Privatization creates an incentive structure driven by profit instead of by the needs of the community. The oft-stated aim of privatization is to increase competition in order to drive down costs and increase efficiency, but the markets for service contracts do not behave like idealized competitive markets. PRA monitors Massachusetts’ most notable conservative think tank, the Pioneer Institute, which is focused on dismantling the public good via privatization not just in Massachusetts but across the entire country.

Canaries in the Classroom

Public Education and Authoritarian Politics in West Virginia and Kentucky
collage of protestors holding signs in support of public education in front of a green background

In Kentucky and West Virginia, attacks on public education by the state and federal governments foreshadow the authoritarian future promised by Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation on a national scale.

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U.S. Imperialism Comes Home to Roost: A Conversation with Ramah Kudaimi

Inform Your Resistance Season 3: Episode 4
A person holding an image of women crying and a sign that says "stop occupations and torture for empire! The world can't wait!"

We talk with Ramah Kudaimi about imperialism & state violence. From the global war on terror, to genocide in Palestine, we discuss how imperial power, capitalist interests, and far-right organizing work together to entrench systems of …

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Exploiting Equity

How the Pioneer Institute Co-opts the Concept of Social Justice

This report demonstrates how three of the Pioneer Institute’s leading claims that their education reforms create greater equity in schools are not only unfounded but that these reforms disproportionately harm communities of color and immigrant…

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Dismantling Public Education One Brick at a Time

The Privatization Strategy of Pioneer Institute and Betsy Devos
President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos poses for a photo with students of Saint Andrew Catholic School on March 3, 2017.

On Wednesday, September 12 a federal judge ruled Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s delay of Obama-era regulation of for-profit colleges as “unlawful.” The regulations forgive federal student loans from “misleading, deceitful, and predatory” lending…

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Old Dog, New Anti-Union Tricks

Pioneer Institute Lawyers-Up with Janus
James Stergios, Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute. Photo: Rappaport Center via Wikimedia Commons.

Since PRA’s 2016 report on Massachusetts’ most notable conservative think tank, the Pioneer Institute has taken on public sector unions not just in Massachusetts but across the entire country. Recent legal challenges to public sector unions have…

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The Right’s Relationship with Climate Denial

In 2015, the United States and China – the two biggest emitters of greenhouses gases in the world – were among 195 countries to ratify the Paris climate accord with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Less than two years later…

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#First100Days Crash Course: Week 5

Neoliberalism and Privatization

Neoliberalism is the economic, social, and political analysis that best describes the startlingly unequal distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. today. Neoliberalism, and the policies it undergirds, results from the triumph of capitalism and…

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Privatizing Massachusetts

The Right-Wing’s Blue State Game Plan

In October, the Fiscal and Management Control Board overseeing MBTA, Boston’s public transit system, took quick action …

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Opening Pandora's Box

The Rise & Fall of the Right's School Voucher Pioneer
A young girl holding a sign that says Celebrate Teachers - Celebrate Choice! National School Choice Week

Polly Williams, the Wisconsin African American lawmaker behind the nation’s first school voucher program, believed vouchers could help students of color in urban Milwaukee. Conservative donors and right-wing think tanks saw her program as opening…

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Midterm Elections: School Privatization Continues to Advance DeVos/Heritage Foundation Strategy

Midterm elections present a particularly fruitful opportunity for the school privatization movement to maximize their investment. Since 1974, in mid-term or non-presidential election years, the federal election turnout has failed to reach 40% of…

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Report in Review: The Right's Privatization Mission

This report documents the role of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in state legislative bills to privatize vital public services, with the aim of helping activists fight back.

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The Pioneer Institute

Privatizing the Common Wealth

Foreword By Patricia JehlenState Representative - Somerville, MA Ideas are powerful. The relentless, well-funded, and well-connected efforts of the Pioneer Institute to “change the direction of the wind” politically in Massachusetts are well…

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Decades of Distortion: The Right's 30-Year Assault on Welfare

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