Education, Training and Labor

BY TYLER S. THIGPEN This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  The conversation that most haunted Marshall Chambers—former director of strategic initiatives for Barrow County Schools, a rural district in Georgia—happened in 2001 at one of the district’s high schools. Chambers, himself a graduate of Piedmont College in Demorest, […]

BY RUFINA PARK This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  On the surface, South Korea’s education system has notable merits. In the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which measures the cognitive skills of fifteen-year-olds from sixty-five participating economies […]

BY LUCY BOYD “[Charter schools] have become the leading edge of long-cherished ideological crusade by the far right to turn education into a consumer choice rather than a civic obligation.”  – Diane Ravitch, a leading author and academic on the American education system. “The only threat charter schools hold is to the myth that poor […]

Abstract The school to prison pipeline refers to the practice of pushing students out of educational institutions, primarily via zero tolerance and harsh disciplinary policies, and into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The pipeline has emerged in part as a response to the media panic over youth violence and the need to keep […]

Today, more Latinos are attending college than ever before. During the 2012 academic year, there were 2.4 million Latinos enrolled in college, comprising 19% of the total college-going population. Despite this surge in college enrollment, only 9% of the total Latino population between the ages of 25 and 29 holds a bachelor’s degree. This paints a bleak picture for Latinos as they strive for the American Dream, as enrolling in college without attaining a degree will not necessarily facilitate upward socioeconomic mobility. Further, Latino college students are also grappling with this generation’s greatest financial burden—student loan debt.

  One student prepares to run for elected office. Another has just finished an internship in a federal courthouse. A third is taking a college course on Kierkegaard. These students are eighth graders. Education can be transformative. And it can be transformed. RETHINKING EDUCATION REFORM Education reform has been an ongoing effort for the past […]

What the Most Recent Attack on Organized Labor Will Mean for American Workers’ Health and Safety BY DANYAAL RAZA Organized labor is under attack. In 2011, in the depths of an icy Midwestern winter, roughly 100,000 Wisconsinites descended upon their state capitol. Just one month into his term, Governor Scott Walker’s ultimately successful attempt to […]

Wading into the Debate BY DANIEL R. BOWLES When Rex’s mother passed away, he was lost. Just eighteen years old and only six days past his high school graduation, he had nowhere to stay and no good prospects for employment. He spent the next three years out of work. Without any real direction in life, […]

Today we are presenting an Interview with Liz Montoya. She is a Washington expert through and through. You can also say she has been a part of building Washington as we know it with over 30 years of Human Resources experience she has been a key leader in hiring and setting personnel policies at the Office of Personnel Management as well as the Department of Energy and Transportation. She has worked closely with the White House as well. We talked to her about hiring practice and what it will take to get more people of color in positions of higher authority in our government.

We are back for the Spring semester and excited to share our interview with Soledad O’Brien. Soledad is one of America’s most distinguishable and recognizable journalist. For over 20 years she has reported and anchored television shows on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Aljazeera, and most recently on HBO. She has also won many awards. Including an Emmy and the NAACP President’s Award as well as the Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

In our first installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Professor Mohamad Al-Ississ, Spring 2014 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative, discusses his current research at Harvard Kennedy School, the constraints on economic development in the Middle East and attempts at education reform in the region. You can watch the interview, conducted […]

Note: This post assesses President Obama’s State of the Union Address in 4 policy ares: K-12 Education, Higher Education, LGBTQ and Military Affairs. It is a follow up to KSR’s SOTU coverage here and here. POLICY AREA: K-12 EDUCATION BY ADRIENNE MURPHY As an education reform enthusiast, I was excited to hear the President kick […]