Education Archives - Page 34 of 43 - Progressive Policy Institute

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.

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.

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!

Cutting the Cost of College with Three-Year Degrees

Posted on June 14, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Recently a group urging free tuition at Harvard University failed to win a seat on the University’s Board of Overseers. With an endowment of $38 billion, Harvard can afford to have this debate. But the vast majority of schools in America today are too tuition dependent to offer universal free tuition. And while any plan to get the debt monkey off the back of students is welcome, the reality is the promise of free tuition is illusory – most of the proposals would only cover the cost of tuition at your typical community college, fail to reign in rising college prices, and are cost prohibitive (for example Senator Sanders proposal would run about $70 billion a year).

Fortunately, many voters have not been blinded by the allure of promises of free tuition. According to a recent poll by veteran Democratic pollster Peter Brodnitz for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), When asked to choose between free college tuition and a proposal to offer three-year college degrees, thereby cutting college tuition costs by a quarter, Swing voters picked three year degrees by a 63 percent to 29 percent margin

Three-year colleges are the norm in many European countries, and a few enterprising universities here have begun to follow suit. This proposal would require any U.S. college or university with students who receive any type of federal student aid to offer the option of earning a bachelor’s degree in three years, and to hold annual increases in the price of tuition and fees to just over inflation.

By making a three-year bachelor’s degree the norm the cost of attending college would drop dramatically. Students currently attending four-year public schools (in-state) would see savings on average of $8,893 while those at private schools would experience a $30,094 reduction.

Cutting tuition by a quarter would also reduce the amount students need to borrow. Nearly 70 percent of bachelor degree holders have taken out student loans, with an average debt burden of $29,400. Assuming someone borrows $29,400 at the going rate of 4.66 percent over four years, the interest owed would amount to $7,505. But shaving a year off college cuts that interest tab to about $5,629, a savings of $1,876. And keep in mind we are talking averages here; the many students carrying debts well above the average will reap bigger savings.

But wouldn’t shaving a year off college also mean giving colleges a financial haircut? Not necessarily. Colleges could increase the number of students in each incoming class by 33 percent given that annual class capacity would be greater with the elimination of the 4th year. While suffering transition costs over the initial three years, many schools, particularly the most attractive ones in the top two-thirds of college rankings, would eventually be made whole under the Three-Year Degree.

While some schools might be tempted to squeeze a four-year degree into three years, that approach would be unwise, given that the majority of today’s college students need six years to complete a bachelors.

A better approach would be for schools and their accreditors to rethink their curriculum. For example, reducing the number of electives, cutting back on core requirements or shifting to shorter semesters are all options that schools could use to move to a three-year bachelors and improve the educational experience.

The debate over the cost of college is long overdue. Yet the solution cannot be one that would cripple the world’s finest system of higher education nor allow colleges and universities to continue to pile debt on the backs of families and students. Shifting to a three-year degree bachelor will ensure American’s can afford college to send their children to college again while expanding access to the best schools in the world.

U.S. News & World Report: When Performance Pay Doesn’t Pay Off

Posted on May 24, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In 2005, Denver stepped into the national spotlight by adopting a performance pay system negotiated with the teachers’ union, financed by a $25 million-a-year boost in property taxes. The subsequent decade of experience reveals a surprising lesson: No one in Denver thinks performance pay has made much difference in student outcomes, but most agree that charter schools – which aren’t eligible for the taxpayer-funded performance pay – have made a big difference.

Performance pay can work. But compensation systems are more effective when they are fashioned by individual schools or groups of schools (charter management organizations). Different schools and teachers have widely different needs and attitudes toward performance pay, and fashioning one system for 150 different schools is probably a fool’s errand.

The Denver effort began in 1999, with a pilot negotiated for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association by Brad Jupp, the union leader who later became Superintendent Michael Bennet’s chief policy adviser. The union not only embraced the effort, it helped raise more than $1 million from foundations to finance it. But to participate, a school had to get 85 percent of its teachers on board, so only 16 schools joined the pilot.

Continue reading at U.S. News & World Report.

The Mile-High City Leads the Way

Posted on May 13, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using a “portfolio strategy”: negotiating performance agreements with some mix of traditional, charter and hybrid public schools, allowing them great autonomy, letting them handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students, giving parents their choice of schools, replicating successful schools and replacing failing schools.

Many doubt that such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers such fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the strategy – such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and Camden, New Jersey – have done so with insulation from local electoral politics.

All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools has embraced charter schools and created “innovation schools,” which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010, it signed a Collaboration Compact with charter leaders committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools, whether charter or traditional.

Money and Schools: Debating Ben Spielberg 50 Years After the Coleman Report

Posted on May 5, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Is “more money” a vital education policy, when compared with other possible changes? Should taxpayers allocate significantly more money to existing K-12 public schools, without demanding structural reforms? On average, if existing K-12 public schools had more money, would students obtain significant or sustainable benefits?

Increasingly, conventional wisdom answers “yes:” many say that money alone, even without reform, helps students. Matt Barnum, policy editor of education website The 74 Million, posted in April: “At this point there’s a large body of evidence that more $ leads to better outcomes,” linking to a February summary of recent case study research. Nick Albares, a policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in January’s Education Post: “common sense and research suggests [that] money matters for long-term outcomes.” In response to my 2015 column contrain Dropout Nation, the analyst Ben Spielberg wrote a sharp dispute.

In the spirit of the Education Post mantra of “better conversation, better education,” Spielberg and I dedicated several hours researching each other’s claims and meeting in person to develop a common fact base and framework. This column represents my reflections on that effort.

Continue reading at Education Post.

A 21st Century School System in the Mile High City

Posted on May 4, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what many call a “portfolio strategy.” Others call it “reinvention,” a “21st century approach,” or “relinquishment.” By whatever name, it generally means that districts negotiate performance agreements with some mix of traditional, charter, and hybrid public schools, allow them great autonomy, let them handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students, give parents their choice of schools, replicate successful schools, and replace failing schools.

Many doubt such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers such fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the portfolio strategy—such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J.—have done so with insulation from local electoral politics. In New Orleans, the state board of education and its Recovery School District (RSD) oversee most of the schools; in D.C., Congress intervened, creating an appointed Public Charter School Board; and, in Camden, the state took over the district.

All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools (DPS) has embraced charter schools and created “innovation schools,” which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010 DPS signed a Collaboration
Compact with charter leaders committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools—whether charter or traditional.

Download “2016.05-Osborne_A-21st-Century-School-System-in-the-Mile-High-City”

U.S. News & World Report: The Weapon Against Inequality That 2016 Forgot

Posted on April 14, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

If the democratic candidates are serious about combating inequality, they should start by embracing education reform.

For education reformers, the 2016 presidential primaries have been a wasteland. The Republican circus has produced many memorable moments, but few if any have touched on education.

Even on the Democratic side, education has been virtually invisible. The major issue is rising inequality, and public education has long been our society’s major instrument to combat that problem. Yet neither of the candidates has said anything positive about the one strategy that has made a real difference for low-income children: charter schools.

Reducing inequality without reforming our education system is probably impossible, because the tide is flowing so strongly in the opposite direction. Twenty-five years ago only a third of public school students were low-income (eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch). Today, for the first time since the data has been compiled, a majority are low income.

Read more at U.S. News & World Report.

Education Next: Denver Expands Choice and Charters

Posted on April 12, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what’s known as a “portfolio strategy.” Under this approach, districts negotiate performance agreements with public schools—traditional, charter, and hybrid models. The arrangement affords school leaders substantial autonomy to handcraft their schools to fit the needs of their students. Districts give parents choices among the schools while working to replicate successful schools and replace failing ones.

Many doubt such a strategy is possible with an elected board, because closing schools and laying off teachers triggers fierce resistance. Most cities pursuing the portfolio strategy, including New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Camden, New Jersey, have done so with insulation from local electoral politics. In New Orleans, the state board of education and its Recovery School District (RSD) oversee most of the schools; Congress created the appointed D.C. Public Charter School Board; and in Camden the state is in charge.

All of which explains why reformers are paying close attention to Denver, Colorado. With an elected board, Denver Public Schools (DPS) has embraced charter schools and created innovation schools, which it treats somewhat like charters. Since 2005 it has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters. In 2010 it signed a Collaboration Compact committing to equitable funding and a common enrollment system for charters and traditional schools, plus replication of the most effective schools, whether charter or traditional.

Continue reading at Education Next.

Press Release: PPI Unveils New Blueprint for Shared Prosperity

Posted on March 15, 2016September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2016

Contact: Cody Tucker, 202-775-0106
or ctucker@ppionline.org

A Progressive Alternative to Populism

PPI Unveils New Blueprint for Shared Prosperity

WASHINGTON—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism, a new blueprint for renewing America’s economic dynamism.

The plan offers an array of creative proposals for accelerating the “digitization” of the physical economy; lowering regulatory obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship; launching a new public works push; adopting pro-growth tax reform; grooming the world’s most talented workers; and enabling working families to escape poverty and build middle class wealth.

The blueprint also takes aim at the populist anger that has figured prominently in campaign 2016:

…[P]opulists do Americans no favors by claiming the economic game is hopelessly rigged against them, that the leaders they elect are incompetents, or that our democracy is rancid with corruption. None of these claims is true, and such demagoguery undermines public confidence in America’s boundless capacity for self-renewal. Populist anger fosters an ‘us versus them’ mentality that, by reinforcing political tribalism and social mistrust, can only make it harder to build consensus around economic initiatives that benefit all Americans.

“We believe progressives owe U.S. voters a hope-inspiring alternative to populist outrage and the false remedies of nativism, protectionism and democratic socialism,” writes Will Marshall, PPI President.

“I encourage anyone looking for optimistic ideas to create more jobs, wealth, and prosperity for hard working Americans to read PPI’s new report using innovation to spur growth,” said Congressman Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Chairman of the New Democrat Coalition. “This report is full of forward thinking policy initiatives that help grow the American economy.”

“In the midst of today’s populist uprising, it’s up to our leaders to recognize the real reasons why our economy isn’t working for everyone and to fight for effective solutions,” said Governor Jack Markell (D-Del.). “PPI’s blueprint gives policymakers a roadmap to create opportunity for all Americans by harnessing the unstoppable forces of globalization and technological innovation, while opposing the impractical, and sometimes dangerous, proposals offered by the political extremes.”

The anger on which populists feed is rooted in a real economic problem: America has been stuck in a slow growth trap since 2000. This long spell of economic stagnation has held down wages and living standards and shrunk the middle class. What the nation needs is a forward-looking plan for moving the U.S. economy into high gear. Instead, as the PPI blueprint notes, today’s populists peddle nostalgia for our country’s past industrial glory but offer few practical ideas for building new American prosperity in today’s global knowledge economy.

Unleashing Innovation and Growth seeks to fill this vacuum in the presidential campaign, offering bold ideas for unleashing the collective ingenuity of the American people—harnessing disruptive change, raising skills, lowering tax and regulatory barriers to individual initiative and creativity, and experimenting with innovative ways to rebuild middle class wealth and enable more Americans to exit poverty.

Summary of Key Proposals

Unleash Innovation
• Spread innovation across the economy: Adopt a new “Innovation Platform” aimed at stimulating public and private investment in new ideas and enterprises, and at diffusing innovation across the entire economy.
• Improve the regulatory climate for innovation: Tackle the mounting costs of regulatory accumulation, the constant layering of new rules atop old ones; Make systemic changes to regulatory agencies to make promoting investment, innovation and new enterprises part of their core mission; Rein in occupational licensing requirements that screen out many low-income entrepreneurs; Lift outdated restrictions on lending to small business; give businesses incentives to offer more flexible work, including paid leave.
• Innovate our way to clean growth: Implement a more innovative energy strategy that simultaneously advances two vital interests: powering economic growth and assuring a healthy environment; Recognize that, for the foreseeable future, the U.S. and the world will have to tap all fuels—renewable, nuclear, and fossil—to meet growing energy demand and sustain global economic growth; Institute a nationwide carbon tax to curb greenhouse emissions while driving investment to clean and efficient energy.
• Democratize trade: Sell more of America’s highly competitive exports to a growing global middle class; promote the free flow of data across global borders; support innovative trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that lift labor, environment and human rights standards in developing countries and enable more Americans to benefit from trade; Seize new opportunities for U.S. small businesses and entrepreneurs to use low-cost digital platforms to tap into global growth.

Align Fiscal Policy with Innovation and Growth
• Embrace pro-growth tax reform: Advocate for a dramatic shift from income to consumption taxes to stimulate investment in productive economic activities rather than those favored by the current tax code; Close loopholes that benefit special interests and dramatically simplify taxes for most Americans; Raise enough money to cut corporate income taxes down to globally competitive levels, and reduce taxes that penalize innovation and hiring.
• Modernize public works: Accurately measure the true economic impact of infrastructure spending; open infrastructure markets to private capital; define a strategic role for Washington through a national infrastructure bank; impose firm deadlines on project approvals and licensing process.

Groom the World’s Most Talented Workers
• Reinvent public school: Champion new models of school governance that enable more school autonomy and innovation, more customized learning, rigorous standards, and genuine accountability and results.
• Create new pathways into middle class jobs: Create a more promising approach to “career pathways” by combining classroom training and work experience through a sequence of jobs, within or across firms in an industry, and a sequence of credentials that signal their growing skill levels.
• Cut college costs for everyone: Rein in costs and decrease debt by encouraging colleges to offer three-year degrees rather than the traditional four-year program and focus policies on competency, rather than credit hours.

Build Middle Class Wealth
• Narrow the wealth gap with universal pensions: Champion “universal pension” accounts that would enable all workers to save for retirement, navigate the maze of tax-favored retirement plans, and take their pensions with them when changing jobs.
• Help families save for homeownership: Tackle the twin problems of declining homeownership and souring housing costs for both owners and renters by creating a new, tax-preferred mechanism for down payment savings—“Home K”—to lower obstacles to homeownership, like tight credit and down payment requirements, for first-time homebuyers and to promote savings.

Fight Poverty with Empowerment
• Empower people with smart phones: Use modern technology to cut through bureaucratic barriers to government safety net programs, consolidate benefit streams, enable people living in poverty more access to the information they need, and apply online for social supports; Encourage federal, state, and local governments to create online H.O.P.E. (Health, Opportunity, and Personal Empowerment) accounts and action plans.
• Expand housing choices for low-income Americans: Convert some federal rent subsidies into incentives for homeownership to relieve the burden on low-income families of high housing costs and reduce the waiting list for subsidized housing, without raising taxes or adding to the federal deficit.

Download Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism.

Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism

Posted on March 15, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As Americans choose a new president in 2016, populist anger dominates the campaign. To hear Donald Trump or Senator Bernie Sanders tell it, America is either a global doormat or a sham democracy controlled by the “one percent.” These dark narratives are caricatures, but they do stem from a real dilemma: America is stuck in a slow- growth trap that holds down wages and living standards. How to break this long spell of economic stagnation is the central question in this election.

Today’s populists peddle nostalgia for our country’s past industrial glory but offer few practical ideas for building a new American prosperity in today’s global knowledge economy. Progressives owe U.S. voters a hopeful alternative to populist outrage and the false panaceas of nativism, protectionism, and democratic socialism. What America needs is a forward-looking plan to unleash innovation, stimulate productive investment, groom the world’s most talented workers, and put our economy back on a high-growth path. It’s time to banish fear and pessimism and trust instead in the liberal and individualist values and enterprising culture that have always made America great.

Download Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism

Washington Post: The new Democratic Party proposal to rival Bernie Sanders’ socialism

Posted on March 15, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Simplicity is one of Bernie Sanders’ great strengths: Corporations and the rich have rigged the economy. His solutions sound simple, even when the plans behind them are complicated: college for all, health care for all, tax the rich, break up big banks. He trails Hillary Clinton in presidential delegates to this point, and he remains an underdog for the Democratic nomination, but Sanders has already pulled Clinton, and the party, toward a more populist, more socialist policy agenda, thanks in part to that clarity of message.

The centrist Democrats who oppose that leftward lurch have struggled to match his simplicity. They tend to view the economy through a lens of skills and adaptation, not power and treachery. Many of them pushed in the 1990s, under President Bill Clinton, to expand global trade and deregulate the financial sector. They now concede those efforts did not go according to script, particularly for middle-class workers, but they are not calling for a full rewrite in response.

Their risk, in this election and moving forward, is to define themselves solely as anti-Democratic-socialist – the folks who don’t like the stuff that a lot of Democrats like about Sanders.

The Progressive Policy Institute is the latest centrist Democratic institution to try to counter that image. Today it will release what its president, Will Marshall, calls a “radical” agenda to get America working for the working class again. The report is called “Unleashing Innovation and Growth: a Progressive Alternative to Populism,” and it is organized around a straightforward, if not perfectly simple, principle.

Memo to the Presidential Candidates: To Reduce Inequality, Reinvent Public Schools

Posted on March 9, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Growing inequality has emerged as a central issue in the 2016 presidential election. Yet none of you has paid much attention to a major source of economic inequality in America: the uneven quality of our public schools.

As far as we can determine, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has no thoughts on how to improve K-12 education. With the exception of Jeb Bush, now out of the race, and Gov. John Kasich, the Republican candidates have said little about education on the stump, beyond ritual denunciations of the Common Core standards.

On the Democratic side, both candidates want to make public colleges more affordable, Sen. Bernie Sanders by eliminating tuition, Hillary Clinton by spending $350 billion for financial aid. Both also want to invest heavily in early childhood education. But Sanders’s web page lists 21 priorities, and K-12 education reform is not among them. Clinton includes it but offers only platitudes, such as “Make high-quality education available to every child—in every ZIP code—in America,”and “Ensure that teachers receive the training, mentorship, and support they need to succeed and thrive in the classroom.”

Given the glaring inequities in our public schools, we are mystified by the absence of K-12 reform from your campaigns. Frankly, this appears to reflect what is worst about each party. Republicans, in blind obedience to the ideology of local control, seem more upset by the prospect of “federal meddling” in public schools than by their endemic failure to give low-income students a quality education. Democrats tolerate failure for another reason, namely fear of alienating teachers’ unions. None of you, it seems, is prepared to stand up for poor children trapped in poor public schools.

Download “2016.03.09 Osborne_Marshall-Memo-to-Presidential-Candidates_Education-Policy”

U.S. News: The Schools of the Future

Posted on January 20, 2016 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The first time I visited a Summit Public School, in February 2014, I pulled up in front of a one-story building in an office park. I was sure I had the wrong address – but no, there was a sign. This was Summit Denali, in Sunnyvale, California.

Inside, my surprise deepened. All the students, then sixth graders, were in one big, open area. Most were working on their own, at laptops. A few were working with another student, or in hushed conversations with teachers. All their chairs, desks, tables and whiteboards were on wheels, so the space could be instantly reconfigured.

Diane Tavenner, Summit’s co-founder and CEO, explained that she and her colleagues had spent two years piloting profound changes in their education process, and this year they had rolled out the new, personalized model in all seven of their Bay Area charter schools. “The industrial model is really driven by adults,” she says. “Kids come in, they’re told where to go, where to sit, what they’re going to learn, when they’re going to learn it. You’re on the assembly line. We believe the next generation models are about the students being empowered to drive their own learning.”

Continue reading at U.S. News & World Report.