While the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet in our rear-view mirror, the worst seems to be behind us. It’s not too soon to examine the U.S. policy response to this unprecedented public health emergency — both its successes and failures — so that our country will be better prepared to face similar challenges in the future. The U.S. is closing in on one million COVID-19 deaths since February 2020. COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.
When looking at deaths per capita, the U.S. is on par with Poland and Armenia rather than its fellow economic powerhouses like Germany and the United Kingdom, and far behind countries like Australia that took aggressive COVID-19
mitigation measures. Compared to 29 other high-income countries, the U.S. experienced the largest decline in life expectancy. Here, it fell by two years — the largest decline since the data was first collected in 1933.
In response, federal lawmakers have proposed creating an independent task force to review the U.S. response to “fully recognize the lessons of this pandemic,” according to bill sponsor Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.). This paper seeks to contribute to this important inquiry by assessing how the United States responded to the pandemic, examining both our failures and our successes. One note of caution: As essential as this retrospective examination is, it is equally important to underscore that the next pandemic may take a very different form. Instead of planning to win the last war, our national authorities should invest in overall preparedness and resilience against crises we can’t predict.
President Joe Biden rightfully focused the economic portion of his State of the Union address on jobs, inflation, and the need to boost investment at home. He rightfully claimed credit for more than 6 million jobs generated on his watch, and the steps his Administration is taking to cut costs for Americans.
But inexplicably, Biden did not cite some real economic success stories. On the job front, the most consistent job creator since the pandemic started has been the digital sector, with employment in the tech, broadband and ecommerce industries up by 1 million jobs since January 2020.
And even as prices for traditional goods like energy and autos have skyrocketed, digital economy inflation has remained almost non-existent. Two examples: the price of internet access services fell 1.3% in the year ending January 2022, according to the latest producer price report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released February 15. And the price of data processing fell by 0.3% over the same stretch.
Meanwhile the overall consumer price index rose by 7.5% over the same stretch. The producer price index for final demand rose by 9.7%.
This lack of inflation in the tech, broadband and ecommerce worlds is a stunning phenomenon that deserves a lot more attention from the White House, which is debating internally whether to blame rising prices on corporate greed. Why are these digital companies holding the line on inflation — at least so far — when old-line industries are bingeing on double-digit price increases? After all, consumers can spend their dollars on digital goods and services just as easily as traditional goods, especially during the era of Covid-19.
If you get irate over income or property taxes, don’t look down at your feet. You’ll feel worse if you do, because the costs that go into many Americans’ shoes contain the country’s most unfair taxes.
The American tariff system rarely draws attention. The Trump-era tariffs on metals and Chinese goods were unusual. They were hotly debated, drew foreign retaliation, and raised prices on many consumer goods and industrial inputs.
Those who investigate the permanent tariff system find a few predictable things: Tariffs are an inefficient form of tax that enable price increases without increasing supply or affecting demand, and they are a relatively small revenue source for the U.S. at about $85 billion in 2021. But they also find something both startling and grating: Tariffs are easily the most regressive of all U.S. taxes, forcing the poor to pay more than anyone else.
This is because permanent U.S. tariffs mostly tax a few basic household goods. Clothes, shoes, silverware, dinner plates and drinking glasses account for about 6% of imports, but (excluding the Trump tariffs) raise about half of all tariff revenue. This is because tariff rates on these products, which have hardly changed since the 1960s, average about 11%—compared with the 0.7% average for other goods.
Today, theProgressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project released a new report with a dire message to the Biden Administration and parents across the country: If the Department of Education’s proposed regulations on charter schools are adopted as drafted , it will be difficult — if not impossible — for charter schools to qualify for federal start-up grants under the Department’s Charter School Program (“CSP”). As a result, thousands of children and families will be denied high-quality, innovative education options. The report, “A Bureaucratic Plan to Disempower Parents,” is authored by Will Marshall, President of PPI, and Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project.
“The proposed rules, if adopted, will inevitably stall the growth of charter and other autonomous, innovative public schools desired by communities with urgent academic needs,” write Marshall and Pankovits. “We urge the White House to intervene to stop the Department of Education’s bureaucratic attack on the federal CSP and, by extension, on parents who wish to choose the public schools that best fit their children’s needs. This is not the time for progressives to defend the educational status quo and turn their back on Black and Hispanic and low-income parents who have long been shortchanged by our legacy school system. Instead, President Biden and the Democrats should pick up where Presidents Clinton and Obama left off, by championing public school innovation and modernization,” they continue.
The CSP is a hallmark of the Clinton Administration. It has been supported by every administration since, with the Obama Administration greatly expanding its innovation school improvement goals. Created in 1994, the CSP provides federal funding to state education agencies (SE) and nonprofit education organizations to encourage the development and continuous refinement of new models for public schools. CSP start-up grants have been a critical catalyst of America’s public school choice movement. More than half of today’s charter schools have received a grant. This has made high-quality public schools available to millions of low-income and minority families whose children are too often consigned to low-performing schools. Nationwide, charter schools are in high demand, often with long waiting lists. Public charter school enrollment increased by nearly a quarter of a million students during the pandemic.
The Reinventing America’s Schools Project inspires a 21st century model of public education geared to the knowledge economy. Two models, public charter schools and public innovation schools, are showing the way by providing autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among schools tailored to the diverse learning styles of children. The project is co-led by Curtis Valentine and Tressa Pankovits.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The Executive Branch of the United States government has scores of departments and agencies employing about 1.8 million civilians. Given its sprawling size, it’s not surprising that the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing.
Let’s hope that’s the case with an arcane set of rules newly proposed by U.S. Department of Education (ED). Unless the White House intervenes to block or fix them, the rules would make it harder for parents to choose high-quality public schools for their children. They would also undermine the progressive school reforms championed by the previous two Democratic presidents.
The target of this bureaucratic sabotage is one of President Bill Clinton’s signature policy innovations, the Federal Charter School Program (CSP). Created in 1994, the CSP provides federal funding to state education agencies (SE) and nonprofit education organizations to encourage the development and continuous refinement of new models for public schools. CSP start-up grants have been a critical catalyst of America’s public school choice movement, which has made high-quality public schools available to millions of low-income and minority families whose children are too often consigned to low-performing schools.
The next Democratic president, Barack Obama, continued and built creatively upon Clinton’s modernizing reforms. His $4 billion “Race to the Top” initiative spurred a competition among states to devise plans for adopting higher standards, improving teacher quality, collecting performance data to help schools and parents measure their students’ progress, and turning around failing schools.
During his 2020 campaign, however, President Biden stepped back from his predecessors’ commitment to providing national encouragement to state and local efforts to reinvent K-12 education. He called for eliminating federal funding for charter schools that contract with for-profit external management organizations (EMO). Only 9.1% of the nation’s roughly 7,500 charter schools are run by for-profit companies; the remaining 90% are stand-alone self-operating schools or are run by non-profit groups.
ED’s proposed rules would indeed make it difficult – if not impossible – for schools administered entirely or “substantially” by for-profit companies to get federal start-up grants under CSP. But they go further, imposing onerous and unreasonable requirements on all non-profit charter school models as well. So unprecedented are the proposed changes that if they had been enacted earlier, some public charter schools ED named “blue ribbon schools” – the nation’s best – would have been excluded from its grant competition. Minneapolis’ Friendship Academy of the Arts, which is 98% minority, is an example of a public charter school that would fail to meet the expectation of the new diversity language in ED’s proposed regulation.
The timing of the proposed rule changes is also odd. They will likely delay Fiscal Year 2022 CSP awards, as the annual competition is already behind schedule. What’s more, ED published the proposed rules on March 14, 2022 and has set an April 13, 2022 deadline for public comments – a very brief window considering what’s at stake for millions of U.S. families whose children attend schools of choice.
From a political perspective, the timing of these proposals also couldn’t be worse.[7] Many parents in the U.S. are dissatisfied with the way their children’s public schools have performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are frustrated by lengthy shutdowns[9] and learning losses, by political wrangling over vaccines and mask mandates, and by unresponsive central school bureaucracies and teachers’ unions that didn’t seem responsive to their concerns.
During the pandemic, enrollment in traditional public district schools has fallen. But enrollment in public charter schools has risen, a sign that parents want the power to choose among a wider array of quality school options.
Amid mounting public pressure for systemic change in K-12 schools, defending the educational status quo hardly seems like a progressive response. Worse, ED’s proposed rules would roll back previous Administrations’ progress toward modernizing a legacy school system created more than a century ago to serve the needs of a then-rapidly industrializing nation.
Thanks to pioneering efforts by state and local school reformers – mostly Democrats – a new model for 21st Century schools is emerging. It is built upon four pillars: expanding parental choice, shifting decision-making power from central bureaucracies to autonomous school leaders, delivering more personalized learning to students rather than one-size-fits-all instruction, and real consequences for failing to lift all students’ performance.
So far, the main beneficiaries of this new model are parents of color in low-income communities who can’t pick up and move to the suburbs if their local district schools don’t make the grade. In cities such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Denver, Indianapolis, New York and Newark, public charter schools, innovation schools, partnership schools and other non-traditional schools have produced dramatic gains in student learning in impoverished communities. As a matter of civil rights and social justice, the Biden Administration should stand with low-income and minority parents who are demanding an end to second-class schools for their children. Instead, ED’s proposed rules seem designed to protect the interests of adults employed in local school districts at the expense of the children and their parents.
ED’S PROPOSED RULES
ED’s new rules– “Proposed Priorities, Requirements, Definitions, and Selection Criteria Expanding Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Program (CSP)-Grants” — would make it more difficult for charter school start-ups to get federal support. For nearly three decades those funds have served a critical need. Public charter schools, unlike traditional schools, do not have taxing authority to issue bonds to establish or increase the number of local school seats. Federal grants under CSP average about $500,000. At least half of today’s charter schools have received one.
The rules impose a raft of new requirements on applicants for federal grants to state education agencies, charter school management organizations, and grants to groups seeking to organize new charter schools. The rationale for the changes, according to ED, are as follows:
To eliminate federal support for for-profit management contracts, which ED contends is necessary to ensure fiscal transparency and accountability.
To encourage independent public charter schools to enter into new “partnerships” with central school districts.
To ensure charter schools are racially and socioeconomically diverse.
To require charter applicants to submit “community impact” analyses.
ENDING GRANTS FOR-PROFIT MANAGEMENT SERVICES
Charter school opponents invariably cast a nefarious light on schools that seek to increase their capacities by obtaining academic, financial, human, facility and organizational resources from for-profit specialists in those fields. However, creating and sustaining a successful charter school is a complex undertaking, requiring skills, knowledge and capacities in many different areas. As such, private companies can provide small charter schools with economies of scale in managing payroll, back office, and other services.
Because they are public schools, all charters are free, publicly funded and subject to financial oversight from authorizing boards that are answerable to public authorities. The quality of that oversight varies from state-to-state depending on the competence and diligence of the authorizing boards states have empowered by statute. When financial abuses or malfeasance occurs, it is the board’s responsibility to take action.
Such problems are by no means confined to for-profit charters or those that contract with for-profit companies for some, or all, of their administrative functions. It’s not hard to find examples of nonprofit charters that have gone under or have been shut down as a result of financial mismanagement or misuse of public funds. In fact, without proper oversight, even traditional public schools can be felled by corruption.
No surprise, then, that rogue for-profit actors prey on weak authorizers, seeking to take over failing schools and keep them limping along while they collect public funds. But rigorous local oversight is the best answer to financial mismanagement or profiteering. A strong authorizer, such as Washington D.C.’s Public Charter School Board, moves quickly to close schools that mismanage public funds. It also can and has refused to grant charters to private companies with bad financial and academic track records.
And, there are signs that other places are taking concrete steps to reign in wrong doers. In Utah, the State Charter School Board (SCSB), which is responsible for the compliance of 91% of the charter schools in Utah, has issued a record number of “letters of concern” and warnings to administrators this year, letting them know they are being closely watched and that expectations have increased. The state is responding to the high profile scandal that led to the closure of the American International School in June of 2019. The director of the SCSB, Jennifer Lambert says, “It’s not that it isn’t that charter schools are suddenly performing poorly… it’s that the board is being more proactive to help keep these schools in line with rules and regulations.”
Nonetheless, the Biden Administration evidently believes the federal government should deny start-up grants to schools even “substantially” run by private companies. The Administration’s purported main target is charter management organizations with “sweeps” contracts, which are arrangements in which the management company completely runs the school and also receives most of the school revenue. These have the greatest potential for abuse, because the entire school can collapse if the management company runs afoul of rules and regulations.
Even so, we’re skeptical of ED’s argument for usurping the function of local authorizing boards and empowering a remote federal agency to act, in effect, as a “second authorizer” for charter schools. A better solution would be to invest more in raising the quality and rigor of charter authorizing boards.
Our skepticism extends to ED’s failure to define “substantially” for future applicants. Many public charter schools, just like their district counterparts, contract out some administrative and operational responsibilities to private companies, while others purchase a variety of goods and services — transportation, technical supports, cafeteria services, professional development, facility maintenance, and so on — from for-profit businesses. Without a well-defined federal standard, it is difficult for CSP applicants to understand where ED will draw the “substantially” line. Leaving that definition to state education agencies is likely to create an uneven and confusing welter of rules for those seeking to open charter schools.
REGULATORY OVERREACH
Our main concern, however, is for the 90% of public charter schools operated by nonprofit boards and CMOs. ED’s proposed rules would subject them to unprecedented federal micromanagement.
State law and local policy – not federal regulations – have always determined the conditions under which America’s public schools open and operate. At present, ED awards CSP grants to nonprofit developers with a charter approved by a state sanctioned charter authorizer, and to departments of education (SE) that then disburse funds to sub-grantees seeking to open or expand local charter schools in accordance with varying state laws.
ED’s proposed regulations, however, would in effect override the authority of state laws. They would force SE grantees to require charter school applicants to comply with new, non-statutory federal rules in order to qualify for start-up grants. This in effect would make the federal agency a national school board supervening the decisions of charter school authorizers.
A host of new ED mandates will doubtless balloon CSP grant applications to thousands of pages. The department conservatively estimates that the new requirements will add a minimum of 60 additional hours to complete, over the current application requirements. It further estimates the total estimated burden created by the proposed regulations would be 21,900 annual hours at a cost of $2.1 million per year. While large CMOs experienced with CSP applications might absorb the additional burden of time and money, the new regulations would likely mean prohibitively high transaction and compliance costs for the vast majority of charter schools that are organized and run by small groups of educators and parents, many in low-income communities.
MANDATING “PARTNERSHIPS” WITH DISTRICTS
In addition to public charter schools, which are autonomous and free of central district control, some states and cities have created semi-autonomous schools of choice variously called innovation schools, renaissance schools, iZone schools, 1882 schools, and other names. Like charters, they compete for students with traditional district schools.
As the Progressive Policy Institute has documented, the competition gives parents a wider choice of public schools for their kids, while also putting pressure on traditional district schools to improve their performance.
A key to the superior performance of these schools of choice is their ability to make key decisions on-site and operate nimbly, because they aren’t constrained by the central school district’s top-down rules and restrictive union contracts.
Another key to such autonomous or semiautonomous schools’ success is that they are voluntary partnerships, meaning that there is “buy in” from both partners – the district and the school operator. The voluntary nature of the relationship ensures they equally commit to ensuring the arrangement produces good outcomes for students.
However, ED would now mandate that all charter schools partner with local districts if grant applicants want to receive “priority points” for funding in federal CSP competitions. But the “partnership” ED envisions evidently is strictly one-way, since it imposes no such obligation on school boards and district leaders. But the “partnership” ED envisions evidently is strictly one-way, since it imposes no such obligation on school boards and district leaders.
Down on the ground, many school districts resent competition from charters, which they see as luring away “their” students. Compelling charters to partner with often hostile school districts or risking losing access to federal funding would compromise the independence and autonomy that makes them work. This is a longtime goal of the change-averse K-12 establishment and teachers unions, but it has nothing to do with the CSP’s mission: increasing the number of high-quality public schools available to low-income and minority families whose children are too often “zoned” into low-performing neighborhood schools.
AN IMPOSSIBLE “DIVERSITY” MANDATE
Similarly disingenuous is ED’s proposed requirement that charter and independent public schools meet a uniform standard for “diversity” that doesn’t take into account America’s demographic and geographic realities.
PPI wholeheartedly believes that children of different races, creeds, cultures and socio-economic background should learn together. In practice, because schools of choice have made their deepest inroads in America’s major urban centers, they often serve disproportionately low-income and minority students.
All CSP applicants already have to demonstrate to ED how they will maintain racially diverse student and staff populations. The department’s current practice “prioritizes” (awards extra points) to grant competitors who use school models that are diverse-by-design. The proposed rules essentially change ED’s “priority” to a top-down “mandate.”
This has enormous potential to harm urban students and indigenous populations. Notwithstanding vigorous enforcement of federal civil rights laws over the past 60 years, too many urban school districts have continuously failed low-income, African American, and Hispanic families. Charter schools are helping to change that baleful tradition, and it isn’t fair to put the burden of reversing centuries of residential segregation entirely on them. Should their students be punished because charters operate in communities that don’t have enough white students or because their schools don’t have enough white teachers? Our answer is a resounding “No.”
A TENDENTIOUS “COMMUNITY IMPACT” STANDARD
Perhaps the most egregious of the ED proposals is one that would give federal grant reviewers the power to override state and local decisions to authorize schools in the name of “community impact.” This vague standard is transparently intended to protect school districts from losing students and public dollars when parents choose to enroll their children in charter schools. It apparently rests on the spurious assumption that charters create too much school capacity in communities where district schools have enough seats for all children that live there. Omitted from this zero-sum logic is any consideration of the quality of district schools.
Under the new rule, charter applicants would have to demonstrate “sufficient demand” for new school seats, rather than simply letting parents choose between charter and district schools. Specifically, an applicant must “show evidence that the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated or expanded. . . must not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community.”
Charter schools were never conceived to be temporary classroom trailers waiting to catch traditional schools’ overflow population.
Nor do parents typically choose public charters for their children because of overcrowding. Parents choose them because they believe they are a better fit for their children, offer higher quality instruction and outcomes, are safer, or are more culturally affirming.
ED’s criteria for this proposed regulation center make it clear that its chief concern is not a quality education for all students, but the fiscal health of traditional school districts, and preserving their monopoly on public schools to protect their staffing models. At a time when enrollment in traditional district schools is falling, this regulation aims at stopping the growth of charter school enrollment. With long charter school waiting lists — around 50,000 children in New York City alone, for example — this is no time for the U.S. government to be turning its back on America’s neediest families.
CONCLUSION
What is most striking about ED’s proposed rules is their evident unconcern for making our public schools better, and for making sure all students have equal access to good schools. Parents frustrated by their interactions with their schools during the pandemic also are demanding a more transparent, accountable and responsive public education system. ED’s push to load scores of new regulations and mandates onto CSP applicants points is fundamentally out of touch with the public’s growing interest in systemic change.
The proposed rules, if adopted, inevitably will stall the growth of charter and other kinds of innovative public schools springing up in communities where they are urgently needed. We urge the White House to intervene to stop ED’s bureaucratic attack on the federal CSP and, by extension, on parents who want to be able to choose the public schools that best fit their children’s needs.
This is not the time for progressives to defend the educational status quo and turn their back on Black and Hispanic and low-income parents who have long been shortchanged by our legacy school system.
Instead, President Biden and the Democrats should pick up where Presidents Clinton and Obama left off, by championing public school innovation and modernization.
While we’re generally big fans of the Biden Administration, Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has made a big misstep by sending a letter endorsing proposed tech antitrust legislation in the House and Senate.
Four key reasons:
First, these bills are not ready for prime time. They need more interagency review, beyond the opinion of the DOJ’s acting assistant attorney general for legislative affairs. In particular, there are major cybersecurity concerns, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the rest of the Department of Homeland Security needs to weigh in.
Second, the Senate should have the chance to act first. The DOJ shouldn’t be encouraging the House to vote on a bill that has no chance of passing the Senate.
Third, these bills would make inflation worse at just the wrong time. At a time when Americans are oppressed by soaring prices, inflation in the digital sector is running at only a 1% pace. Forced break-ups will eliminate economies of scale and almost inevitably drive up prices.
Fourth, the digital sector, led by the big tech companies, is outperforming the rest of the economy on just about every dimension that consumers and workers care about.
The tech/ecommerce sector has added 1 million jobs since the pandemic started, while the rest of the economy has lost 3 million jobs. Many of these new jobs are in political swing states.
Biden identified the need for more investment in his State of the Union Speech. Many old-line companies—in particular, energy and auto companies– cut back on capital spending during 2020 and 2021, while enterprises in the tech, telecom and ecommerce sectors kept investing at the same or higher rates.
The big tech companies are helping boost American competitiveness by spending on research in key areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Given all the real problems in the economy, PPI believes that it is remarkably counterproductive to go after the companies that are benefiting consumers and workers.
By country count, the African Continental Free Trade Area (launched 2021) is the world’s largest FTA.
THE NUMBERS:
African exports*, 2021 –
To world: $500 billion
To Asia: $158 billion
To western Europe: $160 billion
Intra-African: $88 billion
To U.S. & Canada $30 billion
* International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Statistics 2021
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Reflecting on the maritime past of East Africa and the Indian Ocean littoral in his Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean (2010), Tanzanian historian Abdul Sheriff offers an emotional appreciation of open societies and of trade as a way to share goods, ideas, and values across cultures:
“Commerce necessarily demands exchange of goods and ideas among peoples of different ecologies, cultures and religions … [T]he movement of people, the routes they follow, and the relationships they forge create unities in human history. … Mercantile communities are necessarily open societies … [whose] cosmopolitan culture is made up of elements of diverse provenance, and while this does not automatically add up to a harmonious blend, it is remarkably tolerant toward other religions, cultures, and behaviors.”
The contemporary “African Continental Free Trade Area” (AfCFTA) is in concept an effort to create such a unity, and in practical terms an attempt to at least partially solve some persistent challenges to African growth and development: Why does so little trade go on within Africa, in comparison to Europe, Asia, or the Western Hemisphere? (South African think-tank TRALAC estimates that 17% of Africa’s trade is “intra-regional”, as opposed to over 60% for Europe and Asia, and about 46% for the Western Hemisphere.). And, relatedly, how can Africa reduce its reliance on exports of primary resources to Europe, Asia, and North America, and raise its ability to produce and sell manufactures, services, and farm products?
Launched in 2018 and signed in 2020, AfCFTA now applies in 41 of 55* countries in Africa, with a combined population of 1.1 billion. These figures make it the largest free trade agreement, by country membership in the world (assuming one doesn’t consider the 164-member WTO as such a group), and second to Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership as the largest by population. Its elimination of a planned-for/hoped-for 97% of tariffs on intra-African trade began a year ago; participants continue to talk about approaches to services, intellectual property rules, trade facilitation and “non-tariff barriers” such as customs transparency, technical standards notification, and other challenges that are often more costly than tariffs.
While many such questions remain open, an enthusiastic World Bank study projects an extra $450 billion in continental income by 2035, with 30 million people escaping poverty, Africa’s export trade shifting a bit away from energy and metal ores to manufactured goods, and African wages rising by about 10%. Side effects include raising U.S. exports to Africa by about $12 billion in manufacturing and $2 billion in agriculture (as African growth rates and incomes rise and allow for more imports), and $10 billion in services such as education, health, and logistics; rising competitiveness vis-à-vis other regions would push up African exports to the U.S. by about $16 billion.
Economic modeling and implementation challenges aside, AfCFTA is both a detailed program for Africa’s economic future and a remarkable commitment to swim against a bleak 2020s intellectual tide, in which visions of open societies are under great pressure, governments trust each other less than in the past, and publics perhaps more likely to believe that one country’s success may require another’s loss. As such it seems not only a visionary idea, but a good example for a world that needs one just now.
* State Department count is 54 countries, including 49 in sub-Saharan Africa and 5 in North Africa. The AfCFTA’s 55 include the disputed Western Sahara.
FURTHER READING
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo at the AfCFTA Secretariat opening in 2020.
South Africa’s TRALAC (Trade Law Centre) tracks AfCFTA implementation and policy debates.
… and has a startling graphic on the cost non-tariff barriers impose on intra-African trade.
UNCTAD has a supporting website offering opportunities to report and publicize non-tariff barriers in Africa.
And African Development Bank Chief Economist Kevin Urama on AfCFTA outlook and potential implementation challenges, 2020.
U.S. Policy
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reviews the U.S.-Africa relationship, and applauds AfCFTA, the 2021 AGOA* Ministerial.
* “AGOA” referring to the “African Growth and Opportunity Act,” a program launched in 2000 which waives tariffs on nearly all goods from participating African countries (subject to a set of eligibility criteria), accompanied by a regular series of Summits, Ministerial meetings, business/civil society dialogues, and technical assistance programs.
And still current though a bit further back, the Obama administration’s 2016 “Beyond AGOA” report — the last major U.S. policy document on the U.S.-Africa economic relationship — points to urban demographics, falling poverty rates, and accelerating technological connectivity as core trends suggesting an African economic boom in the later 2020s and the 2030s. Statistics since 2016 underline the report’s take on the data:
The “sub-Saharan” continental economy has grown from $1.5 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
Africa’s urban population has grown by about 80 million (from 392 million to 470 million), and will approach a billion in the next decade
Africa’s internet-using population has likely doubled, from about 200 million to 400 million, accompanied by a six-fold increase in available bandwidth.
The report suggests a need for a more differentiated U.S. approach to Africa, in which tariff waivers are accompanied by reciprocal agreements, and a deeper African engagement in the WTO, with particular attention to tariff bindings, trade facilitation, transparency and notification rules such as those regarding technical standards. The “Beyond AGOA” report can be found here.
And two big picture looks at Africa’s cosmopolitan past:
Tanzanian scholar Abdul Sheriff’s Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean on East Africa, Persia, India, and Indonesia in the global economy to 1500 (with cameos from the Roman Empire,“Star Raft” navigator Zheng He, and Portuguese explorer/buccaneer Vasco da Gama), with reflections on the nature of maritime and mercantile societies.
And Francois Xavier-Fauvelle’s The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages has a series of snapshots — drawn from Nubian state correspondence, a coral house on Kenya’ Indian Ocean coast, a Saharan salt mine, an Arab account of the Malian court, the small gold statue of a rhinoceros from Great Zimbabwe — on long-ago government, trade and diplomacy in the Sahel, Ethiopia, and the East African coast.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Ben Ritz, Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future, released the following statement on President Biden’s new budget proposal:
“The Progressive Policy Institute applauds President Biden for proposing a budget that calls for $1 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade. After a year in which loose fiscal policy contributed to inflation rising to its highest levels in over 40 years, it’s essential that Congress uses its power of the purse to complement the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting efforts.
“However, it remains unclear if the specific package of policies proposed in the President’s budget would achieve his stated objective. Several major provisions are unscored or have their scores bundled together in a couple of opaque line items. There is also no attempt to focus this package on a few core policies that could get a majority in the Senate after it became clear last year that the whole Build Back Better framework could not.
“Thus, it falls upon Democrats in Congress to fill in the blanks. PPI urges lawmakers to pass an energy security and inflation control bill that meets the President’s stated goal of reducing deficits by $1 trillion without relying on budget gimmicks and funds smart investments in clean energy to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels produced by foreign adversaries like Russia.
“We also believe that the new revenue proposals included in this budget merit debate and consideration. But it is unlikely most of these policies could be sufficiently vetted and refined in time for inclusion in a reconciliation bill before the midterm elections. The focus now must be on policies that can pass before the August recess.
“Democrats cannot afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s long past time for lawmakers to figure out what sustainable, disinflationary fiscal policies can get majority support in both chambers and send them to President Biden’s desk for his signature.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Launched in 2018, PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Futureworks to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. We tackle issues of public finance in the United States and offer innovative proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy, modernize health and retirement programs to reflect an aging society, and transform our tax code to reward work over wealth.
Russian invaders are still dealing out death and destruction in Ukraine, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has already suffered an enormous political defeat. The main question now isn’t whether Putin will win his war, but how many more Ukrainians will have to die to give him a face-saving way to stop this senseless slaughter.
No matter how the fighting ends, the Ukrainian people have shown that they will never willingly submit to rule by Moscow. Putin’s ham-fisted attempt to bend a former Russian colony to his will has turned into Ukraine’s war of independence, with President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian, cast improbably in the role of George Washington.
Of course, Russia has by far the stronger military and evidently no moral compunctions about using it to massacre Ukrainian civilians. Can Putin inflict enough pain on Ukrainian society to wring big concessions from its government? Possibly, but so far Ukraine’s defenders are more than holding their own.
The Russian dictator is caught in his own web of historical delusions and disinformation. Few outside Russia believe his ludicrous claims that Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders are “fascists” scheming with America to prevent Ukrainians from voluntarily reuniting with Mother Russia. Yet in launching his second invasion in eight years, Putin seems to have expected that his forces would easily topple Zelensky’s government, allowing him to install a more compliant regime in Kyiv.
In this week’s episode of Mosaic Moment, PPI’s Director of Health Care, Arielle Kane, sits down with Dr. Sarah Oh Lam from the Technology Policy Institute to discuss the benefits and barriers to telehealth services. In a recent blog post Arielle writes, “Without addressing barriers like unequal broadband distribution and limited access to video-capable devices, telehealth won’t live up to its potential.” Dr. Oh Lam lends her expertise in broadband, exploring policy recommendations that would expand internet access and promote digital literacy while Arielle discusses what lawmakers can do to ensure telehealth patients get the highest quality care possible.
Learn more about the Mosaic Economic Project here.
Learn more about the Progressive Policy Institute here.
The U.S. tariff system is biased against poor families.
THE NUMBERS:
U.S. MFN tariff rates:
On silver-plated forks: 0.0%
On stainless steel forks 15.8% + 0.9c each
values under 25 cents:
WHAT THEY MEAN:
As Americans prepare 1040 forms and tax payments this week, some observations on the U.S.’ oldest and most regressive tax:
In principle, tariffs are simple. An American auto dealership pays the Customs Bureau the 2.5% tax on a German car and includes it in the sales price. But in practice, tariffs can be very complicated. Even setting aside the system’s many add-ons and holes,* the basic U.S. “Most Favored Nation” tariff schedule is a mini-tax code all to itself, arranged in 11,111 different “lines” from horses at the beginning (line 01012100) through salt, cars, butter, planes, powdered zinc, playing cards, computers and more, to antiques between 100 and 250 years old at the end (line 97069000), each with its own tax rate.
Information on this system’s operation is scarce. Congress appears to have held its most recent hearing on tariff policy in 1974. It has been even longer since the Treasury Department reported on the distributional and other economic effects of tariffs. And the only regular review of the tariff system’s impact on employment, production, and living standards — the U.S. International Trade Commission’s admirable if limited “Economic Effects of Significant Import Restraints” report — last came out in 2017. But enough information is available to make three main points: (1) the tariff system is a small part of federal revenue; (2) it mainly taxes consumer necessities like clothes and shoes; and (3) it is, by far, the most regressive U.S. tax. Some detail on each of these points, plus an additional fourth observation unrelated to taxation:
1. Tariffs provide about 2% of federal revenue. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s November estimates, the U.S. Treasury took in $4.06 trillion in Fiscal Year 2021 (i.e., Sept. 30, 2020 through Sept. 30, 2021). The Treasury used six major taxes to raise this money, topped by the $2.04 trillion income tax, the $1.31 trillion payroll tax, and the $0.37 trillion corporate tax. Tariffs placed fourth at $81 billion (for the Fiscal Year; the calendar year 2021 total was $85 billion), about equally divided between the administrative and provisional Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods and metals, and the permanent “MFN” tariff system established by law. Rounding out the six taxes, excise taxes on fuels, alcohol, and tobacco placed fifth at $75 billion, and inheritance taxes sixth at $25 billion.
2.The U.S. tariff system is mainly a way to tax clothes, shoes, and a few other consumer necessities, and is therefore a “regressive” tax. The Trump-era tariffs hit manufacturers and construction firms hardest. (More on this in a few weeks.) The permanent tariff system is quite different, mainly taxing retailers and families by putting its highest rates on clothes, shoes, and a few other home goods such as silverware, plates and cups, and drinking glasses. Tariff rates on this set of goods average about 11.3%, roughly 16 times the 0.7% average for everything else. Thus in 2017, the last year before the Trump tariffs, these products accounted for about 6% of America’s goods imports ($144 billion of a $2.37 trillion total), but raised about 55% of tariff revenue ($17 billion of $33 billion). Any tax focused on clothes, shoes, and other home needs is “regressive” — that is, it hits low-income families harder than middle-class or rich families — since the poor must devote more of their income to these necessities.
3. Because consumer goods tariffs are high for cheap goods, and low for luxuries, they single out the poor to pay more. Worldwide, most tariff systems tax these goods more heavily than industrial products and natural resources. Thus the U.S. system is not unusual in being a regressive tax; but it is nearly alone in taxing cheap mass-market goods much more heavily than the exactly analogous luxury products bought by the wealthy. For example, Australian tariffs on shoes are almost all either 5% or zero, and do not set higher rates on cheap shoes than on expensive ones. American shoe tariffs by contrast are 8.5% for dress leathers, 20% for elite basketball and track shoes, and 48% for cheap sneakers imported at $3.00 and below. The fork example above is much the same: buyers of sterling silver pay no tax at all, while buyers of cheap stainless steel pay about 20% (counting the 0.9 cent per fork flat fee as well as the 15% “ad valorem” tariff).
This skew is systematic, appearing in almost all tariffed consumer goods. A quick PPI table gives twelve typical examples:
Explanatory note: These home goods — clothes, shoes, home linens, luggage and handbags, jewelry, and tableware — account for a relatively small proportion of imports, totaling $123 billion in 2017, or 5% of the U.S.’ $2.3 trillion in merchandise imports. Nonetheless, these products account for $17 billion of the $32.4 billion in 2017 tariff revenue. Thus average tariff rates applied to these products are about 15%, 20 times higher the 0.8% average for other goods. About $25 billion worth of these products arrived duty-free under FTAs and trade preference programs, while $100 billion came under the MFN tariff s above.
For the sake of simplicity, we have not included the actual tariff line numbers in the table above. They are available at the U.S. International Trade Commission’s tariff site. If you have a specific request, please email us.
4.Tariffs do not appear effective as job or production protectors. Finally, though not a tax issue as such, the consumer goods tariffs appear not to have powerful effects on employment and production. For example, 98% of shoes are imported and no cheap sneakers have been made here since the 1970s; likewise 97% of clothes are imported, and most arrive under the normal tariff system rather than FTAs or preferences. Silverware is made in the United States, but in the high-priced luxury low-tariff category rather than the cheap high-tariff category.
Perhaps we can do better, and treat low-income Americans more fairly, than this.
* Add-ons: anti-dumping and countervailing duty penalties on particular goods, Trump-era “301” and “232” tariffs on metals and Chinese goods. Holes: waivers of tariffs for particular countries through FTAs and preferences.
Obama administration Council of Economic Advisers luminaries Jason Furman, Jay Shambaugh, and Kadee Russ on the tariff system as an “arbitrary and regressive tax.”
In this Form 1040 season, tariff reform and PPI’s big-picture tax reform
PPI’s July 2019 tax proposal envisions scrapping Trump-era tariffs and the regressive-but-ineffectual parts of the MFN tariff system. This is part of a larger reform program designed to create a “simpler, fairer, and more pro-growth tax system that raises adequate revenue”. The program includes 14 specific reforms that reduce taxes on income from labor while increasing them on unearned sources of income for the wealthy; rein in the biggest tax expenditures; encourage reduction or elimination of other wasteful and distortionary elements of the tax code; and improve collection. Examples include replacing the relatively regressive payroll tax with a value-added tax; revising the estate and gift tax system; adding a marijuana excise tax, and more. See pp. 44-56.
And for reference, the basic data from CBO
The Congressional Budget Office’s latest outlay-and-revenue summary.
And the six main taxes in Fiscal Year 2021:
Total federal revenue $3,842 billion
Personal income taxes $1,705 billion
Payroll taxes $1,296 billion
Corporate income taxes $268 billion
Tariffs $81 billion
Excise taxes $75 billion
Estate & gift taxes $28 billion
Misc. other fees and fines $32 billion
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Twelve years ago, Congress approved, and President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. And what started as a small program that provided health coverage to people on cash assistance was cemented as the most impactful health insurance program: Medicaid.
Medicaid was first approved in 1965 as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s great society. While Medicare provided health coverage to seniors, Medicaid was envisioned as a more limited program for low-income pregnant women and people with disabilities. But over the forthcoming decades, it’s been expanded and reformed to become the largest health insurance program in the country: covering 80 million lives, paying for nearly half of all births, and protecting 10 million people with disabilities in addition to millions more who need long-term care.
During the pandemic, Medicaid and the ACA served as a safety net as many people lost jobs. Though the pandemic led to huge economic and employment downturns, the number of uninsured people actually fell by 0.6 million, or 1.9%. This was in stark contrast to the Great Recession of 2008-2009 when 9.3 million people lost their jobs and, subsequently, their health insurance — roughly 9.5% of children were uninsured. This time, safety net programs like Medicaid and subsidies available through the ACA kept people from losing health care coverage. Medicaid and CHIP enrollment increased to 83.2 million, up nearly 18% since February of 2020 and enrollment in Marketplace plans increased from 11.4 million in 2020 to 14.5 million in 2022. This was largely in part to the expanded subsidies pushed by the Biden administration and approved through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
But all this progress is now in jeopardy. Throughout the pandemic, states have been obligated to keep people covered through Medicaid in exchange for higher payments from the federal government. But when the national declaration of a Public Health Emergency expires, states will lose the enhanced Medicaid funding and be required to conduct eligibility determination on all 83.2 million enrollees.
The risk is that the administrative process of chasing down enrollees and making them mail in the proper documentation will inadvertently kick-off millions of eligible people — putting them at risk for economic and physical harm.
The Biden administration has been working to streamline the redetermination process, saying that it can take up to 12 months to complete the renewals. States are also being asked to outline how the process will work, and how they will connect ineligible people with other forms of coverage, such as through the ACA exchanges.
Many states lost workers during the pandemic. That compounded with poor technology, outdated addresses, and the heavy lift of determining eligibility could leave many people left uninsured — intentionally or unintentionally. Red states, particularly those who resisted Medicaid expansion, could use it as an opportunity to “purge” Medicaid roles for political reasons. There are still 14 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid to cover all low-income residents and others that only expanded begrudgingly under state referendum.
The Urban Institute estimates roughly 16 million people who currently have coverage will be found ineligible. Of the adults, roughly a third should be eligible for federal tax credits for ACA private plans — if they enroll during the so called “special enrollment period.” But millions could slip through the cracks without a concerted effort to connect them to available resources, undoing the successes of the ACA right after it proved its utmost utility during the worst pandemic in modern history. States should take advantage of new flexibilities put in place by the Biden administration to simplify the redetermination process for beneficiaries and make the transition between Medicaid and private insurance as smooth as possible and Congress should make the enhanced ARPA subsidies permanent.
Gallup 2022 poll: International trade “is an opportunity for growth through exports”*
All respondents 61%
Self-declared Democrats 72%
*The alternative, international trade is more “a threat to the economy through foreign imports,” gets 35% support among the general public; Gallup’s writeup does not cite Democratic support for this proposition.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Gallup’s February trade poll asks, for the 22nd time since 1992, whether we are more inclined to see “exports as an opportunity for growth” or “foreign” imports as a “threat to the economy.” Lamentably off on the economics! But faced with this choice, 61% of respondents choose “opportunity” and 35% “threat.” This result is on the “optimistic” side of the poll’s average, which over the full 30 years comes out at 53%-33%. Its partisan filter, meanwhile, finds self-identified Democrats more “pro-trade” than average at 72%; Republicans are for now more pessimistic, with 44% choosing “opportunity” and 52% “threat.” Independents, at 65% “opportunity,” are closer to the Democratic view.
The second very recent trade poll, released last November by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, asks about two specific trade agreements — the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (previously the more concise TPP), and U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (before its renegotiation, the North American Free Trade Agreement) and whether in general “globalization” and “international trade” are good for the United States. Though the questions are different, the Council’s results are similar to Gallup’s: an overall positive view, with a noticeable partisan divergence. Asked about a hypothetical decision by the U.S. to rejoin the CPTPP, 62% of Council respondents favored the idea while 33% opposed. Among Democrats, the split was a decisive 75% yes and 19% no; Republicans were also positive but less emphatic, at 50%-38%. Likewise, asked whether “international trade” is good for the U.S. economy in general, 86% of Democrats concurred as against 66% of Republicans; and asked whether trade is good for “creating jobs,” 68% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans agreed.
Both results are pretty typical of the last decade’s trade polling, showing a generally positive public view of trade but with Democrats more enthusiastic. A trawl back through earlier Gallup and Chicago Council polls, along with more by Pew Research, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Monmouth and others, finds at least three different demographic axes of divergence, suggesting that the partisan gap has a stronger foundation than simple reactions to a current administration:
1. Youth and Age: Young people generally seem more positive about trade than their elders. As an example, Pew’s 2018 poll found 18-29-year-olds most likely to agree in a general sense that “trade is good” (84%), and also most likely to agree that trade creates jobs, lowers prices, and raises wages.
2. Race and Ethnicity: Monmouth University asked in 2019 (during the Trump administration’s burst of tariffing) whether “tariffs on products imported from our trading partners” would help or harm the U.S. economy. This poll divides the public a little simply, contrasting the views of non-Hispanic whites with those of all other races and ethnicities combined. It found non-Hispanic white Americans tilting against tariffs (28% help the U.S. economy, 41% harm); among Hispanic, Asian Americans, and African Americans, by contrast, the split was a decisive 19% “help” and 57% “harm.”
3. Education: The same Monmouth poll, found differences on tariffs to be modest among the public as a whole, but with less-educated white Americans noticeably less likely than other demographics to see tariffs as harmful to the economy. Among all Americans with college degrees, 23% predicted that tariffs would help the economy while 56% predicted harm; for all those without degrees, the split was a similar though less emphatic 25% “help” and 43% “harm”. Among non-Hispanic white Americans, specifically though, views diverged sharply by education level: respondents with college degrees viewed tariffs as likely to harm the economy by 54%-23%, while respondents without degrees split nearly evenly, at 31% “help” and 35% “harm.”
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has the longest continuous record of trade polling, spanning 42 years from last November’s report to the March 1979 American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy release. Forty-three years ago, the U.S. public’s top international economic concerns were inflation and the declining value of the dollar, and the public at large appears to have been more inclined to keep tariffs while national leaders mostly favored abolishing them. The Chicago Council archive.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS)Project has partnered with The 74 Millionto tape a new podcast series on the “Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas. In the final episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine sits down with Sarah Johnson. Sarah Johnson serves as CEO of Teaching Lab, a non-profit dedicated to shifting the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity. In this wide-ranging discussion, Curtis and Sarah discuss how she came to lead Teaching Lab and why teacher development is critical to putting effective teachers in classrooms across America. Curtis asks Sarah to offer her insight on what trainers can do to better prepare educators for the future of learning and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project has partnered with The74Million to tape a new podcast series on the “Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas. In the third episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine continues the conversation from the previous episode about reshaping school leadership for the future as he sits down with Atlanta Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring. In this intriguing conversation, Dr. Herring discusses her path to becoming superintendent of Atlanta’s Public School system and details why empowering teachers is critical toward ensuring the success of students both in the classroom and in their future careers. Finally, Curtis and Dr. Herring look ahead to next year’s conference and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project has partnered with The 74 Million to tape a new podcast series on “The Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas.
In the second episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine sits down with Jean Desravines. Jean Desravines serves as the CEO of New Leaders, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure high academic achievement for all children, especially students in poverty and students of color, by developing transformational school leaders and advancing the policies and practices that allow great leaders to succeed. In this engaging discussion, Curtis and Jean discuss the current state of school leadership in the U.S. and its direct impacts on teachers. Additionally, Jean offers a preview of what he will be presenting at the conference and offers advice for school leaders intent on preparing teachers for the future of learning. Curtis and Jean look ahead to next year’s conference and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
