Tag: private schools
A Rebellion in Yale’s Secret Societies
One evening in 2019, in a windowless building known as the “tomb” in the center of Yale’s campus, the members of Skull and Bones snapped. There they were, having been granted membership to the most elite secret society at one of the most elite universities in the world—part of a rare group that for generations included individuals from the most powerful families on the planet. Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Buckleys have all been in Skull and Bones. Three Bonesmen would
American Privilege: The One Percent, Myself Included
In the first spring of the pandemic, I worked a few shifts at a hospital in Brooklyn. The governor had asked on television that health-care workers volunteer, and tens of thousands did. I was surely among the least qualified—an EMT on paper, I had ’til then logged a total of 12 hours, a single overnight ambulance rotation amid the bars and projects of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The hospital human-resources administrator noted my inexperience and asked if I was willing
The Parents Who Fight the City for a “Free Appropriate Public Education”
Travis came to live at his ninth home the day before he started kindergarten. When his new foster parents, Elizabeth and Dan, enrolled Travis at their neighborhood public school, in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, they learned that Travis was eligible for special-education services. (Some names in this story have been changed.) Several languages had been spoken in Travis’s past homes, which had included foster-care placements and homeless shelters, and he had not begun speaking until he was three
Special Ed Shouldn’t Be Separate
In the fall of 2020, as my son and his neighborhood friends started to trickle back out into the world, my daughter, Izzy, stayed home. At the time, Izzy was 3 years old, ripe for the natural learning that comes from being with other kids. I knew by the way she hummed and flapped her hands around children at the playground—and by her frustration with me at home—that she yearned to be among them.
The question of where Izzy would
What Should Colleges Care About?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked, “If you were in charge of the admissions office at a top-50 college or university, how would you decide which applicants got accepted as undergraduates and which got rejected?”
Jonathan deems character traits to be the
Gordon Sondland, The Only Ambivalent-About-Trump Pundit
From 2017 to 2021, a string of businessmen with long, lucrative careers entered government service and left with their reputations tarnished. Rex Tillerson was a world-bestriding CEO who found himself hated by both his new boss and his new employees. Steven Mnuchin, a successful though largely anonymous moneyman, developed an image as a sloppy supervillain. President Donald Trump was arguably the paragon of the class, transforming himself from a famous personality to an infamous threat to democracy.
Gordon Sondland was
War on Drugs Logic and Overdose Deaths
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Observers disagree about law enforcement’s case against Donald Trump, the former president whose Florida mansion was recently searched by federal officials in pursuit of classified documents. None of us knows whether Trump will face charges––or the
13 Reader Views on Directing Tax Money to Private Schools
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked, “Should America go ‘all in’ on public schools, or should parents have the ability to direct the tax dollars that fund their child’s education to the public or private school of their choice?”
Mary is a
Learning Loss Doesn’t Begin to Describe What Happened
On March 4, 2020, a week before the World Health Organization formally declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, Northshore School District, in Washington State, closed its doors, becoming the first in the country to announce a districtwide shift to online learning. Within three weeks, every public-school building in the United States had been closed and 50 million students had been sent home. Half of these students would not reenter their schools for more than a year. No other
Your Starkly Different Perspectives on Omicron
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As the Omicron stage of the pandemic wears on, many of you are anxious, frustrated, and incredulous or even despairing as to how others are behaving––but you’re not of like mind. Some of you believe that the response to the new variant is overwrought, while others think that it is underwhelming.
“How should America’s colleges, high schools, and elementary schools handle the winter surge of COVID-19 cases associated with the Omicron variant?” I asked