MORNING MESSAGE: Stop High Stakes “Common Core” Testing OurFuture.org’s Jeff Bryant: “Ratcheting education standards ever higher at the same time we cut supports that schools and students need to reach those standards never made any sense to begin with. And the value placed on testing isn’t yielding the return promised in terms of significantly better [...]
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By now it's become clear to anyone willing to pay attention that our nation's obsession over education standards and testing has gotten out of hand. In a moment of sanity last week, a leading proponent of the new standards-aligned tests defected from the run-up to implementation and called for a moratorium on the high stakes associated with the Common Core and its new tests.
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A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, six – even seven – days a week. Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And [...]
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This week, President Obama will travel to Austin, Texas to call for action on jobs. The proposals the president put forth in his State of the Union address – investing in infrastructure, expanding preschool, bolstering manufacturing assistance centers, raising the minimum wage – have been blocked in the Congress, and disappeared from the public debate. [...]
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If, like me, you’re a working parent or any other adult struggling to balance the demands of work and family, you know the two biggest challenges to pulling off that balancing act: Time and Money. We never have enough of either, and have precious little control over what we do have. Now, House Republicans have [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: The Democratic Dilemma: It’s Still the Economy OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “… for all of the Republican disarray, Democrats are in trouble. The bi-elections in 2014 come in the president’s sixth year in office. The economy and jobs will be the overwhelming issues. Voters will hold the president’s party accountable for the state of [...]
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Cutting Meals On Wheels doesn’t save the government a dime, it costs $489 million a year. Cutting IRS obviously increases the deficit because it lowers tax revenue. Other cuts also increase spending. All obviously hurt the economy. Tell me again, what’s the justification for this? Repeal this foolish and unjustified sequester. A continuing seriesRead the [...]
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President Obama set a goal of 1 million new manufacturing jobs in his second term. Last month we added zero. Not one. Nada. Zip. We did add low-wage jobs, though. Maybe we can talk about a national manufacturing strategy now? A Million Manufacturing Jobs? In the 2012 campaign President Obama set a goal of creating [...]
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News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed – and a common need for unionized resistance. “It was [...]
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MORNING MESSAGE: Repeal the Sequester, And The Insanity Behind It OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “Sure, we urgently need to repeal the sequester. (You can tell your Representative that here.) But it’s even more important to repeal the insane thinking that led to the sequester … The argument shouldn’t be about where we should be cutting, but [...]
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