The Brookings Cafeteria

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. Despite initial enthusiasm, criticism of and outright opposition to the standards are beginning to arise. , a senior fellow in the  at Brookings, explains how the Common Core came about, why some are opposed to it now, and what his research shows about its impact on student achievement. Show notes: •  (Loveless)•  (Loveless, in 2012 Brown Center Report)•  (West and Bleiberg)•  (Brown Center event)•  (West and Bleiberg)•  (Brown Center event)•  (Loveless)•   

The Arctic is changing. As the polar ice cap recedes, new shipping routes are opening up and access to Arctic energy resources is expanding. , a nonresident senior fellow with the  at Brookings, explains what these changes mean for Arctic governance and for U.S. leadership of the Arctic Council in 2015. Show notes: • Offshore Oil and Gas Governance in the Arctic: A Leadership Role for the United States:  |  • • • 

"Happiness." "Contentment." "Subjective well-being." Can we measure how happy people are and if so, what can we do with this information? In this podcast, , the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow and author of , explains how happiness/well-being research works and why it matters for public policy in the U.S. and globally. In the podcast, Graham explains two dimensions of understanding well-being, the "Benthamite/hedonic" and the "Aristotelian/eudemonic." She explained them : Those of us involved focus on two distinct dimensions: hedonic well-being, a daily experience component; and evaluative well-being, the way in which people think about their lives as a whole, including purpose or meaning. Jeremy Bentham focused on the former and proposed increasing the happiness and contentment of the greatest number of individuals possible in a society as the goal of public policy. Aristotle, meanwhile, thought of happiness as eudemonia, a concept that combined two Greek words: "eu" meaning abundance and "daimon" meaning the p

Pork barrel spending has traditionally been understood as the exclusive domain of Congress. Yet recent presidents are highly engaged in the practice, too, as  demonstrates in his illuminating new book,  (Brookings, 2014). In this podcast, , a fellow in Governance Studies, explains how presidents dole out over $100 billion per year in discretionary federal grants through scores of federal agencies, often in service of improving his electoral prospects. In one example, Hudak examined why the National Park Service delivered more grants to Pennsylvania than to California, even though the former has fewer residents and fewer federally protected sites. One explanation he offers is that, during the course of his study, Pennsylvania has been a swing state while California has not. Show Notes: • • •  • 

"More than half of Arab children are not learning," says Senior Fellow  in this new podcast about learning in the Arab world. He joined , a fellow also with the  at Brookings, in this discussion about their findings on and solutions for a range of education issues in the region, including number and quality of teachers, accountability, gender, curriculum, and whether Arab world children are learning the skills they need to compete in the 21st century. Show notes: • • • • 

From East Asia to Africa, through Afghanistan to Syria and the greater Middle East, Senior Fellow  guides us on a brief tour of the good, the bad, and in some cases, the ugly challenges facing our world today. Find out why he says, despite all the challenges, the global order is remarkably healthy right now and what that means for America's role in the world. Show notes: •  (Big Bets & Black Swans presidential briefing memo)•  (Big Bets & Black Swans memo)• • •  

Poverty in the United States looks different now than it did when President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty" 50 years ago. With the publication of their book, , Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube brought to the fore of the national conversation the experience of the 16.5 million people living in poverty in the suburbs. In a new podcast, , a fellow in the , says that the landscape of poverty is "dramatically different" than it was a half century ago. A third of the poor population lives in the suburbs, and during the 2000s, the poor population there grew larger and faster than in cities. While many programs from the war on poverty have been effective in keeping millions of people out of poverty, Kneebone says in this podcast that the shifting geography of poverty to suburbs means that we need to "reassess what's working" and "better adapt our policies to a new reality of suburban poverty." Learn more about the book, get case studies about communities facing suburban poverty, and downlo

"Cyber issues have been too long been left only to the 'IT' crowd, ... when it's something—whether you are working in politics, in media, in military, in law, in business, or just frankly as a good citizen or as a good parent—you need to know more about. It connects to all of these different issues and yet most of us have been operating from this position of, frankly, ignorance. And we're being taken advantage of." So says , co-author of the new book, . In this podcast, Singer, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings and director of the , talks about how individuals, businesses and governments need to be thinking about cyber issues. Our conversation touched on a variety of issues covered in the book, including the utility of parallels to the Cold War; the role of nonstate actors; how Anonymous and the Zetas Mexican drug cartel mixed it up in cyber space; and how important individual cyber hygiene is.  

"The intersection of politics and policy is a lonely place," writes Senior Fellow  in her new book . In this podcast, Kamarck, founding director of the , touches on the ideas and examples in her book to explain why politics and policy have to come together for us to understand success and failure in U.S. politics. She talks about "surveying the policy battlefield" in trying to understand the complexity of change. For example, why did unpopular President Harry Truman manage to get the Marshall Plan passed "with a hostile Republican Congress," while Barack Obama, who "came into office on the heels of a robust political victory" with majorities in both houses of Congress, failed to enact climate change legislation? The conversation ranged from how FDR's social policies reflected American values, to whether the Affordable Care Act does, to the complexity and length of modern legislation, to whether or not elections matter and if mandates exist outside politician's own minds. Show notes: • , by Elaine Kamarck• • ,

In this podcast, congressional expert  explains why the Senate filibuster is a historical mistake. She talks about her research on Congress’s relationship with the Federal Reserve and addresses whether Congress is more polarized today than it has been in the past. Binder, a senior fellow in Governance Studies, is also a professor of political science at George Washington University and contributor to the .  Show notes: •  (testimony by Alice Rivlin)• • • •  • 

Universal primary education by 2015 is one of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. While great progress has been made in expanding educational access, are children learning what they need to learn to succeed? , senior fellow and director of the , talks about why access plus learning is important. In the podcast, Winthrop also describes her collaboration with the Learning Metrics Task Force, and addresses how to measure educational outcomes, the challenge of educating children in conflict-affected areas, and the significance of Malala Yousafzai to the global education movement. Show notes: • • • •  • 

The number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty—defined as living on $1.25 a day or less—was cut in half between 1990 and 2010. Yet more than one billion people still subsist at this level, and about three billion live at under $2.50 a day. , a fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at Brookings, discusses the possibility that by 2030 the world might eradicate the most extreme poverty. He explains how we measure the problem, what the private sector and aid agencies can do about it, whether or not current targeting approaches are effective, and talks about the poverty problem in the United States.  Chandy, who is a scholar in the , says that while a lot of progress has been made over the last decade in reducing poverty, continued progress is: going to require new approaches and new efforts to get us closer to that zero mark. That would include bringing to an end some of the persistent conflicts in low-income countries; bringing marginalized communities into the orbit of their economies;