Education in America

Last night, the Bush campaign delivered the Kerry camp a nice little political present when the president denied having said of Osama bin Laden, in 2002, “I truly am not that concerned about him” — practically forcing news channels to dredge up and play the clip in the days ahead. But on the domestic front, […]

Well, they done sent George W. Bush to Demeanor Re-education Camp. He don’t scowl no more. Don’t shout, neither. Not scowly, not shouty, ol’ W. was powerful better in the third debate than in those first two. By the second half, as he was movin’ away from the 98th recitation of the 98 times John […]

That America’s political center is to the right of every other modern democracy is nothing new, but why has it recently lurched so much further right? A belligerent cowboy president who says he’s doing God’s work seems on the verge of being elected to another term of office; both houses of Congress are in the […]

The dustup over charter schools reached the big time a few weeks back when it landed on the front page of The New York Times under the headline “Charter Schools Trail in Results, U.S. Data Reveals.” The story, which centered on a study by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led this way: “The first […]

In a recent episode of South Africa’s version of Sesame Street, Takalani Sesame, a girl named Kami lets out a wail. When someone asks why she’s upset, she says, “I’m trying to express my emotions. I’m sad because my mum is gone. She died of AIDS.” She faces a relatively common problem in South Africa. […]

A very weird thing happened when Colin Powell announced a couple of weeks ago that he would not be speaking at — or even attending — this year’s Republican convention. The explanation that he and a few spokesmen offered, dutifully parroted by the press, was that, by tradition, cabinet secretaries do not attend party conventions. […]

Suddenly “Pomp and Circumstance” was booming out of the Zellerbach Auditorium sound system and there she was — my daughter Miranda, that short blonde in the front row (no mere mortarboard could obscure those locks) as the orchestra section filled up with hundreds of graduating University of California history majors last Friday morning. And just […]

In the 1960s, as counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Derrick Bell helped make sure that white-controlled school districts across the country were abiding by desegregation orders. In 1971, he became the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School. He left Harvard in 1992 and is now a visiting professor of law at […]

Worried about outsourcing? Well, you shouldn’t be, at least according to the conventional wisdom; the economy will certainly create better jobs as we climb higher up the skills ladder. Consider, for instance, Jagdish Bhagwati, a leading free-trade advocate and Columbia University professor, who offers these comforting words: “The fact is, when jobs disappear in America, […]

Recently, it was my good fortune to be able to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. But it was my great misfortune to have to follow the Almighty One: Alan Greenspan. Our nation’s chief economist just sucks all the air out of the room. After his two hours of testimony and […]