Author: TheConversation

By Kevin Welner, Professor, Education Policy & Law; Director, National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado Boulder Proponents of charter schools insist that they are public schools “open to all students.” But the truth is more nuanced. As an education policy researcher, and as author of a new book I wrote with fellow researcher Wagma Mommandi – School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment, I have discovered that charter schools are not as accessible to the public as they are often made out to be. This finding is particularly relevant in light of the fact that...

By Preston Green III, John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education, University of Connecticut; and Bruce Baker, Professor of Education, Rutgers University White public schools have always gotten more money than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “separate but equal” era, which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The disparities have persisted even after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools. Since Black schools get less funding even though Black homeowners...

By Alex Krieger, Research Professor in Practice of Urban Design, Harvard University Since Epcot’s inception, millions of tourists have descended upon the theme park famous for its Spaceship Earth geodesic sphere and its celebration of international cultures. But the version of Epcot visitors encounter at Disney World – currently in the midst of its 50th anniversary celebrations – is hardly what Walt Disney imagined. In 1966, Disney announced his intention to build Epcot, an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.” It was to be no mere theme park but, as Disney put it, “the creation of a living...

By Emily B. Campbell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of the Holy Cross The highly contentious Purdue Pharma settlement announced September 1, 2021, comes at a pivotal time for the United States overdose crisis: 2020 was the worst year on record, with over 93,000 Americans losing their lives to fatal drug overdose. The drug overdose epidemic, now more than two decades long, has claimed the lives of more than 840,000 people since 1999. Current estimates suggest that some 2.3 million people in the U.S. use heroin and 1.7 million people use pharmaceutical opioids without a prescription. Since 2016,...

By Christia Spears Brown, Professor of Psychology, University of Kentucky Facebook officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram, the social media platform most used by adolescents, is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being but swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a September 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report. Facebook’s policy of pursuing profits regardless of documented harm has sparked comparisons to Big Tobacco, which knew in the 1950s that its products were carcinogenic but publicly denied it into the 21st century. Those of us who study...

By Andrea Seielstad, Professor of Law, University of Dayton The quest by pop singer Britney Spears to end the conservatorship that handed control over her finances and health care to her father demonstrates the double-edged sword of putting people under the legal care and control of another person. A judge may at times deem it necessary to appoint a guardian or conservator to protect a vulnerable person from abuse and trickery by others, or to protect them from poor decision-making regarding their own health and safety. But when put into the hands of self-serving or otherwise unscrupulous conservators, however,...