Recent News

Even after the unrest in Ferguson has subsided, we’re left with questions about the tension that built up and exploded in the small St. Louis suburb. Among those questions: How did a city where two-thirds of the residents are black elect an almost entirely white city government?  The answer is simple:  Ferguson holds its city elections off-cycle, entirely separate from state and national elections, and that can make all the difference. People rarely think…

We are a long way from knowing precisely what happened in Ferguson, two weeks ago, but one thing is clear: The town’s name has become yet another synonym for the chasm of experience dividing white and black America. Time and again, young African-American men have been fatally shot by police under ambiguous circumstances: Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell … the list goes on. Yet public opinion polls show that a majority of whites consistently fail to see…

TODAY’S education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share the belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology. Neither strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason. It’s impossible to improve…