Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

My new TIME Magazine story investigates what government workers actually do all day long and whether they are actually overpaid. If you are not sure which side to love or hate in the Wisconsin imbroglio, this is the story for you. (If you are convinced in the purity of the unions or the righteousness of the governor, then I’d suggest reading something else. Or breathing deeply.)

After talking to many people, reading a lot and listening earnestly to both sides, I concluded that they are both wrong. There’s a third way, and there’s never been a better time to finally take it…

The opportunity before us is not to shrink or grow government: it’s to make it smarter. Over the past three decades, nearly every other job in America has gone through the productivity wringer. Starting with manufacturers and moving through retail and professional services, we have had our jobs galvanized by technology, stripped bare by efficiency metrics and honed by competition. It has been a grueling journey, but it’s the primary reason America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world.

Now it’s the government’s turn. If we seize upon this crisis to make basic changes—to start rewarding public employees in part on the basis of how effective they are, for example—we could do more than just stabilize our budgets; we could raise our entire economy.

For now, the efficiency gap between the public and private sectors is holding us all back. The U.S. ranked 68th (out of 139 countries) in terms of wastefulness of government spending in the 2010-11 World Economic Forum report on global competitiveness. Experts put our public-sector productivity about 10 years behind that of the rest of our workforce. If public workers could halve that gap, the annual savings would ring in at $100 billion to $300 billion, according to a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute. That would mean the equivalent of a recurring stimulus package every three to eight years.

I’ll be speaking at the House of Representatives tomorrow about how the brain responds to fear and uncertainty. I suppose it’s good timing...

There is a lot of confusion about what Teach for America is and is not. Is it a tiny nonprofit that will never have enough teachers to make a difference? Is it an elite conspiracy to take down the unions? Walking into Teach for America’s 20th anniversary summit in DC this weekend, the answer was obvious. This is basically a cult. Nothing less.

There were nearly 11,000 people in one huge hall, with five big TV screens hanging from the ceiling and pulsating lights strobing the audience. The crowd—mostly teachers or former teachers and a smattering of celebrities, from Malcolm Gladwell to Gloria Steinem to John Legend—made up a giant chorus of believers. The Ballou High School Marching Band carved its way through the hall, and a line-up of the country’s most battle-scarred reformers, from Geoffrey Canada to Joel Klein, called for nothing short of a revolution. It felt like a religious revival.

In the break-out sessions and in the one-on-one conversations in the hallways afterward, the anxiety crept in. The two most pressing questions I heard again and again were about the future: Are we finally turning the corner to fix America’s schools—or is this yet another education reform bubble? And secondly, Do reformers need to be nicer? Or more ruthless than ever? (In other words, is collaboration with the teachers’ unions a synonym for the status quo—or the only way to achieve real change?)

But the event answered one question with certainty: Teach for America is not really about its 8,000 active corps members or its 20,000 alumni; it’s about the Kool-Aid, the elixir that has found its way, after 20 years, into the bloodstream of the educational establishment. At latest count: 357 principals, 30 superintendents, 6 charter-school founders and dozens of elected officials, all of them convinced that every kid can learn, no excuses. Period.

John Legend Performs from TFA 20th Anniversary Summit on Vimeo.

I’m excited to tell you about a new book I’m working on. The working title is, WHERE THE SMART KIDS ARE. The book chronicles the stories of three American teenagers embedded in countries with superior education outcomes. I cannot wait to introduce you to these kids—all of whom have bravely left their American high schools to spend a year studying and living abroad.

Through them, I am learning what it would be like if America could do what a dozen other countries have done—and find a way to educate all kids to high standards, regardless of how much money their parents earn or where they live.

As I head out on this adventure, I’ll be posting updates and sharing what I discover along the way. You can follow my adventure on Twitter @smartkidsbook.

For now, here are a few stories that I’ve already written related to the book:

TIME Magazine: Korea’s Crackdown on Studying Sept 2011

The Atlantic Magazine: America vs. the World Dec 2010

Slate: Brilliance in a Box—the Best Classrooms in the World Oct 2010

More updates soon!

John Seabrook has a chilling piece in this week’s New Yorker detailing the 2008 Black Friday stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart. You have to subscribe to read it, but it’s worth paying for (abstract is here). I wrote about how to prevent these tragedies for Time back when the Wal-Mart incident happened, but Seabrook follows up on what has happened since. And he gives a nice introduction to the larger science of crowd crushes (which, as I explain in The Unthinkable, are no longer mysterious—and almost always preventable.)

From a Q&A with Seabrook about the story:

“There’s a deep seated fear of crowds that I think you can trace back to the 19th century and the writings of Gustave Le Bon. It was a class based fear that was largely purged in the 20th century, in a political context, but lingered on in the realm of crowd dynamics, and lingers to this day.”