The new documentary “Waiting for Superman” has unleashed a long overdue national debate on the dire state of America’s public schools. Unfortunately, it’s too narrow of a debate.
The filmmakers and their school reform allies on Capitol Hill argue the vast majority of the blame for falling test scores can be laid at the feet of teachers unions — and teachers unions counter that it’s stingy, test-happy politicians who are the true obstacles.
Meanwhile, elected officials from both sides of the aisle dawdle and are letting a truly transformative innovation — the Promise Neighborhoods program — wither on the vine.
One of President Obama’s key anti-poverty initiatives since his days on the campaign trail, Promise Neighborhoods (based on the Harlem Children’s Zone model) capitalizes on a rarely recognized fact about our children’s success — it’s not just about the school, it’s about the community. The hyper-focus on teacher quality — while important — obscures the reality that there are many other significant challenges facing poor children.
When Arne Ducan announced the 21 geographically diverse winners of Promise Neighborhoods planning grants late last month, he lit the fuse on what we hope will be a complete reimagining of the way we empower poor children. Rather than just focusing on the eight hours a day a child is in school, Promise Neighborhoods looks at a child’s full 24 hours — wrapping them in a pipeline of education, health and social supports from birth to college.
But nervous moderate Democrats (and lockstep Republicans) fearful of spending any money in this crazed anti-spending environment have abandoned the promise of Promise Neighborhoods — slashing President Obama’s $210 million FY 2011 budget request by as much as 90 percent.
It is short-sighted to allow a proven, pragmatic idea like Promise Neighborhoods to go untested. More than 330 communities applied for the first 21 planning grants — the hunger is there. President Obama’s $210 million request was supposed to take the program to the next step: to empower communities to go beyond planning and actually implement some of these innovations. Instead, politicians who are always praising “innovation” and “new thinking” are keeping this program from ever getting off the ground and proving itself a worthy investment.
While many people associate the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) with its successful charter school program, Promise Neighborhoods lifts up what really sets HCZ apart.
HCZ has pioneered innovations like Baby College, which helps expectant parents learn the ropes of parenting, promotes reading to children, and encourages verbal discipline over corporal punishment. They’ve also tackled the pernicious asthma and obesity epidemics that leave millions of poor children unhealthy and home from school.
HCZ head Geoff Canada — a hero of the school reformers — will tell you that it is these out-of-school efforts that have helped boost Harlem kids’ test scores as much as anything done inside the classroom. But, too often, these common-sense truths — hungry children learn less; asthmatic children miss school; children who were read to find it easier to learn to read — are missed in the current reform debate.
Promise Neighborhoods is not, at heart, about school reform. It is a proven model to stop the devastating cycle of intergenerational poverty.
The recent federal poverty numbers show we cannot wait any longer. America is hemorrhaging talent. One in four black and Latino people in America live in poverty. Tomorrow’s knowledge economy will require millions of skilled workers that we are simply not producing.
But leaders in Washington aren’t listening. The House cut the president’s budget $210 million request down to $60 million and the Senate slashed it even further, down to just $20 million. It’s not clear how much — if at all — Congress will eventually invest in this program.
To put that in perspective, HCZ’s budget this year was $48 million to cover only a 97-block area in Harlem. Even with the local matching funds that would be required to earn an implementation grant, it is absurd to think that we can seed transformative change across America with less than half the funding it takes to run HCZ for a single year.
In the meantime, we’ll see this innovation being seeded in nearly two dozen communities thanks to the planning grants. From Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights to the Mississippi Delta to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, change is coming — but Congress must do more.
The crisis facing American education cannot be solved by one loud voice, one large grant, one strong leader, or even one great teacher. It can only be solved if we all work together — nationally and locally — to bring children all the support they need to succeed.
We must remember that schools finish the job that communities start. Promise Neighborhoods creates a strong foundation on which all other reforms can build. We must invest in change now, before we waste the talents of more of our children
On Thursday morning, Barack Obama will mark the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP with a speech to the group’s annual convention. The president should use this opportunity to note that in America’s rush to declare itself “post-racial,” somebody forgot to tell the economy not to discriminate.
Communities of color — and especially black communities — are getting hit the hardest by far in this recession. A new report on the front page of the New York Times this week showed black unemployment is rising at four times the rate of white unemployment in New York City. Overall, black unemployment in June sits at an astounding 14.7 percent, compared to a still-scary 9.5 percent nationwide. That means that more than one in every seven black Americans is actively looking for work and can’t find it. Hispanics are not that far behind, with a 12.2 percent unemployment rate.
Even before the recession, black unemployment was at “recessionary levels,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. EPI analyst Algernon Austin found that during the boom times of 2006, white male unemployment was just 3.9 percent while black male unemployment was more than twice as high at 9.7 percent — worse than the current national unemployment rate that has everyone rightfully worried. That doesn’t mean whites are having it easy right now — far from it. Working-class people of all races are facing a daunting job market as unemployment continues to rise across the board.
But there’s also no doubt communities of color are getting an extra helping of pain in this downturn. Our federal policy has to start targeting recovery efforts toward communities that the recession itself is already targeting. If we don’t target our efforts, we risk decimating already-struggling communities and deepening a long legacy of disinvestment.
Many politicians argue that “a rising tide lifts all boats” — meaning an improving national economy will, by definition, help all communities to thrive. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are countless seldom-seen barriers to communities of color getting the help they both need and deserve.
We need look no further than the $787 billion stimulus package to see what happens when federal spending is not targeted at vulnerable communities. The stimulus was supposed to be a shining example of broad-based, equal disbursement of federal dollars — pumped from D.C. to each state so they could spend it as they deem appropriate. Ostensibly, this was supposed to mean all communities got an equal share. It has not.
Instead, we’ve seen states spending in exactly the kind of ways advocates warned about early on — plenty of new highways (built by powerful construction concerns) and very little money for public transit projects or operations (which provide vital links to jobs for millions of low-income people of color) or other infrastructure needs like expanded broadband or improved water systems. And as a New York Times analysis found last week, states are spending less than half their stimulus dollars on cities, despite cities being home to more than two-thirds of the nation’s population and the overwhelming majority of the nation’s poor. That means for every dollar spent on a city resident, more than $2 was spent on an exurban or rural one. There are, of course, folks in desperate need of help in rural and exurban areas, too, but the sprawl-inducing highway projects that are being built do little to address the real needs of these struggling communities.
We have seen over and over again that “colorblind” spending policies too often end up benefiting white, middle-class areas the most.
Obama has always been the first to dismiss the idea that we are in a “post-racial” society. The legacy of racism remains baked-in in the way our government spends its money. That legacy doesn’t always have to show itself in such overt ways as disinviting 60 black campers from a pool in Philadelphia. It can be — and usually is — far more subtle, like the vast discrepancy in unemployment rates between white and black men with exactly the same educational attainment or the lack of fresh food or broadband in most low-income communities.
President Obama should use his bully pulpit at the NAACP to begin to tackle the racial components of this recession. Communities of color need his leadership.
President Obama named a tough, hard-nosed former Secret Service agent to lead the federal oversight board for the $787 billion recovery package. I’m sure Earl Devaney will live up to his reputation as a top-notch investigator of fraud and abuse. But oversight of the stimulus must be about more than just catching crooks and waste after the fact. We must also make sure the money is being spent wisely and effectively to help the economy and target those most in need — right now.
Much of the money in the package is intentionally flexible, heading out to state and local government agencies with broad guidelines but no hard mandates about how to spend it. Without the voices of regular taxpayers in the mix, this flexible spending is likely to just get pumped through the same old broken and tilted system, leaving low-income communities without the infrastructure improvements that they so badly need to catch up to the global economy. Stimulus spending must engage, listen to and learn from the Americans who are actually facing these challenges every day — and who are also financing the solution.
That is why it is crucial that each state set up its own state-level oversight board, to get money flowing to the local projects that will have the greatest economic impact, both short- and long-term. The recovery bill does make some good nods toward transparency and accountability at the federal level. Most funded projects will be listed on the new Recovery.gov Web site, $350 million is set aside for federal investigators and accountants, and Devaney will head up a multi-agency oversight board.
But none of these measures will do much to ensure the money is spent wisely and to greatest effect — only that we will know after the fact if money is spent poorly. Clearly, the Washington insiders on the federal oversight board will bring a wealth of knowledge on how the gears of government work. But this is not enough. The voices of the people — everyday people in communities across the country — must be heard as well.
Without such oversight, the funding being sent directly to state-level agencies will be particularly susceptible to the influence of high-powered lobbyists and moneyed special interests who steer resources away from where they are most needed. The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, a broad-based group of open-government advocates led by OMB Watch, agrees that the reporting requirements for state and local spending are far too lax.
In my two decades working across the nation with grass-roots leaders trying to improve their communities, I’ve always been amazed at the depth of wisdom, expertise and brass-tacks knowledge at the local level. Anyone working in these communities could offer up a long roster of people in all 50 states that could perform such an oversight function.
I think of people like Doris Koo, who heads Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit developer of affordable housing for low-income families. Or Kent Wong, head of UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education and an advocate for immigrants’ rights who has forged countless partnerships between trade unions, community groups and business. Or Nathaniel Smith of Atlanta’s Emory University, who is working to ensure equitable development benefits for all people in his region.
The talent pool of experts who know both policy and people is wide and deep. Economist Manuel Pastor, of the University of Southern California, is ideal. So is Peggy Shepard of the environmental justice group WE-ACT. Same with noted mixed-income housing developer Richard Baron and California Community Foundation president Antonia Hernandez.
Without an eye on the results of this spending, money will likely end up flowing to politically advantageous projects, rather than to those that will do the most to increase economic opportunity for all people. For instance, spending on highways tends to be popular among crucial suburban swing voters. But public transit projects actually produce 19 percent more jobs per dollar spent and serve as an indispensable link between low-income people and jobs. Empowered and insightful oversight boards at both the state and federal level could help direct state block grants toward those projects that create more jobs and spread economic opportunity.
Also, longer-term investments like job training programs, broadband expansion and clean energy projects often don’t have enough support from local politicians to move through the byzantine world of state and local government. Oversight boards that include representatives of the most impacted communities could help ensure that economic recovery funds go toward viable, long-term infrastructure projects and not just on short-term, “band-aid” fixes.
We cannot afford to allow billions to be spent haphazardly or to serve parochial political concerns. Tough, grounded oversight from inside and outside the Beltway is absolutely necessary to make sure the stimulus spending is not only free from fraud, but also grounded in the lives of struggling Americans.
Millions of Americans are suffering thanks to an economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up soon. Congressional stimulus proposals likely hold the key to our economic revival. Yet the debate over the bill is dominated by allegations about alleged pork and wasteful spending. At a time of national crisis and on the heels of a formidable electoral victory, why are President Obama and his congressional allies playing defense on the recovery?
Obama must find a more compelling way to tell America that we need far more than just a short-term stimulus plan. This bill — with some relatively small adjustments — offers hopeful signs that the nation is ready to transform and move quickly to do so.
Sure, the bill is flawed, but it also does much right. Foremost, it offers solid and immediate help for low-income people – - those hit “first and worst” — with boosts in unemployment insurance, food stamps and refundable tax credits. Many Republicans are questioning why such social support expansions are in the bill, but it is clear that it is both humane and economically savvy. The inability and unwillingness of millions of Americans to spend is forcing us further down a grave economic spiral. The poorest Americans — those who are targets of this social spending — have no choice but to spend what they have. That is why this kind of spending is, in fact, perhaps the most stimulative portion of the bill — the gross-domestic-product turnover per dollar spent for these kinds of social spending is far, far higher than any corporate tax break.
The bill also provides some tentative first steps toward a down payment on many pressing infrastructure demands — a kind of economic backfilling. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Minneapolis bridge collapse, we have seen what happens when we refuse to dedicate the necessary dollars and manpower to fixing our infrastructure. But not all infrastructure projects are equal. Retrofitting schools and homes, building new energy grids and expanding public transit access all work to make a more green and broadly prosperous America.
So, the broad outlines of the bill are encouraging. But there remain significant concerns about whether this bill will help those who need it most and usher in a new era of shared prosperity in America.
For instance, the bill calls for massive investments in suburban highways, but comparatively little for the public transit that is the economic lifeblood of millions of low-income Americans — and which, if funded well, could be the salvation of millions more.
Job training programs also do not receive nearly enough funding. At PolicyLink, we call for at least 1 or 2 percent of all infrastructure funding to go toward training the next generation workforce.
And outside-the-box projects like grants and loans for new supermarkets in poor communities (to help inner-city residents eat better and improve their health) or more targeted broadband expansion (to encourage competitiveness and entrepreneurship in low-income communities) haven’t the attention they deserve, either.
The bill started off from a very exciting place — a recognition that we need a massive infrastructure investment and it could be used as stimulus. But the infrastructure choices, so far, have not met this singular moment. And Republicans have been successful at the cable news game of highlighting seemingly wasteful spending, forcing supporters of the stimulus continue to play defense.
Still, we support the general outlines of this bill. We, of course, hope President Obama and Congress will improve it. But the president must not shy away from talking about what this bill truly is. It is not simply a stimulus package. It is a stimulus and recovery package. It is the first step toward settling the roiling economy and beginning a dramatic, overdue and equitable transformation of the American economy. The nation can afford nothing less — now or for future generations.
A still from "Waiting for Superman" 
Unemployed truck driver Allen Askew III gestures to the photographer while checking job listings at a jobs search agency in Detroit, Michigan April 3, 2009. 
