Mitt Romney has just released his plan for educating America’s young people, and it’s wholly consistent with his overall philosophy: Allow money to dominate politics, and everything will work out great. Except that, when it comes to policies on college education, we tried that approach under George W. Bush, and it was a disaster for
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EdWeek reports that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has named the members of his K-12 Education Committee for his campaign: Serving as Rommey’s K-12 committee co-chairs will be Nina S. Rees, a former assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the U.S. Department of Education and currently the senior vice president for strategic
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Maryland is home to 296 million broiler chickens. That many chickens means just one thing — lots of chicken manure, some of which is used to fertilize fields. According to a Waterkeepers study reported on by Grist, “billions of pounds of chicken litter have flowed into the bay in the decades since international poultry conglomerates
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By now, most Americans realize that Big Money is a powerful force in American politics. Members of Congress often shy away from regulating an industry that showers them with campaign donations. Members will rush to vote for massive subsidies and giveaways to big donors. One senator who has been mostly unmoved by the presence of this
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In March, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) led members from both parties in introducing legislation to delay the implementation of the Volcker Rule, a new regulation to limit risky trading by big banks. He was joined by Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the biggest proponents of financial deregulation in the Senate. The legislation may come back
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Will 2012 be the year of voter revolt against corruption? As almost the entire world continues to struggle with a seemingly endless recession, the public has turned to government for answers. In nation after nation, public officials have been slow to respond, or in many cases, too close to the wealthy interests to provide meaningful
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The corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) likes to claim that it’s about “free market” ideas. But if that were true, it wouldn’t be fighting against conservative lawmakers to manipulate tax policy to harm mom and pop stores in favor of giant corporations (who just happen to be their corporate donors). Here’s how
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In America’s schools, the barrage of standardized testing kids have come under is overwhelming. From the Iowa Test of Basic Standards (ITBS) to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the alphabet soup of bubble-in tests that fill our schools is provoking a backlash from educators and parents who think kids are over-tested and denied
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