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“In covering the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristofwrites that “with the American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics. But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves. These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum. . . .” In talking about role models for these young leaders, Kristof points to Wendy Kopp as someone who “turned her thesis at Princeton into Teach for America and has had far more impact on schools than the average secretary of education.” To read more, please go to http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27kristof.html.

Last weekend, The Washington Post quoted DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee as saying, “Someone said to me that we have to close a school in Ward 3 as a symbolic gesture. I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.” Rhee has what has got to be one of the toughest jobs in the country. This former Teach For America corps member and social entrepreneur is now charged with turning around the DC public school system, where last year just 22 percent of the schools met federal performance targets for adequate yearly progress. And one way she proposes to do it is to redirect $23 million by closing 23 schools, most of which are under-enrolled due to flight to charter and private schools.

I guess it was inevitable that issues of race and gender would creep (some might say “rush”) into the race for the Democratic Presidential nominee. Many of us consider these issues to be major distractions, taking everyone’s eyes off of the real issues and creating an internal gang war that will not end well for the Democrats. The good news (for Democrats, at least) is that last Tuesday night—on what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 79th birthday—during a debate in Las Vegas, the candidates called a “truce” and blamed their surrogates for the recent skirmishing. Senator Clinton called them "exuberant" and sometimes "uncontrollable supporters." Senator Obama acknowledged that staffers and other backers of his campaign occasionally "get overzealous" and say things "I would not say."

As the presidential candidates stumped around Iowa last fall, many campaigned on some version of strengthening families and creating a better world for our nation’s children. They would have done well to have peered in the doors of a small three-year-old nonprofit in Cedar Rapids—The Kids First Law Center. In a nation where 50 percent of marriages end in divorce—meaning that virtually everyone is touched in some significant way by a family break-up—little has been said about how society can mitigate this impact on children. Many would agree that children are left particularly vulnerable after a divorce, and yet the courts grant these children little—indeed often no—input into their post-divorce daily lives. Judith Wallerstein, the acclaimed researcher of marriage and divorce, has concluded that our court system, more frequently than not, fails these children, bemoaning that “lawyers speak up for what parents want, but no one speaks up for the child.”

Michigan—cars (fewer and fewer), cold (beers and winter) and crucial (Mitt Romney’s win).

The media had lots of folks believing that the race in Michigan between Mitt Romney and John McCain was going to be close. Some press reports even wanted the public to believe that this was going to be the end of the line for Romney. Instead, last night Romney pulled out a strong win, walloping McCain by nine points. In his concession speech McCain attributed his opponent’s win to “being the native son.” And that’s just how Romney ran, making it a local race, talking about the specific challenges at hand in Michigan.

Because Tuesday's Michigan Primary was more of a match for Republicans than Democrats, we can't read too much into the results. But in one respect, the outcome seems quite clear—voters are shifting their priorities from Iraq to home. Michigan voters (home of the original Reagan Democrats) voted with their pocketbooks; the pre-eminent concern for them was the economy. While they tell the candidates and the media that they still care deeply about Iraq and terrorism, they are rightly worried about their "bread and butter" issues that require new solutions (“change”), leadership, and attention here at home. This is a positive trend for those of us calculating strategy for the America Forward campaign. Slogging through the fall, and trying to break through the near cacophony of Iraq and security messages, we wondered if any domestic issue would break through to voters. The economy clearly did in Michigan. As a result I predict you'll see all the "front runners" rapidly seeking ways to deliver a message about their priorities for the domestic agenda.

If the past two weeks has not caused us to reconsider what the election landscape may look like this spring and summer, Ruth Marcus’ piece in today’s Washington Post, "Parsing Tsunami Tuesday," has certainly caused us to pause! Marcus’ column provides the reader with a primer on “super delegates” and “proportional representation rules” and leaves open the possibility that the Democrats, at least, could come to their national convention in this summer with nothing decided. According to Marcus, the Republicans (as distinguished from the Democrats):

Ted Kennedy celebrated the 6th anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by writing an op-ed in this past Sunday's Washington Post arguing why the act needs to be reauthorized this year. Eduwonk Andy Rotherham has a good take and suggests that Kennedy just might have a shot at getting the albatross through this year (Full Disc: I used to work at Education Sector, co-founded by eduwonk). In his op-ed, the venerable senator reaches out to critics and proponents of the law alike; proponents will appreciate the reform minded shout-outs to using growth models to measure student achievement, as well as differentiated consequences for schools in varying need of improvement. Critics—though disappointed he doesn’t want to scrap it all together—will appreciate his call for increased funding, smaller class sizes, and removing incentives to teach to the test by broadening the array of tools LEA's use to evaluate schools. But neither proponents nor critics have been pleased of late by the attention the issue has received on the campaign trails. That's because it hasn't really gotten any at all.