Dana Goldstein

What Megan is Missing on Teachers Unions

I would not defend teachers or principals unions in all cases; indeed, I agree with Megan McCardle that their resistance, in some parts of the country, to paying professionals a bonus for working in low-income schools isn't in the best interests of children. That isn't merit pay tied to test scores or other factors a teacher can't fully control -- it's simply paying professionals more for agreeing to do a much more difficult job, which would in turn attract better teachers and principals to where they are most needed. But by crediting the break-up of the New Orleans teacher's union with a subsequent small improvement in test scores there, Megan ignores many of the other factors at play in the Big Easy overhaul. Here's how the New York Times describes it:

Since Hurricane Katrina, most of the schools here have been taken over by the state, and are run either by [Superintendent] Vallas or as citizen-controlled charter schools. The local school board and administration — long notorious for corruption and political interference — have been neutered.

Classes are smaller, many of the teachers are youthful imports brought in by groups like Teach for America, principals have been reshuffled or removed, school-hours remedial programs have been intensified, and after-school programs to help students increased.

Still, the challenge remains substantial in a school district of 32,000, where 85 percent of the students are at least several years below their grade levels.

Just as it's easy to pick out circumstances in which the interests of teachers unions seem antithetical to the interests of children, it's easy to point to times when the two are in sync. Teachers unions advocate for smaller class sizes. Teacher's unions advocate for newer, better supplies, from textbooks, to chairs and desks, to cleaner classrooms. Teacher's unions advocate for more support staff, such as guidance counselors, psychologists to deal with learning disabilities and problems at home, and classroom assistants. All of that is very good for kids.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

A Long Way to Go on Transit

Paul Krugman has a chart showing that 77 percent of American commuters drive to work alone, and less than 5 percent nationwide use public transportation. But because of sky-rocketing gas prices, mass transit ridership is up about 5 percent in large East Coast cities such as New York and Boston, and up as much as 10 to 15 percent in Southern and Western cities such as San Francisco, Nashville, Denver, Houston, and Salt Lake City.

I've just returned from a reporting trip to Phoenix, AZ, where Gov. Janet Napolitano is trying to convince voters to support a ballot initiative that would raise the sales tax by a penny in order to fund a transportation package that provides about $7 billion for mass transit, and would include a light rail line between Phoenix and Tuscon. Indeed, I was shocked and appalled by the rush hour conditions of the highways circling Phoenix -- the traffic really does impose a "time tax," as Napolitano calls it. Nevertheless, her proposal is an incremental one; highway funding accounts for over $24 billion of the $42 billion package, almost three times what will be spent on trains and buses. Of course, had the plan been more progressive in terms of prioritizing mass transit, it's unlikely Napolitano could have convinced Arizona's powerful homebuilders to support it -- which they did. After all, the continued exurbanization of America depends on the car.

I'll have more on all this in an upcoming TAP print feature looking at Gov. Napolitano and the political and physical landscape of Arizona.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

The Case of the Missing Education Policy

Over at The Prospect, I report on the fact that John McCain hasn't released a detailed education platform since the year 2000, confusing education experts as to how exactly he's planning on improving our schools -- if at all.

McCain's thin education record raises questions about whether he has rethought either the central idea or the specifics of his 2000 education platform: a $5.5 billion, three-year national experiment in private school vouchers.

Since McCain first advocated vouchers, a growing body of research has confirmed that they do not improve students' academic performance or help close the achievement gap between affluent white children and poor children of color. Furthermore, the value of the vouchers McCain and other conservatives have proposed -- $2,000 -- is equal to less than half the average annual tuition at an American private school -- $4,689. That means vouchers won't give poor families many educational options beyond inner city parochial schools, which are far less expensive and exclusive than secular prep schools focused on ensuring college admission. Voucher programs stack the deck against families who prefer a secular education for their children. In Milwaukee, the site of the largest private voucher experiment to date, 102 of 120 participating schools are religious-affiliated.

In 2000, McCain wanted to fund his proposed federal voucher program through repealing sugar and ethanol subsidies. He has continued to argue against such subsidies, but no longer links that platform to education. In fact, McCain's track record in the Senate shows a long history of voting against redirecting money toward public schools, although he did approve $75 million in funding for abstinence-only education.

Read the whole thing.

How Best to Help FLDS Children?

If you've been following the story of the 437 children removed by the state of Texas from a breakaway, fundamentalist Mormon community in Eldorado, you know things are more complicated than they initially appeared: Police raided the compound after they received a call from a woman who said she was a 16-year girl who'd been sexually assaulted there. Now authorities believe those calls were actually placed by a Colorado woman with a history of making false police reports. Yet a Court chose to keep the children, even breast-feeding infants, away from their families and in foster homes, at least for the time-being. It is known that the sect forces girls in early puberty into marriages with older men, and that girls as young as 13 years old have been impregnated. A powerful argument can be made that when a community of adults forces children to conform to such a misogynist, violent, and abusive ideology, it is in their children's best interest to be raised by adults outside of that community.

Yet voices are beginning to raise in protest of the removal. Warren Binford, a children's rights expert, writes in the Oregon Statesman Journal:

If these teenage girls are being sexually abused, they should be in protective custody — absolutely. However, most of the children in custody are boys and young children, and thus, not at imminent risk of the abuse alleged.

All children have the right to remain with their families unless and until there is substantial proof of imminent risk of serious harm to that specific child. Due process rights entitle each and every child to individualized findings of harm or serious risk of harm.

It is sensible to assume that, especially for girls, being raised in an environment of sexual coercion has a profoundly negative psychological impact well before the actual acts of physical abuse take place. Still, Binford's point is well taken; removing young children from their parents abruptly may be equally traumatic. Indeed, there is no way for society to root out every family subjecting their children to such ideas and put those kids into an already over-burdened foster care system. So policy and legal solutions to these problems are unclear. Readers, what do you think? Is Texas right to keep the FLDS children in state custody?

cross-posted at TAPPED 

How Well Do Our Kids Write?

While high school grades remain the single best indicator of how successful a student will be in college, a new study finds that of all the sections on the SAT, the writing section is the best predictor of academic success. The College Board decided in 2002 to roll what used to be the SAT II writing subject test into the SAT I, which now contains both an essay and a multiple choice grammar review.

I am a total writing triumphalist, but I'm a bit surprised the SAT essay section has proven to be so predictive. The topics students are asked to write about on the exam do not at all reflect the typical college assignment. The SAT prompts personal essays on broad, amorphous topics, not exercises in building an argument through carefully engaging with competing evidence. That's why I've always been a fan of the "Document Based Question," which New York State uses on its Regents examinations. Those essays give students a number of primary sources around which to build an argument. For comparison's sake, here's an example of an SAT writing prompt:

Being loyal—faithful or dedicated to someone or something—is not always easy. People often have conflicting loyalties, and there are no guidelines that help them decide to what or whom they should be loyal. Moreover, people are often loyal to something bad. Still, loyalty is one of the essential attributes a person must have and must demand of others.

Adapted from James Carville, Stickin': The Case for Loyalty

Assignment: Should people always be loyal? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

Now a really engaged (and privileged) high school kid, one who might even know who James Carville is, could use this prompt to write about the presidential race. But most students will write about friendships, relationships on athletic teams, and other examples of loyalty in their personal lives. If they do so grammatically, include an introduction and conclusion, and begin their paragraphs with topic sentences, they will potentially ace this section of the exam. The sad fact is, most American high school students can't do even that. And that's not a problem, of course, that can be solved at the college level.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Genetics and Health Care

Today the Senate is celebrating passing (by a 95-0 vote) the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. The bill, which President Bush supports and is expected to quickly pass in the House, would make it a crime for health insurers and employers to discriminate based upon genetic tests showing an individual is susceptible to a particular disease or condition. Sen. Ted Kennedy hailed the legislation yesterday as "the first major new civil rights bill of the new century."

Indeed, after failing to pass the Equal Pay Act earlier this week, GINDA is a real accomplishment. No one deserves to have their insurance premiums raised, or to be denied coverage, because they carry the breast cancer gene, or because they are genetically susceptible to illnesses that can be aggravated by work, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. But the bill makes absolutely certain to preserve insurers' rights to discriminate once those diseases have actually presented themselves. In other words, discriminating on the basis of a "pre-existing condition" continues to be perfectly fine, even though discriminating on the basis of genetic susceptibility to a condition will likely soon be against the law.

As an ideology undergirding our health care system, you can see how this is inconsistent. Either human beings deserve affordable medical care regardless of the diseases they have, or they don't. The sad truth is, protecting the basic for-profit nature of American health care (read: the right of insurers to deny coverage) is what's needed to attract Republican Congressional support to any reform bill. And that's why, despite Ezra's protestations, I'm inclined to woefully nod in agreement when Congressional Democrats throw water on hopes for universal health care in 2009.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

"Free Range Kids"

Via Newsweek, I've just been alerted to a dust-up in the world of upper middle class parenting: Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for the New York Sun, penned a column in early April describing why she allowed her 9-year old son to travel by himself from Bloomingdale's department store on Manhattan's Upper East Side to their home in Midtown West. (It's not a very long trip.) She wrote, "[F]or weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call. ... Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence."

Predictably, this anecdote garnered joyous cries of support, as well as rabid calls for Skenazy's head. The writer appeared on television and radio to defend herself against cries of "bad mother!" and even coined a catchphrase for the kind of parenting she supports: "Free Range Kids" -- complete with a new blog, of course. At first, I figured the backlash was in part suburban and exurban parents' horror at the idea of allowing a child to roam New York City alone. People don't realize that New York's crime rate is similar to that of Boise, Idaho. New York ranks number 136 in crime among the nation's 182 cities with populations over 100,000.

But in a follow-up column and podcast, Skenazy recounted her correspondence with parents nationwide, which proved that hovercraft parenting knows no geographical boundaries. A dad in Park Slope, Brooklyn won't let his 9-year old cross the street to go to the playground. An Atlanta mother doesn't allow her daughter to walk alone from the front door to the mailbox. A suburban lawyer makes his 11-year old call home immediately after walking one block from her own home to a friend's house. All this despite the fact that we now know "stranger danger" pales in comparison to the violence and sexual and emotional abuse too many children suffer at the hands of adult family members or acquaintances. And that the number of child abductions has been falling steadily for years.

I'm only 23 and my own childhood was quite different. My friends and I wandered our safe (but unfortunately sidewalk-less) neighborhood after school until dusk. We walked to the local Carvel ice cream shop. We rode our bikes to the library, where I once went wearing mismatched sneakers. We played in the woods. A good time was had by all.

There is simply no way for us to protect our loved ones from every tragedy that might befall them. Many of us learn this lesson in the most difficult way. But it's sad to think that American childhood has become a time of anxiety, instead of a period of exploration. To the parents out there -- do you think Lenore Skenazy is a heroine, or is she misguided?

cross-posted at TAPPED

Young Women Evaluate Candidates Based Upon Substance

I've admired Linda Hirshman's work in the past, but her recent Slate column accusing young female Obama supporters -- including TAP online contributor Courtney Martin -- of having "Mommy issues" is terribly reductionist. You can read Martin's response here, in which she thoughtfully points out that like men, women (even feminist women) are a diverse group who will never vote as a single bloc. But I really think the intergenerational divide between liberal women when it comes to these two Democratic candidates is rather simple to explain. Here are a few substantive explanations with which Hirshman and others who advance her argument should grapple:

1. Young, politically-engaged women are more likely to have been against the Iraq war since 2002 than older women are. And polls show that those young, single women who initially supported the war were among the first Americans to turn against it. Barack Obama has been consistent since the invasion in his opposition to war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton continues to refuse to apologize for her war authorization vote.

2. Generation Y is the most multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial demographic in American history. In Barack Obama, who is biracial and has written about his personal struggle with identity politics, many young voters see themselves -- or an idealized version of themselves.

3. Obama's campaign excites young activists in part because it's a campaign about organizing. Indeed, Obama's career began as an inner city community organizer, and his campaign today is offering a summer organizing fellowship.

4. There's no denying that Obama is the new, fresh face in this campaign, and that young people like that sort of thing. 'Nuff said.

In short, feminism is important to many young women who are sympathetic to Obama. Feministing, for example, a website for which the Obama-supporting Martin writes, also features a regular "Hillary Sexism Watch," which defends the Senator from misogynist attacks. Hirshman should realize that when a young woman votes for Obama, it isn't necessarily an anti-Hillary vote -- and certainly probably isn't an anti-woman, anti-feminist, anti-mom vote.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Last Night's Education Debate

One of the more interesting moments of the debate last night was the conversation about affirmative action, in which both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said they supported the inclusion of poor white children in the group of people who benefit from college admission preferences. The truth, though, is that most elite colleges already consider class alongside race as they try to diversify their student bodies. Enshrining this concept across the board is a good idea, but only if it is accompanied by a real commitment to racial diversity, as well.

That commitment is under threat this year, as voters in five four more states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma) will be asked to either accept or reject ballot initiatives, crafted by the infamous Ward Connerly, that would roll back all affirmative action. While Clinton made a smart move last night in using the affirmative action question as a chance to pivot into a larger discussion of education reform, it's important to remember that banning affirmative action affects a lot more than just college admissions. It would outlaw state programs that help women and minority business owners apply for government contracts, as well as after-school programs that introduce girls of color to science and technology careers.

Clinton's statement was helpful, though, in that it reminded us that endlessly debating affirmative action -- a policy that can boast of real successes, although it should be tweaked -- is really a distraction from addressing the troubles facing our K-12 and higher education systems. She said:

I think we've got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds -- whoever they are. That's why I'm a strong supporter of early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten.

That's why I'm against No Child Left Behind as it is currently operating. And I would end it, because we can do so much better to have an education system that really focuses in on kids who need extra help.

That's why I'm in favor of much more college aid, not these outrageous predatory student loan rates that are charging people I've met, across Pennsylvania, 20, 25, 28 percent interest rates. Let's make college affordable again.

cross-posted at TAPPED

News and Views

I've got two new pieces for you to check out. Top at The American Prospect today is my column on why Hillary Clinton might consider running for governor of New York -- not just because it would be politically expedient, but also because she might actually be good at the job.

And last week over at RH Reality Check, I offered seven possible policy solutions to battle the epidemic of sexual assault in our military. RH has been nominated for a Webby award in the category of best new political blog. At Slate, Jack Shafer has a bug up his butt about the Webbies, but hey, for small sites like RH, it's a real boon to be recognized for filling a new space in commentary and reporting. And it brings new readers! Seriously, nobody else is writing as comprehensively on issues of reproductive health and justice. It's a project I'm really proud to be part of.

In other news, I'm happy to report that I'm now officially a staff writer at TAP, after serving as a writing fellow since last July. Exciting! This also means that we are hiring writing fellows, so please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about the program, which is -- hands down -- the best entry level job in magazine journalism.

A Male Birth Control Pill Within 3 Years?

Could be, reports the Washington Times. Tyler Cowen takes interest in the issue mostly as a way to ponder whether men can expect more or less sex if they can tell potential partners they are on the pill. But this ignores, I think, the main utility of oral contraceptives, which don't protect either partner from sexually transmitted infections: to prevent pregnancy in long-term, committed relationships. Megan McCardle helpfully intervenes:

As any woman can attest, it's all too easy to miss one or more of those pills. It's therefore very difficult to trust someone else to take them. It's especially hard if you are the one who will bear the heaviest price for a failure. As long as women have the stronger incentive to avoid pregnancy, it will be easier to trust them to keep taking their pills. Especially if you don't live together and thus can't watch him taking it at the same time every morning.

Indeed. One hopes, though, that the burden of this responsibility could be successfully transfered to men, especially those in committed relationships who are, presumably, deeply invested in their partner's health and happiness. So men out there: Would you take birth control pills if you knew they were safe and their effects were reversible? Would you trust yourself to remember to take them at the very same time every day?

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Be Not Afraid of the Future!

Many journalists I know have been chatting this week about Eric Alterman's New Yorker piece on "the death and life of the American newspaper." Alterman focuses on Huffington Post as the epitome of the "new," newspaper-killing media, portraying the site as the bad cop to Talking Points Memo's good cop. TPM, of course, is a site that does real reporting and digging, while HuffPo's news gathering apparatus is secondary to its function as a gathering place for liberal punditry. The risk of all this online news, Alterman writes, is that eventually, with advertising dollars moving to the web, no one will be able to afford expensive, real-time reporting projects such as the New York Times' Baghdad bureau, which costs $3 million annually. Alterman, somewhat credulously, quotes Arianna Huffington's more positive forecast of the future of news:

"As advertising dollars continue to move online—as they slowly but certainly are—HuffPost will be adding more and more reporting and the Times and Post model will continue with the kinds of reporting they do, but they’ll do more of it originally online.” She predicts “more vigorous reporting in the future that will include distributed journalism—wisdom-of-the-crowd reporting of the kind that was responsible for the exposing of the Attorneys General firing scandal.” As for what may be lost in this transition, she is untroubled: “A lot of reporting now is just piling on the conventional wisdom—with important stories dying on the front page of the New York Times."

Like Alterman, I believe the Times deserves more credit than that, but I'd caution against devolving into full on hand-wringing over the future of news. For one thing, online-only, analysis-driven news sources have been around for way longer than Alterman admits, since the advent of Salon and Slate in 1995 and 1996. Slate especially has a model that relies upon a parasitic relationship with the traditional press (see "Today's Papers"). Secondly, non-profit journalism is a business model that can yield excellent, independent reporting, from the St. Petersburg Times, to new projects such as Pro-Publica and the Washington Independent, to our very own American Prospect. And third, for-profit online journalism is actually becoming more and more reported. The Politico, for example, no matter what you think of their coverage, employs dozens of reporters who are traveling around the United States breaking news on the presidential election.

In other words, there are lots of hopeful models out there for online news gathering. Let's not be afraid of the future.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

New Pieces

I have been very busy at TAPPED, so please, come visit me there! In other news, I have two new columns out. The first, at the Prospect, introduces American readers to a debate over Afrocentric public schools taking place in Toronto:

Across our northern border, a battle is raging over race and education. The Toronto District School Board has approved a plan to create an Afrocentric high school for black students, set to open in 2009. Many black community activists overcame initial reservations about racial separation to support the idea; in Canada as in the United States, there is an intractably high drop-out rate among black students, although up north, the majority of blacks are descendents of Caribbean immigrants, not slaves. In Toronto, 40 percent of black Caribbean youth never graduate high school. Parents and advocates rightly argue that radical action is needed.

But the Toronto school board's split 11-9 decision in late January to move forward with the plan reflects what has become an increasingly divisive political fight.

And over at RH Reality Check, I outline how the anti-choice right is planning on attacking Barack Obama for his opposition to the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act." A lot has been said about Obama's "present" votes on choice, but much less attention has been paid to his history of taking a strong stance for reproductive health, a history that social conservatives can't wait to exploit.

The anti-choice anti-Obama strategy is based on Obama's clear "no" votes on the "Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act," or BAIPA. Leading anti-choice blogger Jill Stanek, who testified in the Illinois state Senate on behalf of the bill, has played a key role in disseminating this anti-Obama argument in the right-wing blogosphere. Taking the bait, former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, in a fundraising email to supporters of his political action committee last month, excoriated Obama for opposing BAIPA. And in a Feb. 26 editorial, the National Catholic Register fumed, "Obama wouldn't even protect children born alive by mistake during abortion attempts."

But BAIPA isn't really about protecting infants; it is anti-abortion rights legislation crafted by the hard right. ... [T]he idea that otherwise viable babies are regularly "born alive" during abortions is an invention of the anti-choice movement.

The Political Wives' Club

As Spitzergate hit the airwaves last week, Dina Matos McGreevy, ex-wife of the "gay American" former New Jersey governor, Jim McGreevy, made the rounds of the cable news networks, empathizing with Silda Wall Spitzer. In a New York Times op-ed, she mused, "Who knows why powerful men conduct themselves this way?"

Well. Matos McGreevy may have knew more than she's been letting on. The Newark Star-Ledger reports:

A former aide to James E. McGreevey said today that he had three-way sexual trysts with the former governor and his wife before he took office, challenging Dina Matos McGreevey's assertion that she was naive about her husband's sexual exploits.

The aide, Theodore Pedersen, said he and the couple even had a nickname for the weekly romps, from 1999 to 2001, that typically began with dinner at T.G.I. Friday's and ended with a threesome at McGreevey's condo in Woodbridge.

There's a few ways to look at this revelation -- if it's true.  First, political wives are a much, much savvier lot than the way they present themselves to be, and savvier than the media generally give them credit them for. Who knows, for example, what Wall Spitzer knew or suspected about her husband's sexual habits? Of course, regular threesomes with Pedersen may not have led Matos McGreevy to the conclusion that her husband was carrying on a long-term romantic affair with a different man, Golan Cipel. People are into all kinds of stuff, after all, and sexuality and gender exist on a spectrum. But this bombshell (again, if it's true) does put a dent in her argument that she was caught completely unawares by his coming out.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

So What Do You Get for $5,500?

That was the flippant question asked yesterday by many news organizations as they covered the fallout from Spitzergate. And hey, I'll be the first to admit that I've been curious. Last night, the New York Times posted as near to an answer as we're likely to get: A profile, complete with pictures, of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the 22-year old sometimes-prostitute who visited with the Governor at the Mayflower hotel last month. After reading the piece and following the Times' link to Dupré's MySpace page, I just felt sad. Far from the fantasy of a college-educated sex-fiend who chooses prostitution out of many career options, Dupré left North Carolina at the age of 17 to move to New York City, where she aspired to become an R&B singer. On her MySpace page, Dupré writes about surviving abuse, using drugs, and being homeless. In short, she hews far more closely to the typical profile of a woman who chooses prostitution than you'd assume from the price the Emperor's Club commanded on her behalf.

I don't have a larger point here about the benefits or risks of legalizing prostitution; I'd encourage you to read Scott on that score. Rather, I'm struck by the pedestrian -- yet heartbreaking -- quality of Dupré's personal history. And lest you think Dupré got rich off her travails, note that she told the Times she's so strapped for cash she's considering moving back home with her mom.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

Behind the Numbers: Teen Sex Infections

Dismay greeted news this week that a quarter of 14 to 19-year old women are infected with at least one of four common sexually transmitted diseases: human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis. A look behind the numbers is even more staggering. Because only half of the 838 young women in the CDC study were sexually active, that means 40 percent of teenagers who have had sex at all are infected with an STD. Half of all African American teen women were affected by one of the diseases, compared to 20 percent of white teens.

Some feminist writers, including Samhita at Feministing, have asked why the CDC chose to conduct such a high profile teen STD study that focused only on women. After all, in the vast majority of cases, it's guys who are giving girls these infections, yet young women, once again, are alone at the center of a storm of media hang-wringing about their sexuality. But push deeper into the survey results and there may be a hint as to the CDC's motivations. As expected, the majority of the infected young women who participated in the survey suffered from one disease, HPV, which affected 18 percent of the teenagers. The second most common disease, chlamydia, affected only 4 percent.

It's important to publicize these numbers because there is now a vaccination, Gardasil, that protects girls and women from the cervical cancer-causing HPV. Yes, comprehensive sex-education is a huge part of the prevention equation; without information on contraceptives, young men and women can't make the best decisions about how to protect their health. But if these new numbers shock heretofore reluctant parents into dealing with the reality of teen sexuality and vaccinating their daughters, that would be a great thing for women's health.

Still, next time around, I hope the CDC focuses on teen guys. Those little buggers and their parents need a wake-up call, too.

Update: A friend of mine working in health policy cautions that it's possible that Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil, encouraged the CDC survey, just as they've encouraged laws around the country that would have schools get involved with promoting the vaccine or even make vaccination mandatory. So far, there's no proof of this, although it's something worth considering. I'll find out more if I can.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Will Obama Be More Aggressive on Education Issues?

TNR's Josh Patashnik has an interesting rundown of Barack Obama's commitment to education reform. Patashnik focuses mostly on Obama's willingness to buck the teachers' unions on merit pay. He also suggests that Clinton hasn't released as comprehensive of an education platform, but in actuality, we know quite a bit about how the Democrats differ on these issues. Here's an overview. In short, Obama is open to both private school choice and linking teacher pay to standardized test scores. Clinton outright rejects private and parochial school vouchers, and her merit pay plan calls for extra money to be distributed when an entire school improves its performance. It is Clinton who has the more aggressive plan on expanding access to preschool education, while Obama wants to provide four-year college scholarships to students who promise to become public school teachers.

All that said, I disagree with Patashnik's suggestion that, once in office, Obama would prioritize education more than Clinton would. That could be true, but there's not a lot of evidence for it from where we stand. Neither Obama nor Clinton has injected education into the race in a deeper way than occasionally criticizing No Child Left Behind and promising to overhaul it. Supporting new ideas in white papers doesn't necessarily equal a commitment to pushing them through Congress.

cross-posted at TAPPED 

I Admit It!

It feels like a coming-out-of-the-closet moment to admit I have more than a passing knowledge of some of the games described in this Slate article about Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah, I know, I seemed like a healthy, well-adjusted young lady before this. But seriously, I'm not lying when I tell you that my friends and I who participated in role-playing weren't total dorks. For one thing, we weren't celibate. (Mom and Dad, please disregard that last sentence!)  We were the theater kids -- faux suburban hip hop culture just wasn't doing it for us. Most of us are pretty normal these days.

In any case, during my adolescence, it never really occurred to me to think about the ethics of D&D, mostly because I was a dabbler and not a hardcore fanatic. In Slate, Eric Sofge -- who, as an editor at Popular Mechanics, I assume is a far more typical former role-player than I -- argues that the massive killing of entire races encouraged by Gygax's gaming system is akin to genocide. Think of the hated, dark-skinned orcs from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series; those greedy (Semitic?) dwarves; or the high-cheek boned, delicate, Northern elves. This is partly what I was drawing from when I wrote an essay back in the day on how the Harry Potter books conform to some of the more conservative identity politics of the fantasy genre. Looking back, that piece seems over-argued (after all, I enjoyed the Potter books!), but there's definitely a there there.

By the way, if anybody wants to use this moment to also publicly confess they once role-played, I'll be your friend forever.

McCain's Far Right Catholic Support

The media coverage of televangelist John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain in late February may have left some with the impression that McCain hadn't, until that point, received wide support from the religious right. In fact, right wing Catholic leaders had been flocking to the McCain campaign since the fall. That's why Hagee's derision of Catholicism is so problematic for McCain: Hagee alienates a key Republican social conservative constituency -- anti-abortion rights Catholics -- that McCain had already won over.

Over at RH Reality Check today, I look more closely at exactly who on the religious right supports McCain, and whether the Hagee controversy will hurt McCain's electoral success with Catholic voters. Here's an excerpt:

In South Carolina, the campaign trotted out Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn to call McCain "an unwavering voice in Congress for the rights of the unborn." A doctor himself, Coburn supports the death penalty for physicians who perform abortions. In January, McCain attracted endorsements from Cathy and Austin Ruse, a prominent couple in the Catholic anti-choice movement. Cathy is a former pro-life spokesperson for the United States' Congress of Catholic Bishops, and Austin is president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which lobbies the United Nations in opposition to family planning and abortion services worldwide. "We believe that abortion is the greatest civil rights issue of our day," the Ruses said in their statement of support for McCain. (No word on how the Ruses feel about income inequality or housing and workplace discrimination.) Also this winter, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a leader in the effort to ban so-called "partial-birth abortions," signed onto the McCain campaign.

With those endorsements, McCain had plenty of anti-choice credibility even before his ill-fated pas de deux with John Hagee. But in his rush to the Bush right, McCain will leave no stone unturned -- even if lurking underneath is the possibility of angering over 60 million American Catholics. Of course, McCain has never been a shoe-in for the Catholic vote; ironically, polls show that like most Americans, Catholics believe abortion should be generally legal. Just more evidence to support the fact that John McCain's views on reproductive health lie well outside of the mainstream.

Check out the whole thing.

Downfall

The implosion of Eliot Spitzer looks fated to become one of the more dramatic downfalls in American political history. It was Spitzer's reputation as a tough-as-nails, populist prosecutor of Wall Street misdeeds that attached to him what, with 20-20 hindsight, were totally outrageous expectations: First Jewish President. Savior of Democratic Populism. Tamer of Corporate America.

Almost as soon as he entered office, Spitzer's flaws were brought to light. New Yorkers have rolled their eyes through an unbecoming scandal in which he used aides to dig dirt on Joseph Bruno, the Republican Senate majority leader and, arguably, Albany's most powerful figure. Then, politically chastened, Spitzer proved weak-kneed on his own proposal to grant undocumented immigrants driver's licenses. This was the same proposal that so tripped up Hillary Clinton during fall debates.

The timing of this prostitution brouhaha isn't very helpful, as New York Democrats are hoping to take over the State Senate, which would finally allow some more progressive legislation to break through.

One last thought: When politicians are caught cheating, I wish they'd leave their wives in the green room while they address the press. You're in the dog house, and it should look that way. Those "stand by your man" visuals are tired and demeaning.

cross-posted at TAPPED