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Ritz for Forbes, “Donald Trump’s Budget For A Declining America”

Posted on March 14, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

After the president’s budget was released on Monday, House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) called it “A Budget for a Declining America.” Unfortunately, that might be an understatement.

The Trump administration’s Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal is a compilation of the worst ideas to come out of the Republican Party over the last decade. It would dismantle public investments that lay the foundation for economic growth, resulting in less innovation. It would shred the social safety net, resulting in more poverty. It would rip away access to affordable health care, resulting in more disease. It would cut taxes for the rich, resulting in more income inequality. It would bloat the defense budget, resulting in more wasteful spending. And all this would add up to a higher national debt than the policies in President Obama’s final budget proposal.

The most harmful aspect of Trump’s fiscal blueprint is its scheme for gutting investments in public goods that are core responsibilities of government. The administration proposes to reduce the share of gross domestic product devoted to non-defense (domestic) discretionary spending – the category of the budget that is annually appropriated by Congress and includes most federal spending on infrastructure, education, and scientific research – by more than half over the next decade. The result is deep cuts to all three of these important investments that provide the foundation for long-term economic growth.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Langhorne for Forbes, “Separating Fact From Fiction: Five Important Findings About The Nation’s Charter School Landscape”

Posted on March 14, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Charter schools serve about three million students across 42 states and the District of Columbia. To clarify, charter schools are public schools operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits. Most are schools of choice, and unlike magnet schools in traditional districts, they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, they hold lotteries to see who gets in. Charter schools are freed from many of the rules that constrain district-operated schools. In exchange for increased autonomy, they are held accountable for their performance through contracts with authorizers.

Each state’s charter law empowers a variety of different agencies to authorize charters. The most common types of authorizers are a local school board, a state education agency, higher education institutions, and statewide bodies set up for the sole purpose of overseeing charter schools. Authorizers vet and approve charter school applications, and they also close or replace underperforming schools.

Based on both performance and sustainability, charter schools have been the most successful education improvement strategy of the millennium, and they’ve been particularly effective at educating low-income students. In places like New Orleans, Denver, and Washington, D.C., the charter formula – school-level autonomy, accountability, diversity of school design, and parental choice – has proven far more effective than the centralized, bureaucratic approach inherited from the 20^thcentury.

However, over the last few years, the growth of charter schools across the nation has slowed. In an effort to understand this decline in growth, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) examined charter school proposals and approvals over the last five years, analyzing 3,000 charter school applications to authorizers in the 20 states that oversee nearly two-thirds of charters nationwide. Their new report Reinvigorating the Pipeline: Insights into Proposed and Approved Charter Schools unearths important facts about the nation’s charter school pipeline, facts that also dispel some of the commonly perpetuated myths about charter schools.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Sen. Warren’s Tech-Bashing Populism Misses the Mark

Posted on March 8, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The last time we checked, the United States was locked in a high-stakes race with China to lead the world on digital innovation. So we’re mystified by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call today to break up Google, Amazon and Facebook. These are not only America’s most creative companies, but they and other large tech platforms have pioneered a global digital revolution.

They’ve grown big because they’ve been successful. That doesn’t make them perfect and, like any private enterprise large or small, they need strong public oversight and regulation. But breaking them up, absent compelling evidence that they are systematically gouging consumers or stifling competition, would be an act of stupendous economic folly.

To be sure, business consolidation and concentrated market power are real concerns. But as PPI economist Michael Mandel has demonstrated, such worries apply less to the dynamic and fiercely competitive digital ecosystem than to America’s older and more static physical industries.

Perhaps Sen. Warren is jockeying to enter a very crowded populist “lane” in the 2020 presidential nomination contest. But if she believes that anti-tech populism is broadly popular with U.S. voters, she’s mistaken. In fact, as a recent PPI poll makes clear, most Americans have a favorable view of the big tech companies, and oppose breaking them up.

Our poll found that 67 percent of likely voters view the tech companies positively, as shown in Figure 1, and 55 percent oppose breaking them up. While 60 percent of voters acknowledge they are concerned about tech companies’ handling of privacy and data protection, 71 percent of voters view tech companies as “a sign that the American economy is working.” In contrast, just 32 percent view Big Tech as “too powerful.”

Sen. Warren’s call to break up America’s tech leaders may go down well with her party’s “democratic socialist” faction. It will no doubt be applauded by European regulators, who have also drawn a bead on U.S. tech companies. But to most voters, they symbolize American ingenuity and entrepreneurial prowess. Are those qualities progressives really should oppose?

Charter Schools in Rural Communities: An Opportunity for Career Preparation through STEM Skills Development

Posted on March 7, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The West Virginia House of Delegates recently shot down Senate Bill 451, abruptly killing a promising chance for education reform throughout the state. The bill, which would have allowed for creation of public charter schools throughout the state as well as an increase in open enrollment policies, would have created more educational options for all of West Virginia’s children. However, the teachers unions and their allies rallied against the bill, arguing that charter schools would take money away from public schools. This is, of course, nonsense, since charter schools are public schools. Nonetheless, West Virginia teachers walked out of their classrooms last week in protest of the bill, striking for the second time in the last 18 months.

The state’s House of Delegates missed a tremendous opportunity to ensure that all children in West Virginia have the best chance for academic success. Many of the jobs in well-paying industries that rural communities used to rely on, like manufacturing and energy, are no longer available or have adapted to the digital age so that today’s workers need higher-level skills, such as coding, equipment maintenance, or systems knowledge, to enter to the workforce. As a result, there’s an increasing need for the rural workforce to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills for STEM and non-STEM fields such as computer science and coding. Rural areas across the nation have been experiencing significant “brain drain” as young people leave their communities for better academic or economic opportunities elsewhere.

And, in a state where over 50 percent of the population lives in rural areas, the legislature can’t afford to miss opportunities to improve education.

Twenty-first century school systems built upon the pillars of autonomy, accountability, diversity of school design, and parental choice have resulted in dramatic and positive educational change in urban areas such as New Orleans and Denver. Essentially, these systems treat all of their public schools like charter schools. Rural communities can likewise benefit from the creation of public charter schools.

Many rural charters partner with local industry, higher education institutions, and the community to provide students with the skills needed to succeed in the local economy. Many rural charter schools such as North Idaho STEM charter academy in Rathdrum, Idaho offer dual-enrollment courses, which allow for students to earn an associate’s degree while in high school. These students not only save money by earning college credit during high school, but they also improve their skill set by taking career applicable courses. The Academy of Seminole, a public charter school in Seminole, Oklahoma, was founded by the leader of a local aerospace manufacturing company because his company had encountered difficulty in finding skilled local workers to fill their positions. The school has a partnership with the company, and it focuses on career and workforce development. It also offers dual enrollment courses through a partnership with a local community college, vocational certificates, and a business mentoring program that enhances students’ exposure to different types of careers.

Other rural charter schools have also used place-based education to draw upon their existing natural resources to encourage curiosity and teach STEM concepts while enhancing their connection to the community. Through a partnership with Oregon State University, Elkton Charter School in Elkton, Oregon, uses its proximity to the Umpqua River to create a natural resources curriculum where students engage in project-based learning: they study soil samples, mold, fungi, leaves, trees, and estuaries.

STEM-focused charter schools and school choice programs offer a potential solution for communities who wish to retain and adequately prepare their young populations for skilled careers in their community. Considering West Virginia is the third most rural state in the United States, it is a shame that lawmakers are failing to seize the opportunity to address the needs of students in rural communities by allowing for the creation of charter schools.

Press Release: Americans deserve solutions, not rhetoric, to solve Net Neutrality

Posted on March 6, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

For Immediate Release (3/6/19)

WASHINGTON – “Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Congressman Mike Doyle (PA-14) today unveiled a bill that will only continue to delay real action on net neutrality. Congress last passed significant legislation on our communications networks in 1996 and this new proposed bill is a continuation of the DC game of rhetoric and no action as this bill has no chance of passing Congress.

“For the last two decades, different versions of net neutrality have bounced between Congress, the FCC, the courts, and most recently within states — but even with today’s proposal, many of the issues surrounding Net Neutrality will still go unsolved.

“Bipartisan compromise on strong, permanent, clean net neutrality is clearly within reach. We are confident that a practical deal that will protect consumers, strengthen the internet, grow the digital economy, and add jobs in an evolving and modern sector is on the horizon, but this proposal doesn’t pass the smell test.

“It’s not enough to hold press conferences and introduce message bills – American consumers deserve effective action that actually solves the problem of net neutrality. The backward-looking poison pill approach we have seen so far only makes it harder to achieve. Hopefully, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate will work together moving forward on changes to this legislation that can get us over the finish line and deliver a lasting solution on Net Neutrality – not just more talking points and fundraising emails.

“We continue to urge Congress to solve this problem for good by enacting a strong, pro-consumer, clean net neutrality law ensuring an open internet for all that does not apply European style regulations to a true American success story: the communications sector.”

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Members of the news media may contact media@ppionline.org, or by phone (202) 525-3926.

Gerwin for Medium: “Trump Thinks ‘Trade Isn’t Tricky'”

Posted on March 6, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

When economic historians recount U.S. trade policy under Donald Trump, they’ll tell a cautionary tale. Like the current consensus that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs worsened the Great Depression and tanked global trade, future analysts will detail the negative economic effects of Trump’s go-it-alone trade policies. And historians will draw from a treasure trove of quotes from the “Tariff Man,” who famously said that “trade wars are good and easy to win.”

Perhaps no quote better captures the essence — and dysfunction — of Trump’s trade policies than his claim that “trade isn’t tricky.” Trump sees trade as a straightforward, black-and-white issue. As a result, he’s pursued simplistic — often blunt-force — solutions. Trump’s failure to appreciate the complexity of the interconnected global economy is perhaps the greatest source of the long-term damage that his policies are causing to America’s economy and global standing.

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.

New Ideas for a Do Something Congress No. 6: Break America’s Regulatory Log-jam

Posted on March 5, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Regulation plays a critical role in refereeing competition in a free market economy. But there’s a problem: Each year, Congress piles new rules upon old, creating a thick sludge of regulations – some obsolete, repetitive, and even contradictory – that weighs down citizens and businesses. In 2017, the Code of Federal Regulations swelled to a record 186,374 pages, up 19 percent from just a decade before.

The steady accumulation of regulations raises compliance and opportunity costs for businesses, especially small enterprises, putting obstacles in the way of economic innovation. Dozens of agencies in Washington issue new rules, but not one is dedicated to retiring old ones. To fill this institutional vacuum, PPI proposes a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC), modeled on the highly successful Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for closing obsolete military installations. Like the BRAC process, the proposed RIC would examine old rules and present Congress with a package of recommendations for an up-or-down vote to eliminate or modify outdated rules.

THE CHALLENGE: REGULATORY ACCUMULATION DAMPENS AMERICA’S ECONOMIC VITALITY

Wise regulation is essential to facilitate market competition, protect public health and safety, and keep powerful economic actors honest. But as PPI has pointed out in a series of reports, even if any particular regulation is defensible, the sheer accumulation of rules over time can dampen economic vitality (1). New regulations can interact with old ones in unintended ways, and business owners end up spending more time trying to navigate and comply with proliferating rules rather than on growing their companies.

Federal regulations hardly ever die, resulting in a dense thicket of rules that raise costs for America’s entrepreneurs and economy.

As shown in Figure 1, the Code of Federal Regulations has steadily grown in size over time, swelling to a record 186,374 pages in 2017 (2). Because the extent of regulation can be difficult to measure, the Code of Federal Regulations’ size is commonly used to provide a sense of the scope of regulations businesses and consumers must comply with. Measured another way, the Federal Register (where the federal government prints new rules) published 61,950 pages in 2017 alone, including proposed rules, final rules, and notices.

Spread across every sector, regulatory accumulation acts as a drag on the economy. One often-cited 2010 study for the Small Business Administration placed just the direct cost of compliance with all federal regulations at $1.7 trillion in 2008, or $15,584 per household (3). A 2012 consulting study for the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation estimated the cumulative cost of major regulations for manufacturers to be $164 billion in 2011 (in constant dollars), double the cost just 10 years earlier. More recently, a 2017 National Small Business Association survey estimated that the average small business owner spends at least $12,000 every year on compliance, with nearly one in three spending more than 80 hours every year dealing with federal regulation (4).

The Trump Administration’s “2-for-1” approach to deregulation fails to distinguish between vital rules and those that tax innovation and growth.

President Trump frequently brags about his efforts to provide business with regulatory relief, but his 2017 executive order requiring the elimination of two regulations for each new regulation is the wrong approach. It raises the bar for issuing new regulations without creating a rigorous mechanism for pruning old ones (5).

In addition, Trump’s 2-for-1 scheme fails to distinguish between the kinds of regulations that are reasonable for public health and economic stability or would enhance market competition and those that might be unnecessary or harmful to innovation and growth. Setting aside its conceptual flaws, Trump’s approach has so far not had much practical effect either. According to a Brookings Institute analysis, the Administration’s approach to regulation has largely been one of inaction, and the most consequential “deregulatory” maneuvers have actually been undertaken by the GOP Congress through the wholesale legislative reversal of important Obama-era rules, such as on environmental protection (6). Neither outcome leads to the sort of effective regulatory framework our economy needs.

THE GOAL: IMPROVE THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT TO UNLOCK ENTREPRENEURIAL GROWTH

Washington needs a mechanism for systematically eliminating regulatory obstacles to economic innovation and entrepreneurship while protecting public safety and ensuring fair competition. Improving the regulatory climate would help inventors and entrepreneurs spend less time and resources on regulatory compliance and focus instead on delivering goods and services and growing their enterprises. A smarter regulatory regime would also realize savings for taxpayers, as less money would need to be spent on enforcement.

While Democrats see the value in responsible regulation that has an important societal function, Republicans take the general view that less regulation is always preferred to more, and that too many regulations of any kind hamper economic growth and potential business investment. These differences in opinion result in incompatible ideas for what regulatory reform should look like.

The answer to outdated, conflicting, or costly rules isn’t deregulation, but the constant updating, streamlining, and improving of our regulatory system. PPI’s proposal for a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC) bridges the stale, gridlocked debate on the merits of regulation between Democrats and Republicans, presenting a measured and bipartisan mechanism for improving the regulatory environment to catalyze innovation while also protecting public interests. The RIC would fill an institutional vacuum in regulation policy by creating a mechanism for the periodic clearing out of obsolete rules. Importantly, the RIC has no mechanism by which it can inhibit policymakers’ ability to create critical new rules to address threats to competition or public health and safety. Rather, the RIC would be designed to address only existing regulations that have accumulated over time and are now obsolete.

THE PLAN: ESTABLISH REGULATORY IMPROVEMENT COMMISSION TO DEAL PERIODICALLY WITH THE BUILD-UP OF OLD RULES

Washington has dozens of agencies that issue new rules, but not one institution dedicated to streamlining the accumulated body of regulations. To fill that vacuum, Congress should set up a regulatory version of the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), which has resulted in the successful closure of more than 350 obsolete installations since the late 1980s. That panel offers a rare example of bipartisan success in accomplishing a politically difficult mission – shutting down old military bases that the Pentagon deemed no longer necessary, but which had influential constituencies in communities around the country.

The RIC would be an independent commission of eight members, appointed by the President and Congress, with regulatory expertise across industry and government. It would meet as authorized by Congress to review and, following a public comment period of 60 days, draw up a list of 15 to 20 rules for elimination or modification. The package would be sent to Congress for an up-or-down vote, and the RIC would be disbanded. If the proposed changes pass Congress, they would go to the president’s desk for signature or veto. The RIC would need to be re-authorized each time Congress would like to repeat this process. Such continued re-authorization is important, as it provides an inexpensive method to solve the problem of regulatory accumulation compared to a standing committee and avoids the creation of a new government bureaucracy.

In 2015, bipartisan groups of lawmakers introduced bills in the House and Senate to establish a Regulatory Improvement Commission based on the BRAC model. House cosponsors included Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), now acting White House Chief of Staff, and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), now a Democratic Senator from Arizona. Unfortunately, the incoming Trump administration ignored the bipartisan RIC bills in favor of anti-regulation bills supported only by Republicans.

The RIC offers an alternative to the witless binary approach to regulation poised by extreme partisans on both ends of the spectrum. Obviously, America’s massive and complex economy needs smart regulation to function properly, and we need institutions charged with constantly improving our regulatory environment, rather than simply piling new rules atop old ones.

In this way, the RIC would fill a vacuum in Washington for a politically viable regulatory improvement mechanism that can inspire confidence across our partisan and ideological divides. And it would create a court of appeal where anyone—business, consumers, labor, civic groups—could challenge existing rules and propose changes.

[gview file=”https://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PPI_Break-Americas-Regulatory-Log-jam_V4-1.pdf” title=”PPI_Break America’s Regulatory Log-jam_V4 (1)”]

ENDNOTES

1) Michael Mandel, “A Progressive Approach to Regulation”, Progressive Policy Institute, February 2011: https://www.progressivepolicy.org/2011/02/reviving-jobsand-innovation-a-progressive-approach-to-improving-regulation/

2) Federal Register: The Daily Journal of the United States Government, “Federal Register and CFR Publication Statistics – Aggregated Charts (XLS)”: https://www.federalregister.gov/reader-aids/understanding-the-federal-register/federal-register-statistics

3) Small Business Administration, “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms,” September 2010: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/The%20Impact%20of%20Regulatory%20Costs%20on%20Small%20Firms%20(Full).pdf.

4) “2017 NSBA Small Business Regulations Survey,” National Small Business Association, 2017. https://www.nsba.biz/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Regulatory-Survey-2017.pdf

5) “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” Executive Order 13771, Federal Register, January 30, 2017. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/03/2017-02451/reducing-regulation-and-controlling-regulatory-costs

6) Jennifer Erin Brown, Joelle Saad-Lessler and Diane Oakley, “Retirement in America: Out of Reach for Working Americans?” National Institute on Retirement Security, September 2018, https://www.nirsonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FINAL-Report-.pdf.

7) Connor Raso, “How has Trump’s deregulatory order worked in practice?,” Brookings Institute, September 6, 2018. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-has-trumps-deregulatory-order-worked-in-practice/.

Kim for Medium: “The Dangers of Big Ideas and Small Tent Politics for House Democrats”

Posted on March 4, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Emboldened by their conviction that the national zeitgeist is on their side, the progressive left is taking a harder line against House Democrats reluctant to embrace their agenda.

Groups like the Justice Democrats, for instance, have signaled their intent to primary moderate members who don’t espouse signature liberal efforts such as the “Green New Deal” or the abolition of private insurance in favor of single-payer health care. And last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reportedly warned her colleagues in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that they could find themselves “on a list” of primary targets if they bucked the party on certain votes.

These tactics will do the party no favors as it works to maintain a relatively fragile majority. And as the findings of a pre-election poll by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) show, liberals are wrong to assume that most Americans share their desire for sweeping government intervention in the economy.

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.

Trump Gets It Half Right on PBMs

Posted on March 1, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In searching for ways to satisfy public demand for lower drug prices, President Trump has found rare common ground with Democrats. The White House recently released a plan to reform the way pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) negotiate prices with drugmakers on behalf of health insurance companies. Specifically, the proposal takes aim at special discounts or rebates negotiated by PBMs that create a perverse incentive for drugmakers to push up the list price of their products.

The idea is to get rid of these incentives in order to bring down drug prices, which would mean lower out-of-pocket expenses for patients. Democrats like Senator Ron Wyden have long pushed for changes to the rebate structure. However, Trump’s plan has drawn fire from critics who say it could become a boon for big drug companies by shifting more costs to the federal government. The truth is, the rebate proposal is a good first step to help Medicare beneficiaries at the drug counter; but, without further action to increase transparency around drug pricing and encourage competition, costs could be shifted from drug companies to taxpayers.

Langhorne for Forbes, “The Real Faces Behind the ‘Corporate Reform’ of America’s Public Schools”

Posted on February 28, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

With 2019 barely underway, the nation has already witnessed another set of highly publicized teacher strikes. Teachers unions and anti-charter activists have wasted no time in painting public charter schools as the culprit, blaming them for “draining money from public schools.”

To clarify, charter schools are public schools. They’re supported by taxpayer money and overseen by public organizations—often school districts. All charter students must participate in state tests and related accountability measures. However, charter schools are operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits, so they’re free from top-down mandates and bureaucratic red tape that often constrain district-operated schools.

In exchange for increased autonomy, charters are held accountable through performance contracts with authorizers, who close or replace them if their students aren’t learning enough. Most charter schools are schools of choice, and unlike magnet schools in traditional districts, they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, they hold a lottery to see who gets in.

Continue reading at Forbes.

New Ideas for a Do-Something Congress No. 5: Make Rural America’s Higher Education Deserts Bloom

Posted on February 26, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As many as 41 million Americans live in “higher education deserts” – at least half an hour’s drive from the nearest college or university and with limited access to community college. Many of these deserts are in rural America, which is one reason so much of rural America is less prosperous than it deserves to be.

The lack of higher education access means fewer opportunities for going back to school or improving skills. A less educated workforce in turn means communities have a tougher time attracting businesses and creating new jobs.

Congress should work to eradicate higher education deserts. In particular, it can encourage new models of higher education – such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges – that can fill this gap and bring more opportunity to workers and their communities. Rural higher education innovation grants are one potential way to help states pilot new approaches.

THE CHALLENGE: HIGHER EDUCATION “DESERTS” ARE HANDICAPPING RURAL AMERICA

For millions of Americans, distance is as big or bigger a barrier to higher education access as finances. According to the Urban Institute, nearly one in five American adults—as many as 41 million people—lives twenty-five miles or more from the nearest college or university, or in areas where a single community college is the only source of broad-access public higher education within that distance. Three million of the Americans in these so-called “higher education deserts” also lack broadband internet, which means they are cut off from online education opportunities as well (1).

Rural students have lower rates of college-going and completion.

More than four in five people in higher education deserts – 82 percent – live in rural areas. This could be one reason why fewer rural Americans attend or finish college.

In 2016, 61 percent of rural public school seniors went on to college the following year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, compared to 67 percent for suburban students (2). Only 20 percent of rural young adults between 25 and 34 have four-year degrees, says the USDA’s Economic Research Service, compared to 37 percent of young adults in urban areas (3). Moreover, the urban-rural gap in college degree attainment is growing. From 2000 to 2015, the share of college-educated adults rose by 7-points in urban locales compared to 4-points in rural areas.

Less-educated rural areas are falling behind while better educated cities leap ahead.

With more and more jobs demanding ever higher levels of skill, disparities in access to higher education are translating to vast disparities in the distribution of jobs and opportunity throughout the United States, including a widening urban-rural divide. Wealthy urban areas are getting richer, while rural areas are increasingly lagging.

The Economic Innovation Group (EIG), for instance, reports that of the 6.8 million net new jobs created between 2000 and 2015, 6.5 million were created in the top 20 percent of zip codes, which were predominantly urban (4). These prosperous, job-creating zip codes are also the best-educated. EIG further finds that 43 percent of residents in the top 10 percent of zip codes has a bachelor’s degree or better, compared to just 11 percent in the bottom 10 percent. While a four-year degree is of course not a prerequisite for a good living, the heavy concentration of highly-educated workers is indicative of the imbalance in economic opportunities between rural and urban areas.

Most of the nation’s least educated and most impoverished counties are rural.

If education and prosperity are linked, so conversely are poverty and the lack of educational attainment.

Out of 467 U.S. counties identified by the USDA as “low education” counties – places where 20 percent or more of the population has less than a high school diploma – 79 percent are rural (5). These counties tend to be clustered in the rural South, Appalachia, along the Texas border and in Native American reservations and also suffer from higher rates of poverty, child poverty and unemployment.

THE GOAL: ERADICATE HIGHER EDUCATION DESERTS AND ENSURE EVERY RURAL AMERICAN HAS HIGHER EDUCATION ACCESS

Better access to higher education in rural areas, especially for the many millions of “nontraditional” students who are now increasingly the norm (6), can help close the gulf in opportunity between urban and rural areas. Greater opportunities for convenient, affordable higher education would allow more rural Americans to finish their degrees or pursue occupational credentials, qualifying them for higher-skilled, better-paid jobs. Rural students would also benefit by not being forced to leave home for school – not only lowering costs for students but potentially slowing or even reversing the population declines plaguing rural areas. Institutions of higher education can also serve as engines of economic development in the communities they serve. They can work with businesses to turn out the skilled talent they need and provide research or other support.

THE PLAN: CREATE RURAL HIGHER EDUCATION INNOVATION GRANTS TO ENCOURAGE NEW MODELS OF HIGHER EDUCATION REACHING RURAL AMERICA

While it’s unrealistic to establish a new college, community college or university in every rural area that needs one, emerging models for delivering higher education potentially offer a creative, cost-effective and effective alternative. These new models can also expand the ability of workers to obtain high-quality occupational credentials, which in many instances are likely to be more practical, affordable and desirable than pursuing a two-year or four-year degree.

Some states, such as Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, are pioneering new approaches, such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges, that use technology to broaden students’ options for both traditional college education and occupational training (7). The Northern Pennsylvania Regional College, for instance, operates six different “hubs” scattered throughout the 7,000 square miles it serves, plus numerous “classrooms” using borrowed space from local high schools, public libraries and other community buildings. In addition to conferring its own degrees, it provides the infrastructure for other accredited institutions to extend their reach through “blended” offerings combining virtual and in-person teaching.

Similarly, Virginia’s five higher education centers provide physical infrastructure for colleges and community colleges offering classes as well as occupational training in fields such as welding, mechatronics and IT certification. In Maryland, the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center offers specific courses from ten different institutions, including Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland. Though relatively new, these institutions are already establishing a track record of success. In South Boston, Virginia, for instance, the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center worked with more than 30 area industries and entrepreneurs in 2017, developed customized training for nearly 150 workers in local companies and placed 173 students into new jobs (8).

Congress should encourage all states to make rural higher education a priority and help more states experiment with new models for accessing higher education in remote areas. One way to do this is to provide seed money in the form of Rural Higher Education Innovation Grants so that states can stand up pilots, evaluate the effectiveness of new models and scale up promising approaches. These grants moreover do not need to be large – the Pennsylvania legislature initially appropriated just $1.2 million to launch what is now NPRC.

As a start, Congress should set aside $10 million in competitive grant funding for states. Funding for these grants could come from an earmark of the money collected from the 1.4 percent excise tax on large university endowments included in the 2017 tax legislation (9).

Read Here: New Ideas For a Do Something Congress No. 5

A Look Inside Monument Academy, a D.C. Public Charter School Designed to Serve Students in Foster Care

Posted on February 22, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The industrial-era public education system that America inherited from the last century no longer works for the majority of students. Because it is highly centralized and assigns students to schools based on their home address, it produces cookie-cutter schools that treat all children the same. However, that educational model is profoundly unfair to the majority of America’s children. Kids come from different backgrounds. They speak different languages. They have different interests and different learning styles. They arrive at school on different academic levels.

Whereas traditional public schools attempt to treat most students the same, public charter schools attempt to create best-fit learning environments that meet the specific needs and interest of their students.

When children land in the right school, they flourish in surprising ways.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Washington, D.C. The District has a universal enrollment, and nearly 50 percent of the public school students attend charter schools whose leaders have the autonomy to control their school designs and influence school culture. As a result, the District’s charter sector has an extraordinary number of innovative learning models– STEM, Classics-based, dual-language immersion, Montessori, etc.– creating a variety of educational options so that each student can find a best-fit school.

Reinventing America’s Schools and The 74 recently highlighted some of these unique schools in our Schools of the Future series. However, because D.C. has so many innovative schools, we simply couldn’t cover them all. As such, we encourage you to read Harvard Ed. Magazine’s piece on Monument Academy, a D.C. public charter school designed to serve kids in foster care.

Read the story here.

Valentine for BlackPressUSA, “Developing a universal enrollment system for all Memphis public schools”

Posted on February 21, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

On any given day, you can find Sarah Carpenter organizing parents in the Memphis area. A single mother of four daughters and 13 grandchildren, Carpenter was an advocate long before becoming co-founder and CEO of The Memphis Lift, which she describes as “a parent organization run by parents, for parents.”

Born and raised in North Memphis, Carpenter says her experience as a single parent prepared her to lead The Memphis Lift. “I have always been an advocate for my daughters and for other’s kids,” she says. “I started in 1995 when I was asked to help open a Family Resource Center in a high school and students without involved parents in their lives took to me. Parents would stop me and say, ‘They are passing my son on to High School and he can’t even read.”

Carpenter and her fellow co-founders met during the training component of a public advocate fellowship funded by the Memphis Education Fund, which educated parents about the landscape in Shelby County Schools (SCS). At the time, SCS had the highest number of “priority schools” –those in which student scores on state exams ranked in the bottom five percent – in Tennessee.

Carpenter and her colleagues have since visited more than 10,000 homes to educate others on the state of Memphis’s schools. SCS students can attend four categories of schools: traditional neighborhood schools, charter schools, charter schools in the state-run Achievement Schools District, and schools in the district’s Innovation Zone.

For Carpenter and her organization, ensuring that all parents – regardless of income – have access to all the options SCS has to offer is paramount.

Continue reading at BlackPressUSA.

Bledsoe for USA Today, “Trump border emergency is fake and climate crisis is real. Guess which just got funded?”

Posted on February 19, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Donald Trump funds ’emergency’ border wall but relief for victims of wildfires, storms and other climate change-fueled catastrophes must wait.

One emergency, the border wall, is fake, invented by a rogue president desperate for a political win no matter the price. Another, the climate crisis, is real, with tens of millions of citizen victims around the country. Guess which one got funded?

President Donald Trump is risking a constitutional crisis by declaring a false national emergency to fund a border wall that his own government experts say isn’t needed and won’t work, and of which he himself says, “I didn’t need to do this.”

Meanwhile, the bill Trump signed last week to keep the government open leaves out tens of billions of dollars of relief for American citizens who are victims of hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters made worse by climate change.

This should not be a shock to anyone paying close attention. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, reacting to earlier reports, last week pointedly denied that the administration would raid relief funds designated for victims of storms and wildfires to get money for Trump’s dubious border wall.

The president, who denies basic climate science and is rolling back key climate protections, would have been taking money from its victims to escape the consequences of his own manufactured government-shutdown crisis — all to build a wall that will be ineffective and even counterproductive in improving border security.

A firestorm of criticism prevented that. Yet here we are about a month later with much the same outcome.

Continue reading at USA Today.

Marshall for Medium: “Will the Senate Defend Our Constitution?”

Posted on February 15, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

By declaring a national emergency to build a border wall, President Trump has crossed the Rubicon. He has turned a cheap partisan stunt into a bona fide Constitutional crisis.

Congress this week declined to give Trump all the money he demanded to wall off Mexico from the United States. The president has declared an emergency explicitly to defy the will of Congress and usurp its Constitutional power to raise and spend public money. In his contempt for democratic norms, Trump makes no effort to conceal the fact that the alleged ‘emergency’ on the border is a political contrivance to assert his will. Having failed to extort wall funding from Congress through the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, he is willing to violate the Constitution to get a political ‘win.’

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.