Brookings Today, 10/9/14

A roundup of some of the content published today by Brookings.

• Implementing the Common Core State Standards. Tom Loveless focuses on how the Common Core curriculum is shaped in schools and classrooms.
• New employment data for metropolitan labor markets. Alan Berube examines new data on employment, focusing on prime-age labor force participation rates in metropolitan areas.
• Older women at risk for downward income mobility. Ben Harris and Aurite Werman discuss the impact of changing demographic patterns and increased female labor force participation on the intragenerational downward mobility of older women.
• Charging ahead in girls’ education. Jeni Gamble and Rebecca Winthrop consider what strategies will transform advocacy for girls’ education into action.
• Three big economic ideas. With so many issues challenging the U.S. economy, Robert Litan discusses three transformative ideas that are still sitting on the shelf.
• Too much concern for presidential “optics”? Richard Lempert, reflecting on President Obama’s public reactions to both the White House fence-jumper and the CDC’s response to the Ebola scare, worries that “a concern for optics will on occasion trump sound policy and rational management.”

Charmaine Crutchfield contributed to this post.