Kennedy's concern for the plight of the poor never turned into a broad legislative program. But his successor seized on the issue, claiming it was the martyred president's last wish that he do so.
The national entertainment state threatens to transmogrify American life into a soap opera
A new solution to the problem of failing public schools is emerging: takeover by outside authorities, who prescribe a standardized field-tested curriculum. This runs counter to our long-standing tradition of autonomy for local schools and teachers, but it works
Political intellectuals of both parties call for something more bracing than Bill Clinton's flabby syncretism—and think we want it too.
An old disagreement over how to teach children to read -- whole-language versus phonics -- has re-emerged in California, in a new form. Previously confined largely to education, the dispute is now a full-fledged political issue there, and is likely to become one in other states.
An increasingly powerful agent in American life is also one of the least noticed.
The voguish idea that America is run by a small group of brainy people is a wild exaggeration, but it has its political uses.
A pseudonymous Los Angeles columnist stirs up the Korean-American community.
Just as intriguing as Robert Putnam's theory that we are "bowling alone"--that the bonds of civic association are dissolving--is how readily the theory hasbeen accepted
The first mass administrations of a scholastic -aptitude test led with surprising speed to the idea that the nation's leaders would be the people who did well on tests
In America perhaps only race is a more sensitive subject than the way we sort ourselves out in the struggle for success. At the center of that struggle are higher education and ETS, the Educational Testing Service. Herewith an inside look at the history and workings of one of the most familiar yet least public of American institutions
Americans have always believed in the power of self-determination and in their ability, with coaching, to change their attitudes—and their lives. But researchers have rarely bothered to study whether motivation has any measurable effect on the way a person’s life turns out. One who has hot he red is the psychologist David McClelland, who in a fifty-year career has never quite achieved the success he himself wanted
Conversations with students at Penn and Temple show that black nationalism and assimilation are not the opposites they appear to be
Most people think of inner-city poverty as a black pnenomenon. But it is also alarmingly high among Puerto Ricans, the worst-off ethnic group in the country—even though Puerto Rico itself has made great progress against poverty and there is a growing Puerto Rican middle class on the mainland