The Obama administration is now tying states’ access to federal education funds to the ways they hold teachers accountable for students’ success. That all sounds good in theory, but The Nation’s Dana Goldstein explains how this is causing most states to push test-heavy approaches to evaluating student achievement, and how such models can hurt student’s engagement more than they can help.
Legendary Chicago activists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers talk about this week’s protests in Chicago, where NATO will hold its largest summit to date. Thousands of protesters from a diverse coalition of organizations including unions, antiwar groups, immigrant rights organizations and Occupy are expected to march in the streets. Chicago is preparing a massive security operation, with the Department of Homeland Security declaring the summit a “National Special Security Event.” Civil liberties advocates have warned it could provide the first public test of a new law that expands the ability of the Secret Service to suppress protests in or around certain restricted zones. “We think that NATO should be meeting in an underground bunker or on a remote island,” Dorhn says. “[Chicago] is being treated as really a practice military zone … [while] we don’t have money here for community mental health clinics, we don’t have money for public libraries or for schools, we don’t have money for public transportation… We want peace and not permanent wars abroad and military war games and [the] national security state at home.”
Noam Chomsky says the Occupy movement has helped rebuild class solidarity and communities of mutual support on a level unseen since the time of the Great Depression. “The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn’t really exist in the country: Communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion … people doing things and helping each other,” Chomsky says. “That’s very much missing. There [has been] massive propaganda going on for a century, that you really shouldn’t care about anyone else, just yourself … To rebuild [class solidarity] — even in small pieces of society — can become very important, can change the conception of how society ought to function.” Chomsky also gives his assessment of President Obama, whom he says has attacked civil liberties in a way that “goes beyond George W. Bush.”
Featuring United Steelworkers International President Leo Gerard, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, Blue-Green Alliance Deputy Director Margrete Strand Rangnes, Michigan AFL-CIO President Karla Swift, AFT Michigan President David Hecker, Juliana Goodlaw-Morris from National Wildlife Federation, BlueGreen Alliance Director of Chemicals, Public Health and Green Chemistry Charlotte Brody, and students from the Detroit School of Arts.
In 1976, when Trina Garnett was 14 years old, she accidentally started a housefire that ended up killing two boys. Now, thirty-five years later, Trina is fifty years old and still in prison. Why is a first-world country imprisoning its children for life? The Nation‘s Liliana Segura explains.
On 5/5/12, people around the world volunteered, documented, educated, and protested to connect the dots on climate change. We’re just getting started — join us at http://www.350.org
Center for American Progress Executive Vice President Winnie Stachelberg discusses President Obama’s historic announcement in support of marriage equality and explains how he is in line with public opinion on the issue.
There’s only one way change happens: when people stand up and make change. There’s a long road ahead of us, but together we’ll continue to bend the arc.
