‘We know how to make our educational system world-class again’

‘The “Mississippi marathon” is teaching kids to read’

Rahm Emanuel at The Wall Street Journal

Mississippi “chose to spend less time on topics that dominate Washington’s education agenda and instead maintained a focus on what happens inside the classroom,” says Rahm Emanuel. It “restored phonics-based systems that rigorous scientific studies have shown to work” and “constructed a system to train teachers so that they are effective at teaching students to read.” Rather than “discarding public schools or educator accountability, the rest of America should adopt a model that has been proven to work.”

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‘The World Cup is out of reach for many. The hope lies outside the stadiums.’

Leander Schaerlaeckens at The Guardian

If the “shocking ticket prices for the actual World Cup will make it exclusive and inaccessible,” something “like a shadow World Cup may nevertheless emerge,” says Leander Schaerlaeckens. With a “wall built around the genuine article, scalable only by a bundle of money, a kind of bootleg version may be fashioned out of the scraps and flashes of the tournament.” It may be a “lower-case world cup, as it were, consisting of fan fests and open training sessions and pre-tournament warmup matches.”

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‘Always beware a declining superpower’

Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times

America “remains the strongest country on Earth, if by a reduced margin,” but in “another sense American decline is worse,” says Janan Ganesh. Even “under a normal president, the U.S. might be behaving badly,” as “status-anxious countries have to puff themselves up. It is a rare superpower that takes decline well.” Because the “performance of the U.S. this century has been so awesome in absolute terms,” the “nation’s relative decline can be hard to visualize. But it is there.”

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‘Mamdani might actually pull off universal child care in NYC’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “presented universal child care as part of his campaign platform,” some “thought it was a remarkable goal – and a far-fetched one,” says Sara Pequeño. But it “seems that dream is closer to reality, and the entire country may be better for it.” If “all goes well, this program could cement the city as a guiding light for other metropolitan areas looking to retain talent and keep parents, particularly moms, in the workforce.”

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