August 2012

[Commentary] Mooresville (NC) is best known as "Race City, U.S.A.," home of Nascar. But these days Mooresville is leading the nation in a different way—by using digital technology to improve public education.

"Fixing Our Schools," a documentary I am hosting for the Fox News Channel this Sunday, looks at how digital learning is being used by schools like those in Mooresville to help fix our broken education system. The big change in Mooresville began when Superintendent Mark Edwards took the radical step of cutting back on teachers and using the money to give every student from third grade through high school a laptop computer. All of their textbooks, notes, learning materials and assignments are computerized, allowing teachers and parents to track their progress in real time. If a student is struggling, their computer-learning program can be adjusted to meet their needs and get them back up to speed. And the best students no longer wait on slow students to catch up. Top students are constantly pushed to their limits by new curricular material on their laptops. Nearly every phase of students' education is a data-point that can be tracked, analyzed and compared with their peers. The bottom line is that bringing more technology into the classroom shows tremendous promise to improve schools. And any doubters should take a look at the little school district now speeding along in Mooresville. [Williams is a columnist for the Hill and a political analyst for Fox News Channel]

[Commentary] I recently had an opportunity to address the annual Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Conference in Washington, DC. MMTC has for years toiled mightily to enhance the role of minorities in our telecom and media enterprises. But the current woeful state of diversity in our media goes beyond the ability of any single organization to resolve. Any proposal for truly meaningful remedies runs head-long into special interest opposition in the private sector and, more often than not, lack of interest in the public sector. Both sectors are at fault; both sectors are in default. The bottom line is that minorities have been grievously short-changed; diversity in all its many forms has been largely abandoned as a regulatory objective; and our civic dialogue has been diminished just when it most needs to be nourished. I want to expand upon my remarks at MMTC because we have to develop a sense of national urgency about this problem. Our country is now nearly one-third minority—yet minority issues and cultural contributions receive shockingly sparse attention in our media. When minorities are covered, it is too often in stereotype, too infrequently based on facts. Who at this moment can really claim there is anything approaching equitable, real-world coverage of minorities and their concerns? Why are there so few programs with a minority focus? With minority lead characters? Why are so many news interviews conducted with white males instead of people of color—or women, who are actually a majority of our population? At last report, people of color own about 3 percent of full-power commercial TV stations! And the numbers are only getting worse.

Demand Progress, a progressive advocacy group, launched a campaign to urge the Republican and Democratic parties to include a commitment to protecting Internet freedom in their party platforms. "It's about time for the Democratic and Republican parties to stand up for Internet Freedom — and to do it in writing," the group wrote. "2012 has been a landmark year for those who believe in the right of Americans to share information and communicate with each other free from censorship and surveillance."

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) launched a political campaign in support of legislation that would pressure companies to locate their telephone call centers in the United States.

The union plans to campaign in 50 congressional districts to support lawmakers who back the United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act and attack lawmakers who oppose it. The campaign, which also targets the New Mexico and Wisconsin Senate races, will include robo-calls, radio ads and social-media tools. The bill, offered by Rep Tim Bishop (D-NY), would bar companies that offshore call centers from receiving federal grants and would require them to disclose the physical location of their center at the beginning of each call. The bill would also give callers the right to be transferred to a U.S. call center.