Pioneer Institute
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Pioneer Institute, is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded think tank founded by Lovett C. Peters in 1988. James Stergios is Pioneer's Executive Director. The Massachusetts-based think tank seeks to change the intellectual climate in Massachusetts by supporting scholarship that challenges the "conventional wisdom" on Massachusetts public policy issues. The Institute believes that individual freedom and responsibility, limited and accountable government, and the expanded application of free-market principles to public policy contribute to greater human dignity, happiness, and economic prosperity.
Pioneer's legacy issue is public education, especially under-performing schools in poor urban areas. In the 1990s, the Institute became a leading champion of charter schools. In Massachusetts, charter schools were initiated as part of the Education Reform Act of 1993 to offer choice and foster innovation in education. Across the country, charter schools have grown from 1 in 1992 to over 3,000 today. Currently Massachusetts has 59 charter schools. In the early 1990s, Pioneer established the Charter School Resource Center, which until 2003 supported efforts to ensure the recruitment and training of charter school entrepreneurs. That Center was spun off successfully and is now a stand-alone organization serving charter schools across the country. In 2006, Pioneer established the Center for School Reform, which promotes choice, competition and school-based management in the public school system.
In addition to education, Pioneer focuses on finding ways to streamline state and local government by introducing competition and free-market philosophy to service delivery, eliminating unnecessary regulation, and refocusing government on its core functions. In 1991, Pioneer launched the Better Government Competition, a grass roots citizens’ ideas contest to improve the cost-effectiveness of state and local government. In 1997, Pioneer began The Shamie Center for Restructuring Government, named in honor of the late Ray Shamie, a long-time Pioneer board member. In his work as a humanitarian, philanthropist, enterpreneur, and political activist, Ray Shamie personified the values of freedom, personal responsibility, and competition that are the foundation of the center's work.
Another of Pioneer's primary issues is economic opportunity. Pioneer's Center for Economic Opportunity works to strengthen the private and public sector business assistance available to low-income urban entrepreneurs and shape public policy that enables the start-up and growth of new businesses. The Center also works to influence statewide economic development policy to promote a healthy, competitive economic climate in Massachusetts.
In recent years, Pioneer has expanded its key areas to include environments and health care. In 2003, Pioneer partnered with Harvard University's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston to conduct a two-year long research project on the housing market in Central and Eastern Massachusetts. In 2006, Pioneer and Rappaport released The Initiative on Local Housing Regulation. The initiative is comprised of a first-of-its-kind catalogue of local regulations in 187 communities with 50 miles of Boston. The accompanying analysis of these regulations determined that a broad range of municipal regulations, from minimum lot size requirements to wetlands protection standards, have had a dramatic impact on housing production in the last 15 years. The report demonstrates that local land-use regulations have produced a dramatic decline in new housing permits, thus prevening the market from responding to increases in demand and ultimately increasing prices. The Initiative on Local Housing is a landmark study that confirmed previous speculation and will influence public policy makers for years to come.
