New America Podcasts

Sometimes even U.N. diplomats have an exciting week. Or, as Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations said of her time last week, a “fascinating and frustrating and, really, in the end, depressing week.”

When does a journalist stop being a citizen? Coverage of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Arab Spring have recently highlighted this ethical dilemma, but journalistic paragon Edward R. Murrow grappled with it, too. Do members of the Fourth Estate have the right to publicly express their views at the barricades? Should they tend to the wounded and intervene in attacks/detention? What does it mean to be a fact-gathering reporter and also a commentary writer? Listen to this group of reporters who have experienced these challenges in their lives and work.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” is a nationally administered math and reading test that we discuss frequently on Early Ed Watch. The 2011 NAEP scores, which were released earlier this month, showed small improvement in 4th grade math, but no statistical improvement in reading.

More and more elementary school principals across the country are thinking about and looking for ways to provide more seamless education in pre-K, kindergarten and the early grades. Jon Millerhagen, principal of Washburn Elementary School in Bloomington, Minnesota, is one example. Millerhagen says he was not trained as an early education principal but that as he sought out strategies to improve student learning in his school he realized he needed to find out more about pre-K and early learning.