Reading between the Lines

Tonight, in my family engagement class, we heard from a Congressional policy advisor: Do you like reading legislation?  If you want to work in policy, you're going to have to read a lot of it--and you'll have to like it.

I've been up to my eyes in English Language Learners this semester in my statehouse internship, and thus far--I can't say I love legislation.  Department of Education regulations ... technical assistance for school districts; they may not be page-turners, but they're at least bereft of looping semicolons and "whereases" that dot the statutory language.  But the law itself?  Not only don't I love it.  It's not even a courtship.

I may not be enamored of legal language, but it's been a blast seeing policy from the inside-out.  The hearings, the advocacy, the urgency: this stuff matters.  And to contribute to the process has been quite gratifying.

But as someone used to writing a lesson plan on Friday to be rolled out next week, state legislation seems to move at an absolutely glacial pace.  And there's something else to adjust to.  Bills are filed, the public weighs in, committees file amendments, semicolons are added, "whereases" tweaked.  If you're lucky, a bill squeaks through committee, gets enough support on the voting floor, and goes to the Governor for a signature.  Sure, it's what we all learned in eighth-grade civics.  But the slowness of it is what stands out in person.

And the tortoise speed of legislative action is mirrored in the distance one might feel from the effect of law. The bill I'm working on right now carries a pearl of frustration precisely because it's not yet clear to me how changing the bill will actually change kids' lives.  It's not clear to me policy is the right arena in which to be fighting the battle.

Some legislation has an impact, maybe even immediate impact.  But much legislation edits around the margins, spawns unintended consequences, or at worst, as we all know this week, is immediately pilloried and targeted for repeal.

And that's something else our guest visitor spoke of today: How often do you need to see the results of your work?

Week Links: In a Wonky Mood

Guess I've been in a wonky mood since my professor encouraged us this week to "curl up in bed ... with Title I of No Child Left Behind."  Haven't gone that far, but ...

A well-reported piece on how more and more homeless families in Massachusetts are being put up in local hotels.  I would have liked a little more about the overall Rube Goldbergian homelessness and housing system, but there's plenty of good stuff and vivid anecdotes nonetheless.  The money stat: Four years ago the state housed 66 homeless families in hotels; today, that's 1469.  And this, despite state programs designed precisely to move families into their own apartments ASAP.

A perceptive article at The New Republic on Obama's "re-competition" plan for early-childhood education: same pot of money, but now programs deemed "deficient" have to compete for grants.  One interesting takeaway: the changes have faced little opposition because they were proposed by a Democrat--and because ECE lacks large teachers unions to organize resistance.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

Finally, a Romney and a Kennedy: strange and (at times) strained bedfellows.

Adult Education's Day (or More?) in the Sun

Back from a few days in Burlington, Vermont, with its 70-degree March weather, and surprisingly good restaurant scene (like this one).

A sure sign of spring's renewal and hope, yesterday: adult education prominently featured in the Boston Globe!  In essence, to respond to the reality that adults go back to get a GED, then find it's not enough to get them a family-supporting job or to succeed in community college, the state is planning to "retool" the system to strengthen the focus on college- and career-readiness:

The effort would lead to increased instructional intensity, more academic and career advising, and a curriculum geared toward college and career readiness, including courses in specialized areas of interest, education officials said.

For me, some takeaways, lots of questions.  First, this move should be seen as part of the overall K-12 conversation about bolstering college and career pathways, and making a more seamless educational system.  Second, while adult education has undergone funding cuts since the recession struck in 2008, a renewed focus on the field might act as a barrier to later cuts. 

That said, it's unclear how the field will be "retooled" from above--despite the positive comments from people in the article, teachers, counselors, and directors will all have to be on-board with, and well-trained, in the new sauce.  And I worry that too strong a focus on merely career preparation--while undoubtedly important to so many GED and ESOL-skills seekers--neglects preparation for the rest of life: to be a citizen, to be a parent, to go to college for broad, not narrow skills. 

Look forward to following this one.

What Matters to Me, and Why

Third in a series of speeches for Arts of Communication, at the Kennedy School of Government (the first here, the second here).  

Assignment: Speak about your values.

Over the past few weeks, a number of you have spoken about growing up white and privileged.  In the small town where I’m from, that was my experience, too.  My parents are loving, caring, and involved in the community.  But let’s face it: we were more likely to be in a food co-operative than a multiracial coalition.

A month after I graduated college, I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to volunteer with AmeriCorps.  In college, I’d been an ethnic studies major and student activist.  I was drawn to Milwaukee because it was diverse, affordable, and a bit gritty.  I was drawn to AmeriCorps because, before I became a schoolteacher, I wanted to immerse myself in the community.  I wanted to learn about the institutions around me, and about myself.  Little did I realize, living in a white neighborhood, and working in a black one, just how immersed I would be.

When I arrived, I had six weeks to kill before the program.  I went on brewery tours, I bought a bike, I learned about Milwaukee history.  And I settled into the room I’d rented in a two-bedroom apartment, one of six units in a yellow stone building in a neighborhood people had told me was good to rent in.

A month after I moved in, my roommate Helen and I were chatting one night.  She said, “if you ever need something fixed, talk to me.  The landlord, Gretchen, doesn’t like to deal with subletters.  And I’ll tell you something else Gretchen doesn’t like: blacks.”  Ellen went on: one time Gretchen found out she was considering subletting to a black couple.  She told her, “If you ever rent to people with hair like that, I’ll evict you.”

That night, I learned: it’s one thing to read about race, another to feel it pound, feel it sweat.  I went to my room in a daze, wrote down everything Ellen had told me on a yellow legal pad.  That night, and many more nights, my muscles would clench with questions: Should I move out?  Should I stay, and try to change minds?  I had black friends.  Could I invite them over?

I decided to stay.  I decided to take action.  Now, I didn’t end unfair housing.  But I gathered facts, secretly.  I called up a fair housing council, and gave them each piece of the story.  They opened a case—though I never found out how it got resolved.  But as they investigated the practices in my building, I had to interrogate the habits of my mind. 

For Milwaukee is a city with a lot of street crime.  And for many people, the face of that crime is young, black, and male.  That fall, as I’d leave my AmeriCorps job at the Red Cross to wait at a bus shelter on the corner of 27^th and Wisconsin, in a downbeat, black neighborhood, I’d like to say I felt no anxiety or prejudice.  But I’d be lying.

With time, I found my own way to be comfortable.  I talked to friends and colleagues about—my own racial feelings.  I walked around the neighborhood.  I engaged people at the bus stop.  I tried to make peace with my skeletons.  That fall, I learned: It’s one thing to feel open-minded, but another to open your mind and see how you really feel. 

More than that, in my year in AmeriCorps, I learned what structural racism, and personal racial prejudice, look like in living color.  What was the more important lesson?  To take steps to rectify institutional racism?  Or to take a step back and reflect on our own racial feelings?  Both.  And I learned that you can’t deal with one and not the other.  As long as our minds are segregated, our apartments, our streets, our neighborhoods, will be segregated.  I truly believe that, even if we can’t overcome inequality overnight, with time, we can—but it has to start with each of us.

File This Under:

Wonky but Revealing: Cutting Class, a report from MassBudget on the problems--visible and hidden--with the public education funding formula here in the great state of Massachusetts.


The Executive Summary gets the main points, but there are many nuggets throughout the whole text.  Key takeaways: There are some structural and some situational issues with the "foundation budget" for school systems--what  schools spend on their system, minimum, which differs from district to district depending on number of low-income students, distribution of elementary vs. middle vs. high school students, and so forth.

Structural: the formula was set based on 1993 figures, which weren't adjusted once it was signed into law in 1994, thus always lowballing district needs.

Situational: health care costs and special-ed costs are higher than what you might expect.  Many reasons for both, mostly understandable.  The result: districts pull money that could be used for regular ed teachers and other services to fund their legal obligations to special-ed and employee benefits.

Circumlocutionary: By "the great state of Massachusetts," I actually mean, "the Bay State," "the citizens of the great state I governed," or "home," depending on which version you prefer from what Romney used in his victory parity speech tonight.  By my count he did mention the state's name twice, but it was listening to him get around having to say "great" and "Massachusetts" in the same sound-bite-bound sentence was almost as painful as, well, as listening to him speak in general.

By "home," he expanded by way of saying, "It's nice to be home for the first time in two months."  Hmmm.  Hasn't been in Massachusetts in a while?  As my mother might say, that's sort of how he governed.

Policy Takeaway for the Week: It's likely the only major legislation to get through the Massachusetts Statehouse before summer is the budget, and a bill to contain health-care costs.

First reaction: man, that's slow.  Why doesn't anything ever get accomplished in politics?

Second reaction: considering how much health care eats up the state budget, a health-care bill is an education bill, a transportation bill, a community-development bill.  In theory--the devil will be in the details, of course.