According to two articles today, SAT scores remained flat this year. A graph in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage illustrates that this news comes after two years of decline from a peak reached in 2005. While WSJ’s headline “Class of ’08 Fails…” sets a dour scene, the people who run the test are actually encouraged by the results.

The number of Americans without health insurance decreased by one million last year, down by half a percentage point from 2006, according to annual figures from the U.S. Census Bureau released today.

A couple of interesting items have come up in the past few days on the cost of college as well as the pay off that college provides to its graduates. The Associated Press revealed the results of a report by the Sallie Mae foundation, which showed that when looking for a college, 40 percent of families don’t limit their school searches based on cost.

Although the movement to engage citizens in public life is growing, a lot of folks – citizens, leaders and policy-makers included– don’t “get” public engagement and how it works to foster a more meaningful and participatory democratic process. Journalists, in particular, often tend to express skepticism and uncertainty about how public engagement efforts advance community participation in the decision-making process.

Today's New York Times story on Medicare fraud raises an interesting question: Who pays the medical bills when a government bureaucracy shoots itself in the foot?

Can a movie get people fired up about the national debt? I.O.U.S.A. is going to try.

This has been a wild week for U.S. foreign policy – relations with Russia have deteriorated dramatically over the war with Georgia, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, may be forced out of office.

The Census Bureau sums up one of the nation's most significant trends very neatly today: "An Older and More Diverse Nation by Midcentury ." There will be a lot of more of us, too, with the U.S. population projected to hit 400 million by 2039.

Minorities, who are now about a third of the total population, will become the majority of Americans in 2042. And by 2030 one in five Americans will be age 65 or older.

Storytelling is a powerful tool – and never more so than in public policy.

What got me thinking about this was a story in the New York Times, Health Benefits Inspire Rush to Marry, or Divorce." According to the Times, "it is not uncommon" for couples to get married or break up at least partly in order to have health insurance.

New ACT results were released today, indicating a slight drop in scores for the 2008 graduating class (details of the results can be found here). But ACT officials were quick to point out that a record number of students took the test this year.