Category: Uncategorized

The Third Way: A Guide to Implementing Innovation Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Across the country, urban school districts are moving beyond industrial-era systems by creating “innovation” or “partnership” schools that have the freedom to reinvent the way they educate students. The Progressive Policy Institute released a how-to guide for legislators, district leaders, and advocates who want to create more of these 21st  century schools: The Third Way: A Guide to Implementing Innovation Schools.  

From Texas to New Jersey, from Colorado to Indiana, about 20 urban public school districts—and a few rural ones—are giving schools real autonomy, so school leaders make the key decisions, such as hiring and firing and controlling the budget. They are promising to hold these schools accountable for their performance and replace them if they fail their students, encouraging them to diversify their learning models, and letting families choose the schools that best fit their children. 

The results so far have been impressive. In Indianapolis, “innovation network schools” are the fastest improving group of schools in the district. In Camden, N.J., reading proficiency in the district’s 11 “Renaissance schools” doubled and math proficiency quadrupled in their first four years. 

The guide draws lessons from the experience of these and other districts, discusses key “success factors,” lays out implementation steps, and includes model state legislation to allow and encourage districts to create such schools.

Reinventing America’s Schools Project Unveils Comprehensive Guide to Modernizing America’s Schools

Posted on by dcadmin

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The education landscape has shifted dramatically since the COVID-19 shuttered schools and upended classroom routines. Eight months later, lack of nimbleness and innovation continues to hamper school districts in their efforts to deliver student-centric teaching and learning. The crisis exposed what we’ve long known but failed to remedy: America’s public schools are stuck in systems designed 100 years ago around an industrial economy that bears little resemblance to today’s world.

If we learned anything from 2020’s massive twin traumas − the pandemic and the rage and despair that boiled over after George Floyd’s (and too many others before him) murder − it is that Black and brown communities are disproportionally harmed by the failure of antiquated systems. This includes centralized, one-size-fits-all school systems that perpetuate inequities for low-income, minority children.

Across the country, however, some urban school districts are moving beyond industrial-era systems, by creating “innovation” or “partnership” schools that have the freedom to reinvent the way they educate students. The Progressive Policy Institute today released a how-to guide for legislators, district leaders, and advocates who want to make more of these 21st century schools a reality: The Third Way: A Guide to Implementing Innovation Schools.

From Texas to New Jersey, from Colorado to Indiana, about 20 urban public school districts around the country—and a few rural ones—are giving schools real autonomy, so school leaders make the key decisions, such as hiring and firing and controlling the budget. They are then holding these schools accountable for their performance and replacing them if they fail their students; encouraging them to diversify their learning models; and letting families choose the schools that best fit their children.

The results have been impressive. In Indianapolis, “innovation network schools” are the fastest improving group of schools in the district. In Camden, N.J., reading proficiency in the district’s 11 “Renaissance schools” doubled and math proficiency quadrupled in their first four years.

The guide draws lessons from the experience of these and other districts, discusses key “success factors,” lays out implementation steps, and includes model state legislation to allow and encourage districts to create such schools.

“America needs new, innovative ways to meet students where they are and offer learning environments in which different students will thrive,” said David Osborne, the director of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project at PPl and co-author of the guide. “This moment requires leaders who are ready to put words into action by building a more equitable educational system, where every student in America has the opportunity to succeed.”

“This is a tool for legislators and policymakers who want to help Black and brown kids get out from under the historical inequalities in our public schools, added PPI’s Tressa Pankovits, who co-authored the guide. “We are offering a real-world guide to achieving change in a profound way, at a moment when the dire need for progress in how we educate our children has the nation’s attention.”

“High-quality education opportunities are critical to student success,” said Indiana State Representative Bob Behning (R-Indianapolis), chair of the House Education Committee and chief author of Indiana’s Innovation Network Schools bill. “Innovation network schools are one more option for parents looking to take control of their child’s education and enroll them in a classroom that best fits their needs. These schools provide educators the freedom and flexibility to shape their own curriculum, and in Indiana, we have seen several successful innovation network schools really raise the bar and meet the unique needs of students.”

PPI Statement on Digital Markets Report from House Subcommittee on Antitrust

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Washington, DC – The House Subcommittee on Antitrust released its long-awaited report today on competition in digital markets. The recommendations include a call to break up tech companies so they can no longer own platforms and offer products and services on them at the same time, something that almost all other retail leaders do and do well.  

“The radical proposals set forth in the report would hinder America’s most innovative and globally competitive companies, simply because they are big, and ultimately would harm consumers,” noted Alec Stapp, Director of Technology at the Progressive Policy Institute. “The real problem with antitrust enforcement is that our agencies are underfunded and haven’t addressed the real competition issues in the healthcare and other consumer-facing industries”

“The report just skips over the statistical evidence that these companies lead the sector which has performed better than the rest of the economy in terms of prices, productivity, wages, investment and job growth,” said Dr. Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute. “If you have a car that’s running smoothly, why disassemble it for parts?”

Experts Alec Stapp, Director of Technology Policy and Dr. Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute are available for commentary. For more information or to speak with Alec or Michael, please contact Ryan@RokkSolutions.com. 

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Creating a Culture of Innovation in America’s Public Schools

Posted on by dcadmin

PPI launched a significant new report: “The Third Way: A Guide to Implementing Innovation Schools.” In this webinar, leaders discuss the spread of “innovation” or “partnership” schools: district schools in a variety of models, with full autonomy and accountability for performance. Listen to hear how these 21st-century schools are producing meaningful results with low-income students, from Springfield, MA, and Camden, NJ, to Indianapolis, IN, and Denver, CO. As traditional school systems struggle to adapt to the “new normal,” this is a conversation you won’t want to miss:

  • Pedro Martinez, Superintendent, San Antonio ISD
  • Mariama Shaheed, Founder, Global Preparatory Academy (Indianapolis)
  • Chris Gabrieli, Co-founder and CEO, Empower Schools
  • David Osborne, Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project
  • Tressa Pankovits, Associate Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project.

Will the President End the Politicization of Science Now that He’s Tested Positive for COVID-19?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Science should not be politicized. The public needs to trust scientific information to adhere to guidance, get vaccinated, and ultimately end the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. Yet the President and his politically appointed “yes men” have undermined science, public health, and the regulatory process for their own political purposes. These actions sew doubt and will leave deep-seated distrust of federal guidance for years to come, resulting in unnecessary deaths.

Before the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was heralded as the world’s premier public health agency. Other countries relied on research and assistance from the agency. But a slew of mistakes this year — including flawed testing kits, poor contact tracing, and mixed messages over mask-wearing, knocked the agency on its heels and contributed to the United States’ poor response to the outbreak of the novel virus.

Six months later, the CDC has tried to find its footing, but unfortunately, rather than building the agency back up, President Trump continues undermined it.

Read the rest here.

Trump and Republicans are putting a Supreme Court seat ahead of America’s recovery

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The faltering economy continues to weaken, with real unemployment over 11%, with as many as 26 million Americans still jobless. A jobs report late last week found that the economy has at least 11 million fewer jobs now than at the end of last year, a far bigger jobs loss than even the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Meanwhile, a second wave of coronavirus is killing nearly a thousand Americans each week. COVID cases have risen in 33 states in the last month and more than a dozen states have reported increased hospitalizations in every region of the country as part of a “ominous national trend.” Already, 7.5 million Americans have contracted COVID, and more than 210,000 have been killed.

Normally reserved Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has become uncharacteristically blunt, telling Congress recently that economic recovery “will depend on keeping the virus under control, and on policy actions taken at all levels of government.” Powell has specifically urged passage of a long-delayed congressional economic stimulus and COVID relief package.

But in more than three months since House Democrats passed comprehensive economic and COVID recovery legislation, Trump and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have failed to enact a robust economic relief and stimulus package.

Read the full piece here.

Battleground voters are pragmatic on energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Unfazed by President Trump’s non-stop belligerence in last Tuesday’s debate, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden embarked the next morning on a whistle stop tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania — two pivotal states Trump won in 2016 that now seem to be slipping from his grasp.

In addition to their huge importance as presidential battleground states, Pennsylvania and Ohio rank among the top five U.S. states in natural gas production. No wonder Trump keeps trying to convince voters there that the former vice president is a Green New Deal zealot eager to ban drilling for natural gas.

Only it’s not true, and it’s not working. According to a new ALG Research Poll commissioned by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), Biden is leading Trump in Pennsylvania (50-44) and Ohio (48-46). What’s more, Biden is running significantly ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in the “shale belt” — the gas-producing counties of Southeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania that Trump won handily last time.

Read the full piece here.

Let’s Have No More of These

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Donald Trump is a serial vandalizer of America’s democratic ideals and institutions. Last night, his victim was the presidential debate.

Down in the polls and obviously frustrated by events he cannot control – especially the Covid-19 pandemic – Trump was like a disturbed child acting out in school to get attention. He simply could not control himself.  He could not restrain himself even for the two minutes Joe Biden was allotted to answer questions. 

Instead he interrupted constantly, talking over his opponent with a steady fusillade of taunts, insults and bald-faced lies. Biden correctly called him “unpresidential,” but that doesn’t begin to describe Trump’s sickening behavior last night. Bullying, malicious, ranting incoherently, he sabotaged every attempt at rational argument. 

It will be interesting to see how Trump’s legion of apologists and lickspittles try to explain away his deranged performance in Cleveland. If here are any self-respecting conservatives and Republicans left who truly venerate America’s democratic traditions, they must be feeling very queasy this morning.

If Trump lacks the self-discipline to abide by the rules of presidential debates – rules his campaign officials agreed to – there’s no point in inflicting two more of them on the American people. Neither Biden nor the media has any obligation to collude in Trump’s attempts to turn presidential debates into a tawdry theater of demagoguery and abuse. 

U.S. voters already know enough about Donald Trump and Joe Biden to make an informed choice in November. The vote can’t come soon enough.

Battleground Voters Pragmatic on Climate & Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Following last night’s debate, Joe Biden will campaign in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where a new poll released today by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) shows him leading President Trump. In addition to their huge importance as presidential battleground states, Pennsylvania and Ohio are energy powerhouses that rank among the top five U.S. states in natural gas production. 

The poll, commissioned by PPI and conducted by ALG Research, finds Biden ahead by six points in Pennsylvania (50%-44%) and two points in Ohio (48%-46%), despite Trump’s attempts to brand Biden falsely as an opponent of “fracking” and natural gas. Biden also is running ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in the “shale belt” — the gas-producing counties of Southeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. 

“Unlike the ‘drill, baby drill’ right and the ‘keep it in the ground” left, voters in midwest states like Pennsylvania and Ohio show a deeply pragmatic streak on energy and climate issues,” said PPI President Will Marshall. “They are not climate deniers like Donald Trump, and they view natural gas as a bridge, not a barrier, to America’s clean energy transition.”

Key poll findings:

  • 71% of Pennsylvania and Ohio voters — and 66% in gas-producing counties — say climate change is a “real and very serious problem.”
  • Voters oppose a ban on natural gas by an enormous margin — 53 points (74-21%).
  • Even among liberal leaning groups, there is little appetite for a ban: Democrats, young voters and advanced degree holders oppose a ban by 30, 29 and 55 points respectively.
  • Voters’ biggest worry about banning gas production is job loss, following by higher energy prices. 
  • Voters do not want to use fossil fuels indefinitely, but they see natural gas as playing an important role in supporting U.S. renewable energy growth over the medium term.
  • Voters expect it will take a decade or more to end use of natural gas without disruptions to the economy, electric reliability, and energy bills.

Despite Biden’s lead in this poll, voters split over who they trust more on energy issues. 

“Voters know where Trump stands on energy, but they aren’t as certain about Biden,” said Marshall.  But when it’s described to them, 52% of voters say they support a Biden plan that does not ban fracking, continues to use natural gas and requires the United States to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.

View the full polling memo here.

Media contact: Carter Christensen, cchristensen@ppionline.org

 

Appendix B: State Breakdowns on Key Findings:

o Pennsylvania: Voters oppose a natural gas extraction ban by 72-23%.o Ohio: Voters oppose a natural gas extraction ban by 76-19%.

o Pennsylvania: Democrats oppose a ban on natural gas extraction by 59%-32%.o Ohio: Democrats oppose a fracking ban by 65-30%.

o Pennsylvania: The biggest worry associated with banning natural gas is job loss (40%), followed by increased energy prices (20%) and energy shortages (15%).

o Ohio: The biggest worry associated with banning natural gas is job loss (26%), followed by increased energy prices (18%) and energy shortages (15%).

o Pennsylvania: 57% of voters see natural gas as playing an important role in supporting U.S. renewable energy growth over the medium-term.

o Ohio: 53% of voters adhere to this view.

o Pennsylvania: 43% of voters say we should be using more natural gas; 34% say we should be using the same amount of natural gas versus; and, 18% say we should use less natural gas.

o Ohio: 41% of voters say we should be using more natural gas; 37% say we should be using the same amount of natural gas; and, 18% say we should use less natural gas.

 

How Biden Wins Tonight’s Debate: What He Has to Do to Disrupt Trump

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Joe Biden’s job in tonight’s debate is actually very simple. It is to constantly remind viewers that Donald Trump isn’t what he claims to be, a radical outsider challenging a corrupt status quo. Trump is the swampy status quo in Washington. He’s an incumbent with a record to defend — and it’s indefensible.

As Bill Clinton likes to say, a presidential campaign is basically a job interview with the American people. Based solely on Trump’s job performance, voters should throw his own tagline back at him: “You’re fired.”

Trump excels at self-promotion, not producing actual results. The glimpse America has gotten at his tax records confirms that he is a clever tax evader (so far) and a lousy businessman. He loses more money than he makes and most of his branding ventures go belly up. Where are the Trump Steaks of yesterday?

But it doesn’t really matter, because Trump’s businesses are simply a means to an end: the glorification of Donald Trump. They provide a platform for Trump to impersonate a business tycoon. The fancy hotels and golf resorts, the now-bankrupt casinos and beauty pageants, the Playmates and private jets — it’s all for show.

Trump’s perverse genius lies in fabricating a loser’s idea of a winner. It’s no accident that his only recent money-maker was playing a capitalist buccaneer on TV.

Now the Trump Show has moved to Washington, where Trump is pretending to be president of the United States. Just as he lacks the patience and skill to effectively manage a business, he has zero interest in the details of governing. What’s his second-term agenda? The further feeding of Trump’s monstrous ego.

How do you debate a carnival barker who hogs the spotlight with a volcanic cascade of lies, abuse, bigotry and wild conspiracy theories? You don’t.

Read the rest here.

Changing the climate of presidential debates

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When future generations — or simply young people today — look back at the topics of recent U.S. presidential debates, they will be stunned that America’s political journalists ignored climate change, the issue that will overwhelm most others in coming years. In essence, debate moderators have pretended climate change doesn’t exist.

Not a single question on climate change was asked by any moderators in the three 2016 presidential debates, even though Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had diametrically opposing views on climate science and policy. The same silence occurred in the previous round of debates in 2012, and also 2000, and 1996. And now climate change has been ruled out as a topic at the first 2020 Presidential debate this Tuesday in Cleveland.

The consequences on American policy of this willful climate silence during debates has been remarkably far-reaching, especially during Donald Trump’s presidency. The U.S. is the only country in the world to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, and Mr. Trump has ignored entreaties by other world leaders to use other means to make progress on the issue. Domestically, the Trump Administration has repealed or attempted to rollback every climate protection it can, especially limits on greenhouse gas emissions from most major sources, including power plants, cars, and oil and gas drilling.

Read the full piece here.

The GOP’s Pivot Away From Fiscal Relief Hurts Millions of Americans

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

At every turn, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have bungled the coronavirus pandemic and shortchanged our recovery. For the first month after most programs created by the CARES Act – the last major stimulus bill passed by Congress back in March – expired, the GOP wasted valuable time on half-measures that could not pass and executive orders that do not help. Washington Republicans have now completely abandoned work on further relief measures so they can focus on a partisan gambit to pack the Supreme Court with yet another right-wing justice before voters have a chance to make their voices heard in just five weeks.

It didn’t have to be this way. Back in May, House Democrats passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act that they intended to be a follow-up to the CARES Act. Although the bill had many flaws, it offered a starting point for negotiations. Their Republican counterparts in the Senate, on the other hand, spent two months doing literally nothing to advance any additional relief legislation. It was only a full month after the major provisions in the CARES Act had expired that the Republican-controlled Senate voted on a partisan $500 billion “skinny” stimulus bill, which then failed to pass the chamber. Negotiations have now stalled due to GOP’s insistence on penny-pinching for a critical stimulus bill that, it should be noted, would almost certainly be less expensive than the wasteful $2 trillion tax cut the party enacted at the height of our most recent economic expansion.

In an attempt to cover for his party’s fecklessness, President Trump issued a series of executive orders ostensibly designed to fill the needs for further relief unmet by Congress. But as is too often the case with Trump, these actions were almost entirely superficial – and in some cases, actively harmful to the people supposedly helped. Rather than playing these pointless partisan games, Republicans need to join Democrats at the negotiating table and deliver a real solution for the millions of Americans struggling to survive amidst a global pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Anyone at Risk of Contracting Coronavirus

The first priority for policymakers must be controlling the pandemic, as our economy cannot fully recover until people feel safe going in public to work or spend money. Adequate testing and tracing are essential to preventing the virus from spreading until a vaccine is found, but delays in test results have already undermined our COVID response. Democrats proposed $75 billion for coronavirus testing and contact tracing as part of their stimulus proposal in the HEROES Act, while Republicans proposed a much-smaller $25 billion investment, including just $16 billion of new funding not reallocated from CARES Act programs. But without a deal, neither side gets any investment – and the virus continues to spread through our communities.

People Who Have Lost Their Jobs

Up to 26 million Americans remain unemployed thanks to the pandemic. In normal times, unemployment benefits typically only cover 34-54 percent of lost wages for a limited period of time. These benefits, however, are woefully insufficient during a prolonged period when few job openings are available to be filled. The CARES Act sought to address this problem by increasing UI benefits by $600/week through the end of July and extending the maximum number of weeks someone could claim unemployment benefits until December.

Democrats proposed to continue the full $600/week until January (or tie the extension of benefits to real economic indicators), while Republicans wanted to replace it with a $300/week supplement through the election). There was a very reasonable middle-ground here, as both sides agreed that supplemental unemployment benefits should not be allowed to expire in their entirety – but because no agreement was reached, that is exactly what happened.

Trump claimed to resolve the problem with an executive order letting states use Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money to establish a supplement for unemployment insurance. But this approach was riddled with problems: it depended on state unemployment offices, which are already burdened with crushing caseloads and obsolete information technology, to set up new administrative structures, delaying the receipt of benefits. The new supplement was worth only half as much as the one authorized by the CARES Act, and was not made available to low-income workers who receive less than $100/week in normal unemployment benefits. Finally, the FEMA fund only had enough money to fund benefits for six weeks – and required drawing upon funds that will likely be needed to fight wildfires out west and repair damage from hurricanes in the south.

Landlords and Lenders

Failure to adequately support unemployed Americans will have cascading effects throughout the economy. Because the unemployed then cannot spend as much money as usual, the businesses that rely on their patronage also lose income, which hurts workers throughout the broader economy and deepens the recession. They are also more likely to fall behind on payments for rents, utilities, or mortgages. The CARES Act included a temporary moratorium on evictions, but now that it is expired, millions of American families are at risk of losing their homes by the end of the year. Democrats  have proposed imposing an even broader moratorium than was included in the CARES Act. The Trump administration, meanwhile, ordered the Centers for Disease Control to enact a limited moratorium on evictions until the end of the year for low- and middle-class renters.

Although a moratorium may give at-risk renters some temporary relief, it fails to resolve the underlying issue: lost income. Trump’s moratorium simply delays the inevitable for any renter who is behind on rent and would otherwise face eviction. Meanwhile, smaller landlords will lose out on income they need to pay for mortgages and property taxes, which puts them at risk of default. Lenders may also face significant losses from landlords and homeowners unable to make their required payments. If Congress were to instead provide adequate income support for people who have lost their incomes in the pandemic, they would ensure people can afford to remain in their homes without creating these new burdens.

Small Businesses and Their Workers

The CARES Act included a Payroll Protection Program (PPP), which gave small- and medium sized-businesses money to retain their workforce. That funding dried up when the program ended on August 8th. Here, Congressional Republicans actually want to be more generous, proposing almost $360 billion in small business support, loans, and employee retention provisions, while Democrats proposed $290 billion. But without a deal, small businesses – many of which are operating in industries, such as dining and hospitality, that have been particularly hurt by the pandemic – have not gotten any more support.

The only support for small businesses in President Trump’s executive orders was a counterproductive payroll tax holiday. Neither party in Congress supported Trump’s previous proposals to temporarily cut the payroll tax, so instead he used his limited authority to defer collection of some payroll taxes until next year. But since workers will still owe that money in 2021, many employers are just withholding the tax anyway. Meanwhile, federal workers – including those in the military – who cannot opt out of deferral are being advised not to spend the money so they aren’t financially flattened by the massive tax bill for back taxes they will receive next year.

State and Local Governments

The coronavirus pandemic has blown a massive hole in the budgets of state and local governments: income and sales taxes are drying up while spending on safety-net programs, such unemployment insurance and Medicaid, have increased dramatically. Because most state and local governments are required to balance their budget, this fiscal squeeze will compel them to cut their budgets right when people and businesses need government support the most.

Although Congress included some aid for state and local governments as part of the CARES Act, it only allowed this money to be spent on new coronavirus-related expenses, not to replace lost revenues. Republicans have proposed to loosen rules on how states could spend this aid, but offered no additional funding. Democrats, meanwhile, included almost $1 trillion in new funding for state and local governments in the HEROES Act.

Many on the right have argued that providing further aid would be a “bailout” for the finances of poorly-managed states, but this criticism is at best deeply misguided. PPI projects that state and local governments will need at least $250 billion in additional support beyond what was already appropriated before the end of 2021 just absorb the pandemic’s financial impacts without making deep cuts to essential services – and this figure could be even higher if the economic impact of this unpredictable crisis is worse than current projections. Rather than argue over an arbitrary dollar amount, Congress can easily address the concerns of both Democrats and Republicans by designing programs that provide aid to state and local governments based on the real pandemic-induced shortfalls realized on their balance sheets.

Parents and Families

The pandemic has taken a particularly brutal toll on parents who are unable to send their children back to school this fall. It is difficult for workers to do their jobs, either remotely or in-person, when they are unable to access child care that they usually could depend on at this time of year. It also poses a special burden on students from low-income families who lack the internet access necessary to participate in online classes.

The good news here is that both parties have proposed about $100 billion in additional support for schools. But they disagree on what it should be used for: the Trump administration would use this money to pressure school districts across the country to return to in-person classes, the even though doing so would be unsafe without the proper public health safeguards in place. The Democrats’ proposal, on the other hand, would also enable schools to stand up high-quality remote learning to keep their students learning while school buildings remain closed.

Unfortunately, these nuances don’t even matter at the moment: because Congress failed to reach a broader agreement, schools have received no additional federal support. Even worse, the looming shortfalls facing state and local budgets are likely to result in deep cuts to education spending (as they did following the 2008 financial crisis), further jeopardizing the long-term opportunities for children and families.

Voters

State and local governments face an unprecedented challenge administering a national election in the midst of a pandemic, made even worse by foreign governments threatening to interfere again like they did in 2016. The HEROES Act included $3.6 billion to support election integrity and vote-by-mail operations to make sure every vote is counted, while the Senate bill included nothing. As we enter the final stretch of what is perhaps the most contentious presidential election in modern history against the backdrop of several overlapping national crises, the failure of federal policymakers to support election infrastructure jeopardizes the bedrock of our democracy.

Conclusion

Although neither party’s proposals have been perfect, only one is making any serious effort to find common ground and support our economy in a time of unprecedented crisis. While House Democrats prepare to vote this week on a new package of proposals that is more moderate than the HEROES Act they passed four months ago, President Trump and Senate Republicans are leaving millions of Americans in the lurch by prioritizing partisan court packing over any further fiscal relief. Democratic candidates for office and all stakeholders, from the worker who is at risk of losing her home along with her unemployment benefits to the parent who cannot save his small business and give his child a decent education at the same time, should pressure Republicans to return to the negotiating table and work in the public interest – or face severe consequences in November.

Advancing the Gains Made by Black and Brown Students in the next Administration

Posted on by dcadmin

The Progressive Policy Institute hosted a conversation on how members of the Democratic Party can better protect recent gains made by Black and Brown students while advancing these gains after the 2020 Presidential Election.  The conversation surrounded gains made by Black and Brown students, how these gains were made, and more importantly how Democrats can ensure the gains continue under the next Administration.

Speakers:

  • U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, (D) Colorado
  • David Osborne, Progressive Policy Institute
  • Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa, Former Mayor, City of Los Angeles
  • Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union
  • Dr. Howard Fuller, Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools

Moderator: Curtis Valentine, Deputy Director of Reinventing America’s Schools Project.

What It Takes: Modernizing Government IT to Meet 21st Century Challenges

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Covid-19 crisis has put a spotlight on how archaic government systems are failing to keep up with the times and handle an unexpected surge of applications for public assistance programs. Cybersecurity threats have demonstrated vulnerability in aging government IT systems. New missions and requirements for government technology capability have shown the limitations of 20th century technology systems and resources for addressing 21st century needs.

The scale of the problem is massive. According to our estimates, federal, state and local governments would have needed to spend an accumulated $316 billion more over the past 20 years to have kept up with the growth of software investment per worker in the private sector. This should be viewed as a lower bound on the shortfall in government IT investment, as this figure excludes hardware investments that also should have been made.

Washington needs to build incentives inside government for a technology culture of continuous improvement and innovation to keep up with external technology developments and changes. Absent such a major modernization strategy, government will become less and less functional in our everyday lives. We need a big push to modernize government, using new digital tools not only to deliver services more efficiently, but to reengineer public services to make them more citizen-friendly and empowering. 

To meet public expectations for the kind of speed, versatility, accuracy and efficiency that Americans experience in the non-governmental aspects of modern daily life, we must once again reinvent government just as we did 25 years ago at the beginning of the internet age. 

Congress has tried to provide critical relief to Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic — passing three phases of disaster relief totaling 13.6 percent of GDP — but the rollout of support has been marred by obsolete IT and bureaucratic culture.1 In June, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated between 30 to 35 million stimulus checks had yet to be issued.2

The initial rounds of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) also were plagued by institutional delays, internal IT system crashes and incomplete, inaccurate and lagging databases. An April 2020 survey by the National Federation of Independent Business found that 28 percent of small business owners were unsuccessful in submitting an application for funds.3 The Small Business Administration’s loan processing system, known as E-Tran, crashed twice in April, frustrating lenders and small business owners seeking relief.4 5

State governments have also stumbled. For example, unemployment offices have been stretched thin as roughly 58 million Americans have filed claims since March.6 In Washington State, only 41 percent of claims had been paid as of July 30.7 Florida’s unemployment website has crashed repeatedly, with phone calls to the office going unanswered8, and citizens complaining of lengthy delays. Frustrated workers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have camped out overnight in front of unemployment offices for answers.9

Government IT Woes Predate COVID

The COVID-19 crisis is just the latest example of a chronic issue plaguing government programs at the state and federal levels. Poor information technology infrastructure and practices, antiquated and siloed systems, and outdated databases, have led to three main issues: security vulnerabilities, poor user experience and lengthy delays for citizens interacting with their government.

On the question of data security, perhaps the most infamous case is the data breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) in 2015 by hackers working for the Chinese military.10 The incident affected 22.1 million Americans and included data on security clearance files, Social Security numbers (SSNs), job assignments, performance evaluations, fingerprints, and financial and health records.

Most disturbingly, data missing from the OPM database could potentially be used by foreign spy services to uncover CIA operatives working under diplomatic cover, as Ellen Nakashima reported for The Washington Post: “Names that appear on rosters of U.S. embassies but are missing from the OPM records might, through a process of elimination, reveal the identities of CIA operatives serving under diplomatic cover.”11

But while the OPM hack may have attracted the most attention in recent years, it wasn’t even the largest hack of U.S. government data in terms of the number of people affected. As shown in the table below, data breaches of the U.S. Voter Database, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) each affected more than 50 million Americans.

Table 1: Largest Government Data Breaches

Source: Government Accountability Office

15
In addition to data breaches, government databases are often inaccurate and out of date, leading to ineffective performance. For example, the IRS taxpayer database contains incomplete and aging data, which resulted in improper payments in PPP benefits to large numbers of dead taxpayers, returned payments that were misdirected, and even funds sent abroad to foreign citizens of other countries. 12 13

Currently, the U.S. government spends the vast majority of its IT budget on maintaining and operating older legacy systems rather than upgrading and modernizing them. A 2019 Government Accountability Office report found that 80 percent of the $90 billion the federal government planned to spend on IT in 2019 would be used to operate and maintain existing systems.14 As shown in the table below, the report concludes that there are 10 legacy systems most in need of modernization, a few of which are more than 45 years old. One system at the Department of Education still runs on Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), a programming language first introduced in 1959.

COBOL was originally designed for mainframe computers. While it has mostly died out in the private sector as businesses have transitioned from owning on-premise mainframe computers to renting cloud computing services from Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, COBOL has been in the news recently as government relief programs struggle to cope with surging demand.16

Government systems still rely on this outdated technology for essential services. At the state level, COBOL has been used to keep unemployment insurance programs running continuously for 40 years (34 state unemployment systems still depend on it today). 17 18 And during the current crisis, New Jersey’s governor put out a call for volunteers fluent in COBOL to help fix the state’s computer systems.19 Data from Indeed, a job listings search engine, showed a massive increase in search interest for “COBOL” in April.20 But there is a real risk these calls for help will go unanswered. COBOL is only the 43rd most popular programming language as of this year and the average age of a COBOL programmer is about 55-years-old.21 22

Why haven’t millions of people received their economic impact payments from the IRS yet? COBOL seems to be the culprit there, too. Many Americans encountered error messages (“Payment Status Not Available”) when they tried to find out why they hadn’t received their stimulus check yet.23 The solution? Using only uppercase letters in the form (and if that didn’t solve the issue, people were advised to try abbreviating words like “Street” and “Avenue”).

But the problems are not just limited to outdated programming languages. The IRS has a profoundly outdated and inaccurate taxpayer database and its systems are unable to talk to each other. John Koskinen, the Commissioner of the IRS from 2013 to 2017, testified on multiple occasions in Congress, and made other public statements, about the dangerously outmoded condition of the agency’s IT infrastructure, even citing existing systems that date back to the Kennedy Administration.24

Other government processes are also antiquated. In New York, newly unemployed workers are required to fax in documentation.25 In some states, people can file for unemployment online, but only from a desktop or laptop computer.26 The state websites, it turns out, aren’t mobile-friendly — a significant barrier for the millions of people whose only internet access is via their smartphones.27 And some states, such as Illinois, even shut down their websites for multiple hours every day.28

A Decades-Long Investment Shortfall

These problems with the government’s digital infrastructure didn’t arise overnight. Technical failures of this nature are the inevitable result of an accumulating investment deficit over recent decades. According to a Progressive Policy Institute analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data, federal and state government investment in software per worker significantly lags behind private sector investment.  29 30

As the pandemic recession grinds on, the federal and state governments must invest more in digitizing their operations if they are going to deliver aid faster and more accurately. U.S. officials should study the example of Estonia, which has digitized 99 percent of government services, including online voting, an e-residency platform that allows businesses across the European Union to establish and manage a business online, and a nationwide system of digitally-kept health records. 31 32 33 34 Estonian officials estimate that digitizing these processes saves the country two percent of its Gross Domestic Product a year in salaries and expenses, roughly what it pays to meet its military obligations to NATO.35

The federal government has a Technology Modernization Fund, but it’s only been allocated $125 million since 2017 when it was created. 36 37 In its big relief bills (such as the Paycheck Protection Program and the CARES Act), Congress included funds for agencies to upgrade their technology systems. For example, the bills allocated nearly $3 billion to the Small Business Administration that could be used to upgrade and modernize its IT systems. But much of the money has gone to hire outside contractors rather than to acquire new technology. For instance, the Small Business Administration awarded RER Solutions $500 million for data analysis and loan recommendations as part of Covid-19 relief. 38 Sufficient in-house technology systems would both limit the potential for breaches to occur and be a more prudent use of taxpayer money rather than continuously “renting” delivery systems. 

For too long, the U.S. public sector has been a laggard in adopting the modern digital technologies that the rest of society have. That’s mainly been the result of underinvestment. To close this public-private technology gap, the federal and state governments need to invest more in software and systems improvements to ensure aid is rapidly delivered during the next crisis.

Government IT Needs Both Incremental Modernization and End-to-End Modernization

All of these issues might make it seem like the best approach is to tear everything out root-and-branch and start over. And while end-to-end modernization strategies might make sense in some cases, for the most essential government systems, an incremental strategy is actually best because it minimizes risks to essential services and limits downtime for users. As Alasdair Allan, a computer scientist at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, pointed out, legacy software systems have accumulated decades of solutions to corner cases and bug fixes. Starting from scratch would be a mistake:39

You should (almost) never rewrite from scratch, and (almost) never throw the legacy system away, it is your institutional knowledge. A legacy software system is years of undocumented corner cases, bug fixes, codified procedures, all wrapped inside software.

If you start from scratch you will miss things. There is no guarantee that you will end up in a better situation, just a different one. I have yet to speak to anyone that has been involved with a project to reimplement a large legacy code base from scratch that has anything good to say about the idea. Document, improve the build system, modernise the infrastructure around it. Write tests. But do not throw it away.

Modern programming languages can be used to deliver social services on modern devices (e.g., smartphones) while sitting on top of the existing mainframe servers. This approach would drastically improve the user experience while preserving the accumulated knowledge. But what might this look like in practice and where should the government start?

Start Small: Public-Private Partnerships and Pilot Projects

One area the federal government can look to improve incrementally in terms of delivery via information technology is anti-poverty programs. Low-income families spend inordinate amounts of time and energy running from one social service agency to the next to apply for public assistance. Now, with many offices shut down, social distancing, and intermittent mass transit, that job is harder than ever. The opportunity costs of simply applying for and receiving public support have risen dramatically. We need to use new digital tools to reduce those costs by empowering low income people to apply once online and receive benefits on an ongoing basis.

Over time, government IT systems have accrued a lot of technical debt — the cost of future work caused by choosing an easy, short-term fix.40 Solving these problems won’t be easy. But a step in the right direction would be passing the Health, Opportunity, and Personal Empowerment (HOPE) Act.41

As Joel Berg detailed in a white paper for PPI in 2016, the HOPE Act would jumpstart the modernization of social services with pilot projects and innovation contracts.42

“Currently, low-income families need to navigate a morass of bureaucracy to receive the benefits they need and deserve, including SNAP, WIC, and UI benefits. Filling out the requisite forms often requires waiting in long lines and traveling to far flung offices. For example, for residents of Panola, Alabama, the closest location to get a driver’s license is a 70-minute drive away.For more complicated processes, recipients often need to hire professionals to help them secure financial assistance from the government.

A 2016 PPI study found that low-income workers paid an average of about $400 each to national tax preparation storefront chains in low income neighborhoods.43 A better alternative would be to move all these services online and make them accessible from a single smartphone app.”

Nevertheless, the government — at both the federal and state and local levels — does not have a good track record of building large scale transactional systems. Moreover, poor customer experiences have too often resulted from government attempts to mimic the online transactional processes and consumer interfaces the public has come to expect from their daily experiences with private sector innovations. And as we’ve shown, the government has a big task ahead in fixing its current systems, in terms of financial resources, managerial resources, and tech talent resources. 

However, the needs of the country also cannot wait for notoriously lengthy public procurement cycles to solve these problems. Just getting through the phases of systems design, specifications, and competitive procurement for major systems would take 5-10 years, while implementation of awarded contacts would take 5-10 years more, with high risk of obsolescence by the time of deployment. Successful government reinvention will therefore require reinvention of processes and strategies for service delivery in order to rapidly meet public expectations for performance. Innovative public-private partnerships, with appropriate public safeguards, should be a cornerstone methodology for government reinvention in the 21st century.

With all of that in mind, new online service delivery platforms could be provided via multi-sourced public-private partnerships – including those at no cost to either the public treasury or individual users — which would allow the government to harness the private sector’s technology capabilities and IT infrastructure, with a declared objective of creating an environment of continuous innovation and improvement. The government could then create supporting national public communications campaigns, down to the community level, to inform the public about the availability of these service platforms, so the working poor can know there is are free online, government-sponsored and regulated alternatives available to them.

According to Berg, the HOPE Act can help make this better alternative a reality:44

“Here’s how HOPE would work: The President and Congress would need to work together to enact a law that would authorize the federal Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development, (HUD), Treasury, and Agriculture (USDA) to work together – and to form public/private partnerships with banks, credit unions, and technology companies – to create HOPE accounts and action plans that combine improved technology, streamlined case management, and coordinated access to multiple federal, state, city, and nonprofit programs that already exist. States and localities would initially be asked to participate in pilot projects implementing the accounts and plans, and, if they work, would be required over time to implement them universally.”

The program would only cost $35 million in its initial stages and would go a long way to showing the potential benefits of bringing government tech into the 21st century. As Berg says, “In America, trying to get out of poverty can be a full-time job.”45 In normal times, this is a tragedy. In a pandemic, when tens of millions are at risk of becoming impoverished for the first time in their lives, this is a national emergency.

The HOPE Act can serve as the first step in a radically pragmatic approach to modernizing government IT. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Joe Morelle have been leading the effort to include this bill in the Phase 4 relief package for the COVID crisis and low-income Americans need this change now more than ever.46

A big part of the problem is that government investment in software has not kept pace with the private sector. As Figure 1 shows, real private sector investment in software per full-time equivalent (FTE) worker increased at an annual growth rate of 6.4 percent over the last 20 years. Meanwhile real investment in software per FTE worker grew at a noticeably slower rate of 4.7 percent for federal nondefense, 4.1 percent for federal defense, and 4.1 percent for state and local governments. 

If the federal nondefense sector had kept pace with the private sector, software investment in 2019 would be 38 percent, or $10.7 billion higher (Table 2). Software investment in the federal defense sector would be 55 percent higher, and state and local government software investment would be 54 percent higher. 

Table 2: The 2019 Software Gap (billions)
Actual software investment Necessary software investment* Size of the gap
Federal Nondefense 28.3 39.0 38%
Federal Defense 12.6 19.5 55%
State and Local 20.1 31.0 54%
*assuming that real software investment per FTE had kept up with private sector
Data: BEA, PPI

 

But that’s not the worst of it. This gap has accumulated over time, as year after year the government has spent less than it should have. According to our estimates, the accumulated shortfall in government software investment since 1999 has totaled $316 billion. As Table 3 shows, federal nondefense, federal defense and state and local governments would have invested an additional $123.6 billion, $89.5 billion, and $102.5 billion, respectively, to match the private sector’s pace over the last 20 years. This should be viewed as a lower bound on the shortfall in government IT investment, as this figure excludes hardware investments that will also need to be made.

Table 3: Accumulated Shortfall in Software Investment, 1999-2019 (Billions)
Federal Nondefense $123.6
Federal Defense $89.5
State and Local $102.5
Total  $315.6
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis data, author calculations
*See Methodology Appendix

 

While the task of modernizing government technological capabilities may seem immense, it pales in comparison to the opportunity cost of not acting at all. A Technology CEO Council report highlighting opportunities for innovation in government use of technology estimated the federal government alone could save $1.1 trillion over the next decade in areas like fraud and improper payments prevention, big data and analytics, mobile, and cybersecurity.47 For example, the federal government is forecast to make $117 billion in improper payments in FY 2020 and has made over $1 trillion in improper payments since FY 2012.48 Technology CEO Council estimates “the federal government could reduce improper payments by approximately $270 billion over 10 years” by employing techniques like when IBM implemented predictive analytics for New York State, which resulted in the prevention of $1.2 billion in improper tax refunds.49

Cybersecurity is another area where modern technology can save taxpayer money. A study by the Ponemon Institute found the United States to have the highest average cost for a data breach in 2020 at $8.64 million.50 Public-private partnerships can help federal, state and local governments avoid expensive cybersecurity attacks. IT security company Akamai helped the U.S. State Department move to a secure cloud-based web presence that successfully protected the agency from one of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on U.S. government websites to date. 51

Once again, public-private-partnership is an essential part of a 21st century cyber defense strategy. A good example is the Treasury/IRS Security Summit and ISAC, which was created by IRS Commissioner Koskinen five years ago, in concert with the private sector. This Treasury/IRS initiative has thus far reduced identity theft tax refund fraud by 80.52 This innovative strategy to defend the tax system against international cyber-attacks should be studied as a model for other government agencies who hold sensitive information and billions in public assets.

Conclusion

The Covid-19 pandemic has shed a light on the obsolete systems used by federal, state and local governments to deliver relief. When time was of the essence, the federal government stumbled in delivering stimulus checks and PPP loans efficiently and accurately. State governments were ill-equipped to process the unprecedented surge in unemployment applications. To be sure, government IT issues predate the pandemic, as federal and state systems have been routinely compromised by data breaches.

The root cause of these IT problems is a decades-long shortfall in government infrastructure investment. For example, the overwhelming share of the federal government’s investment in IT is spent on operating and maintaining outdated legacy systems, some of which are more than half a century old. But the solution isn’t to maintain obsolete systems that aren’t secure and don’t serve their purpose anymore; the solution is for governments to invest in modernization and digitization. Governments should start with pilot projects and partner with the private sector where possible. The HOPE Act would represent a down payment on the $316 billion we estimate federal, state and local governments has fallen behind the private sector. Likewise, modern public-private partnership strategies would enable government to leverage private sector investments and infrastructure to apply them to public purpose. 

Methodology Appendix

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis enables us to calculate real software investment per full-time equivalent worker for the private sector, the federal nondefense sector, the federal defense sector, and the state and local sector. As shown in Figure 1, the growth rate was substantially faster in the private sector compared to the three government sectors. 

We then calculated how much higher software investment in the three government sectors would have needed to be in each year since 1999 to match the growth rate of real software investment per FTE in the private sector. We then translated this increase into nominal dollars and summed over the twenty-year period to get the total shortfall. The 2019 figure gives the current gap reported in Table 2. 

This estimate should be regarded as a rough measure of the amount of “software debt” that the government has built up. Ordinarily we might not worry about a lack of spending 10 or 15 years ago because of depreciation, but the government has spent far too much money holding legacy database systems together with scotch tape.   

The other issue is hardware. The data published by the BEA for government spending on computers includes “consumption expenditures” as well as investment, so it doesn’t quite correspond with private sector investment in computers. It is generally agreed, however, that even in the era of cloud computing that the government needs to modernize its hardware.   

Interactive Calculator: How Much Federal Support Do State and Local Governments Need?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Social distancing is essential to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, but it also reduces opportunities for millions of Americans to earn a wage or buy goods and services from others. As a result, state and local income and sales taxes that fund education, public safety, and other essential services are drying up. Meanwhile, the rising unemployment rate is causing states to spend more on safety-net programs, such as unemployment insurance and Medicaid. Because most state and local governments are required to balance their budget, this fiscal squeeze is compelling them to cut their budgets right when people and businesses need government support the most.

PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future has developed a tool to help estimate the additional aid state and local governments will need from the federal government over the next two years to compensate for lost economic activity. Users can input an unemployment rate in each quarter through 2021 (the default values for which are based on the Federal Reserve’s September 17th projections) and set the percent of emergency reserves they are comfortable asking states to draw down.

The results show how much money, beyond what Congress has already appropriated, states will need to fund their aid spending and make up for lost revenues without cutting their budgets or raising taxes. The figures only show the change in revenues or spending from what they were before the crisis, without accounting for the lost economic growth that was previously projected to occur in the coming years before the pandemic hit.

PPI currently estimates that state and local governments will need at least $250 billion in additional federal support between now and the end of 2021. 

This estimate is based on the latest labor market data and experiences during past recessions, but it is important to note that the unique nature of the current crisis, as well as changes to state fiscal policy or the economy at-large since those recessions, has already meaningfully altered the expected impact on state and local government finances. In fact, our current baseline estimate is significantly smaller than the $500+ billion estimate produced by our calculator when it was first published in May. The biggest reason for the change is that better-than-expected economic news: the current unemployment rate, as well as the projected unemployment rates for future quarters, are below what they were projected to be four months ago. 

Given the demonstrated unpredictability of the current economic crisis, PPI’s estimates should be considered a guideline rather than a concrete policy prescription. We strongly encourage congressional lawmakers to design programs that provide aid to state and local governments based on real economic indicators, rather than appropriating a precise amount of money that could easily be significantly larger or significantly smaller than what is needed. 

We have also made some important methodological changes to our calculator. We no longer give users the option of including shortfalls in state unemployment insurance systems that are currently set to be recouped under current law from higher taxes that automatically apply to employers who lay off workers, as the unprecedented nature of this crisis has made it difficult to produce credible predictions based on the experiences of past recessions. Additionally, the calculator now includes the cost of supporting K-12 schools, which joins several other new spending needs beyond covering existing shortfalls, such as election security and creating a national state-led testing program (but still does not account for other costs directly related to addressing the pandemic, such as increased spending through public health insurance programs). 

Click here to download the tool. (Updated September 22, 2020)

How 5G Will Create 300,000 Manufacturing Jobs Over The Next Fifteen Years

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a new paper, the Progressive Policy Institute, working with the National Spectrum Consortium, projects that applications of 5G will create 309,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States over the next 15 years. That’s only a small part of the 4.6 million jobs that 5G is expected to create over that period, according to the paper, “The Third Wave: How 5G Will Drive Job Growth Over the Next Fifteen Years,” which I co-authored with Elliott Long.

The application of 5G to manufacturing is especially important because the new communications technology has the potential to jumpstart a lagging sector. Yes, it feels funny to call manufacturing a lagging sector, but that’s the only way to describe it. Even before the pandemic, labor productivity decreased in 18 of the 21 NAICS 3-digit manufacturing industries in 2019, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Output grew at a crawl.

The benefit of 5G is that it allows a much faster digitization of the physical transformation processes that lie at the heart of manufacturing. A 2019 McKinsey analysis observed that “[f]or decades, factory automation has relied on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that were physically installed on (or very near) the machines they controlled, and then hard-wired into computer networks to ensure precise, reliable control under extreme conditions. If 5G consistently meets its performance promises, the PLC could be virtualized in the cloud, enabling machines to be controlled wirelessly in real time at a fraction of the current cost.” Not only will costs be lower, but flexibility will be improved.

Read the full piece here.