Progressive Opinion

guardian.co.uk — Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transport for school children and free health care — including heart surgery — for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis. For its part, the US has never attempted to give free college for all, and it took a bitter battle just to ensure that America's poor get access to health care — a guarantee that the Republican party is now working hard to repeal, claiming the country cannot afford it. But Mauritius, a small island nation off the east coast of Africa, is neither particularly rich nor on its way to budgetary ruin. Nonetheless, it has spent the last decades successfully building a diverse economy, a democratic political system and a strong social safety net. Many countries, not least the US, could learn from its experience.

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nytimes.com — It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. But what everyone knows is wrong. The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated. Why is this happening?

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huffingtonpost.com — The Republican Party has let us know who they believe is at blame for America's collapsed economy -- a crash which has devastated the nation and caused massive unemployment. Teachers. Not the financial industry that dealt in high-risk, mortgage-backed derivatives which collapsed the housing market. Teachers. Not Wall Street executives manipulating toxic assets, not big bankers manipulating bad loans, not corporate CEOs manipulating markets. No, no. Teachers. The real high-finance scourges of the American economy. Those rich, jet-setting, highfaluting teachers. They're paid truckloads of money, have such cushy jobs, rake in ungodly benefits and have bankrupted America. Teachers. Why do you think they turned down the low-paying corporate jobs, or avoided going to paltry law school, or medical school? Because they wanted to make the big bucks.

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thenation.com — “Care about educators like they care for your child.” It was impossible to miss the thousands of signs with that message in the sea of 100,000 protesters who gathered at Wisconsin’s Capitol on February 26. Since the start of the protests, teachers have been an integral part of the resistance to Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting budget repair bill. The fight against Walker’s bill is now entering its third week, and the governor has already announced that his 2011–13 budget will include more than $800 million in cuts to schools. It is a frightening time for Wisconsin’s public school teachers — and students — and this is only the beginning. The outcome of this standoff will undoubtedly influence the way state governments across the country negotiate with organized labor.

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robertreich.org — Over the long term, the only way we’re going to raise wages, grow the economy, and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people — especially their educations. But considering the increases in our population of young people and their educational needs, and the challenges posed by the new global economy, more resources are surely needed. Here’s another reason why the $858 billion tax bill — including a continuation of the Bush tax cuts to the richest Americans and a dramatic drop in their estate taxes — is so dangerous. By further widening the federal budget deficit, it invites even more budget cuts in education, including early-childhood and post-secondary. Pell Grants that allow young people from poor families to attend college are already on the chopping block.

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inthesetimes.com — How can we undo the prejudice against shared public resources that has settled over America’s discursive landscape? To begin with, we need a compelling argument that the public sphere is worth fighting for. We need to cultivate a richer understanding of what public actually means—or what it ought to mean. Public does not mean government institutions or government ownership—although government institutions can and should serve the publics that conjure them into being. Public is more than offices in buildings where people’s salaries are paid for by taxes. By bickering over how much salary, whose taxes, and where the offices ought to be constructed, we lose sight of the grander meaning of our commitment to one another as human beings.

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huffingtonpost.com — Many watching the debacle masquerading as the lame duck session of Congress these past few days are wondering whether Washington is so broken that governance itself has become impossible. It's quickly becoming apparent that only the rising power of people themselves can force our government to act responsibly to extend federal unemployment insurance, pass the DREAM Act, eliminate the unfair tax policies of George Bush and put ordinary Americans back in the calculation. The starting point for building such a movement might have occurred this week when the Republican Party declared that unless tax cuts for the rich are passed, they simply won't vote for anything. That's right. They will filibuster EVERYTHING.

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prospect.org — The take-home message of "Waiting for Superman," the much-talked-about education reform documentary, is pretty clear: The answer to our education woes is having a "Superman" teacher in every classroom -- a goal unions have been blocking. While it would be nice to believe that an army of Jaime Escalantes, the famed Latin American educator who taught calculus to inner-city kids, or Dangerous Minds Michelle Pfeiffers, is all our education system -- and struggling schools in particular -- need, the reality is, of course, not so simple. It's just not true that good teacher = performing student. Anyone who has actually taught disadvantaged kids will tell you that most of the time, it's hardly like being Superman; it's a much different -- and much harder -- job.

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thenation.com — Here's what you see in Waiting for Superman, the new documentary that celebrates the charter school movement while blaming teachers unions for much of what ails American education: working- and middle-class parents desperate to get their charming, healthy, well-behaved children into successful public charter schools. Here's what you don't see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse). You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children are often the most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away. In other words, Waiting for Superman is a moving but vastly oversimplified brief on American educational inequality. Nevertheless, it has been greeted by rapturous reviews.

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thenation.com — For nearly two years, the loudest and most insistent voices in American politics have been on the extreme right. That is going to change. No longer will we allow a noisy and vocal fringe hijack the definition of “patriot.” No longer will we sit idly while right-wing extremists seek to turn back America’s clock to a past of fear and intimidation. No longer will we watch self proclaimed “real Americans” usurp the will and desire of the real mainstream, the American majority. Simply put, we’ve come too far, overcome too much, to not make our voices heard. On October 2, 2010, the people of America will come together in Washington, DC, to denounce the cynical politics of distraction and division, and rally around real solutions for our country's problems. Under the banner of "One Nation, Working Together," a broad and diverse coalition will march together: for jobs, quality education and justice. We are marching for all Americans.

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