Kennedy School Review

BY JASON HUNG In 2001, Lord Jeffrey William Rooker, then UK Minister of State for Asylum and Immigration, asked Prime Minister Tony Blair whether there was a legal way an asylum seeker could enter the United Kingdom.[1] The latter bluntly denied such a possibility. After current PM Theresa May took over the office, she argued […]

BY LUIS CARLOS RAMIREZ MARTINEZ In the last two decades, the United States has fought at least two trade wars. Both times, the key battleground has been steel, and lobbyists have been in the thick of it. However, one would have to go back almost four decades, to 1981 in fact, to find another example […]

BY ALEXANDRA SCHMITT The summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, scheduled for this week in Vietnam, promises to be a dramatic reunion. Trump, for his part, bragged that he and Kim “fell in love” during their last meeting in Singapore and that he “developed a very special bond” with the […]

THE 2020 NORTH STAR This March will mark ten years since President Obama gave his first major speech about education. In this speech, President Obama referenced the North Star goal for his education policy: that by the year 2020 the United States would once again lead the world in terms of the proportion of young […]

BY DENNIS FUNES “Students like YOU end up working rather than going to college.” As a young male of color at a middle school in the Los Angeles School District, a teacher had already predicted my future, or so he thought. Fortunately, I had positive role models, such as my father and my Algebra teacher, […]

BY CHRIS GEARY As a former traditional public middle school math teacher and charter high school history teacher, it is clear that the question “are charter schools good or bad?” cannot be answered as simply as anyone would like. Before diving into the implications, it is worth defining what charter schools actually are. Essentially, a […]

BY ABEL MCDANIELS Last month, teachers from Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, went on strike for nine days. Among their demands were community schools. A community school intentionally organizes school and community resources to support student success. These schools stay open well beyond 3pm, the typical end to a […]

BY STEVEN OLENDER Julian Castro championed an ambitious expansion of public education while announcing his 2020 presidential bid by advocating for universal Pre-K. His plan, “Pre-K for the USA,” is likely an extension of his Pre-K 4 SA program which works to make high-quality, full-day Pre-K available to all four-year-olds in San Antonio. Pre-K for […]

BY SAM BARRAK This past November, Massachusetts made history as the first state to affirm transgender non-discrimination protections in a public referendum. To those voters who said yes on Question 3, thank you for making the state that I love a safer place for me to live as a transgender person. While we rightly celebrate […]

BY BRETT J. BANKER Imagine there were a bipartisan agreement in Congress for a package of critical reforms to a politically important government agency. Say that the chief sponsors of the legislation enacting those reforms included both the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus[1] and a prominent member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.[2] Let’s […]

BY NICK BUFFIE As you may have heard, in the United States the rich pay more federal income taxes than the poor – both in dollar terms and as a share of income. This point is acknowledged by commentators on both the Right and Left, serving as a rare example of nonpartisan objectivity in an […]

BY HENRI BREBANT January 19th was the 10th consecutive Saturday that the “Yellow Vests” protested in France. The movement started in October 2018 with a viral video, a change.org petition and some Facebook events that pushed 290,000 people[i] into the streets and onto the roundabouts. Unstructured and distancing itself from political parties and unions, the […]