Initial observations: Al and Tipper Gore look depressed. George H.W. Bush would rather chat with Bill Clinton than with Jimmy Carter. Hillary‘s royal blue coat is a winner. Do I like Michelle Obama‘s chartreuse dress and jacket combo, with contrasting green gloves? I can’t decide. Malia and Sasha though, in their brightly colored little skirts […]
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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IN DEFENSE OF PETE SEEGER.
Reason‘s Nick Gillepsie isn’t happy about Pete Seeger‘s participation in yesterday’s We Are One inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, writing about Seeger’s Marxist past and initial opposition to American engagement in World War II. (An erroneous position, I might add, held on both the left and the right at the time, including by some […]
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MORE ON ETHNIC CHARTER SCHOOLS AND SEGREGATION.
Rick Kahlenberg makes some very good points in this piece about the ethnic charter school movement. Rick argues that the correct liberal position is to oppose both the Arabic-language public school and the Hebrew language public charter in New York. …the purpose of public schools is not to satisfy the individual preferences of parents. The […]
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HOW TO SHOP FOR ORGANIC FOOD.
The jury is out on whether eating organic can significantly improve your health. But for those who’d like to ingest fewer chemicals and hormones, here, via The Daily Green, are lists of foods that absorb the most chemicals and those that absorb the least. In other words, if you want to get the most bang […]
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AN AGENDA TO “END THE CULTURE WARS?”
Our own Ann Friedman states it best: reproductive rights and gay rights shouldn’t be seen as “culture war” issues — a framing that plays into the hands of the right — but should actually be understood as what they really are, matters of civil rights. Unfortunately, it seems that Third Way hasn’t gotten the message. […]
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CHARTER SCHOOLS AND UNIONS.
Continuing our charter school discussion from yesterday, I want to point out some major news Ezra highlighted: a KIPP middle school in Brooklyn is unionizing under the United Federation of Teachers, and a second New York City KIPP school already represented by the UFT is entering into collective bargaining. This means that three of KIPP’s […]
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THE FACEBOOK BREAST-FEEDING BAN.
It is as nonsensical as the L.A. Times editorial board says it is. Of course, the photo ban isn’t exactly a surprising mistake from a company whose founders and many of its executives have yet to reach parenting age, and who seem to not have particularly long cultural memories. Haven’t we already debated breast-feeding on […]
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CHARTER SCHOOLS AND SEGREGATION.
I generally believe that progressive education reform should include a healthy investment in the public charter sector, with careful oversight and attempts to re-create successful charter models. But as someone who writes frequently about the astounding levels of segregation within the American education system — a problem that is getting worse, not better — it […]
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GEORGE W. BUSH, VISIONARY?
George W. Bush has said that he will be judged kindly by history. On foreign policy, protection of our Constitution, health care, poverty, and so many other issues, that won’t be the case. But I do believe that the Republican party elders of 2050 will look back on Bush and Karl Rove‘s outreach to the […]
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ON GAZA, OPINION COALESCES…
As Spencer Ackerman points out, even the editors of Haaretz, Israel’s premiere daily paper, are calling for an end to the ground war in Gaza. Israel’s justified rationale in acting against rocket launchers has been increasingly damaged over two weeks. The legitimacy and understanding extended to Israel melt away amid the pictures of killing and […]
