u/lemon_lime_light

From an opinion piece in the Washington Post:

>As America’s drug crisis has claimed the lives of nearly a million people over the past decade, cities and states, supported by the federal government under the Biden administration, have embraced new strategies meant to keep people who use drugs alive long enough for them to get help.

>The most visible of these are supervised consumption sites. Also known as harm reduction centers, these facilities provide people with a place to use their drug of choice in the presence of staff armed with overdose-reversing naloxone. New York City and Rhode Island have allowed SCSs to be established, and Minnesota is expected to do the same. Cities around the world have also embraced them, and unapproved sites operate in other American cities.

>Supporters of SCSs say that amid an unprecedented increase in overdose deaths, communities should do whatever they can to save lives. They’re not wrong. If SCSs measurably reduced deaths, they might be worth any problems they cause. One of us even argued as much in 2019.

>The problem is these facilities don’t work, disrupt communities and are clearly illegal under federal law.

>In a new report for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions, we reviewed the growing body of evidence that shows SCSs have no effect whatsoever on overdose deaths.

From City Journal:

>In recent months, leaders in several cities and states have touted their schools’ sky-high graduation rates. Such figures usually justify celebration—but not when state exams and standardized test scores show weak results. Praising high graduation rates could mislead families about what their kids really know, setting them up for unpleasant surprises later in life.

>Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for example, recently touted his state’s highest-ever graduation rate: 84.9 percent. The state’s lieutenant governor highlighted the “meaningful and long overdue” progress for Native American students, whose graduation rate has improved by nine percentage points since 2021.

>Yet scores for Native Americans declined on state high school exams over the same period. Today, just over a third of Native-American students are reading proficiently, while only 17 percent are proficient in math.

>Declining test scores extend to other students as well. On eleventh-grade math, proficiency dropped from 41.4 percent to 35 percent between 2021 and 2025. On tenth-grade reading, about half of students are proficient, down from almost 60 percent in 2021. And nearly two-thirds of students don’t meet grade-level standards in high school science, with 42 percent scoring at the lowest level...

>Politicians and school administrators may find it convenient to sidestep or ignore declining academic outcomes on standardized tests. But by dismissing clear evidence, they preserve the status quo instead of reckoning honestly with the results of the time and money they have invested. Schools don’t deserve praise for improved graduation rates when those gains are not matched by real improvements in learning.