News Day

Need more than sunshine to get the week off to a good start? Try these four good news stories:  Continue reading →

Alberto Monserrate has it right:  Continue reading →

Henry Louis Gates Jr. watched Freedom Summer on television from his hometown of Piedmont, West Virginia. He was thirteen years old that summer. I was, too, and I also watched Freedom Summer on television, from another rural community half a continent away. Continue reading →

End homelessness — a couple of years ago, that sounded to me like an impossible project. Now it seems within the realm of possibility. Continue reading →

More than 10 years ago, whistle-blower Courtland Kelley told GM about the safety problems and was forced out of his job. Yes – GM, whose failure to recall vehicles with ignition switch failures have cost at least 13 lives. Continue reading →

Weddings feel like this — a crowd of people fizzing with happiness, dressed up for the occasion, coming together to celebrate a life-affirming commitment.  Coming together on June 21 at the Minnesota History Center — 128 immigrants from 44 countries, making their promise to protect and serve this country, the United States of America, as they become naturalized citizens. Continue reading →

Broken bones, bloody noses, dark closets, duct taped wrists — all part of U.S. schools’ restraints of unruly children, as documented in a June 19 Pro Publica report. Children with emotional disabilities make up the majority of those subjected to restraints and seclusion. Federal data shows that restraint and seclusion were used more than 267,000 times in 2012. The federal numbers understate the practices, because only one-third of the nation’s school districts reported any instances of restraint or seclusion. Continue reading →

Need some hope to start the week? In case you missed them, here are four stories of things going right in the world.  Continue reading →

Is teacher tenure across the country at risk because of the June 10 California decision? Not yet — and not really. Here are five things you need to know about teachers, tenure and Vergara v. California. Continue reading →

Border Patrol rescues immigrant girl stranded on banks of Rio Grande. Photo by Donna Burton. US Customs and Border Protection on Flickr, Creative Commons license

Children, hundreds of them, sleeping on plastic boards lined up on the floor. Frightened mothers, clutching hungry children, dumped at a Phoenix bus station. Homeland Security, forced to shift gears from jails to child-care, requisitioning mattresses and porta-potties in an attempt to turn warehouses into shelters. Children are the big immigration story of 2014.

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