assurance that
approximately $2.3 million in salaries, fringe benefits, and
related indirect costs between December 1, 1995 and November 30,
1996 were allocated in direct relationship to the time and effort
made toward the Regional Educational Laboratories contract." The
department also was unable to "make an informed decision regarding
$415,000 of proposed subcontract actions because the University did
not obtain cost information from prospective subcontractors as
required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation." Though the
university has taken action to correct itself, the inspector
general recommended that the department require the university to
submit additional information for evaluation and assurance of
compliance with appropriate
federal regulations.
- Questionable Quality and Value of
Research. As Peirce Hammond, director of the Office of
Reform Assistance and Dissemination at OERI, explains, labs have to
"strike a balance between the urgency of children's needs. The
issue is what do you do with partial knowledge. Take a chance? Or
take a risk? Labs are in the middle of this dilemma all the
time." But a
1997 District and State Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of
Education found that nearly half of the states and districts that
had contact with regional labs found them to be of little or no
help in understanding or implementing comprehensive standards-based
reform. Their
emphasis on speedy delivery is also not reassuring, because sound
research methods often rely on experiments that take months, if not
years, to conduct.
Lack of Objectivity. The
labs consider themselves to be independent and objective and,
through their national network, to possess a capacity to tackle
nationwide needs and encourage efficiency. "By using proven
practices and applying Laboratory expertise, educators and
policymakers can avoid duplications, mistakes, and unnecessary
costs of reinventing programs," boasts one lab
manual.
But even a quick review of lab Internet
sites shows big gaps in the information made available. There are
few details on free-market ideas or initiatives such as school
choice, even though there are many recent studies on school choice
programs and their positive appeal to inner-city parents
(especially with the increase in privately sponsored programs).
Somewhat more information is available on charter schools and the
contracting-out of school services.
- Promotion of Fads. The
labs are supposed to disseminate proven methods of achieving
academic improvement, yet many of the methods they promote are
widely criticized fads, such as whole language. Furthermore, the
research they conduct often seems to rely more on anecdotes and
theories than on facts.
For example, OERI lists AEL's Family
Connections as one of the Regional Laboratories' top 16 tested
ideas for teaching and learning. Yet the program was reviewed by a
panel selected by the AEL that included Head Start coordinators,
Title I directors, teachers, and Parent-Teacher Association
leaders. The panel gave high marks to the program for
"developmental appropriateness, interest, understandability, and
usefulness to parents," but failed to mention any impact on
students' academic achievement.
AEL also touts its QUILT program, which
was designed to "train teachers to use well-placed questions to
stimulate students to think, question, and learn." QUILT "helps
teachers create a classroom environment that is more reflective,
more student centered, more inquiry based, and more
metacognitive." Yet no
one--not even the labs--can provide evidence that QUILT actually
improves students' test scores. The data from a four-state field
test indicate only that QUILT-trained teachers employed what they
learned to change classroom practice and that students in their
classrooms asked more questions that reflected "better
thinking."
An LSS project entitled "The Rural Cluster
Case Study: Say Yes to a Youngster's Future" promotes a math and
science curriculum "designed to be inquiry-based, hands-on,
cooperative, [and] self-paced." There is, however, no mention of
whether the program is or is not backed by research or solid
evidence that demonstrates proven academic gains. LSS claims that
the overall goal of this program is to test the feasibility of
implementing the "Say Yes" program and to determine how to scale up
implementation--with no mention of seeing how "Say Yes" improves
academic achievement.
The labs also frequently use terms like
"feeling positive" about the classroom and school environment,
"situational learning," and "better academic self-concept" to
describe what they are researching. NCREL developed "Strategic
Reading," an "innovative" approach that uses reading to improve
instruction and encourages "team teaching, active roles for
students, and meaningful principal participation," among other
things. NWREL is
developing processes and resources for schools to establish
classroom environments that are developmentally and culturally
appropriate for young children.
THE LABS' QUESTIONABLE RESEARCH
E.
D. Hirsch, a professor at the University of Virginia, points out
that terms such as "developmentally appropriate," "modern,"
"hands-on," "integrated," "interesting," and "individualized" are
often used to describe teaching techniques that are ideologically
loaded and neither grounded in nor backed by solid research that
tests their effectiveness. Several studies show, for instance, that
learning ability does not correlate with age and background--an
idea that underpins "developmentally appropriate" programs.
Juxtaposing developmentally appropriate methods with traditional
methods of teaching students makes the "progressive" techniques
more attractive, but little if any research supports their
effectiveness.
Labs
have different methods of evaluation and place different degrees of
importance on research. Yet all use the term "research-based" to
describe the programs they promote, even though "[they] don't have
the luxury of running controlled experiments," as Wesley Hoover,
President and CEO of the Southwest Educational Development
Laboratory, admits. At the
same time, "Direct Instruction," a program which uses memorization
and drill and has been proven to be effective in boosting the
academic outcomes of disadvantaged students, is not
widely distributed or prominently featured by the labs because it
is not interesting to the teachers who have to use it. "[The]
program will not work," claims Hoover, because "75 percent of
teachers in our Elementary schools come from a whole language
background. You need something else that `walks them through Direct
Instruction.'"
Flaws in Lab Research
A
June 1993 analysis of OERI and its labs by Maris Vinovskis, former
Research Advisor to the Assistant Secretary at OERI and currently a
professor at the Department of History and Institute for Social
Research at the University of Michigan, provides a glimpse of the
quality of research and development at five OERI Regional Education
labs. Vinovskis
praised the work of some of the labs, but he also found several
problems:
-
The mission of the Northeast and
Islands Regional Educational Laboratory (LAB) at Brown University
is to "promote systemic school improvement in the Northeast and
Islands region by supporting researchers who conduct collaborative
inquiry alongside educational practitioners and community members."
Yet LAB launched an intensive Collaborative Action Research effort
in three sites without an adequate research design for a
large-scale or long-term undertaking. LAB has
put together a "nice series of briefing papers on teacher quality,
pension portability, and teacher incentives," but the product only
summarizes existing policy papers.
-
The main emphasis of the Southwest
Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) is "ensuring educational
equality for mostly minority or handicapped children and youth who
live in poverty." One of
SEDL's projects was an investigation of small and economically
disadvantaged rural schools in five different states over several
years. Each of the five demonstration schools, all of which had
indicated an interest in improving student achievement scores, was
visited monthly by an SEDL staff member responsible for
facilitating change in that institution. An analysis of the plan
found that because of a lack of standardized measures of
educational success (and failure to include adequate controls in
the research design), it was impossible to make any systematic
comparisons among the schools. And since the schools studied were
not necessarily typical of others in that region, it was difficult
to know how much could be generalized from these findings. Because
there were no control groups in the study, it was hard to establish
which factors were instrumental in improving student achievement.
The analysis found the SEDL project an interesting but very limited
demonstration effort at five diverse sites, which does not lead to
information that would be useful in determining key factors in
improving rural education.
-
The Mid-Continent Regional Educational
Laboratory (McREL) emphasizes working "collaboratively with its
clients to improve educational policy and practice through the
application of knowledge from research, development, and
experience." It has
produced some useful policy papers, but many are little more than a
catalog of research, without adequate attention given to the
quality of the work or the diversity of material in the
field. In
addition, there are serious flaws in the way the lab tallied the
results of a questionnaire it sent to local public school
superintendents in the seven states it serves. Although the overall
response rate was only 40 percent and varied among the states, the
analysts simply grouped all of the returns together to get an
overall regional profile.
-
The signature program of the Northwest
Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL)--"Onward to Excellence"
(OTE)--is referred to as a "research-based" school improvement
process that focuses the attention and resources of school systems
and their communities on learning success for all students and
develops the capacity within school systems for continuous
improvement through shared leadership. OTE was
tested on nearly 2,000 schools, yet a study of its impact did not
explain why certain OTE programs were chosen for the study and
others were not. Moreover, an in-depth study of OTE programs could
not explain why some of them succeeded while others failed. The
study failed to look at non-OTE schools to see whether any of the
improvements in the OTE schools were due in part to other general
changes affecting all schools during those years. And because the
term "success" was not very well defined, OTE programs that set low
goals conceivably could be labeled as "successful" as--or even more
"successful" than--those that set higher goals.
Vinovskis concluded that after spending
$811 million of taxpayer money between 1966 and 1991, the labs had
little to show for it by way of success.
FAILED EFFORTS AT REFORM
The
inefficiencies and contradictions of the regional labs have not
escaped notice. In fact, part of a congressional reorganization of
OERI in 1994 specifically addressed these
problems. The
reorganization included the creation of an Office of Assistance and
Dissemination (ORAD), designed primarily to guide and monitor the
activities of the regional educational laboratories. The labs were
required to uphold the agreements in their five-year contracts with
the government and to promote the goals identified by their
individual boards. They also were given two quantifiable tasks: (1)
bring together scattered successful reform efforts at the state and
local levels, and (2) place more emphasis on existing successful
reforms to promote their implementation in other areas of the
country.
Thus, the 1994 reforms provided a basis
for OERI action both to harness the activities of the labs and to
promote greater accountability in and better guidance for their
operations. Even
Preston Kronkosky, Executive Director of the Southwest Educational
Laboratory, observed that the new arrangement provided a valuable
opportunity for the labs to streamline their goals and conform them
to the legislation.
This
initial optimism was quickly dashed, however, by the lobbying
efforts of the Council on Educational Development and Research
(CEDaR). Established initially to represent the interests of these
labs, CEDaR apparently found the Republican-led 104th Congress as
receptive as the Democratic-controlled one before it. A major blow
to the 1994 reform came in 1996 when Congress, in its
appropriations report, claimed that all of the labs' work should be
based on the directives of their regional governing boards. This
directly opposed the stipulation tying them to their contracts with
OERI that had been imposed only two years
earlier.
WHAT POLICYMAKERS SHOULD DO
The
best way to reform the regional education laboratories is to
incorporate competition and sound research standards into the
process.
Labs
should compete with other agencies and with the private sector for
federal grants to fund each project. Moreover, given today's
widespread access to the Internet and the existence of various
organizations that accumulate credible information, the education
bureaucracy no longer can justify wasting taxpayer dollars by
charging regional laboratories with gathering information.
The
labs' research methods and the activities they use to disseminate
their conclusions must be overhauled. Policymakers should adopt a
set of guidelines to govern decisions on how labs conduct and
disseminate research. Such guidelines should include:
-
Rescuing "research" from
nihilism. One problem with much of the labs' research lies
in "results" that cannot be applied to other cases because the
subjects studied were not controlled for all variables. Jay P.
Greene, an assistant professor of government at the University of
Texas at Austin and a research associate at Harvard University's
Program on Education Policy and Governance, has suggested one way
to improve the quality of research. He maintains that educational
researchers should use "random assignment" in selecting subjects
for a study, much as the medical research community does. In
controlled studies using random assignment, two groups are tracked
that, on average, are exactly alike except for the type of
"treatment" being tested. "Thus," says Greene, "any differences
observed between the randomly assigned groups after a period of
time can be attributed to the treatment." SEDL's
Hoover contends that "when you work with schools, you can't afford
to conduct random experiments." But the
alternative is conducting an experiment on students without a
viable mechanism with which to measure the experiment's
success.
-
Raising research
standards. As Bonnie Grossen illustrates in the Fall 1996
American Educator, many experimental practices today jumped from
theory or hypothesis to the classroom without first being tested by
formal experimentation or analysis to determine the validity of the
underlying hypothesis. According
to Arthur Ellis and Jeffrey Fouts, professors of education at
Seattle Pacific University, there are three different levels of
research. Level I
is theory-building, in which the researcher develops a hypothesis.
Level II tests the theory through formal experimentation and
analysis of data to determine the validity of the hypothesis. Level
III replicates the results in large-scale studies and school- or
district-wide implementation. Level III research calls for peer
review and replication of the experiment, as well as large-scale or
long-term follow-up studies. Unfortunately, many of the programs
being touted by the regional labs have not had any Level III or
even Level II research. Robert
Stonehill of OERI believes that the current role of the labs is to
move research from Level I to Levels II and III. Though
this is reassuring, few parents will find it comforting that
education methods based only on Level I research are being used
with their children.
-
Defining what "research based"
and other terms mean. At the heart of the problem are the
vague definitions and misuse of federal education "research" terms
and the phrase "research based." Robert Sweet, former head of the
National Institute of Education (NIE), OERI's predecessor agency,
has been an outspoken advocate of redefining research terms. For
example, he believes such terms as "exemplary" and "promising"
should be replaced with stricter terms such as "reliable and
replicable" and "pilot tested"--assuming that they actually apply.
The term "reliable replicable research" should mean only objective
and valid scientific studies that (1) include rigorously defined
samples of subjects that are sufficiently large and representative
to support the general conclusions; (2) rely on measurements that
meet established standards of reliability and validity; (3) test
competing theories where multiple theories exist; (4) are subjected
to peer review before their results are published; and (5) discover
effective strategies for improving academic skills. The ultimate
test of a program's usefulness should be whether the students in
the program excel academically. The federally funded labs should
replicate only those methods and education plans that have been
proven to boost academic achievement.
CONCLUSION
Members of Congress can take a grand step
to promote sound education that achieves success in America's
classrooms. The solution lies in the nation's commitment to proven
models of education success.
Federal education research labs, as
currently funded and operated, have done little to promote these
successful models. Their funding should be tied to programs that
boost academic outcomes. The regional labs also should compete with
other agencies and the private sector for federal grants to fund
each individual project, or else their functions should be rolled
over to the states to enable each state to set up its own research
entities.
Finally, policymakers should establish
simple guidelines to govern decisions on how to conduct and
disseminate research. The sole determining factor in deciding
whether a program will be funded and implemented in the schools
should be an observed increase in academic scores, not how much the
educational bureaucracy or education lobbyists like the
program.
Nina H. Shokraii is a former Education Policy
Analyst at The Heritage Foundation.
Endnotes