Taking Note

Equity and Diversity: The Next Challenge for Charter Schools

In response to efforts by a new tea party-backed school board to eliminate the district's longstanding school integration plan in Wake County, NC, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in support of integrated schools. Our nation's "core values," Duncan wrote, "include equity and diversity in education and opportunity." This concern for diversity is welcome, though I wish he also directed it towards America's charter schools.

Educational equity—for all students and for all public schools—is a central goal of the charter school movement. Many charter schools, like The Equity Project Charter School in New York City, are founded with the mission of leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students. And advocacy groups like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) lobby for equitable treatment of charter schools. Last week, NAPCS released their second annual report ranking the nation's charter schools laws from strongest to weakest. As part of their scoring formula, NAPCS looked to see whether states give charter schools and traditional public schools equitable access to funding, extra-curricular and interscholastic activities, and employee retirement systems.

No, You Do Not Have the Right to Free Emergency Care

During the health reform debate, many people asserted that the uninsured are, de facto, already covered because they can always get emergency care. Here, for example, was President George W. Bush in 2008: I mean, people have access to health care in America," he said. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Thursday, one of Ezra Klein's commenters says something similar, though from a different locale on the ideological spectrum:

If the Republican Party is serious about decreasing government control of health care, they should start by introducing a bill that would repeal the law signed by President Ronald Reagan that mandates free health care for all who seek it. That law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), was the largest expansion of government mandated health care since Medicare.

For obvious reasons, it would be terrible health policy to make emergency departments into our all-purpose free-care safety-net, even in a hypothetical universe where these facilities were actually capable of providing all the care that people need. But that's not what EMTALA actually does.

State of the Union: Social Unrest and the Arab World

Last night’s State of the Union address was, unsurprisingly, focused on domestic issues. For someone concentrating on the broader Middle East, the speech’s oblique references to foreign policy did not convey a clear sense of the social unrest and political malaise that have been on display for weeks as demonstrations and acts of self-immolation spread across the region. The only reference to these developments was the President’s brief reflections of the stunning developments in Tunisia:

“And we saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

Absent from this remark was any mention of the unprecedented and ongoing demonstrations on the streets of cities throughout Egypt, a key ally in the region and a recipient of billions of dollars of U.S. assistance. In light of decades-long U.S. ties with and support for the autocratic Arab order, the United States is not in a position to radically revise policy in the space of a paragraph or two. U.S. support for Egypt and the Mubarak regime has been deep and consistent since the signing of the Camp David peace accords under Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar al-Sadat. And while the fundamental justice of the protestors’ cause might lead to a visceral sympathy for them, in many ways avoiding direct reference might be preferable to a short and transparently disingenuous statement.   

For purely instrumentalist reasons, our relationship to political reform and democratization in the Arab world has been inconsistent. Short-term interests and considerations of stability have often taken precedence over long-held ideals about political participation and democratic norms. For the United States, the freedom to think proactively about democratic change in the post-Cold War Middle East continues to be inhibited by the events of 1979 and the Islamic revolution in Iran. Hence we have responded differently to portents of democratization depending on possible outcomes and geopolitical advantage. The post-election protest movement following the 2009 Iranian elections was greeted with genuine, if muted, excitement on the part of the United States. Other instances, such as Hamas’s successful foray in electoral politics in 2006 hastened policy retrenchment. The United States likes democracy when the right people win.

It is only natural that we would be more eager for like-minded leaders to emerge from periods of political transition. Again, while understandable in the short term, our perennial hesitation has become problematic over the course of decades. The Arab world and its leaders have proven wholly immune to the very notions of gradualism and internally-directed liberalization and there have been precious few political transitions to speak of. This has had quite obvious negative ramifications for U.S. interests in the region and beyond. While the United States cannot force political openings, our policies have clearly hindered their emergence. 

However, the social unrest now emerging throughout the region and testing key assumptions of U.S. policy are fuelled by local discontent and popular organizing that has little to do with our State of the Union, as opposed to the frayed and tattered state of unions throughout the Arab world. In light of the disastrous state of affairs in the Arab world wrought by years of conflict, mismanagement, and repression, it is incumbent to think realistically about how we can support the democratic aspirations of Tunisians, Egyptians, and others. This cannot simply be a rhetorical exercise, and words alone will not shift political realities on the ground. And we must bear in mind that the prospect of political reform in the region is fraught with serious dangers. But while the Egyptian situation might not result in immediate effect, we should be on notice that our inability to encourage much-needed political reform by our allies might in the end endanger the very stability we prize. 

 

State of the Union 2011: Education

The President’s State of the Union address last night represented a missed opportunity in the education sphere.  As I noted in a "Room for Debate" column in the New York Times. the president was right to outline two key challenges – making our nation more competitive in a cost-effective manner – but then he failed to mention one of the most powerful weapons available in our arsenal.

American schools do a particularly bad job of educating low-income students, in part because we allow higher rates of child poverty than our competitors, and in part because our schools are more socioeconomically segregated.  In about 80 school districts, steps have been taken to give low-income students a chance to attend mixed income schools, a program that works and is also far cheaper than efforts to “fix” high poverty schools with extra money.  In the Times, I noted:

In 2010 Century Foundation study found that students in families randomly assigned to public housing in low-poverty neighborhoods and who attended low-poverty schools significantly outperformed their low-income peers assigned to higher poverty schools, even though the latter spent far more per pupil for things like reduced class size and extended learning time.  Likewise, a recent Center for American Progress study found that Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina schools, which are socioeconomically integrated, get more bang for the buck than districts like nearby Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which has resegregated in recent years.

Don't Forget the State of the States

Most Americans could find something that mattered to them in President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. But one group of political activists undoubtedly came away disappointed: the nation’s governors and other state and local officials. With anti-recession financial assistance about to run out, these men and women are facing the worst budget crises since the 1930s. At the state level, where Republicans enjoyed sweeping gains in the 2008 election, the circumstances are especially acute. Indeed the one policy area in which inescapable necessity is likely to forge bipartisan coalitions involves Republican governors and state legislators in desperate need of more help from Washington. Their shopping list must range from continuation of support for unemployment insurance to broadened state taxation of internet sales. 

This situation is bound to produce some cognitive dissonance on the Right, with “nullification” advocacy by tea party activists and their GOP allies competing with the practical need to get help from the federal government.

Overall, the panic about the national debt undermines those who recognize that expansionary economic policies, including more help for the states, are the right medicine. Cutting programs that help the states is shortsighted and denial of the necessity for progressive programs is likely to extend the post-recession stagnation. On the other hand, if expansionary policies emerge as the remedy for the continuing crisis at the state level, then a new revenue sharing package, fairer taxation by the states, and reform of state finances would be exactly the sorts of things that would accelerate recovery and put the country back on track.

State of the Union: State of Health Care

In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama devoted only a few minutes to health care reform. This might surprise some, but I think the president made a wise decision. There was little reason for him to devote much time to the issue. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is the law of the land. There is no reason for the President of the United States to debate it any longer.

President Obama did allow that “anything that can be improved in the legislation” should be changed. I agree. As the law is implemented, experience will show us where adjustments should be made. Extending a hand across the aisle, last night the President also said that “we can start now by reducing unnecessary bookkeeping burdens on small businesses,” referring to the provision requiring that every business provide a 1099 tax form for each vendor with whom they do more than $600 worth of business over the course of a year. This was a provision tacked on to the heath care legislation, designed to reduce tax fraud.

Competitiveness? Bring It On

Many progressives find President Barack Obama to be a somewhat frustrating leader for reasons his State of the Union address exemplified. He systematically elides fundamental ideological divides. His references to social insurance programs, which represent some of the progressive movement’s greatest accomplishments, invariably focus on their costs rather than their enormous value to all Americans. His often inspiring and accurate rhetoric about the importance of public investments to the nation’s future is rarely backed by budgetary commitments that would match the ambition of his words. And he tends to downplay the economic hardship that continues to be experienced by a broad swath of the population in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

But the president’s speech also created an opening for progressives to build on, which would be a much more constructive response than the usual fulminating. In emphasizing the theme of international competitiveness, Obama opened the door to much greater attention to the ways in which other countries meet various challenges more effectively than the United States does. In the past, attempts to highlight how other nations more cost-effectively provide health insurance, or early childhood education, or job training, or protections against various forms of hardship, invariably fell on deaf ears in the U.S. political environment. An attitude of American exceptionalism by and large precluded any meaningful discussion of the relative strengths of the economic and social policies of other countries.

State of the Union: The World and Bush's ghost

No sooner had President Obama finished his State of the Union address than I asked the dozen other people sitting around me, who had just watched it in a New Jersey bar and grill, what they could recall of his remarks on foreign policy.

“Winning the New Start treaty,” remembered one man.

“Getting us out of Iraq,” added another.

The State of the Presidency, 2011

 
When candidates recognize that they are about to lose an election, they and their key staff members tend to become radicalized. During the end game, often abandoned by fair weather friends and “the smart money,” they fall back on the true believers who sometimes turn out in huge numbers at rallies that seem to give the lie to polls showing almost certain losses ahead.

For the winners, particularly for winners who have successfully contended for the political center, the experience is quite different.  They are seeking to teach a broad swath of the voting public to trust them – to trust them to be sensitive to their views and not simply those of the political base. Months of reassuring a wide and diverse electorate not only blunts the sharp edges of rhetoric, it also schools the candidate in the lessons of how to secure the approval of popular majorities and, later, the Congressional support so important to success in office. In those cases, the campaign may wind up having a moderating effect on the candidate’s notion of how to govern.

The result is often a shock to the victor’s most ardent supporters, who dreamed of an outcome that would sharply reverse past trends, break new ground, and finally put over the top cherished dreams of policy. This was clearly true in 2008, after eight years of George W. Bush, the Iraq war, the secret prisons, the illegal wiretaps, the economic meltdown, the inept response to hurricane Katrina, and the bruising language of the Republican campaign itself, which combined to intensify the feelings of people across the political spectrum.

Progressives found new allies, including “conscientious objectors” from the GOP side, while conservative hard-liners came to believe that terrible necessities justified the policies that had divided the nation. In the midst of these struggles about core beliefs, calm and sure of himself, Barack Obama presented an option that for a majority seemed to rise above the noise and partisan strife. Now the question is can he sustain the trust he earned for many different reasons. He has already demonstrated that even the stunning results of last fall’s election do not preclude a revival of presidential leadership and support.

During the past 20 years, Americans, not for the first time, have moved beyond skepticism to disdain of politics and government.  One recent survey indicates that 80 percent of Americans believe that government favors the rich and powerful, up from 29 percent in 1964; 65 percent believe that "quite a few" government officials are corrupt, up from 45 percent in the wake of Watergate.  Time magazine finds that the percentage of people who believe that the government generally will try to do the right thing has declined from over 60 percent in 1964 to about 10 percent today.  Sustaining trust in this environment is a tall order.

So while support for the “Tea Party” movement may be in the teens, negative feelings about government are widespread and not really all that new. One need look no further back than the broad hostility toward the Bush administration to confirm that large majorities of Americans are and have been deeply disappointed and sometimes angry about their government. Indeed they don’t see it as “their” government at all. Rather they believe that it serves the special interests, the wealthy, and the professional political class rather than the public in general.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. The economy is in the worst shape in two generations. Most of the recovery activity has been characterized as bailouts for mismanaged companies – and for the “mismanagers” themselves. The stimulus package which actually has helped to provide some momentum for a recovery has received little positive attention. And, a big chunk of the media and more or less the entire Republican Party is doing 24/7 sharp critiques of just about everything the government (or at least this current administration) does.

The recent health care debate also provided a perfect example of how half-truths and outright misrepresentations can gain traction in the overheated, intensely partisan world of modern media. Eventually, the Obama administration and the Democrats prevailed, but only after a year of divisive, bitter, and polarizing political warfare. The health care battle became a classic confrontation between a complex package of measures addressing the enormous range of health care issues we face and a set of potent, headline grabbing slashing attacks on the health care bill’s real and imagined weak points.

The healthcare struggle demonstrated that we are way beyond the healthy skepticism that can be a good thing in both the marketplace for goods and ideas. We need to relocate the place along the scale from blind faith to paranoia that is the sweet spot enabling both democracy and capitalism to function with reasonable effectiveness. Trust, after all, is a prerequisite for popular elections and growing markets.

We need to pull together to overcome the most serious economic setback since the Great Depression. We face as a nation great uncertainty and risk about the outcomes of two on-going wars. Can we claw our way back to a constructive give and take? Can President Obama find the way to lead us there?

Recent history has provided us with good reasons to doubt government: Watergate, Abscam, Iran-contra, the "house-bank," Monica, Enron, Abu grave, wmd in Iraq – all have eroded belief in the notion that our leaders will behave honorably and tell us the truth.

But during the past 40 years, Americans have more than once moved beyond disdain for politics and government to a willingness to support new leaders and fresh solutions to our problems. 

Our recent disappointments are not a reason to give up on the idea that we can do better. Government, after all, remains the way we make decisions as a society, as well as the necessary instrument for public investments in our future--physical ones like bridges and airports, as well as research, training, and education.

And, the present all too real sources of discontent do not necessarily preclude trust.  One need only think of Franklin Roosevelt to realize that difficult periods can create immense opportunities

Today’s conventional wisdom is that Washington is run by the venal and, worse that our system of self-government is incapable of rising above such selfishness. Yet there surely remains the potential for a popular surge in favor of new public actions and a yearning for restoration of the compact between government and the governed.  It is, for the present, a vague and inchoate mixture of electronic democracy, new age openness, and even misdirected longing for a mythical past.  But it is undeniably powerful, and it suggests new opportunity.

To lead in this environment requires an extraordinary degree of "truth telling."  Leaders must gamble that there can be a consensus to reward such behavior.  It won't work at once; it probably will chew up many political and business leaders along the way; but it is the only real hope we have of facing and overcoming our stagnation and reviving civil society.

There is no substitute for a president who will lead this revival.  He must lead because there is no safe political finesse--no matter how cunning the spin--that offers a way to duck these issues.  He can demonstrate to politicians and the press alike that it pays to treat Americans like grown-ups, still capable of understanding and shaping their destiny.

The CBO Punching Bag

At the moment, Republicans are deeply unhappy with the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of the deficit reductions included in the new health reform law. But during the earlier debate over the same legislation, Democrats were the ones displeased with the CBO's failure to credit medical delivery reforms with predicted budget savings.

Methodologically, but not ideologically, CBO is a conservative organization. It is temperamentally reluctant to credit novel innovations in its official budget scoring. Major departures from past policies like last year's health reform or the 1996 welfare reform act provide budget analysts with little foundation to apply from academic literature. The fiscal impact of these measures extends beyond available data. It depends on future matters of politics and implementation that are inherently difficult to forecast. I don’t know whether accountable care organizations or primary care medical homes will save money, and no one else knows either. So these efforts can't get much credit in CBO scoring.