Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy
The expansion of official secrecy now poses a challenge to basic democratic processes, argues a new report (pdf) from OpenTheGovernment.org and People for the American Way.
In a highly readable account, the report explains why openness is a virtue, explores how secrecy impedes public deliberation, and considers what can be done about it.
“As Congress and the White House clash over this administration’s unprecedented secrecy, Americans need to know the full scope of the problem,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org. “It is up to us, with and through our elected officials, to preserve our heritage of open and accountable government.”
See “Government Secrecy: Decisions without Democracy,” written by David Banisar, July 2007.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.
When the U.S. government funds the establishment of a platform for testing hundreds of behavioral interventions on a large diverse population, we will start to better understand the interventions that will have an efficient and lasting impact on health behavior.
The grant comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) to investigate, alongside The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the associated impact on nuclear stability.
We need to overhaul the standardized testing and score reporting system to be more accessible to all of the end users of standardized tests: educators, students, and their families.