Has localism in education really “served us well,” as Obama claims? No way. It’s the reason why states are allowed to set their own narrow, way-too-easy NLCB standards, and then “pass” them with flying colors, giving us no real metric of how well our kids are doing.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.