Alongside President Bush, Arlen Specter was a consistent Republican supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Given the Obama administration’s recent murmuring about prioritizing the issue — a commitment some have doubted — the loss of bipartisan support could represent a setback for immigrants’ rights. After the June 2007 defeat of the McCain–Kennedy immigration compromise, Specter wrote […]
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.
Posted inArticle
WHAT DOES SWINE FLU HAVE TO DO WITH ABORTION RIGHTS?
Talk about paranoia — right-wing talk radio hosts and anti-abortion-rights groups are promoting the idea that President Obama declared a state of emergency regarding swine flu in order to push through pro-choice Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius‘ nomination as health and human services secretary. (You know, it’s not like 152 people have died, or anything.) Concerned […]
Posted inArticle
Listening to Ahmadinejad
The Iranian president wraps his Holocaust denial in legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy. That makes dealing with him much more difficult — and requires a change in Israel’s attitude.
Posted inArticle
MARRIAGE AND 20-SOMETHINGS.
As the child of divorced parents who rarely argued — or at least did a really good job of shielding me from their disagreements — I read with interest this Boston Globe report on a study that found long-term negative consequences for children exposed to verbal fighting between their parents: …15-year-olds exposed to their parents’ […]
Posted inArticle
SAM BROWNBACK: I NEED TO THINK MORE ABOUT SEBELIUS AND ABORTION.
Kansas’ Republican state Legislature certainly is crafty. During Gov. Kathleen Sebelius‘ long, still unresolved fight to be confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary, she’s been forced to deal with several abortion-related bills back home. You know, because in the midst of an economic crisis, the most crucial agenda item is constraining women’s reproductive health […]
Posted inArticle
ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: OBAMA FOLLOWS OUR LEAD.
Israel’s far-right foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is a “repatriate,” or immigrant from the former Soviet Union. The key base of support for Lieberman’s political party, Israel Beitenu (Israel Is Our Home), comes from the repatriate community, which, facing discrimination from native-born Israelis, tends to be more open to the extreme anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian politics that Lieberman […]
Posted inArticle
WHY DO SOME CHARTER TEACHERS WANT TO UNIONIZE?
The Times has a good piece today about the unionization and de-unionization efforts taking place at KIPP charter schools in New York City. The article, by Jennifer Medina, contains the clearest explanation I’ve seen to date of why, exactly, the teachers at KIPP AMP in Brooklyn felt they needed union representation. As reported by the […]
Posted inArticle
A BREAK FROM WONKINESS.
Nothing like a good, old-fashioned sex scandal to liven up a rainy Monday afternoon. It turns out that the president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, fathered two children out of wedlock. While he was a Catholic bishop. —Dana Goldstein
Posted inArticle
WOULD NATIONAL STANDARDS THREATEN CREATIVE TEACHING?
In response to my post on national curriculum standards, commenter Josh G. asks: How do you address the criticism that the “national standards movement” is just an attempt to Taylorize the teaching profession? I once worked at a technical support call center where the management, at the urging of Accenture, switched from actual technical support […]
Posted inArticle
WHO SUPPORTS NATIONAL CURRICULUM STANDARDS?
Eduwonk Andrew Rotherham points toward this Walter Isaacson Time piece in support of national curriculum standards, which notes that two-thirds of American kids attend schools whose curricula leave them unprepared for higher education and the workplace. I’m a fan of national standards, which are a common feature of the highest-rated school systems in the world. […]
