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In the August 19, 2012, edition of my home town paper The Washington Post, the Opinion page featured a column by James C. Roumell, founder of Roumell Asset Management, LLC, titled “What I built with government help.” 

In his column, Roumell described growing up in a working class family in Detroit with a single mother who supported them with a unionized job with decent pay made possible by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.  Roumell subsequently went to college with the help of Pell Grants and government loans made possible by the Higher Education Act of 1965. His now successful business was made possible by the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. ...

By Nora L. Howley, Manager of Programs, NEA Health Information Network

We’ve all heard it said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” But too many children in the United States are starting school each day without breakfast.  As NEA President Dennis Van Roekel pointed out last week on the Huffington Post: “If we're honest with ourselves, the faces of hunger are everywhere -- in every area, every city and every demographic. The 2012 edition of the 'Kids Count' report, one of the most widely quoted surveys on the condition of children in the U.S., indicates that child poverty is mounting. This is not just an issue of an extra donut or bagel. This is chronic hunger affecting millions of children every day, and the consequences are staggering.” Hungry children cannot learn, they cannot concentrate, and they certainly can’t achieve at the levels they would otherwise.

Educators everywhere know this problem all too well. A new poll from Share Our Strength found that three out of five educators report students coming to school hungry and the majority of those say that the problem is getting worse. 

Expanding participation in school breakfast is one of the most important and ...

As teachers prepare lessons and materials for the fast-approaching 2013 school year, it is an opportune time to highlight the value of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) as a tool for the nation’s educators. Learning Forward explains PLCs as:  “Learning communities [consisting of education professionals that] convene regularly and frequently during the workday to engage in collaborative professional learning to strengthen their practice and increase student results.” PLCs are not a new phenomenon, but they are gaining increased attention as the national conversation around education focuses on improving teacher quality through effective professional development. ...

This weekend I started reading David McCullough’s most recent book, The Greater Journey, which chronicles the experiences of some of the United States’ most accomplished writers and thinkers on their visits to Paris in the early part of the nineteenth century.  I’m still at the very beginning of what promises to be a fascinating book; however, I’m enjoying the description of the initial culture shock these prominent Americans had when they arrived in Paris and learned that most of the French knew very little about the United States and didn’t even speak English!  

McCullough points out that the French people’s initial introduction to the United States and its citizens came in 1835 when Baron Alexis de Tocqueville published his first edition of Democracy in America on his return from an extended stay in the US.  In his publication, de Tocqueville described the nature of American politics; the evils of slavery; and American’s love of money.  But the passage that has stuck with me is de Tocqueville’s assertion that from the beginning “the originality of American civilization was most clearly apparent in the provisions made for public education.”

This profound observation by de Tocqueville almost two hundred years ago frames the current debate on resource allocation and the future of both public schooling and our democratic way of life in a fresh context.  While the United States once again garnered the most ...