The Voices

prospect.org — The GOP presidential primary has offered some odd debates on who cares about the "very poor" and whether there should be a "safety net" or a "trampoline" to help people get out of poverty. Meanwhile, in Kansas, it seems Governor Sam Brownback is hoping to dig a bigger hole for the poor fall into. Between his tax plans and his approaches to school funding, Brownback's agenda overtly boosts the wealthy and makes things harder for the poor. While many liberals speculate this to be a secret goal, Brownback is hardly making a secret of his agenda.

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newdeal20.org — Education was rightly big on Obama’s agenda in his State of the Union address last week. As he noted, “[T]o prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earl[y].” He proposed solutions to getting better outcomes from kindergarten to higher ed. But his eyes were mostly on containing the system we have. Yet on a more general level, we’re still having a conversation as a country about what we mean when we say that we owe every child a decent education. We’re currently trying to fix an issue fundamentally about social justice by focusing on accountability, competition, and choice. A conversation about values — the purpose of education and what it should bring each child — is lacking. Why do we educate children? Is the end goal a higher salary? High test scores? Or something else?

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newamericamedia.org — In his State of the Union, President Obama stressed the importance of keeping manufacturing in America. The reasoning is that in order to continue to innovate and develop the next generation must-have products, the U.S. needs manufacturing that uses leading edge technology. Nothing wrong with the reasoning, but it may be too late. A lengthy analysis on why jobs are flowing to China based on the Apple iPhone experience appeared in the New York Times. One of the most important findings was that America simply no longer has the skill sets to meet Apple’s demands for a high quality, technology product. America has lost the edge to make things. The training programs Obama talked about might serve as temporary Band-Aids that might keep certain production from leaving in the short term. But to maintain a world leadership position, the U.S. will need far more technicians, engineers and scientists than the country is producing.

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newdeal20.org — Last night, listening to the State of the Union, I felt really proud of my president. I felt inspired. He spoke to me as a member of the Millennial generation. There seems to be a lot of chatter in politics about how to help out my cohort — talk of how to save my generation from a dystopian future of mountains of federal debt, an oppressive federal health care system, and illegal immigrants stealing our jobs. Last night, President Obama showed that he understood that this kind of rhetoric is not what my generation needs. Fairness is at the heart of the solution. Millennials know it, and the president gets it. He also understands that fairness is not merely a virtue to aspire to, but a core value that we can tangibly work on — and one that is at the center of what makes our country as strong and resilient as it is.

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huffingtonpost.com — When President George W. Bush joined congressmen John Boehner, George Miller and Edward Kennedy to sign the No Child Left Behind Act in January 2002, he touted the moment as a bipartisan victory for America's children. "Today begins a new era, a new time in public education in our country," Bush proclaimed in Princeton, N.J., as he signed the bill into law on Jan. 8, 2002. "As of this hour, America's schools will be on a new path of reform, and a new path of results." But 10 years later, results matching Bush's rhetoric haven't yet arrived — and the law itself is unlikely to change any time soon.

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