By the time this is published, Congress likely will have mandated a massive increase in state standardized testing and threatened harsh sanctions on schools that fail to make “adequate yearly progress” in raising test scores. The consequences for children, educators, …
Whenever I speak to a group about education issues, I begin with a quick straw poll that asks, Do you think your grandparents got a better education than their parents? Your parents a better education than their parents? You a …
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in Boom-Time America by Barbara Ehrenreich Metropolitan Books, 2001, 256 pp., $23 White-Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and its Rewards in Corporate America by Jill Andresky Fraser W.W. Norton & Company, 2001 …
As a journalist who has written—and thought—a great deal about the student antisweatshop movement, I agree with Jeffrey C. Isaac that United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has done an excellent job of achieving modest yet significant reformist victories. I agree, …
The 2000 elections were marked by voter apathy, distrust of politicians, and a widespread cynicism that extended to the political process itself. A certain wariness of state power and those who wield it has been present throughout our history, but …
Head Start was born in a state of contradiction that thirty six years of struggle and reform have failed to overcome. Conceived in the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was established in 1965 to “eliminate poverty in the United States,” …
Ever since President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform act in August 1996, many women have moved off welfare—but not out of poverty. Despite what was until recently a very strong economy, most former recipients, including those who work, are …
It’s an axiom that writing doesn’t pay the rent, so after graduating from college with a degree in English, I took a part-time job with a company called The Princeton Review, preparing high school students to take the Scholastic Aptitude …
The New Men of Power is a study of trade unions and their leaders, the American political scene, and the prospects for a radicalized democracy in the years just after the Second World War. When C. Wright Mills published the …
How should such concepts as power, dominance, and authority be redefined from a cosmopolitan perspective? I have eight theses. 1. The world economy stands in relation to the state as a kind of meta-power; it can change the national and …
Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights by Robert P. Moses with Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Beacon Press, 2001, 192 pp., $21 Is math education today’s civil rights struggle? Are children in inner-city and poor rural schools the dispossessed sharecroppers …
In the years to follow, I hope we will dedicate ourselves as a nation to giving all our children the world-class education they need. There is no challenge more important. —President Bill Clinton, 2000 There is no greater test of …
Three years after India and Pakistan shocked the world with their nuclear tests, it is worth revisiting their arguments for nuclear weapons. Many in the West have already accepted those arguments and grown used to the idea that both countries …
Stand in Times Square at night, thrown every way by waves of light and people. It is easy to feel that you are in the belly of some great beast, and that the beast is being fed more and richer …
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read by Andre Schiffrin Verso Books, 2000, 181 pp., $23 Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future by Jason Epstein Norton, 20001, 188 pp., $21.95 …
