Message from the Editor

Downplayed Policies Rise Again

Three feature stories in this RAND Review highlight the advantages of policy options that have been demoted, disregarded, or doubted in recent years — in defense, education, and health, respectively. The good news is that the promise of these policy options has not diminished. If anything, their stock has risen.

While wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq have strained the ability of U.S. forces to maintain their historically mandated levels of readiness for new contingencies, China has grown steadily stronger. In January, China destroyed an orbiting satellite with a ground-launched ballistic missile, the first successful use of antisatellite technology since a U.S. test in 1985. In March, China announced an 18 percent hike in military spending. As Roger Cliff and his colleagues advise in our cover story, China does not pose a direct threat to U.S. security, but China does pose a real and growing threat to Taiwan and thus to the U.S. ability to fulfill its security commitments to that self- governing island. To prepare for a contingency in the Western Pacific, the United States can do much more.

Since enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, public school districts that fail to show dramatic increases in student achievement have been threatened with state takeover and privatization. Our Philadelphia story by Brian Gill shows that privatization is not the only solution. In Philadelphia, site of the nation’s largest state takeover and privatization effort, both the privately and publicly managed public schools have improved. In fact, some of the publicly managed schools have outpaced all others. The implementation of private management was limited in this case, but reforming public education management has proved to be at least as effective as resorting to privatization.

Our story and centerpiece on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program enumerate the benefits of a policy that has been widely implemented since 1997 but also widely doubted. Operating in all 50 states, this government-sponsored health insurance program has made health care more accessible to children in low-income families. Yet even after a decade, there is considerable skepticism that this program actually improves children’s health. The story by Michael Seid proves the skeptics wrong. Seid confirms the correlation between realized access to care (or receiving needed care) among children enrolled in this program and clinically meaningful improvements in their health-related quality of life.

—John Godges