Charter schools are often touted as labs for novel approaches to education, but one of these innovations isn’t so new at all. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA today released a report showing that charter schools have become bastions for racial re-segregation. The racial segregation cuts both ways. In certain states with high minority populations […]
Gabriel Arana
Gabriel Arana is a contributing editor at The American Prospect. His articles on gay rights, immigration, and media have appeared in publications including The New Republic, The Nation, Salon, The Advocate, and The Daily Beast.
Posted inEducation in America
Hurricane Katrina as Education Reform.
This Sunday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan made his first diplomatic visit to gaffe-land while discussing New Orleans’ educational gains on Washington Watch: “The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.” Duncan later apologized for the comment. The statement itself isn’t really a call for outrage; it was a […]
Posted inEducation in America
The Not Quite Overhaul of No Child Left Behind.
The Obama administration released its 2011 budget proposal today, which includes a sweeping overhaul of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The Bush-era education law was widely criticized as an “unfunded mandate” that punished struggling schools and encouraged districts to slough off poor-performing students. Details of the overhaul are sketchy, but it seems the primary focus […]
Posted inArticle
Prop. 8 Trial Roundup.
This week, plaintiffs in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial began presenting their case before Northern California District Judge Vaughn Walker. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has barred cameras from the courtroom, so most of the information available is coming from reporters or those liveblogging the proceedings. While the trial is not being broadcast, it is still […]
Posted inArticle
Camera Ready
Anti-gay marriage activists’ opposition to live broadcasting the federal challenge to Prop. 8 has little to do with the propriety of cameras in the courtroom and everything to do with setting the agenda.
Posted inArticle
Is ‘Principled Opposition to Homosexuality’ Different From Bigotry?
The proposed bill in the Ugandan Assembly prescribing the death penalty for homosexuality, which was broadly condemned in a Times editorial yesterday, has highlighted the link between American evangelical Christianity and anti-gay extremism in Africa. Many Christian groups that oppose homosexuality have spoken against the bill (they say it goes too far) and have resisted […]
Posted inDepartments
I Love You, Man
Dueling “ex-gay” and gay-rights conferences have more in common than the attendees would like to believe.
Posted inArticle
Hispanic Higher-Ed Policy Misses the Mark.
In higher-ed policy circles, it is well established that Hispanics trail other minority groups in getting post-secondary degrees: But a new report from Excelencia in Education notes that too often policies aimed at closing the gap have relied on a false picture of the Hispanic population, one which reduces all members of the group to […]
Posted inArticle
There Are No Gold Medals in the Oppression Olympics.
This slipped under my radar, but David Kaufman at HuffPo has a stinging diatribe against Andrew Sullivan for suggesting that the fight for marriage rights is equivalent to the Civil Rights Movement. Part of me agrees that it’s somewhat problematic that the “separate but equal” analogy has become a gay-rights orthodoxy. I have argued vigorously […]
Posted inArticle
A Decade of ‘Progress’ for LGBT Rights
Today, the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank funded by major LGBT donors, released a progress report that tracks various indicators of LGBT rights over the last decade. As one might expect, the results are mixed. Since 2000, 26 states have banned marriage through a statewide vote; two more states have banned gay adoptions (bringing […]
