Planned Parenthood has a large target on its back.

When an organization is willing to support only lawmakers who are with it 100 percent of the time, it virtually guarantees that the debate will be bitterly partisan.

Most of Planned Parenthood's work focuses on health care for low-income women: things like screenings for breast cancer and diabetes, and family planning.

My cousin in Louisiana started a small company with a little savings, renovating houses. A single mom, she saved enough to buy a home and provide child care for her son. When the economy went belly up, so did her company. She was forced to sell her home and move in with her parents.

Human faces shouldn't get lost amid the statistics.

Some women are smarter than men, and some aren't. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.

When I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste.

Our educational establishment is failing; it is past time for courage, honesty, and action commensurate with the need, particularly here in the United States.

As David Cameron realizes, we do not have time for the tweaks and increments favored by institutions built to resist change.

Education has not traditionally been a large concern in presidential elections, presumably because the president does not run schools.

It is unimaginable that anyone, right or left, can aspire to be president without having thought about this. Every candidate has the stage; the Republicans have used it to fuss unproductively over the Common Core. The Democrats have all but refused to speak.

If Boston charters can be stymied despite their extraordinary success, charters anywhere can be stopped.

Charter opponents often try to delegitimize strong testing results like those in Boston by attributing them to excessive test prep - as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio did recently.

In 'The Founders,' his new book about top charter schools, Richard Whitmire traces both the 'revolution' these schools brought about in many American cities as well as a parallel phenomenon, 'the charter pushback campaigns.'

More and more parents and voters have rejected the teachers' union antiquated, top down, one-size-fits-all approach to education and continue to elect candidates who embrace reform that celebrates students and empowers parents.

Perhaps there is no greater evidence that the teachers' union has swung too far out of the mainstream that they both have been a target of near-constant criticism from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Voters have demonstrated time and again that candidates who buck the teachers' union are rewarded.

While the protection of speech is at the bedrock of our democracy, it's critical as a nation that we exercise our right every day - and that includes embracing and engaging with those we may not agree with.

My favorite stories are about kids who refuse to give up; their homes and schools may have been destroyed; they've probably had to rely on themselves more than a lot of adults do, and they've resisted the many bad alternatives that city life offers to poor teens.

I was born and raised in Louisiana - a small town called Ferriday, north of Baton Rouge.

The protests and pain over the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown had me wondering if we can ever experience the world as others do. For no matter how disputed the circumstances of both cases, many people see what happened in black and white.

The government sets targets for increased four-year high school graduation rates as part of its agenda for improving Americans' health.

Our education system is not preparing young people for the world they will face.

The consequences of substandard teaching go far beyond whether college or a good job is in reach. They affect earning potential, with implications throughout a person's life.