Pundits routinely assert there is a cheating epidemic in American education.

A few statistics can confirm the extent of the problem. Researchers at the University of Nebraska surveyed students and found that “89 percent said glancing at someone else's answers during a test was cheating, but 87 percent said they'd done that at least once. Also, 94 percent said providing answers to someone during a test was cheating -- but 74 percent admitted to doing it.”

On the very day that Steve Jobs died a new report suggests that the U.S. health care system is spending too much money on people near the end of their lives. The timing of the two events could not have been more ironic.  

Had Jobs been under the care of the British National Health Service (NHS) or the Canadian Medicare system, he almost certainly would have died two years earlier. That would have been a major loss for the world, by anyone’s reckoning.  

Here’s the back story. In 2004 Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He reportedly underwent successful surgery. Then, in 2009 he received a liver transplant. He died on Wednesday.

Across the country, states are enacting and expanding school choice options for families. This year alone, 12 states and the District of Columbia have implemented new school choice options for children or expanded existing options, leading The Wall Street Journal to label 2011 “The Year of School Choice.”[1] 

Among the many school choice advances in 2011 was the enactment of a revolutionary new option in Arizona: Education Savings Accounts (ESA). ESAs redirect a portion of the funding the state would have spent on a child in the public-school system to an education savings account, from which parents can then pay for private-school tuition and a variety of other educational options. Education Savings Accounts are an innovative new approach that many states could take to provide school choice options for families.

If you care a great deal, I’ll give you an account number you can use to make a deposit. 

[Note to Self: Send this Alert to the folks at Commonwealth. Also to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. CC Uwe Reinhardt as well. You never know what they might do. They certainly talk about this topic a lot.] 

While you’re thinking about the initial question, here are a few follow-up questions:

Solar loans about one thing: construction jobs for unions

It is truly scandalous, reprehensible and even criminal that even by the federal government’s own estimates, the Energy Department loans to clean-energy enterprises will wind up costing taxpayers about $6.4 million for every permanent job saved or created. Obama is pumping $16 billion in loan guarantees out the door for which the DOE expects to produce a grand total of 2,500 permanent jobs. Do the math.

Did you know that Paul Krugman is more compassionate than you are? Or so he says.

In fact, just about everybody who is left of center is more compassionate than everybody who is right of center, Krugman explained in a recent New York Times editorial.  “American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions,” he wrote.

If you identify with Milton Friedman’s “free to choose” vision you are today part of the “free to die” crowd.