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The buzz in Sacramento is that early childhood education might get a healthy infusion of state funds this year. It's a top priority in the Legislature, and Gov.Jerry Brown, while not leading the charge, appreciates the potential impact of giving kids a running start. There's overwhelming evidence of the life-changing potential of good prekindergarten. Analyses of model preschools, which tracked youngsters from their preschool days to their 40s, have shown its lifelong benefits. Nobel Prize-winning economist …

Last month, the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association selected David Kirp’s “Improbable Scholars” for its 2014 Outstanding Book Award. The honor, reserved for education’s intellectual heavyweights, is not only a nod to Kirp’s scholarly achievement, but more, an acknowledgement of the power of marrying journalism and policy into a narrative that can drive public interest where there is seemingly so little: systems change. Kirp, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy…

The Goldman School congratulates Chancellor's Professor Robert B. Reich on his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed upon academics and those in public life.  "The American Academy was founded in 1780," says Dean Henry E. Brady. "It is one of the nation's oldest learned societies. The Academy convenes leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to address critical challenges facing our global society. It is a great…

The American Education Research Association (AERA) awarded its Outstanding Book Award to Professor David Kirp's 2013 publication, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools (Oxford University Press, 2013). The Outstanding Book Award was created to honor the best book-length publication in education research and development of each year. David L. Kirp is the James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy and a national expert on education and children's policy.…

Corey Matthews is a first-year MPP student at the Goldman School of Public Policy and a regular blogger for the Wire. Photo Credit: Mike Groll/AP So, let me start my spill with the preface that the idea of prison education as a means to enhance rehabilitation and reentry of prisoners into society is not a new concept. In fact, it’s something that anti-prison advocates and criminal justice reformists have rallied behind for decades; but of course it…

The writing is on the chalkboard. Over the next few years, America can count on a major expansion of early childhood education. We embrace this trend, but as health policy researchers, we want to raise a major caveat: Unless we’re careful, today’s preschool bandwagon could lead straight to an epidemic of 4- and 5-year-olds wrongfully being told that they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Introducing millions of 3- to 5-year-olds to classrooms and preacademic demands means…

From Dean Henry E. Brady: I am very sorry and very sad to tell you that our colleague, Professor Suzanne Scotchmer, passed away on Thursday, January 30, after a brief illness. At GSPP, Suzanne championed intellectual rigor and tough-minded thinking about public policy. She also provided us with a model of how to combine economic thinking with public policy analysis. We all learned from her example and her teaching. She helped to build GSPP and to give it an international…

Response: Rucker C. Johnson Rucker Johnson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley.His work considers the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. I appreciate the opportunity to join this blog platform and react to the thoughtful, provocative, and rich comments set forth by my colleague, Mary Pattillo.  While my comments are not direct replies to her main tenets, my views are certainly aligned with her points and sentiments.  I hope my response…

Read enough political journalism and you will likely be convinced of a simple truth: public policy exists to serve economic ends. We grant tax deductions to encourage home ownership; we extend unemployment insurance to spur economic growth during a crisis. But there is more to public policy than the search for economic outcomes. Policies often confer social rights—powerful markers of status in society, entrenched in law and defended by courts. As British sociologist T.H. Marshall put it…

I often hear – and firmly believe – that “housing is a human right,” not a privilege.  Many communities invest resources into shelters, transitional housing, and other services for their homeless populations.  However, people experiencing homelessness need their fundamental right to housing to be respected and advanced. As Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) in Los Angeles, told me recently, “The right to permanent housing should trump the right to sleep,…