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Goldberg for The Hill: Are Federal Agencies Putting Science Over Fear-Mongering?

Posted on August 27, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

This summer, during one of the least productive sessions in recent history, a rare bipartisan achievement slipped through Congress under the political radar. Democrats and Republicans came together with environmentalists and chemical manufacturers to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

So, what was the secret to TSCA’s success? All of these groups were unified behind a common regulatory vision: chemical regulation must be based on scientific risk alone. TSCA requires EPA to integrate scientific determinations of a chemical’s hazard, use and exposure potential so that facts, not political or fear-based agendas, are the driving force behind chemical regulations.
To be sure, TSCA is a compromise. No one thinks it is perfect. EPA gained authority over chemical regulations, and industry got a streamlined regulatory process. The Environmental Defense Fund called TSCA “a major improvement.” The Society of the Plastics Industry said consumers can have “confidence in the products they depend upon each day, while giving companies a more predictable regulatory system that is based on science rather than rhetoric.”

Osborne for U.S. News & World Report: The Charter School Pot and Kettle

Posted on August 25, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

By David Osborne and Anne Osborne

Critics of charter schools love to charge that charters “cream” the best students by making it hard to apply and pushing out low performers. That’s why charters outperform traditional public schools, they assert. But they rarely present evidence, and they never admit that traditional public schools do exactly the same thing – only more often.

The NAACP recently passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools, in part because the schools allegedly encourage segregation and engage in “exclusionary discipline” and “differential enrollment practices.” In reporting this development The New York Times wrote, “Although charters are supposed to admit students by lottery, some effectively skim the best students from the pool, with enrollment procedures that discourage all but the most motivated parents to apply. Some charters have been known to nudge out their most troubled students.”

A few weeks earlier, a Los Angeles Times editorial criticized charter schools for discouraging families from applying by using long, complicated application forms. To be fair, they did point out that most charters are prohibited from selecting their students: When demand exceeds their capacity, they have to use lotteries in which every family has an equal shot at admission.

Mexico: The Rise of the Mexican App Economy

Posted on August 25, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

All around the world we are seeing the rise of the App Economy—jobs, companies, and economic growth created by the production and distribution of mobile applications (“apps”) that run on smartphones. Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the App Economy has grown from nothing to a powerful economic force that rivals existing industries.

In this paper, we examine the production and distribution of mobile apps as a source of growth and job creation for Mexico. We find that Mexico had over 225,000 App Economy jobs as of March 2016. What’s more, Mexico’s connectivity with the global economy, particularly the United States, gives the country the potential to add many more App Economy jobs in the near future.

Mexico has long benefited from strong relationships with its global trading partners and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. An important next step for Mexico is to seize the opportunities provided by the new economy, realizing its potential for creating new export markets. Trade is now much more than just traditional goods and services—it is also digital goods, such as mobile apps.

Mexico is also benefiting from a relatively stable economy in a time of volatility in the region. Mexico has managed to register slow but steady growth rates over the past few years. For 2015, Mexico showed annual growth of 2.5 percent, while the overall Latin American economy contracted by 0.3 percent. As the global economy stabilizes and Mexico continues its steady growth amongst a region plagued with uncertainty, the country can further strength its position as an economic leader in Latin America.

The Rise of the Mexican App Economy

El Surgimiento de la App Economy Mexicana

Where Should Multinationals Be Taxed?

Posted on August 24, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Which countries should have the right to tax the profits of US-based multinationals that operate globally? A year ago we pointed out that this seemingly arcane question had the potential to become a major point of conflict between the US and the EU. Back then we warned of the potential for an “enormous job-and-revenue grab by Europe,” utilizing the international tax system to claim a larger share of tax revenues from US-based multinationals, and in the process reducing the tax revenues that could be collected by the US government.

Now the US Treasury is agreeing with our warning. In a paper released today, the Treasury raises objections to a series of so-called “state aid” cases launched by the European Commission. The cases would retroactively imposes billions of dollars of additional taxes on US companies–money that would go to European countries and could no longer be collected by the US government. Moreover, the cases are based on a novel interpretation of international tax rules.

Here’s what Robert Stack, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs, says on the Treasury blog.

These investigations have major implications for the United States. In particular, recoveries imposed by the Commission would have an outsized impact on U.S. companies. Furthermore, it is possible that the settlement payments ultimately could be determined to give rise to creditable foreign taxes. If so, U.S. taxpayers could wind up eventually footing the bill for these State aid recoveries in the form of foreign tax credits that would offset the U.S. tax bills of these companies.

…we emphasize that the Commission should not seek to impose recoveries under this new approach in a retroactive manner because it sets a bad precedent for tax policymakers around the world. Finally, we explain that the Commission’s approach undermines U.S. tax treaties and international transfer pricing guidelines already accepted broadly in the global tax community, and undermines the work done as part of the BEPS project.

We agree:This is an extremely important principle that goes way beyond the particular case.

Some background here is useful. Several years ago, the finance ministers of the developed countries decided that multinationals, through legal means, were paying too little taxes. They commissioned a rewrite of the global tax rules called the BEPS project (for “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”). The BEPS rules, when they came out, accomplished two tasks. First, they closed a large number of legal loopholes that companies had used to reduce their taxes. Second, the BEPS rules enunciated a basic principle for the future: That profits should be taxed “where economic activities generating the profits are performed and where value is created.”

While we’ve had our issues with the BEPS rules, this principle is basically a good one. However, it leaves open the delicate question of actually determining where economic value is created in a world of intangibles. For example, in a supply chain where the product design and marketing is done in the US, and the manufacturing is done in China, how should the profits be split for tax purposes? Should China be able to unilaterally decide that all the value was generated in China, and should all be taxable?

Obviously not. We wouldn’t want China unilaterally making this decision. The same is true for the EU.

To summarize: The European Commission has the right to impose whatever rules it wants on state aid. But it doesn’t have the right to unilaterally decide what share of multinational income it gets to tax.

Clinton getting the link between innovation and jobs

Posted on August 11, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we’ve repeatedly said, innovation creates jobs, not destroys them. But we’ve also recently pointed out that government has been lagging private sector spending on R&D, and that’s one reason why productivity growth and job creation has been weak. Moreover, PPI’s Will Marshall recently wrote that the Democrats have to resolve their economic identity crisis.

So it was good news when in today’s speech in Michigan, Hillary Clinton said:

And we’re going to … recommit to scientific research that can create entire new industries.

She’s been getting increasingly powerful on this point. On her website, her “Jobs Plan for Millennials” contains the paragraph (our bold):

Support scientific research and technological innovation. We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of scientific and technological innovation in the 21st century. We will make bold new investments in scientific research, which will create entirely new industries and the good-paying jobs of the future. Together, we can achieve bold research goals, like preventing, effectively treating, and making an Alzheimer’s cure possible by 2025. And we will pursue public policies that spur technological innovation and support young entrepreneurs. Hillary believes that by supporting young entrepreneurs in all types of communities, we can catalyze innovation hubs across the country, encourage millennial talent and capital to invest in their communities, and build thriving local economies.

By contrast, a Google search of Trump’s website shows no appearances of the term “scientific research.” The outline of Trump’s economic vision on his website does not contain the words ‘technology’ or ‘innovation’. We wonder if Trump understands that his favorite outlet, Twitter, was only invented in 2006.

CNN: Democrats must resolve economic identity crisis

Posted on August 11, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Donald Trump’s travesty of a presidential campaign is forcing Republicans to ask themselves some hard questions: Does party loyalty outweigh the risks of putting a self-infatuated political ignoramus in the White House? Do they hate Hillary Clinton more than they love their country?

No doubt Democrats are enjoying the GOP’s agonizing moment of truth, but their party also faces a big strategic choice. Will Democrats wage the fall campaign as pro-growth progressives or as angry populists?

Continue reading at CNN.

Government is guilty of short-term thinking, too

Posted on August 9, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI was among the first organizations to highlight the business investment drought, starting in 2010 and 2011, way before it became commonly accepted (see here and here). And our “Investment Heroes” annual ranking was started in 2012 precisely to contrast the companies that were investing heavily in the United States with the many others that chose to pare back. So the issue of short-term business thinking is no stranger to us.

But we were pondering the recent annual revision from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and noticed something very interesting: By some objective measures, government is more guilty of short-term thinking than business is.

For example, one of the key measures of short-term vs long-term thinking is how much money is being invested in research and development. We found that over the past ten years R&D spending by the private sector has increased by 34%, in real terms. By comparison, real R&D spending by government at all levels has decreased by 2% (see chart below). This decline is mostly driven by defense R&D. But even if we just restrict ourselves to civilian R&D (federal state and local), the real gain in government R&D spending since 2005 is only 12%, far below the private sector increase.*

The gap between private sector and government investment in software is large, but not as large as for R&D. Since 2005, the private sector has increased its investment in software by 51% in real terms, compared to only 37% for government. Similarly, growth in real equipment expenditures by the private sector outpaced the government sector by a wide margin.

Finally, we come to structures. The private sector, despite the recession, has managed to somewhat expand its real spending on long-lived structures over the past ten years. Meanwhile, real government spending on structures–especially infrastructure–has tanked. Real government outlays for highways and streets is down 21% from 2005 to 2014.

Now let’s focus down a bit more on R&D, which is one clear measure of long-term thinking. From 1995 to 2005, private R&D spending, civilian government R&D spending, and GDP all grew at roughly the same rate, adjusted for inflation. For example, over that period real GDP rose by 40%, and real private R&D spending rose by 41%.

But over the past ten years, the pattern is far different. GDP growth slowed sharply, from 40% to 15%, and so did the growth of civilian govt R&D. But private R&D spending barely took a pause, dropping only to 34%. In other words, the private sector continued to boost spending on R&D at more than twice the rate of the rate of GDP growth.

Finally, we can compare private sector R&D with civilian govt R&D, as a share of GDP, over the past 45 years. It turns that private sector R&D is at 45-year high, as a share of GDP, while civilian govt R&D spending is near a 45-year low.

So what conclusion can we come to? Clearly there is a business investment drought in many parts of the economy, as we have written repeatedly. But private sector R&D growth–a true measure of long-term thinking–has held up surprisingly well over the past decade, despite slow GDP growth. Meanwhile, civilian govt spending on R&D has slowed more or less in tandem with the overall economy. Government spending on structures–including physical infrastructure–has simply collapsed

So if policymakers are worried about short-term thinking holding back US growth, they might find it easier and faster to boost government spending on R&D and infrastructure, rather than crafting complex policies to affect private sector decision making.

*Data from OMB shows that nondefense federal outlays for R&D rose by 3.5% from FY2005 to FY 2015.

USA TODAY: Trump, Clinton double-team charters: Column

Posted on August 9, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

By David Osborne and Richard Whitmire

The list of failed school reforms launched since 1983’s A Nation at Risk is embarrassingly long. Worse yet, these sputtering reforms appear to be stacking up at a faster rate: Common Core, evaluating teachers partly on student test scores, luring top teachers into low-performing schools.

Nothing seems to work out, with one very big exception: Districts that fold high-performing charter schools directly into the mix of schools offered to parents.

Denver is probably the best example of a traditional school district taking that path, called a portfolio strategy. In many other cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Washington and New York, charter schools that are independent of districts — but in some cases experimenting with district collaborations — offer the best opportunities for kids growing up in poverty.

In Denver, business groups, foundations and community organizations were all fed up with the traditional district’s failures. When the board hired a new superintendent in 2005 — today’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet — he quickly realized they were right. His decision to embrace charters had support from both sides of the aisle.

Back then, Denver had the lowest rates of academic growth of Colorado’s medium and large districts. Since 2012, it has had the highest. By fall 2014, the percentage of students scoring at or above grade level in reading, writing and math had increased 15 percentage points (from 33% to 48%), far faster than the state average. On a new state test last year, Denver took a huge leap, its middle schools surpassing the state average. Charters are among the biggest reasons.

Now, just when other cities should be greenlighting similar reforms, Denver-style innovations could be at risk.

Continue reading at USA TODAY.

Productivity growth craters in iron and steel mill industry

Posted on August 8, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yes, the productivity slump has hit the iron and steel mill industry as well.

Robert Samuelson wrote a long piece in the WaPo about productivity growth in the steel industry, arguing that “…[p]roductivity (a.k.a., efficiency) has increased dramatically.” His main source was a very careful academic study by Allan Collard-Wexler of Duke University and Jan De Loecker of Princeton University.

However, that study only used data up to 2002. Since then, multifactor productivity growth in the iron and steel mill industry has cratered, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (‘multifactor productivity’ growth, also called ‘total factor productivity’ growth, adjusts for use of capital, materials, energy, and purchased services. )

The chart below shows the growth rate of multifactor productivity was 2 percent annually in the 10 years ending in 1999. Then it slumped sharply. In the 10 years ending 2007–before the financial crisis–the average annual multifactor productivity gain was an excruciatingly slow 0.6%. That’s about where it is today.

Now, iron and steel mills are only a part of the steel industry. What’s happened to productivity growth in the primary metal industry, which also includes companies that buy steel and make it into steel products, foundries, and makers of non-ferrous metals such as aluminum and copper?

Nothing good, I’m afraid. In the 20 years between 1994 and 2014, multifactor productivity in the primary metal industry rose by only 1.7% in total. That averages out to an annual rate of less than 0.1%. In other words, any productivity gains in iron and steel mills since 1994 were swallowed up in the rest of the primary metal industry.

This is actually the central puzzle that economists have to unravel. Why has multifactor productivity growth been so slow across much of manufacturing over the past 20 years? (see the data here). Without significant productivity growth, it’s tough to produce rising wages or to compete against low-cost countries.

PPI School Reform Newsblast: 25th Anniversary of the First Charter School

Posted on August 8, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

We are delighted to send you this inaugural issue of the School Reform Newsblast, a new information service launched by Reinventing America’s Schools. It aggregates important news about developments in school innovation and reform across the country. The Newsblast is going to a select audience of school reform leaders and activists in government, business, and the civic sector, and we hope you find it useful.

Reinventing America’s Schools is a project of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a longtime advocate for improving and modernizing the nation’s elementary and secondary public schools. The project’s director is David Osborne, the co-author of Reinventing Government, a best seller that had a profound impact on President Bill Clinton’s efforts to make government less bureaucratic and more performance-oriented. David is working on a new book that will show how cities across America are developing a new model for organizing and governing public education.

In addition to keeping you abreast of developments on the K-12 reform front, the Newsblast from time to time will update you on the project’s work, and solicit your comments and ideas. To highlight developments in your community, please email us at ReinventingEd@www.progressivepolicy.org. Ultimately, we hope to forge a nationwide network of influential people like yourself and encourage you to weigh in with political leaders when critical decisions about K-12 reform are made.

With the 25th anniversary of the first charter school bill in June, conversations about the 21st century model of school governance were big in the press. Hot button issues included the false binary of school choice and democratic control, the future of charter schools, school accountability, and much more. In articles written in the past month, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno, Brandon Wright, and Matt Barnum discussed the successes of charter schools and THE importance of accountability. In other pieces, Andy Smarick, Peter Cunningham, Danielle Dreilinger, and Chris Gabrieli explored the debate over the best model of school governance. With the 25th anniversary of charters and the presidential conventions coinciding this past month, we were provided important material to consider as we promote 21st century school governance across the nation.

School choice or democratic control? Andy Smarick addresses the false binary and offers an option that blends the two together. As communities struggle with the politics of education, Smarick thinks about how to bridge ideological divides for the benefit of families.
As the charter school movement hit its 25th anniversary, Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Brandon Wright reflect on the successes of charter schools and areas where charter schools have fallen short. The authors conclude that there is still a lot of untapped potential in the charter school movement.
Democrats are at risk of compromising their past educational positions in support of charters and public school choice, which benefitted minority and poor children. This article pushes the Democratic party to take a closer look at its new stances on a number of issues, including school accountability, school closures, school choice, standardized testing, and more.
All eyes are on Orleans Parish School Board as New Orleans’ public schools return from state to local oversight. New Orleans has proven to be the nation’s greatest success story in implementing the 21st century model of education. These new developments will have locally elected officials oversee the nation’s fastest improving school system.
WATCH: In this video, recorded at Empower Schools’ “Third Way” conference, Chris Gabrieli discusses a Third Way of school governance, one in between the traditional district model and the newer charter-only portfolio model. This Third Way, which promotes autonomy and district-charter collaboration, is intriguing but has yet to yield clear results.
As a bonus, we have a video of David Osborne’s panel from that conference.

The ‘Wedge’ Shrinks as Productivity Growth Collapses

Posted on August 2, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The ‘wedge’ between productivity growth and average real compensation growth has shrunk to the lowest level in at least fifteen years.* That’s because productivity growth is slowing, not because real compensation growth is accelerating significantly.

The top line is the ten-year growth rate of nonfarm business productivity, based on data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bottom line is the ten-year growth rate of real labor compensation. The vertical lines represent the’wedge’–the difference between productivity growth and compensation growth.

What we see is that the wedge is 0.6 percentage points, the smallest difference between productivity growth and compensation growth in at least 15 years. To put it a different way, the slowdown of real compensation growth is very closely tied to the collapse of productivity growth.

This data does not mean there is no inequality problem. Because these figures report average compensation growth, they do not reflect increased inequality between workers, or the difference between median and average workers. However, they do imply that the problems facing American workers today have at least as much to do with weak productivity growth as with rising inequality.

We see the exact same pattern in the manufacturing data, only more so. The growth rate of manufacturing productivity peaked in the mid-2000s, along with the growth of real compensation in manufacturing. Since then, productivity growth has collapsed by 2.4 percentage points, while real compensation growth has dropped by 1.5%. So even within the goods-producing sector, the extreme weakness in compensation growth is driven by the decline in productivity growth.

If we look at the 10-year growth rate of multifactor productivity, the importance of slowing productivity growth becomes even more vivid. Multifactor productivity growth in some sense represents the “innovation” component of growth. It measures the ‘vibrancy’ of an economy–the ability to get out more than we put in by being smarter.

We see that multifactor productivity growth has collapsed to only 0.4% annually, well below the 0.7% growth in the 10 years before 1997. Indeed, as a recent blog item showed, many manufacturing industries have negative multifactor productivity growth since 1994. When the pie is shrinking, it can’t be cut in a way to make everyone happy.

Addressing the inequality problem is important. But Americans can’t prosper unless we fix the productivity problem as well.

*This discussion abstracts from a very wide range of substantive and technical issues, including: the difference between median and average workers; the correct measure of compensation; the best deflator to use, etc. A good review of some of these issues can be found here, though I disagree with some of the conclusions. In addition, I believe that productivity growth figures should be treated with some wariness, given the inability of statisticians to do a good job tracking global supply chains in goods, services, and data. Having said all that, there is little doubt that productivity growth has slumped sharply, not just in the US but across the developed world.

NY Daily News: A counterproductive new trade consensus: Democrats need to get responsible on the TPP and other economic pacts

Posted on August 1, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

After the Republican fear-fest in Cleveland, watching the Democrats in Philadelphia last week was like stepping out of the Dark Ages into the Enlightenment. Donald Trump may have no use for facts, civility or rational argument, but these things still seem to matter to Democrats.

There was, however, a big exception to the rule: trade. Riding a wave of populist wrath, Democrats demonized President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a gift to the 1% and mortal threat to U.S. workers. It’s a bogus claim, and one that has them sounding a lot like, well, Trump.

TPP is a linchpin of Obama’s strategic goal of “rebalancing” U.S. power and diplomacy. It would combine the U.S. and 11 Pacific nations in a vast free-trade zone that would act as a counterweight to China’s enormous economic might. If the pact goes down, so will our influence in the region, leaving Beijing to call the shots.

Continue reading at New York Daily News.

Why America Needs A Competitiveness Audit

Posted on July 28, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The division between the trade skeptics and the trade supporters in the Democratic Party is on stark display at this week’s convention in Philadelphia. The Progressive Policy Institute favors smart, high-standard trade agreements, as PPI president Will Marshall and senior fellow Ed Gerwin recently wrote.

Yet both trade skeptics and supporters can agree on one critical point: The government must do more, much more, to provide American manufacturers, especially small ones, with the tools they need to compete successfully against foreign rivals on global and domestic markets. If American manufacturers can compete more successfully, that will lead to more jobs for Americans.

A good first step: The International Trade Commission, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Department of Commerce should jointly lead a government-wide project to do a “competitiveness audit“ of the U.S. economy, as PPI wrote in a previous policy brief, “How a Competitiveness Audit Can Create Jobs”. This competitiveness audit would compare the price of a wide variety of US-made products with the price of similar imported products, based on functionality and quality. The audit would cover the full range of manufacturing industries, from communications equipment to furniture to chemicals to machinery. So, for example, the audit would compare the producer price of a piece of household furniture produced in the United States versus the import price of a similar piece produced in China.

The competitiveness audit is likely to show a big gap between US-made and import prices for some products. But other products are likely to have a small and perhaps shrinking gap, making them prime targets for expansion of US production.

Armed with this information, American manufacturers will be able to target markets where the United States has a competitive advantage. Small companies, especially, will benefit from information produced by the competitiveness audit, since they don’t have access to the global networks that their bigger counterparts do.

The competitiveness audit can also stimulate the formation of new manufacturing businesses by pointing out market opportunities to potential entrepreneurs. People who want to start a new manufacturing business in Ohio, say, will be able to use the competitiveness audit to attract funding.

In addition, mayors and other local officials would be able to use the results of the national competitiveness audit to help direct their economic development efforts. Right now, they are simply shooting blind, without adequate information about where the US has a competitive edge.

Surprisingly, the government currently does not collect or publish data comparing prices of domestic and imported products. That’s an egregious hole. Filling that hole would not only help manufacturers, but would also help economists resolve some big issues about the impact of trade on the economy.

No matter where you fall on the trade question, a competitiveness audit makes sense: If we want to see a revival of manufacturing employment, we have to provide small manufacturers and local officials with the information they need to make good decisions.

Reference

Michael Mandel and Diana Carew , “How a Competitiveness Audit Can Help Create Jobs,” Progressive Policy Institute, November 2011. https://progressivefix.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/11.2011-Mandel-Carew_How-A-Competitiveness-Audit-Can-Help-Create-Jobs.pdf

A Response to the National Education Policy Center

Posted on July 28, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

When I saw that the University of Colorado-Boulder’s National Education Policy Center had published an 11-page review of my recent Progressive Policy Institute report, A 21^st Century School System in the Mile High City, I was flattered. Then I read Professor Terrenda White’s work and was flabbergasted.

Professor White contends that “the only data presented are in the form of simple charts.” Later: “The reader is led to conclude the efficacy of all manner of reforms based on eyeballing what is basically a scatterplot.”

This is probably the oddest criticism I have ever seen, because it is so obviously false. Here is a short list of the data presented in the report:

The percentage of students in Denver and Colorado scoring proficient or advanced on state standardized tests, 2009-2014, overall and broken down by race.
The percentile ranking of Denver schools vs. all Colorado schools on state standardized tests, 2013-2015, based on the percentage of students scoring proficient or above.
Dropout rates and graduation rates from 2005-06 to 2014-15.
Denver ACT scores vs. the state and nation, 2007-15.
Increases in the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses.
College enrollment rates in Denver and Colorado.
The percentage of college enrollees from Denver Public Schools (DPS) required to take remedial classes, 2010-2013.
The achievement gap between low-income and non-low-income students and between white and African American and Latino students.
A 2014 study by Alexander Ooms, published by the Donnell-Kay Foundation, presenting school performance data through 2013, which concluded that the district’s “success in creating quality schools—as well as serving low-income students within those schools—resides overwhelmingly with charters.”
My analysis of 2014 school performance scores, which revealed little change in Ooms’ conclusions.
A study of test scores from 2010 through 2014, by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University, which found that Denver’s charters produced “remarkably large gains in math,” large gains in writing, and smaller but statistically significant gains in reading, compared to DPS operated schools.

Odder still, Professor White acknowledges the MIT-Duke study on p. 5, which of course contradicts her repeated statements that the report’s only data is in the scatterplots. (These compared charter, traditional, and innovation schools in Denver based on two factors: percentage of low-income students and standardized test scores in 2015. They showed that charters generally outperformed DPS-operated schools with students of similar income levels at the middle- and high-school level but not in elementary schools.)

Then there’s her criticism of my recommendation that DPS open more charters: “Replication of charter schools that use a narrow set of practices, moreover, suggests limited options for parents seeking diverse curricular and pedagogical choices.” Did Professor White miss my recommendation that DPS “begin to recruit outstanding charter networks from outside Colorado”? Or does she think that all charter schools “use a narrow set of practices”?

One of Professor White’s central criticisms was that “causality cannot be determined, and the report did not attempt to isolate the effect of a multitude of reforms—including charters, performance pay, and a new performance framework—from larger complex forces shaping student demographics in the city.”

First, it is impossible to isolate the exact impact of specific initiatives, given how many reforms Denver has implemented over the last decade. But the report does compare the impact of charter and DPS-operated schools, using multiple sources of data (as indicated above). It also makes demographic comparisons between charter and traditional schools: by 2014-15, “charters served 3 percentage points more low-income students (those who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches) and 10 percentage points more English language learners.” Then it introduces the scatterplots to provide more fine-grained demographic comparisons.

In a related point, White writes, “The report does not address whether the expansion of charter schools has exacerbated racial segregation, but this is a vital question in light of trends in other cities.” Her footnote cites a study done on New York State, which has absolutely no bearing on Denver. The city has seen a decrease in integration since the courts ended mandatory busing in 1995, but not because of charters. Indeed, the largest charter network works hard to make sure its schools are well integrated by race and income, reserving 40 percent or more of the seats for low-income students. Alexander Ooms took a look at racial and economic segregation in 2012 and found that the district’s own selective schools were the biggest offenders. His conclusion: “So is there a type of school within DPS that is systematically contributing to segregation within our public school system? You bet. But they are not charter schools, and they are not a secret. They are selective admissions schools—including many of the most popular programs in the district—and they are hiding in plain sight.”

Finally, Professor White asserts that I downplayed “the role of outside forces and moneyed groups that influenced the nature of reforms.” Did she read this sentence? “In 2013, Democrats for Education Reform and its allies raised significant money and recruited as candidates a former lieutenant governor, another former city council president, and a former chairman of Denver’s Democratic Party.” How about this one? “The reformers won in part because they had more money and in part because their approach has yielded results.”

She also criticizes me for downplaying “the vulnerability of current reforms to future protests due to embittered stakeholders and local actors concerned about the influence of outside interest groups….” But her footnote cites only one source, a blog by an embittered former board member who hates the superintendent and current board, criticizes everything they do, and has little credibility. As the report notes, reformers won a 6-1 majority in 2013 and a 7-0 majority in 2015. There is opposition, but it is poorly organized and has been wildly unsuccessful in recent years.

Sadly, Professor White did not write a scholarly review, she wrote anti-charter propaganda—something we see all too frequently these days. It’s no surprise that the NEPC is funded in part by the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association.

Rather than publishing distortions aimed at discrediting charter schools, I would invite NEPC scholars to do some research to better understand just what is driving improvement in Denver’s public schools. Why, for instance, are all 12 of the secondary schools with the highest academic growth rates charters? There is surely some fascinating “causality” to be unearthed there!

The Daily Beast: The Coming GOP Clown Show in Cleveland Has Responsible Republicans Running the Other Way

Posted on July 18, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

When Republicans nominate Donald J. Trump for president in Cleveland next week, it will mark the nadir of their party’s 164-year existence. To go from Lincoln to Trump is to descend from the sublime to the ridiculous.

As a progressive, I should be delighted because a Trump-led GOP should portend sweeping Democratic gains this fall. But as a citizen, I’m sickened by what Trump’s rise says about America’s democratic malaise.

Think about it. The party that saved the Union is about to hand its nomination to a vacuous and bigoted blowhard who isn’t remotely qualified to be President of the United States. He’s never been elected so much as dog catcher and gives no signs of having thought deeply about any public question. He is incapable of articulating reasoned arguments or engaging in public debate without slurring his opponents and belittling those who disagree with him.

Trump’s “ideas” are a toxic cocktail of some of the most discredited and retrograde tendencies in U.S politics—1920s-vintage nativism, Smoot-Hawley style protectionism and America First isolationism. Rather than appealing to the better angels of our nature, Trump aggravates the pathologies that are tearing our society apart—a belligerent dogmatism that is deaf to persuasion and prone to violence; a tribal politics that puts ethnic or religious identity above our common rights and duties as citizens, and a disdain for facts and evidence that don’t support one’s preferred political “narrative.”

Continue reading at The Daily Beast.

Marshall for The Hill: How Welfare Vanished as a Political Issue

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