Senator Barack Obama sees a post-partisan future for America, but that doesn't mean all divisions will disappear. Already the Democratic primary is shaping up to be a generational battle royale. In Iowa, Senator Hillary Clinton beat Obama by 20 points among voters over 50; by New Hampshire that margin grew to 30.
Calvin Trillin--veteran New Yorker writer and author of, among other swell books, Tepper Isn't Going Out, which revolves around a New York City man's parking habits--harbors intense feelings about vehicular placement.
This week brought the twelfth edition of the yearly Quality Counts report, which evaluates public education in the states and nation. Each of those political entities is graded in six areas, and those six grades are then combined to yield for every state (and the country and D.C.) an overall grade.
In November 2002, Florida voters amended the state constitution to mandate that classes from pre-k through third-grade have no more than 18 kids, grades four through eight no more than 22, and grades nine through 12 no more than 25. These targets didn't have to be met class-by-class until fall 2008. It ain't gonna be easy. Republican State Senator Don Gaetz predicts "a lot of meetings ...
Has any commentator yet compared the No Child Left Behind act to a stew, one into which cooks dump whatever odds and ends and leftover bits they find in the kitchen, keeping the pot bubbling forever on the back of the stove? If not, allow us to be the first.
Paul T. O'NeillLexisNexis and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools2007
The Golden State is anything but. Yet again, California is in a budget crisis--this time it faces a $14 billion deficit. "For several years, we kept the budget wolf from the door," said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In his commentary on the Dayton experience, "Sources of Charter School Mediocrity," Checker Finn provides one of the choice movement's rare admissions of error. His analysis is trenchant and honestly refreshing.
