The Opportunity Agenda was founded with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America, a reflection of the core American belief that where we start out in life should not determine where we end up. The vision that we will have a country in which your possibilities are determined by you is central to the American self-concept.
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
A new study about the effects of immigration on U.S. employment supports the long-standing arguments of immigration advocates: Rather than displacing American workers, immigrant labor actually makes our economy stronger. Kevin Drum has the details at Mother Jones.
The sheer amount of perseverance shown by New Orleans residents in the face of disasters – first Hurricane Katrina, then the great economic recession, and now the Gulf of Mexico’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill – demonstrates how unique and precious this city is to the greater United States. No other US city has known such repeated devastation, or has demonstrated such noble resistance to defeat, such an immense capacity to endure. Although the city and its residents have not been broken by the continued assaults, many are still picking up the pieces.
In the midst of recovery, NOLA residents are hopeful but scars from the hurricane are still visible, according to a new survey by Kaiser Family Foundation, “New Orleans Five Years After the Storm.” Read more in the August Public Opinion Monthly.
In January, when Arne Duncan proclaimed that Hurricane Katrina "was the best thing" that ever happened to New Orleans public schools, there was a firestorm of protest that pressured him into apologizing. Today, in the observance of the 5 year anniversary of that tragedy, many are implying the very same thing that Duncan overtly stated, with nary a word of disagreement.
My first warning of this concerted effort to herald the "success" of "education reforms" made in post-Katrina NOLA came from OpenLeft commenter LiberlWingofLiberalWing who pointed me to this extremely shallow and one-sided piece on HuffPo last week. Today, the message is practically everywhere in the MSM and the web.
The major thrust of the PR is to tout NOLA's "new hybrid model, whereby charter schools outnumber traditional public schools two to one." And the goal of course is to tout this as a model for schooling worthy of being rolled out across all major cities where there are lots of impoverished brown and black children.
So what's wrong with that?
First, as Jim Horn reveals in a fantastic series of posts over at Schools Matter, it's important to understand what this shiny new model for education in NOLA is. He quotes from a new study (pdf) to explain how "rebuilding of the public school system in post-Katrina New Orleans has produced a five 'tiered' system of public schools in which not every student in the city receives the same quality education."
This tiered system has created highly segregated schools on the basis of race and income. Schools perform highly unequally across these sectors because a "tiered performance hierarchy" ensures students who perform higher on standardized tests attend higher performing schools while "the majority of low income students of color" attend lower performing schools.
The result of this institutionalized segregation is to, Horn contends, "skim the healthiest, wealthiest, and highest-scoring students into charters, and then to dump the most challenging students into the public schools."
And this skimming and sorting isn't just related to race and class. It's well known that among the most challenging students to educate are those who require special education and English language learning services. And NOLA's hybrid school system restricts the mobility of those students as well.
As evidence, Horn points to a video clip from a PBS news story that reveals how NOLA charter schools engage in "dumping" special education students on traditional public schools. How can they do that? Simply by not offering those services, which traditional public schools are required by federal law to offer. You see, charter schools are not governed in the same way that traditional public schools are.
Another critical facet of the NOLA post-Katrina education story that news outlets - major and minor - are getting wrong is that charters are greatly out-performing traditional public schools. While it's true that the charters in the top tiers out-perform traditional public schools in lower tiers, they don't outperform traditional public schools in their tier.
Finally, I suppose you could dismiss all these counter-narratives to the NOLA school reform "miracle" by saying "yes but, the schools are doing better after Katrina."
But as Horn reveals today, that contention is not so clear cut when you look at year-over-year progress (the basis of NCLB requirements):
"Between 2002 and 2005 (based on numbers from the Times-Picayune), test score growth in 4th grade among all NOLA public school children was 18 points in ELA [English language arts] and 16 points in Math. Between 2007 to 2010 test score growth among NOLA children was 19 points in ELA and 10 points in Math.
In 8th grade between 2002 and 2005, NOLA students gained 21 points in ELA and 8 points in Math. Between 2007 and 2010, 8th graders gained 13 points in ELA and 11 points in Math."
So the results are indeed mixed.
Furthermore, NOLA charter schools - the darling of the ed reformist movement - are not in any way living up to the narrative trumpeted throughout the media. In fact, "charters are getting trounced in terms of test score growth by the regular public schools." Based on figures from a 2010 report, regular public schools had a "growth advantage of exactly 2:1."
So despite the reformist plan in NOLA to "improve" education through increased segregation and charter schools for the elite, traditional public schools continue to beat the odds stacked against them.
Finally, much has been written in the press about the increased suicide rates along the Gulf since Katrina, and it's still trending up. What's not been pointed out is that charter schools that decline to offer the special education services needed by students experiencing learning disabilities related to PTSD, depression, and poverty, are complicit in further destabilizing youth populations.
So yes, New Orleans public schools have made "great strides" since Katrina. Indeed, the fact that they are doing as well as they are, given the poor performance of our government to come to their aid, is the real "miracle." But don't believe for a minute that their comeback is purely the result of some reform effort hatched by a DC think tank and backed by Wall Street financiers. And don't' for a minute think you want this sort of school system coming to your neighborhood.
Last week President Obama used a strategy that should become an important part of his leadership going forward. On February 18, he issued an executive order creating a bipartisan commission on addressing the budget deficit, after the Senate failed to enact legislation that would have done so. Whatever one thinks of the commission’s mission or likely recommendations, the order should represent a rediscovery of the power of the presidency.
Perhaps because he came to the White House directly from the Senate, the President has been overly reliant on that body to achieve his goals. It goes without saying that the Senate is dysfunctional and divided—by contrast, the House has passed superior versions of many of the President’s legislative priorities, only to see more anemic version die at the other end of the building. But while the Senate is crucial to federal legislation, and federal legislation is crucial to transformative change on many issues, such as health care, financial regulation, and immigration reform, presidents wield tremendous power as presidents through their constitutional authority as executive. The executive order is a prime example.
President Obama has issued some 42 Executive Orders since he took office. But the Deficit Commission order served as a public notice—or at least it should—that the President stands ready to move solutions forward, within constitutional limits, when the Legislative Branch fails to act.
Recovery from a natural disaster should be able to make survivors “whole.” However, when the starting point is life in one of the poorest and most dangerous countries in the Western hemisphere, getting back to normal becomes a trickier proposition. Haiti has the highest rates of infant, under-five and maternal mortality in the Western hemisphere. In 2003, 80% of the population was estimated to live under the international poverty line. As demonstrated by the extended recovery process from Hurricane Katrina, economic condition has a determinative effect on the ability to recover from a natural disaster, with the worst impact and least independent ability to recover suffered by the poorest residents.
Although this paints a bleak picture, and there’s no denying that the reality is grim, the only possibility for hope or optimism lies in a new roadmap for recovery. Any attempt to rebuild Haiti must be developed with an eye to erasing past inequities. It cannot be enough to rebuild the Haiti of January 11, 2010. Most Haitians lived by subsistence farming. With a lack of arable land, continuing deforestation, and destruction of much of the country’s infrastructure, Haiti’s economy must be rebuilt on a new basis. If the country must begin anew, the opportunity to develop something entirely new exists.
The lingering effects of colonialism, racism, and poverty must be eliminated as the country begins to map out its future. Internal and external factors that have perpetuated, and actually increased, the disintegration of Haiti – its infrastructure, its agriculture, and its people – must be left out of the country’s future. The color line of Haiti’s elites must go. An economy based on unsustainable agriculture must go. Governmental instability and corruption must go. Unacceptable mortality rates for infants, children under five, and women giving birth must go. All of which leaves room for a new, more equitable, more self-determined Haiti – with the help of all of us.
Hurricane Katrina is not as sexy as torture, but has killed more people and ruined more lives, and -- like many non-natural disasters in recent years -- has a chief culprit who has now settled in at 10141 Daria Place, Dallas, Texas, where he clears very little brush and where -- to my knowledge -- not a single politician or journalist or author has sought his wisdom on the affairs of the past seven months. George W. Bush, who should face nonviolent protest every minute of his life while he remains at liberty, knowingly abandoned an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster four years ago this week, and for years refused to repair the damage.
In the days just before and after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 80th birthday, I had the opportunity to visit two places that are integral to his modern day legacy: Washington, DC and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As I witnessed the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president, I thought of Dr. King's admonition, in his 1963 I Have a Dream Speech, that "we cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote." Despite some continuing problems at the ballot box, this was an election about which Dr. King could be truly satisfied; African Americans turned out in record numbers to elect the nation's first African-American president.
In the same speech, Dr. King reminded the nation that "when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the 'unalienable Rights' of 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'"
For anyone who's visited the Gulf Coast recently, it is obvious that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as the people of the Lower Ninth Ward-overwhelmingly poor and African-American-are concerned. The world witnessed in 2005 how our government left the region's people to drown in their homes and suffer unspeakable conditions in the New Orleans Convention Center and Superdome. More than three years later, that abandonment continues.
It's hard to overstate the transformative moment that we're in as a nation and, particularly, as progressives. In just a few years, we've gone from the high point of conservative power to a stunning rejection of conservative federal leadership and the historic election of a progressive African-American president.
But the electoral sea change is just part of the extraordinary national moment. The financial meltdown and slide toward deep recession have crystallized Americans' anger over deteriorating economic security, stagnant mobility, growing inequality, and policies of isolation instead of connection. Americans are ready for a new social compact and a transformed relationship between the people and our government. They are calling for a new era of big ideas and different values than we've seen over most of the past three decades.
The electorate has shown an unprecedented willingness to overcome racial and ethnic barriers to take on daunting shared challenges. Young people, people of color, and low-income people turned out to register and vote in unprecedented numbers that bode well for a far more participatory and egalitarian democracy going forward.
Even before this year's remarkable events, opinion research showed a historic, progressive shift in Americans' views on issues that (not coincidentally) were barely mentioned in the election. Perhaps most striking is the shift on criminal justice and problems of addiction, where the U.S. public has moved broadly to support rehabilitation and treatment over incarceration and retribution, as well as assistance and integration for people emerging from prison.
But an unprecedented opportunity for progressive values and ideas is not the same as victory for a progressive social and policy vision. The stark challenges of rising inequality, faltering security, and broken systems of health care, immigration, and criminal justice are the same on November 5 as they were on November 4. What's changed is only the chance for transformative change.
History shows that progressives could easily blow this opportunity, just as conservatives blew their transformative moments after the 1994 elections and the attacks of September 11, 2001. A few principles can help progressives move from opportunity to realization in ways that profoundly benefit our country.
Three years ago a major American City was devastated. We were told later by our President that no one could have foreseen the disaster. And so, in memory of those who died, I offer the following from the WeatherUnderground's Jeff Masters, who wrote on August 27th, 2005:
I'd hate to be an Emergency Management official in New Orleans right now. Katrina is pretty much following the NHC forecast, and appears likely to pass VERY close to New Orleans. I'm surprised they haven't ordered an evacuation of the city yet. While the odds of a catastropic hit that would completely flood the city of New Orleans are probably 10%, that is way too high in my opinion to justify leaving the people in the city. If I lived in the city, I would evactuate NOW! There is a very good reason that the Coroner's office in New Orleans keeps 10,000 body bags on hand. The risks are too great from this storm, and a weekend away from the city would be nice anyway, right? GO! New Orleans needs a full 72 hours to evacuate, and landfall is already less than 72 hours away. Get out now and beat the rush. You're not going to have to go to work or school on Monday anyway. If an evacuation is ordered, not everyone who wants to get out may be able to do so--particularly the 60,000 poor people with no cars.
The link above will take you to Jeff Master's archive, which discusses the potential disaster days before Katrina hit New Orleans.
And down below you can see John McCain and George Bush laughing it up after Katrina made land fall. But I shouldn't hold it against John McCain - he doesn't use computers so he would never have read about the danger.
Today, writing about Gustav, Jeff Masters writes nearly the same paragraph (on the flip>
"In a world of 1s and 0s...are you a zero, or The One?" The Matrix (1999)
The recent line of right-wing attacks on Barack Obama have been to emphasize his popularity and turn it against him by painting him as nothing more than a celebrity -- "an empty suit" was the phrase I heard one pundit use. Right-wing trolls and bloggers have commonly taken to referring to Senator Obama online as "The One." This attempt at sarcasm is a reference to the character 'Neo' from the movie, The Matrix. As they do this, I have to wonder if they realize who this makes them in their self-created Matrix scenario: Agents? Sentinels? If, in a world of ones and zeros, Barack Obama is "The One," what is John McCain?
So a friend told me that Republican Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa called people in New Orleans a bunch of complainers on their rooftops during the Katrina disaster, in contrast to people in Iowa who had a 'can-do' attitude during their flooding problem. I didn't believe him. But sure enough, here it is in the Congressional record, from last Friday.
So I don't want anybody telling me that we have to offset a disaster relief package for the Midwest where people are hurting, when we didn't do it for New Orleans. Why the double standard? Is it because people aren't on rooftops complaining for helicopters to rescue them, and you see it on television too much? We aren't doing that in Iowa. We are trying to help ourselves in Iowa. We have a can-do attitude. It doesn't show up on television like it did in New Orleans for 2 months.
Senator Chuck Grassley is considered a 'moderate' Republican.
In February 2006, a council of prominent Evangelical Christians signed a mission statement dedicated to the preservation of the only earth God gave us. Among the signatories were the Rev. Rick Warren (author of The Purpose-Driven Life and pastor of the country's largest church), David Neff (editor of Christianity Today), W. Todd Bassett (national commander of the Salvation Army), and the Rev. Berten A. Waggoner of Sugar Land, Texas.
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