“Despite the penumbra of long-term [international] debt, the U.S. economy remains the envy of the world; U.S. social conditions, however, are certainly not. America has some of the worst rates of child poverty, infant mortality, teen suicide, crime, family breakup, homelessness, and functional illiteracy in the developed world. In addition, many of our inner cities have turned into islands of despair, a frightening number of our public schools are dangerous, and almost two million of our residents are behind bars.”
--"A Politics for Generation X," The Atlantic Monthly, August 1999
“We bemoan the fact that American students seen to be failing at higher rates than we would hope on basic math and language tests. But we have not invested sufficiently in children when they are very young. As early as kindergarten, many children have learning deficits that public schools cannot redress. Having the federal government underwrite one or even two years of pre-kindergarten school for all children would likely have a massive impact on both long-term growth and equity. The federal government has never been responsible for much K-12 spending -- today it contributes seven percent, down from nearly ten percent in 1980. It could certainly afford more, including, perhaps, the upwards of $25 billion it would cost per year to reduce average class size to 20 students.”
--Barry Bluestone in The New Republic, Aug. 9, 1999
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