Strengthening Our Democratic Enterprise: Education Policy in the 21st Century

This guest post is from Dr. Barbara Ferman, Founder and Executive Director, University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia and Professor of Political Science at Temple University. Please contact her directly with any questions or comments, at bferman@temple.edu .

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s White House speech on January 10, in which he heralded Action Civics as a promising model for engaging current and future generations in the democratic enterprise, appears to have generated cheers from some and set off alarm bells among others. Such debate is what democracy is all about and should be supported and encouraged. However, as is too often the case, the debate is mired in confusion as to the purpose and practice of Action Civics. As Executive Director of one of the founding organizational members of the National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC), I would like to set the record straight with regards to this very promising practice—what is Action Civics, what is the value added and what does it look like in practice?

Action Civics is an iterative process of issue identification, research, constituency building, action, and reflection that is used to address real-world experiences that apply to the lives of students. It is a process that embraces collective action, encourages youth voice, agency and leadership, and emphasizes the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democratic society. In addition to building the skills, developing the knowledge and shaping the values that underlie a democratic society, Action Civics has been correlated with improved academic and behavioral outcomes. So, what is the problem? The problem is that students may embrace perspectives with which we disagree. This is a very real possibility but isn’t that what democracy is about? For example, I do not agree with Checker Finn’s perspective but I respect and absolutely defend his right to publicly articulate it. Democracy is not about unlimited freedom or irresponsible behavior, both of which threaten democracy. Rather, it is about learning to behave responsibly within a free society. Shutting students down or teaching about democracy in ways that are incongruent with its underlying principles does a disservice to the student, to education and to democracy. If we want our young people to participate in the larger society in ways that are productive, respectful, and that preserve our democratic institutions, we need to let them practice.

So, what does Action Civics look like in practice? What do youth take on when given the opportunity and support to make their voice heard? Here are a few examples from the founding members of NACC:

• At Earth Force, youth are leaders in their community around issues like water quality, food access and energy consumption. They identify local issues important to them, and research the policy and practice behind those problems to create real, sustainable change. They meet with government officials, create awareness campaigns to share throughout their community, and work in partnership with local leaders to ensure their change is effective for the whole community.
• At Generation Citizen, high school students, under the guidance of classroom teachers and college student mentors, have collaboratively developed projects on topics like school transportation policy, gang violence and food access. By learning traditional civic content alongside skills for civic action, these students have applied their civics knowledge to help to raise awareness, inform policy makers on their views, and make their voices heard on issues important to them, their schools, and their communities.
• At Mikva Challenge, students have hosted mayoral candidate forums, served as election judges, volunteered in local campaigns, conducted action oriented research on a wide range of issues and worked closely with the CEO of Chicago schools and the Mayor to improve transportation and schools. 
• At the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia (UCCP), high school and college students have collaborated on a youth produced TV news show that airs weekly on Public Access TV. Upset by the disproportionate amount of negative media attention, these young people decided to spotlight positive contributions of youth. Involved in every stage of planning, production, marketing and distribution, these young people have acquired a wide range of technical, project management, communication, and media literacy skills as well as a much deeper understanding of role of media in a democratic society. 
• Youth on Board, in partnership with Boston Public Schools, administers the Boston Student Advisory Council (BASC) to engage students in decision-making processes that affect their public education. BASC has been instrumental in improving learning environments by creating mechanisms for student feedback in official teacher evaluations, protecting student rights and providing recommendations on restorative justice discipline policies. 

This is only a small sampling of how youth are engaging in the democratic process to make improvements in their education, the health of their communities, the way media portrays young people, and the political process itself. They are learning to be citizens in a democratic society and behaving professionally and responsibly. This is Action Civics in practice. Hopefully, President Obama will share Arne Duncan’s passion for and embrace of, Action Civics as a powerful antidote to our engagement malaise.

Focus on Pell

The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has released a new report highlighting the use of federal student financial aid by states and congressional districts.  It is fairly obviously intended to make the point that campus-based aid-- which President Obama is trying to leverage to hold colleges and universities responsible for rising tuition and fees-- is a tiny amount of money.  I think it does that quite effectively. But what it also highlights is how important the federal Pell Grant is to state and local economies.


Let's take Wisconsin, for example.  In 2010-2011, just over 130,000 Wisconsin students received Pell Grants, valued at over $454 million. In contrast, campus-based programs (the SEOG and work-study) distributed funds to just over 35,000 students to the tune of about $34 million.


The contribution of federal student aid to congressional districts is sizable, but the relative contribution of campus-based programs is generally small. For example, in Paul Ryan's district, the Pell Grant contributes $36 million, while campus-based programs add just $2 million.  In Sean Duffy's district, the Pell contributes $45 million, and campus-based programs barely $3.2 million.  Of course, where there are more colleges and universities, districts benefit much more from campus-based programs.  Tammy Baldwin's district (which includes UW-Madison), receives $104 million from Pell, and just under $10 million from campus-based programs.


The variation in the contribution of campus-based aid dollars to economies in congressional districts illustrates the challenges Obama faces in getting his proposal passed.  In contrast, the widespread distribution of Pell dollars throughout congressional districts shows us why, generally speaking, the Pell is likely to survive for quite some time.  It also makes one wonder why Congress doesn't do more to focus on Pell, and even increase spending, especially given that Pell dollars clearly contribute to state economies-- both directly, and indirectly via increased human capital. 

Are you there Kevin? It's me, neoliberalism

In a recent blog Kevin Carey took on Claire Potter’s critique of Obama’s higher education proposal by chastising her for using the term neoliberalism, and calling her a college professor so out of touch with the real world that she isn’t invited to the policymaking tables where he hangs out.

Dear Kevin, as you know I like you very much—so pardon me if I take offense here.  As a fellow college professor who spends quite a bit of time in DC policy circles (including with you), I think your critique of Potter is off-base. It’s also incredibly unproductive, as you set up an “education reformer versus college professor” dichotomy that's decidedly unhelpful. You accuse Potter of thinking she’s better than the DC crew, but she said nothing of the sort—instead it’s really you who calls her the idiot, seemingly for using big words. 

At the heart of the problem with your critique, Kevin, is that you’ve really missed the meaning of neoliberalism.  Yes, I’m going to keep using the polysyllabic term, since like “stratification,” it has real meaning and is useful for describing a complex concept. 

No, neoliberalism isn’t like facism—as you point out—and no one I know ever claimed it was.  It’s not widely abhorred, primarily because the term itself challenges an ideology so dominant that people have a hard time recognizing its existence.   You reduce neoliberalism to just one of its pieces: an effort to remove market regulation in the pursuit of greater liberty. Since Obama seeks, in some regards, to regulate the action of markets, markets which you rightly note already operate in education, then his policies can’t be neoliberal.  Right?

Wrong.  Neoliberalism is staring you in the face, and in today's education policies it isn’t marked solely or even primarily by a lack of market regulation, but by the promotion of privatization, erosion of worker protections,  heavy reliance on standardized testing, and the rollback of broad community input on school decisions.  More informally, neoliberalism posits that solutions to problems such as opportunity gaps lie in competition among individuals rather than long-term planning and cooperation.  It serves the few who are “racing to the top,” rather than the many who could and should work together for a just and equal society.  Frankly, neoliberal policies take the easy way out and call it “efficient”, rather than doing what’s hard but ultimately long-lasting and ethical.

Unbelievably, without a shred of evidence that positive outcomes have been achieved with the first, President Obama has proposed yet another Race to the Top, one that will undoubtedly reward institutions for policies that promote slippery-slope private partnerships (e.g. between community colleges and business), high-stakes accountability, and top-down reforms of professorial work, all in the name of enhanced productivity.  I'm on the record as for for productivity improvements in higher education, but I would never want them to be agenda #1—first we have a long way to go toward establishing a much deeper commitment public education, we must agree on goals and metrics for both educational equity and quality, we have to develop an appropriate and socially-just financing structure, and then we can work on efficiency.  Working backwards is a surefire way to cut costs and lose what’s most valuable: talent. And it’s definitely the way to create and perpetuate a 1% in education that leaves most of us behind.

Kevin, we share a deep commitment to doing whatever it takes to improve students' education experiences.  But we disagree on what we think the path to that goal must entail.  In my view, the road must include the continuation and indeed the growth of public investments in public education—not routes around it.  It must also include enhanced respect and support for educators.  There is no evidence of such support in this proposal—the importance of adequately supporting the work of professors in order to help student is not mentioned, and yet the fingers of blame are pointed in their direction (most recently by Joe Biden) for rising costs of college attendance.   The winners of this race will likely be the private institutions, who depend far less on state support, and thus will look like winners.  The students and families equipped to benefit from choice—those with more access to information and who are accustomed to “shopping,” will reap the rewards. They're the voters, and they'll love it most of all. Others who love the idea of choosing, and believe the false hopes that discussions of choice perpetuate, will similarly fall in line. That’s the neoliberal model at work—purporting to convene a fair competition, exciting the individualistic imagination of the American Dream, without placing any particular value on the principles of collective public goods or fair labor practices.  It may get people revved up in an election year, but make no mistake about it--it isn’t a progressive vision in the least.

Thoughts on the Obama Blueprint for Higher Education

Today President Obama unveiled his latest blueprint for the reform of higher education at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, a public institution with relatively high tuition and relatively advantaged students, and a place in the midst of a dispute over graduate student labor practices. It's just miles from Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, where on July 14, 2009, Obama released his American Graduation Initiative, a blueprint for transforming the nation's community colleges, which was essentially destroyed as it was caught up in political debates over the health care legislation.

The blueprint responds to the groundswell of concern about the high and ever-expanding cost of college attendance, and the corresponding growth in the costs of financial aid. It resonates with efforts by the Occupy movement, and especially with the agendas of the Lumina and Gates foundation. It's also consonant with the work of many labor economists.

On the one hand, there are many things to like here-- for example, it's about time the Administration shined a light on the fact that tuition is rising primarily because states are cutting their support to higher education. Despite some recent unfortunate remarks by Vice-President Biden, faculty salaries don't account for much of the increase in tuition. While it is the case that the salaries of SOME professors are too high, such discussions serve only to distract from the real problems-- and have the political effect of pitting educators against students. That may be convenient for administrators, or conservatives who simply want to put the predominantly liberal faculty out of work, but it isn't solving the problem of rising tuition. We shouldn't expend effort making policy based on anecdote or a few bad apples, especially when a wealth of data is staring us in the face, pointing the way.

But in many ways, what President Obama does in this blueprint is deeply problematic. First, it demonstrates his clear adherence to market-based logics of educational reform. He seems to actually believe that Race to the Top is working so well that it ought to be replicated by creating another competition in higher education. Where's the evidence to support that? Too much faith in Arne Duncan, if you ask me.

Second, the approach of tying Perkins and SEOG dollars to these new requirements has a consequence--perhaps unintended--of restricting the abilities of financial aid administrators to exercise their professional judgment in directing aid to students. These are some of the most flexible dollars at their disposal-- and some institutions have very, very few. I'm concerned that we don't yet know whether the choices aid administrators make maximize the effects of these dollars in ways that will now be minimized-- and also that these frontline workers would seem to have little control over the institutional and state actions needed to ensure the dollars keep coming in. In other words, aid officers may have fewer flexible dollars to work with now, but no additional control over how their universities set tuition.

I'm happy to see some money to promote the adoption of practices that can increase productivity in higher education, but as Doug Harris and I have pointed out, the evidence-base on which to make judgements about cost-effectiveness of programs is very, very thin. So I'm very disappointed that this program didn't begin by first endowing the Institute for Education Sciences with the resources needed to establish multiple higher education research centers, and task them (in part) with evaluating effects of this effort.

Also, given that some of these approaches to enhanced productivity have negative effects for faculty worklife, it would have been good for Obama to at minimum urge policymakers to avoid pitting students against their educators-- as they have in criticizing teachers' unions-- and instead be cognizant that students and professors have many common interests, and those should be emphasized. I predict that next up we'll be told that faculty aren't really interested in student success, and thus can and should be replaced. Of course, no one will produce hard evidence to back that up-- and yet we'll be demonized.

When it comes to specific aid programs, it is absurd for Obama to double the American Opportunity Tax Credit without any explanation, while barely mentioning the Pell Grant. As Sandy Baum and Mike McPherson recently wrote, when "will we also debate whether government expenditures targeting low-income college students deserve much stricter scrutiny in this age of attempted austerity than government expenditures through the tax code targeting more-affluent students?"

Overall, my reaction to this proposal is a simple "Meh." (HT to Sue Dynarski) Lately Obama has come out fighting, talking about the rich and poor, and about not backing the same old policies which got us into this economic crisis in the first place. What I see in this proposal is a lot of his approach to k-12 education and it's neither radical or progressive. Sure, it resonates with the desire of moderates and conservatives (as well as so-called reformers) to hold the academy's feet to the fire, and it does talk about state responsibility. But a progressive blueprint would've referred to higher education much more strongly as a right and a public good, focused on policies that could most benefit the struggling public institutions (think community colleges and state u's-- not flagships) and left all privates out of eligibility, stressed the importance of both faculty success and student success to the definition of "quality", and instead of framing change as a "race to the top" he should have called for a "war on educational inequality."


PS. After reading my take, please consider Clare Potter's. She is spot-on, and I only wish I'd made the case as well as she did!

The New Normal

Too many Americans appear willing to accept the hand they're dealt. Most shockingly, many of our political, educational and civic leaders seem to have fallen into the same trap. "The New Normal," they call it. Like Death and Taxes. Etched in stone. Undefined, yet not re-definable. Inevitable.

Fortunately, there are those among us willing to demand a new deck of cards -- and a new dealer!

We've seen the rise of the Forces For Fairness in states like Wisconsin where there is no disguising the unsubtle, in-your-face, anti-democratic, vitriolic, bought-and-paid-for policies of Governor Scott Walker, the Brothers Fitzgerald, ALEC, the Koch Brothers and their yes men and women (even the few remaining Republican moderates - if they still can be called such - who should know better). In the Badger State, tens of thousands took to the streets of Madison and are now actively participating in recall efforts to change the equation and prevent Wisconsin from being turned into a place totally unrecognizable.

Nationally, I see a rising consciousness and an emerging consensus that congressional Republicans have one-upped their Gingrichian colleagues from the 1990s in overreaching on fiscal matters. Voters do not like the draconian cuts being pushed through by House Republicans, the intransigence and obstructionism practiced as a religion by Senate Republicans, the GOP's willingness to hold America's bond rating and our economic recovery hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and an adherence to a baseless and extremist anti-tax philosophy. In a recent CBS News poll, 71 percent of Americans are opposed to the way the Republicans are approaching the debt limit debate. As well they should be.

Americans are NOT opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy to address our national debt. A recent Reuters poll found that 52 percent of Americans believed that "a combination of spending cuts and tax increases was the best strategy to reduce deficits." Republicans are so constrained by anti-tax pledges that they even believe a repeal of ANY tax cut or the closing of ANY tax loophole (even those for corporate jet owners!) would result in Grover Norquist gagging them with a mouthful of tea bags and ordering them to a permanent political purgatory.

If more Democrats had shown the courage to stand up sooner and establish the terms of the debate, this emerging consensus could have been precipitated. The likes of Vermont's Bernie Sanders have had it right for some time in the call for "shared sacrifice." Others, including President Obama, appear to be catching up to the reality that was evident to Sanders and other Progressives: Congressional Republicans are economic extremists willing to drive the American economy into the ground in order to assuage the Anti-Tax God (don't let it go to your head, Mr. Norquist).

"The Rock and the Hard Place on the Deficit", an op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times, written by Christina Romer, is one of the best articles I've read that puts the substance of this issue into context. For the benefit of you non-Times subscribers, here are some key highlights:

The economic evidence doesn’t support the anti-tax view. Both tax increases and spending cuts will tend to slow the recovery in the near term, but spending cuts will likely slow it more. Over the longer term, sensible tax increases will probably do less damage to economic growth and productivity than cuts in government investment.
...

There is a basic reason why government spending changes probably have a larger short-term impact than tax changes. When a household’s tax bill rises by, say, $100, that household typically pays for part of that increase by reducing its savings. Its spending tends to fall by less than $100. But when the government cuts spending by $100, overall demand goes down by that full amount.

Wealthier households typically pay for more of a tax increase out of savings, and so they reduce their spending less than ordinary households. This implies that tax increases on wealthy households probably have less effect on the economy than those on the poor or the middle class.

All of this argues against any form of fiscal austerity just now. Even some deficit hawks warn that immediate tax increases or spending cuts could push the economy back into recession. Far better to pass a plan that phases in spending cuts or tax increases over time.

But if federal policy makers do decide to reduce the deficit immediately, reducing spending alone would probably be the most damaging to the recovery. Raising taxes for the wealthy would be least likely to reduce overall demand and raise unemployment.

The politics behind this issue is another matter. But it has huge implications for issues like education. Too many educational advocates, policy types, and yes, even elected leaders seem all too willing to accept "The New Normal" -- and even pontificate about it -- as opposed to fight for a new deal and attempt to redefine the debate. President Obama too often appears to allow congressional Republicans to define the terms of the conversation, such as tying long-term deficit reduction to the debt ceiling, as Robert Reich noted over Twitter yesterday.

There's a time and a place for acknowledging political realities and accepting half a loaf. The problem is we've entered the second coming of the Robber Barons where the rich are hoarding their loaves of bread and too many Americans aren't getting a chance to get their hands in the dough at all. Until we address the historic economic inequality in this country and put spending power back in the pockets of working families, there is a tremendous likelihood that the economy will never fully recover. Never. That requires us -- and our elected leaders -- to speak out and act.

The time is now. Reality is what we make it. More of us have got to be willing to step up and say, "Enough!" I've witnessed Democrats and independents get energized in Wisconsin. We need a similar dynamic to take hold nationally. My guess is that it will build in time. But will it be enough to change the equation?

The forces of fiscal lunacy had better listen to the American people now or my guess is that they'll be hearing from the silent majority of sensible Americans at the ballot boxes in 2012 -- and even sooner in states like Wisconsin. If the "Republican Revolution" in the 1990s is any signal, past is prologue.