The American Education Research Association (AERA) awarded its Outstanding Book Award to Professor David Kirp's 2013 publication, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools (Oxford University Press, 2013). The Outstanding Book Award was created to honor the best book-length publication in education research and development of each year. David L. Kirp is the James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy and a national expert on education and children's policy.…

Corey Matthews is a first-year MPP student at the Goldman School of Public Policy and a regular blogger for the Wire. Photo Credit: Mike Groll/AP So, let me start my spill with the preface that the idea of prison education as a means to enhance rehabilitation and reentry of prisoners into society is not a new concept. In fact, it’s something that anti-prison advocates and criminal justice reformists have rallied behind for decades; but of course it…

The writing is on the chalkboard. Over the next few years, America can count on a major expansion of early childhood education. We embrace this trend, but as health policy researchers, we want to raise a major caveat: Unless we’re careful, today’s preschool bandwagon could lead straight to an epidemic of 4- and 5-year-olds wrongfully being told that they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Introducing millions of 3- to 5-year-olds to classrooms and preacademic demands means…

From Dean Henry E. Brady: I am very sorry and very sad to tell you that our colleague, Professor Suzanne Scotchmer, passed away on Thursday, January 30, after a brief illness. At GSPP, Suzanne championed intellectual rigor and tough-minded thinking about public policy. She also provided us with a model of how to combine economic thinking with public policy analysis. We all learned from her example and her teaching. She helped to build GSPP and to give it an international…

Response: Rucker C. Johnson Rucker Johnson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley.His work considers the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. I appreciate the opportunity to join this blog platform and react to the thoughtful, provocative, and rich comments set forth by my colleague, Mary Pattillo.  While my comments are not direct replies to her main tenets, my views are certainly aligned with her points and sentiments.  I hope my response…

Read enough political journalism and you will likely be convinced of a simple truth: public policy exists to serve economic ends. We grant tax deductions to encourage home ownership; we extend unemployment insurance to spur economic growth during a crisis. But there is more to public policy than the search for economic outcomes. Policies often confer social rights—powerful markers of status in society, entrenched in law and defended by courts. As British sociologist T.H. Marshall put it…

I often hear – and firmly believe – that “housing is a human right,” not a privilege.  Many communities invest resources into shelters, transitional housing, and other services for their homeless populations.  However, people experiencing homelessness need their fundamental right to housing to be respected and advanced. As Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) in Los Angeles, told me recently, “The right to permanent housing should trump the right to sleep,…

Dean Henry E. Brady announced the appointment of Robert J. Birgeneau, the ninth Chancellor of the University of California Berkeley and a world renowned physicist, to the faculty of the Goldman School of Public Policy. Chancellor Birgeneau's major appointment is in physics, but in "his capacity as a public policy innovator and leader, especially in the fields of higher education and science policy, makes him a natural fit," says Dean Brady. Robert Birgeneau served as UC Berkeley's…

“Please donate food items here so Associates in Need can enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner.” That’s the text of a sign hanging over a bin at a Walmart in Canton, Ohio. A photo of the food drive surfaced earlier this month, sparking new attention to the connection between hunger and working conditions in America. This comes close on the heels of revelations that McDonald’s “McResource” help line is encouraging employees to meet basic needs…

The University of California, Berkeley invites applications for a tenured appointment to the faculty at the Associate or Full Professor level, to begin July 1, 2014. The candidate will be expected to provide organizational leadership for the Religious Diversity Cluster of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. The successful candidate will be appointed in one or more departments at Berkeley (depending upon the candidate’s background). The successful candidate will also be considered for appointment to the Haas…