Author Archive » Alex Tievsky
About Alex: Alex Tievsky is a second-year linguistics major at the University of Chicago. He is originally from Washington, DC. (View my For A Better America profile)
This story in the Washington Post a few days ago caught my eye. Basically the gist is that one in four U.S. teenaged girls have some form of STD, mostly human papillomavirus. The slant of the article, however, is frustrating to me. The central question in the article seemed to be “Why do teenagers have sex?” Not, “Why don’t teenagers use protection?” or “Why are teenagers having sex with five different partners?” but “Why are teenagers having sex at all?”
An Upside for the Middle Class
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton declares, “The economy is not working for middle-class and working families,” noting the typical American family earns less now than it did seven years ago. Citing the same trend, her Democratic presidential rival, Sen. Barack Obama, promises “to put America back on the path to prosperity.” Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, says, “It is harder for families to weather hard economic times.” The candidates’ pitches are aimed at wooing the vast majority of Americans who consider themselves middle class. Those people tell pollsters that they are increasingly anxious about their financial security, a feeling that has intensified in recent years because of flattening wages, rising income inequality, increasing consumer debt, soaring health-care costs, spiraling energy prices and, now, declining home values. But as Americans’ wage growth has slowed, their rate of consumption has accelerated, leaving some economists dubious about claims that the middle class is worse off than before.
Read the story from Washington Post | No Comments | Posted February 28, 2008 at 9:06 PM by Alex Tievsky
In the last five years, we’ve witnessed a significant shift in the focus of the U.S. public education system. The shift is perhaps best illustrated by the proliferation of the public high school rankings appearing in national publications. U.S. News & World Report, well known for its university rankings, now publishes a ranking of best high schools as well. Unlike the university rankings, which take many factors into account (yet remain of dubious value), the high school ranking considers essentially one statistic: standardized test scores.
The massive movement towards standardized tests as a barometer for education has its roots in the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. The act is a well-intentioned piece of legislation as its purpose is to improve the overall quality of American public education. It does so partially by attempting to measure schools’ success, as President Bush explained when he signed the bill into law:
The story of children being just shuffled through the system is one of the saddest stories of America….The first step to making sure that a child is not shuffled through is to test that child as to whether or not he or she can read and write, or add and subtract. The first way to solve a problem is to diagnose it. And so, what this bill says, it says every child can learn. And we want to know early, before it’s too late, whether or not a child has a problem in learning. I understand taking tests aren’t fun. Too bad. We need to know in America. We need to know whether or not children have got the basic education.
