Policy Research

The term uninsured, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons notes in a 2006 White Paper on Medical Financing is so widely used it is impossible to avoid. The national organization contends the term "self-paying" or "self-insured" is...

  Free market economists have opposed the taxation of food for more than two centuries. (Policy Foundation, 2002) "The sales tax on groceries should be phased-out over a multi-year period using excess state revenues. The...

Rural Arkansas suffers from a shortage of physicians. One way to address the problem is by exploring alternative systems of delivering medical care. Two alternative systems are advanced nurse practitioners and midwives. Advanced nurse practitioners are...

(August 2008) Eighteen K-12 public school districts in Arkansas earned the top grade (A or A-minus) in the Policy Foundation's third annual School District Rankings study. Fourteen districts received a failing grade of F in...

  "Define and implement a system of performance-based pay for all Arkansas state employees and public K-12 employees, including teachers." (Murphy Commission, 1998 stud, "Making Arkansas State Government Performance Driver And Accountable") (July 2008) Teachers...

  "In its amicus brief filed with the state Supreme Court in the Lake View case, the Arkansas Policy Foundation points out that, in 1996, the Clinton administration recommended a similar accounting system for the country's public...

(June 2008) The National Education Association (NEA), the largest government-sector labor union in the United States, lost members in Arkansas in 2007, records show. There were 16,528 Arkansas NEA members as of Dec. 31, 2007...

(June 2008) A long-stated goal of Arkansas state government officials is achieving 100 percent parity with the U.S. average in terms of per capita personal income (Bureau of Economic Analysis). Government economic development officials have...

One educational group escaped scrutiny in the consolidation debate that occurred after the Court's decision in Lake View: Arkansas' education service co¬operatives. Much of the debate about K-12 consolidation revolved around the student enrollment threshold...

Arkansas has the highest income tax rate among the states that border it, according to 2008 data compiled by the Federation of Tax Administrators. The group has published a chart that shows Arkansas has a...