By Eric Fruits, Ph.D.
‘Tis the season for holiday wishes. And, toward that end, we at Cascade Policy Institute have some of our own wishes for the New Year.
We hope that someday soon, Oregon high school students who are 15 or 16 years old will be allowed to take the GED exam and graduate early with a diploma. Currently, it’s near impossible for high school students to take the GED. But, Cascade has a bill proposal that will change that and open up new opportunities to graduate early.
We wish that Oregon would join dozens of other states in fostering school choice. It can be as simple as enabling inter-district transfers or lifting the cap on charter school enrollment. It can be as bold as shifting state funding to support students, rather than the system. Just this year, Arizona expanded its school choice scholarship program to include all students. Oregon should follow their lead.
Lastly, a wish for all Oregonians. We hope that your power stays on in the years to come. Our elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats are taking drastic steps to electrify everything, from cars to stoves to furnaces. But, we simply don’t have enough electricity to do it. In this season of reflection, let’s hope that our policymakers take a pause in their march toward forced electrification, so that we can keep our lights on this Christmas and into the future.
Eric Fruits, Ph.D. is Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
Gary L Virgin
The movement to electric everything does not make sense when the reliability of our present distribution system is considered. Every small perturbation in nature’s “normal” conditions results in fallen lines and power outages. Vehicle collisions and dead tree failures kill power lines every year. Recently domestic terrorists have discovered the vulnerability of large, expensive and difficult -to -replace power transformers, killing them with gunfire. Underground gas lines are much more immune to such outages, yet the unthinking want to replace gas wherever possible. Please keep up your good work.
Larry
Christmas wish List: (1) Oregon schools return to traditional education” Reading, Writing, Math, American History, Civics, (NO CRT), Math, Science and Literature. (2) School Choice, (3) follow State of Arizona’s example where the money for each student follows the student no any School where he or she wants to go.