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Blog: The Luddite Attitude of San Francisco Supervisors on Vaping is Anti-Science and Regressive

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

2020 will mark the 100-year anniversary of alcohol Prohibition in the United States – a flawed experiment that lasted for 13 years before being repealed.

The city of San Francisco is about to ignore the lessons of this disastrous experiment, and vote to ban all sales and access to vaping products.  But unlike Prohibition, which banned all alcohol, San Francisco’s effort isn’t banning all tobacco products. Rather, the City will continue to allow access to the most harmful use of tobacco, combustible cigarettes.

It’s a very odd message to send:  please use carcinogen-laden products that will kill you faster, but by all means, DON’T touch a product that will improve your health and the health of those around you.

Forty million Americans still smoke traditional cigarettes today.  That’s after 25 years of aggressive anti-smoking campaigns, tax increases and 10 years of FDA oversight of nicotine.  These adult smokers clearly are not going to quit, and the choice of policymakers is to either wait for the 40 million to die or embrace innovation and science to help these smokers and those around them by providing access to new technologies.

As a progressive and adult smoker, I choose the latter and staunchly believe we must give adults an off-ramp from using combustible tobacco.

Policymakers have a responsibility to address access to all nicotine products for young people. No teenager should be permitted to buy, try, test, or experiment with any nicotine delivery device. California has a law that already states that you must be 21 or over to purchase tobacco. That is an appropriate and pragmatic policy.

The science is clear: every adult smoker who switches to a new product like vape or “heat not burn” and away from combustible tobacco is reducing the harmful intake by up to 98%.  If all 40 million American smokers switched to these products today, their health would improve, the health of those around them would improve, and our health care costs would be reduced.

These outcomes are not only impressive—they are utterly achievable if we choose to provide age-appropriate adult smokers access to a variety of products. Unfortunately, if you live in San Francisco, the City Supervisors current efforts support one mantra: burn tobacco until you die.

Meanwhile, our friends around the globe are embracing innovation. In Japan in just a few short years they have been able to switch 33% of combustible smokers to heat not burn users.  In the United Kingdom, the government runs public service announcements encouraging adult smokers to switch to these less harmful products.

The Royal College of Physicians makes it pretty clear: “Large-scale substitution of e-cigarettes, or other non-tobacco nicotine products, for tobacco smoking has the potential to prevent almost all the harm from smoking in society. Promoting e-cigarettes, [Nicotine Replacement Therapy] and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible, as a substitute for smoking, is therefore likely to generate significant health gains in the UK”

The city leaders who will vote on this ban should ask themselves if adult smokers deserve a chance at living a better, healthier and longer life by using and embracing innovation, or continuing to suffer the ill effects of burning tobacco.  San Francisco is supposed to be a modern-day Mecca of innovation, a hub of the progressive spirit and forward-looking leadership. In a city known worldwide for its ability to change the world, this ban is a regressive move that ignores data, science and the well-being of citizens.

Bledsoe for The Hill: “Biden’s domestic climate plan is good, but his global strategies are crucial”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As many climate activists had hoped, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden came forward this week with an ambitious domestic climate change plan that proposes to cut U.S. emissions deeply while growing America’s clean energy sector.

Yet, as important as the domestic elements of Biden’s plan and those of his rivals are, they are ultimately most valuable ecologically in legitimizing the key international aspects of climate protection, which are crucial to solving the inherently global nature of the climate problem in the first place.

After all, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are only about 15 percent of the world total, compared to 30 percent from China alone. Fortunately, the E.U., U.S., China and fewer than 10 of other nations account for well over 80 percent of global emissions, meaning targeted international efforts have strong potential to reach the lion’s share of the problem.

Credible U.S. domestic climate action is a precondition to gaining the trust and respect of the rest of the world — and allowing America to exert unique pressure on other major nations to cut their emissions.

Read the full piece here.

Marshall for The Hill: “Our love-hate relationship with ‘Big Tech'”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are drawing a bead on big U.S. tech companies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says they have grown too powerful and calls for breaking them up — a stance that’s rapidly become a new liberal litmus test.

Meanwhile, European regulators have been slapping stiff fines on Facebook, Google and Apple for a variety of alleged misdeeds, ranging from tax avoidance to privacy and copyright violations.

President Trump has stirred the pot by claiming that social media companies’ efforts to purge their platforms of false and hateful content are biased against conservatives. The Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and House Democrats are all gearing up probes into alleged anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants.

Read the full piece here.

The Price of Innovative and Effective Treatments

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Here’s a question that progressives should be asking themselves: How can we encourage the development of innovative and effective treatments like Zolgensma?

Just approved by the FDA, Zolgensma is a powerful new treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which is the leading genetic cause of death in infants and toddlers. Roughly one out of every 50 adults carries one copy of the defective gene that causes SMA, and the disease affects roughly one out of every 6,000-10,000 live births.

Zolgensma—developed and marketed by AveXis, now part of Novartis—is given as a single intravenous infusion that delivers a working copy of the defective gene to motor neurons, heading off the debilitating effects of SMA. Based on the clinical trials, the positive effects of the infusion seem to persist for years.

In fact, Zolgensma is only the second gene therapy approved in the U.S. for commercial use. Since the 1970s, medical scientists have been fascinated by the idea of curing genetic diseases by modifying cell genes. However, getting to this point has been a long and winding road, punctuated by expensive setbacks and dead-ends.

Zolgensma’s success points the way to a coming future of cures and innovative treatments for debilitating diseases. That could be a triple win for progressives: Health care outcomes would improve; the long-term resource costs of healthcare to society would fall; and offering quality health care to everyone would be cheaper and easier.

But then comes the sticker shock: AveXis and Novartis are setting an initial price of $2.1 million for the one-dose treatment. For people concerned about the cost of health care, this seems like a ridiculous number.

I don’t want to get into the question of what the “right” price of the treatment should be. But based on the current medical and human cost of SMA, $2.1 million is not as big as it seems. Without a drug treatment, “best supportive care” for infantile onset SMA costs $800,000, and only yields 2.4 life-years, and less than 0.5 quality-adjusted life years (QALY). That’s according to ICER, an independent research institute.

By comparison, giving Zolgensma to pre-symptomatic infants with SMA—a usage that the FDA has approved—could give them 27 life-years and 22 QALYs, according to ICER.* How much would you pay for 25 extra years of life?

Of course, we also have to figure in how much additional medical and nursing care an infant with SMA and treated with Zolgensma will need over time. That needs to be taken into account as well.

It should be noted the initial high price of a gene therapy like Zolgensma, when introduced, may not last long. Competition from other medicines is likely to push down the price. Roche, for example, is planning to submit a new drug for treating SMA to the FDA later in 2019. In addition, AveXis and Novartis will set up 5-year payment plans for states, small insurance firms, and self-insured employers, and provide rebates if the treatment is not successful.

Many people complain that corporations take a short-term perspective and don’t take risks for the future. The truth is, for the past forty years research and development into gene therapy has been one of the best ways for the pharma and biotech sectors to lose money, since the first treatment was only approved for commercial use in 2017.

In the end, progressives who want a better-functioning and fairer healthcare system should also want as many cures and innovative and effective treatments on the market as quickly as possible. That means giving pharma and biotech companies the incentive to take the necessary risks.

*The ICER report was released before the FDA approval. But ICER analyzed what they called “Drug X,” which was the equivalent of Zolgensma given to pre-sympomatic infants.

 

Kim for Medium: “Being a moderate in Congress is expensive”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Few jobs in politics might be tougher than to be a moderate member of Congress. Moderates typically hail from competitive districts, which means they enter office with targets on their backs from an opposition eager to wrest away their seats. And unlike their colleagues in safely blue or red seats, they must juggle the concerns of a diverse constituency, meaning less room to embrace the kinds of ideas that appeal to an activist base.

Moderates’ vulnerability also inevitably means a greater burden when it comes to campaign fundraising. In 2018, for instance, moderate Democratic candidates who won their campaigns spent twice as much as winning candidates from more liberal, comfortably blue districts. Moderates, in other words, literally paid the price for Democrats’ majority — a fact the progressive left should keep in mind as the 2020 election approaches.

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.

Kane for The Hill: “Candidates should follow Sen. Harris’s lead on maternal health”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) reintroduced her 2018 bill that seeks to address rising maternal mortality rates, particularly among black women. Harris’s Maternal CARE Act, and the accompanying House version, would authorize $150 million toward programs that seek to help medical professionals identify high-risk pregnancies and establish implicit-bias training curriculum for medical schools.

Her bill seeks to address a deeply troubling development: Severe maternal complications have more than doubled in the past 20 years and the U.S. maternal mortality rate has become the highest among high-income countries. Estimates of the maternal mortality rate span from 17.2 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to 30.1 women per 100,000 births from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Read Arielle Kane’s full opinion piece by clicking here. 

How The China Trade War Will Jump Start Digital Manufacturing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

(As originally appeared on Forbes.com)

Trade war! In my previous column on China and digital manufacturing, I observed that the low price of Chinese imports has been artificially suppressing domestic investments in manufacturing automation. The process of digitization is expensive and risky,  and rational investors and managers won’t spend money if they know they will be immediately undercut by Chinese competitors.

Now President Donald Trump has amped up a trade war with China. The new tariffs will hit consumers in their wallets, as even Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow agrees.  Moreover, the trade war runs the risk of boosting inflation, raising interest rates, and potentially tipping the economy into recession.

But for companies in the digital manufacturing space, there’s a silver lining to the dark cloud of the trade war. Suddenly the risk-benefit calculation of investment in digitization starts to look more attractive, purely as an economic proposition.  For one, sourcing parts out of China is becoming riskier and potentially more expensive.

With perfect timing, Xometry, a Gaithersburg, Md-based manufacturing platform which calls itself “the largest on-demand manufacturing marketplace,” with more than 2500 U.S. manufacturing partners, just announced a $50 million equity funding round to further build out its capabilities. An article in the  Wall Street Journal noted that Xometry’s business “can help blunt small companies’ exposure to price fluctuations and shortages as trade tensions and U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum make prices more volatile.”

“We’ve definitely seen more requests for reshoring but I don’t think the tides have fully turned,” adds Dave Evans, CEO and co-founder at Fictiv, a high-profile San Francisco-based manufacturing platform. Rather,  says Evans, companies are “tariff engineering” their product to reduce costs by making specific parts or assembling locally in the U.S.

For manufacturers of robotics and other industrial automation equipment, the trade war is a mixed bag. On the one hand, domestic companies are gearing up to invest more in robotics.  On the other hand, China has been investing heavily in automation, and those markets may be in trouble as the trade war heats up.

For now, manufacturers are still hoping that the China-US trade war will turn out to be only a skirmish. But at some point, companies that have relied on China for their production will decide that the combination of trade tensions and new technology and new business models–what we have called the Internet of Goods–make it more profitable to produce in the domestic market for the domestic market. And that’s when the digital revolution in manufacturing will really take off.

 

 

Marshall, Langhorne for NY Daily News: “Bernie Sanders’ reactionary education plan”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Central to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ cantankerous mystique is his anti-establishment stance and uncompromising vision for radical economic change. When it comes to public schools, however, Sanders is no revolutionary. On the contrary, he sides with the education establishment in defending a status quo that is failing poor and minority students.

The democratic socialist from Vermont recently unveiled an education “reform” plan that can only be described as reactionary. It calls for rolling back federal support for public charter schools, which are providing millions of black and brown children access to educational opportunity in a growing number of large U.S. cities.

Read the full opinion piece on the NY Daily News website.

Stangler for Medium: “What is the Future of Flexible Federalism?”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Both Republicans and Democrats praise states as “laboratories of democracy” when they don’t hold the White House or Congress. Once in power in Washington, they rediscover their affinity for centralization and federal mandates.

Now, though, in an era of New Localism and widespread local and regional efforts to address persistent national challenges, a renewed approach to flexible federalism is needed. The next and future presidents need a framework for flexible federalism that permits them to encourage local innovation, empower regional leaders, and help share and spread lessons.

So, the president can’t do it all in terms of opening up more space for local innovation. But perhaps the federal government can lead the way, setting an example for the states. What might a framework for flexible federalism look like and how might it be applied?

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.

New Ideas for a Do-Something Congress No. 11: Encourage Employers to Help with Student Debt

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

More than anything else, a higher education remains the ticket to the proverbial American Dream. It offers the skills prized by employers in an increasingly global marketplace, and puts graduates on a path to higher wages over a lifetime of work. But for too many Americans, it comes at the price of student loans that can saddle them with debt just as they’re launching their careers and stunt their financial wellbeing for years to come.

New thinking can address the challenge. One promising solution is gaining traction in the private sector. A small but growing number of U.S. employers have begun offering student loan repayment benefits to their employees—helping them erase student debt faster and, not incidentally, earning the loyalty of employees in a competition for the best workforce talent. Though these programs are still uncommon, they are in high demand, leading some to dub student loan assistance “the hottest employee benefit” today (1).

Congress can help spur widespread adoption of this solution by encouraging more employers to offer this benefit to their workers, such as through the tax code. While current law gives employers a tax break for offering tuition assistance benefits to their employees, student loan assistance doesn’t get the same favorable treatment. Lawmakers should take up bipartisan legislation in this session to equalize the tax treatment of student loan assistance benefits.

THE CHALLENGE: Student Loan Debt is Skyrocketing For Generations of American Workers

American college graduates collectively face a student loan debt crisis of eye-popping proportions. As of December 2018, more than 44.7 million borrowers owed $1.5 trillion in student loans(2)—a sum that exceeds the gross domestic product of all but a dozen countries around the globe.

While this student debt burden impacts Americans of all ages and socioeconomic groups, it hits younger workers the hardest. An estimated 65 percent of the total is owed by people under 40—no surprise, considering that more than two-thirds of college seniors graduating in recent years have left campus with student loan debt, averaging $28,650 as of 2017.(3)

Now, there’s evidence that this mounting IOU has consequences for financial wellbeing more broadly. Indebted graduates enter the workforce with less money available to save, and this constraint soon catches up with them. By age 30, those with student debt have accrued only about half as much in retirement assets as those without debt, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.(4) Other studies suggest that student loan debt also makes it harder for young people to pursue graduate studies, buy their first home (5) and achieve other important life milestones—including, anecdotally, even starting a family.

In recent weeks, the issue has drawn the attention of candidates on the Presidential campaign trail. With an eye toward the coveted youth vote, several Democratic contenders have made college affordability a rallying cry and unveiled proposals to address the crushing debt burden. The most ambitious plan to date would “cancel” up to $50,000 in student debt for every borrower with a household income under $100,000—helping an estimated 42 million Americans.(6) This plan, however, would be immensely expensive for U.S. taxpayers and potentially create perverse incentives for borrowers. Workers need better and more cost-effective help.

THE GOAL: Encourage Employers to Help Ease Workers’ Student Debt Burdens

In the search for solutions to the student debt crisis, America’s employers are an important part of the answer. Today’s historically tight labor market and demand for young workers with the right skills presents big challenges—and a big opportunity. In particular, more employers are finding that offering student loan assistance benefits is an effective way to attract and retain workers.

Under this approach, employers can choose to make monthly contributions against an employee’s student loan balance—either directly to the employee, or to the employee’s lender—and speed up pay-off of the loan. This benefit is actually something that Congress and most federal agencies have offered to eligible staff members for more than a decade. In both cases, the repayment programs were implemented as a way to recruit highly skilled young employees to government service. The specifics vary, but broadly speaking, Senate staffers can qualify for up to $500 per month to pay down their student loans, and House staffers can receive as much as $10,000 yearly in assistance, up to a total $60,000. Similarly, all federal agencies are permitted to make payments of up to $10,000 annually against federal student loans for qualifying employees who agree to remain on the job for at least three years. Most recently through this program, 34 agencies assisted nearly 10,000 federal employees with more than $72 million in student loan repayment benefits.(7)

From the perspective of today’s workforce, there’s unmistakable demand for this “perk” in the private sector, too. Recent surveys have found that student debt is a primary source of stress, distraction, and impaired productivity for young workers. More than half worry “all the time” or “often” about repaying their loans, and many say this anxiety has impacted their health.(8) Moreover, big majorities would welcome proactive solutions from their employers.

• Fully 92 percent say they’d take advantage of an employer match for their student loan payments if one were offered.(9)

• 58 percent would even prefer that their company make payments against their student debt over contributions to a retirement fund.(10)

• And—most importantly for companies—offering help with student loans would earn major points for participating employers. In one survey, 90 percent of employees said that having a loan repayment benefit would positively influence their decision to accept a job offer,(11) while in another, 86 percent said they’d commit to a company for five years if it helped pay off their student debt.(12)

Some forward-thinking employers have responded to this growing market demand and launched student loan repayment plans. Among the early adopters:

• Fidelity. Through its Step Ahead student loan assistance program, the investment company has helped more than 9,000 employees by offering a monthly subsidy—totaling up to $10,000 per borrower—toward student loans.(13)

• Abbott. The pharmaceutical company encourages employees to repay student debt and save for retirement simultaneously through a 5 percent employer “match” in its Freedom 2 Save Plan.(14)

• Others ranging from PricewaterhouseCoopers to Peloton, the fitness cycling company, have partnered with Gradifi, an employee benefits platform, to offer monthly contributions to eligible associates, helping them whittle their student debt.

Notwithstanding these models, employer-provided student loan assistance remains rare. According to an annual Employee Benefits Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), just 4 percent of U.S. companies offered this benefit last year.(15) Far more commonplace, found SHRM, are traditional tuition assistance programs: 51 percent of employers provided tuition support for their associates attending undergraduate studies, and 49 percent offered assistance for graduate school.

THE PLAN: Equalize Tax Treatment of Employer Student Loan Assistance Benefits

There’s a simple reason why so few employers currently offer student loan repayment assistance—current tax law discourages them for doing so. Currently under Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code, businesses receive a tax break for subsidizing their qualified employees’ postsecondary tuition. (Indeed, that’s been the case for 40 years, when the tuition deduction was first enacted by Congress as a pilot.) But there’s no tax incentive to support employees who have already incurred student loan debt in college or grad school. If student loan repayments were treated the same way tuition assistance is today under federal law, many more employers would be eager to adopt such programs.

Congress could jumpstart private-sector engagement on this pressing issue by passing the Employer Participation in Repayment Act. Introduced by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Rodney Davis (R-IL) in the House and Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) in the Senate, the legislation would build on the current educational assistance program by allowing employers to contribute up to $5,250 a year, tax-free, toward any employee’s student loan repayments. The contribution would be tax-exempt for the employee, and could be made against qualified education loans to the employee directly, or through a payroll deduction to the employee’s lender.

At this writing, the measure has broad, bipartisan support, with 128 cosponsors in the House and 21 in the Senate—reflecting much wider interest than in the previous session of Congress. The legislation also enjoys the support of leading education organizations, such as the National Education Association and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, as well as the Democratic House leadership and key figures from the Trump Administration, according to the bill’s sponsors. There’s no official score, but the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated the measure would cost $3.6 billion over 10 years—far less than the price tag for having the federal government “cancel” all outstanding student debt. The bill’s lead Democrats are pushing to get it attached to an appropriate vehicle—perhaps a tax extenders package—in the current session.

Student debt has saddled millions of Americans and can remain a lifelong drag on their families’ financial health. Employers can help provide much-needed relief, and many seem eager to do so. With a straightforward change in the tax code, Congress could provide a powerful incentive for more companies to help—delivering benefits for workers, their families, and the 21st-century workforce.

Sources:

  1. Zack Friedman, Forbes Magazine, October 18, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2018/10/18/student-loan-repayment-employee-benefits/#3481b84a566f

  2. Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, February 2019. https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/hhdc_2018q4.pdf

  3. Institute for College Access & Success, Project on Student Debt, https://ticas.org/posd/home

  4. Center for Retirement Research, June 2018. https://crr.bc.edu/briefs/do-young-adults-with-student-debt-save-less-for-retirement/

  5. Center for Retirement Research, 2018.

  6. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Medium.com: Election 2020 Coverage, April 22, 2019.

  7. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Federal Student Loan Repayment Program (2016), February 2018. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/student-loan-repayment/

  8. American Student Assistance, February 2017. https://www.asa.org/innovation/

  9. American Student Assistance, 2017.

  10. Oliver Wyman, 2017. https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/c52b032b-4e17-458f-8c66-bc25d7daf01f

  11. Oliver Wyman, 2017.

  12. American Student Assistance, 2017.

  13. https://www.fidelity.com/about-fidelity/who-we-serve/easing-the-pressures-of-student-debt

  14. https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/leadership/tackling-student-debt-for-our-employees.html

2018 Employee Benefits Survey, Society for Human Resource Management, June 2018. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/pages/2018-employee-benefits.aspx

Marshall for The Hill: “How center-leftists can stem the nationalist tide in Europe”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The rise of nationalist movements in Europe has coincided with a steep decline in public support for center-left parties. Despite harboring much residual goodwill toward them, European voters no longer see these parties as offering clear answers to the most vexing questions of the day.

That is a key takeaway from a sweeping new survey of European political attitudes that the Progressive Policy Institute released late last month at a gathering of center-left leaders and thinkers in Berlin.

Conducted by Expedition Strategies, the poll interviewed 1,503 voters in Germany, France, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy.

The findings reveal a restive European public worried about their economic prospects, high taxes, inequality, immigration and climate change. Most see their country and the European Union as headed down the wrong track.

Read PPI President Will Marshall’s full piece here.

Stangler for Medium: “What does Flexible Federalism actually mean and look like?”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Despite decades of steadily expanding federal authority, there is still a fairly well-defined division of labor among national, state and local governments. The latter, for example are chiefly responsible for law enforcement and criminal justice, land use, education (mostly), and so on.

In recent years, moreover, local government has been lauded for its effectiveness and responsiveness. Mayors have been told that they should run the world (maybe that’s why so many are running for president). In their excellent book, The New Localism, Bruce Katz and the late Jeremy Nowak declared that “power increasingly belongs to … the local level” because of regional collections of assets, institutions, and networks.

 

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here. 

Langhorne for Forbes, “Ed Reformers Rejoice: New CREDO Report Shows Student Progress In New Orleans Has Continued”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Nearly 14 years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana’s elected leaders decided to rebuild New Orleans’s failing public education system from the ground up, as a system of public charter schools.  Prior to the storm, the district was considered one of the nation’s worst. Half the students dropped out, and four in 10 adults in the city could not read beyond an elementary school level. The district was almost bankrupt, searching for a $50 million line of credit just to meet payroll. Katrina only exacerbated an already dire situation, displacing 64,000 students and creating over $800 million in damage to school buildings alone.

For New Orleans, this catastrophe brought with it an opportunity. In 2003, the governor and state legislature had created a Recovery School District (RSD) to take over the state’s worst public schools, including five in New Orleans, which the RSD had turned into charters. After the storm, the legislature placed all but 17 of New Orleans’s 127 public schools in the RSD. Over the next nine years, the RSD turned them all over to charter operators, and academic progress surged.

In 2015 Louisiana switched to standardized tests aligned with the Common Core standards, which was far more rigorous than the old tests. It began the process in 2014, when it first moved its tests in that direction, and it continued to alter the test after 2015. Not surprisingly, starting in 2014, what had been a steady rise in proficiency leveled off. Education reformers began to fear that this plateau revealed waning effects of the move to charters, rather than just the impact of tougher tests.

But a new report by the Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) focused on student growth scores reveals that New Orleans’s progress has continued.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Stangler for Medium: “Democratic candidates should talk flexible federalism”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Only Washington can solve our problems. That, evidently, is what any voter or casual follower of American politics might forgivably conclude after listening to the Democrats who are vying to take on President Trump next year.

Myriad proposals are being thrown around for the federal government to provide health care for all, free education for all, and guarantee everyone jobs. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress have proposed the Green New Deal, which would essentially have the federal government take on the task of reinventing the energy industry and, well, the entire economy.

At this moment, however, what the United States does not need is further centralization in Washington. As PPI president Will Marshall has written, we have a “mismatch of scale” in terms of problem-solving. Washington is too big to deal effectively with life’s everyday problems yet too small to cope alone with things that spill over national borders: trade, climate, and action to contain pandemics, for example. That’s why we need more distributed problem-solving. And with Washington today mired in political dysfunction, we especially need more empowerment of state and, especially, local government.

 

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here.