The mythical gender pay gap has again appeared out of the mists of fairytale land to grace the news cycle. This time in reference to the US Women’s Soccer team. The US Women’s Soccer team won its fourth Women’s World Cup championship this year, and now people are calling for “equal pay for equal work,”…

“Remember in November”   We’ve been hearing that line for a while, and no doubt, we’ll continue to – especially now that the special session on “education betterment” is complete, and that resolution included the West Virginia Legislature allowing for the creation of the state’s first (three) charter schools among the laundry list of other…

By the time you read this, it is possible that the outcome of West Virginia’s special legislative session dedicated to education reform has been determined. As you are likely aware, on Monday, June 17, the House of Delegates has begun its portion of the special session — the Senate has already passed important reforms like…

At the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, people often ask us why we care about the education system and what we stand to gain from making changes to it.   Obviously, some people ask questions like this simply because they disagree with our values as an organization and feel a need to “troll” us…

In 2018, long-simmering frustrations regarding wages, working conditions, and general funding boiled over into a wave of teachers’ strikes, beginning in our home state of West Virginia and spreading throughout the country to Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado. The trend continued in 2019 in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and a second strike in as…

While the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy is, at its core, a think tank that attempts to find solutions to West Virginia’s many ills through public policy, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t look for solutions in other places, as well. This search led Cardinal a few hundred miles to the south in the…

This past weekend was Easter and has really marked a brighter, warmer, more permanent turn in the weather for Charleston, WV.     Spring is often seen as the season for new beginnings. Whether that be flowers blooming, the beginning of wedding season, or spring cleaning. It’s an opportunity to start over, try something new,…

Last week the world observed Gender Pay Gap Day, so this week on the Cardinal blog, our economist, Dr. Jessi Troyan will be discussing her perspective on the existence, or lack thereof, of a Gender Pay Gap.   Seventy-seven cents on the dollar.   That’s the statistic publicized by President Obama in 2012, and is…

This week our Executive Director is going to walk you through the Four Pillars of a Miracle! These are our guiding principles at the Cardinal Institute that help us determine the policies we advocate for as we work toward a brighter future in West Virginia.   Four Pillars of a Miracle The Cardinal Institute’s guiding…

Permission slips: most students remember taking one of these home for their parents to sign so they could go on a field trip, participate in a school activity, or perhaps watch a PG13 movie in the classroom. But did you know that permission slips aren’t just for field trips anymore? Government permission slips to work,…