Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The most recent round of ISTEP+ results, released last month, continue to show students in Marion County public schools performing well below state averages. At Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, fewer than 25% of elementary and middle school students passed both English and math ISTEP+ tests. These numbers should serve as a call to action to support struggling students and schools. Unfortunately, they’ve also raised a common refrain used to push back against efforts to improve educational outcomes for low-income students. In Marion County, 31% of children under 18 live in poverty, and 66% of […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Smoking remains the number one preventable cause of death in the United States, and Indiana’s smoking rate continues to rank among the worst in the nation. Smoking kills more than 11,000 Hoosiers each year. These impacts are felt especially hard among low-income individuals on Medicaid, who are more likely to be smokers. In addition to the public health impacts, smoking also hurts Hoosiers through high taxpayer-funded costs. For example, Medicaid smokers in Indiana cost $540 million more each year than non-smokers, according to a study we released earlier this year. These lost resources could instead […]