Some powerful numbers from historian of marriage Stephanie Coontz, writing in the Times: Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married […]
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.
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TODAY’S BIG, BAD ECONOMIC NEWS.
European levels of unemployment (when Europe isn’t in recession): 7.6 percent according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. —Dana Goldstein
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HEALTH CARE STIMULUS SPENDING AT RISK.
First they came for the family planning funding. And now, as Harold Pollak reports, Senate “moderates” are out for blood on all manner of health care funding in the stimulus package, including $400 million for HIV screening, $1.1 billion for comparative medical research, and $75 million to discourage smoking. HIV screening? Why, that sounds like […]
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MICHELLE OBAMA’S AGENCY TOUR.
As I wrote last week, after spending the later part of the campaign studiously avoiding most policy discussions, Michelle Obama appears to be easing her way back into the game. She has been visiting federal agencies, speaking to thousands of thrilled bureaucrats and discussing how her husband’s stimulus package would enable each agency to offer […]
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MORNING NEWS ABOUT WOMEN IN POLITICS.
I am shocked, just shocked, to learn that New York Gov. David Paterson leaked nasty lies about Caroline Kennedy to the press, apparently because he actually did plan to select her for the Senate seat and was sore that she left him at the alter. According to the New York Times, the leaks may have […]
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OBAMA’S REMARKS AT D.C. PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL.
At D.C.’s Cap City public charter school, President Obama said he saw the school as a model for education innovation under new DOE secretary Arne Duncan. From the transcript released by the White House: You’re excellent listeners. And the reason we came to visit, A, we wanted to get out of the White House; B, […]
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OBAMAS VISIT D.C. PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL.
Speaking of controversy in the D.C. public schools, guess what Barack and Michelle Obama did today? They visited D.C.’s Capital City Charter School. More evidence that President Obama wants to be understood as an education reformer? The Post‘s Jay Matthews and Lori Montgomery described Cap City back in 2006: Founded in 2000 by middle-class parents […]
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D.C. TEACHERS’ UNION RELEASES COUNTER-PROPOSAL.
In late September, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee presented the Washington Teachers’ Union with a contract that, if put into practice, would be the most radical overhaul of teachers’ work rules attempted since the rise of the teachers’ union movement in the 1960s. The contract created two employment ladders for teachers. The “green” track would […]
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FEMALE CIRCUMCISION AS AN HIV PREVENTATIVE?
Not to open back up the great circumcision wars of 2007, but as someone who has written about experiments in using male circumcision as an HIV preventative, I feel obliged to recognize that the idea, it seems, has run amok. According to the UN’s IRIN news service, Kenyan proponents of female genital mutilation are now […]
