Live Blogging the State of the Union

Hey everyone! Hope your semester's starting off well. This is both a reminder and an announcement: the State of the Union address will be on tonight at 9pm, EST. The Contemporary will be live blogging the speech, so stay tuned and come back to this page tonight!

Education Reform and Bipartisanship

By the looks of David Brooks' column in the NYT today, sensible education reform has the potential to be a bipartisan issue, thanks in large part to Obama's willingness to push effective teacher accountability and merit pay. Read the column here. Here's an excerpt:

Obama’s goal is to make sure results have consequences. He praises data sets that “tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what’s working and what’s not.” He also aims to reward states that use data to make decisions. He will build on a Bush program that gives states money for merit pay so long as they measure teachers based on real results. He will reward states that expand charter schools, which are drivers of innovation, so long as they use data to figure out which charters are working.

Obama Supports Commonsense Education Reform; Teacher Accountability

Kudos to Obama for supporting basic teacher accountability provisions and merit pay; consistent national standards will be tough, though.

NEW Contemporary Podcast!!!

Visit www.browncontemporary.org to listen to our latest political roundtable podcast!! We talk elitism, missles in Poland, and the Divine Chinese dancers and their Providence advertising onslaught!

NCLB's Accountability Illusion

This new report from the Fordham Institute documents how Annual Yearly Progress measures vary widely across states under No Child Left Behind. Read the report here.

NEW Contemporary Podcast!!!

Visit www.browncontemporary.org to download our latest PODCAST!!

Put away the video games...

I can't remember which of the three presidential debates it was when Barack Obama dropped his line that parents need to put away their kids' video games...he just said it again in his unofficial "state of the union;" pandering still very much works. Could video games be good for kids?