Contractors and Workers at Odds Over Scaffold Law
New York Times - December 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In 1885, as new engineering inventions were ushering in the era of...
New York Times - December 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In 1885, as new engineering inventions were ushering in the era of the skyscraper, lawmakers in New York State enacted a law intended to safeguard construction workers who were finding themselves facing increasing dangers while working at ever-greater heights.
That measure, which became known as the Scaffold Law, required employers on building sites to ensure the safety of laborers working above the ground. Since then, some form of the legislation has remained on the books despite repeated attempts to repeal it.
But a lobby of contractors, property owners and insurers has in recent months renewed a campaign against the law, arguing that no less than the future of the state’s construction industry is at stake.
They argue that the law is antiquated and prejudicial against contractors and property owners, and essentially absolves employees of responsibility for their own accidents, leading to huge settlements. The payouts, they contend, have in turn led to skyrocketing insurance premiums that are hampering construction and the state’s economic growth.
On Tuesday, a coalition of contractors, including a newly formed alliance of firms owned by women and minorities, announced the start of an advertising and lobbying blitz in Albany and New York City. But a counter-lobby of unions, workers’ advocates and trial lawyers is pushing back just as fiercely. The law, they argue, is essential to ensuring the safety of workers in some of the world’s most dangerous jobs, particularly those employed by shoddy contracting firms that cut corners to save money. The law, they say, holds developers and contractors accountable for keeping job sites safe.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this week acknowledged the politically loaded atmosphere surrounding the Scaffold Law, but suggested that he was open to the possibility of modifying the law.
The law states that contractors and property owners are responsible for ensuring that scaffolds, hoists and other devices that enable aboveground building construction and repair “shall be constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.”
When injuries result from a violation of those terms, the law says, contractors and owners are liable. There is no mention of worker responsibility. Under the law, however, the plaintiff still must show that a violation of the law’s standards occurred and that the violation caused the injury.
But those seeking to change the law want to incorporate a standard of “comparative negligence.” This amendment — described in a state bill submitted earlier this year — would require a jury or arbiter to consider whether the liability of the defendants, and thus the amount of damages, should be reduced for cases in which the worker’s negligence or failure to follow safety procedures contributed to the accident.
Opponents argue that the amendment would reduce the incentive for the property owner and contractors to take necessary safety precautions.
“This law protects both union and nonunion workers and creates a sense of accountability on these job sites,” said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an umbrella group for unionized construction workers. “If the law was modified, the workers would lose their voice.”
But those seeking to alter the law say the amendment would not eliminate the owners’ and contractors’ motivation to keep their workplaces safe because they would still face the possibility of shouldering large payouts, even if they were found only partly responsible for an accident.
“The notion that a contractor or owner would want to do anything to undermine the safety of the worker on the job doesn’t make sense,” said Pamela Young, associate general counsel of the American Insurance Association.
Workers’ advocates argue that erosion of the Scaffold Law would have a disproportionate impact on minority and immigrant laborers, who, the advocates say, are more likely to work for nonunion companies that may not provide proper safety training and equipment.
Immigrants, the advocates said, are less likely to speak the same language as their bosses on a job site and more likely to fear being fired if they demand a safer workplace.
From 2003 to 2011, federal safety regulators investigated 136 falls “from elevation” that killed workers on construction sites in New York, according to a recent report by Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group. Of those workers, about 60 percent were Latino, foreign-born or both. That rate rose to 88 percent among fatal falls in New York City.
Some trial lawyers have been effective at using the law to secure large settlements. Of the 30 largest settlements in 2012, at least 14 were in cases brought under state labor laws and most of those involved falls from ladders or scaffolding, according to The New York Law Journal. The awards ranged from $3 million to $15 million.
Weislaw, a Polish immigrant, was the plaintiff in a liability case that was settled last month. (He spoke on the condition that his surname not be used in this article, out of concern for his privacy.) He had been part of a crew repairing the roof of a one-story public school building in Long Beach, on Long Island. While he was working on the roof one spring day in 2010, he was concentrating so hard on his task that he lost track of the edge of the roof and fell, he said, suffering multiple fractures.
“I will most likely never be able to return to work,” he said.
Weislaw filed a lawsuit under the Scaffold Law arguing that he had not been provided with proper protection, such as a safety line or a spotter.
The case settled for $2.7 million, said David Scher, a lawyer from the firm that represented him.
Critics of the Scaffold Law say the way it is written makes these sorts of cases easy to win.
“It’s a gold mine for the plaintiffs’ bar,” said Mike Elmendorf, president and chief executive of Associated General Contractors of New York State. “When you get one of these cases, it’s largely about how much it’s going to cost.”
These high payouts, he and others contend, have driven up insurance rates, knocking smaller contractors, particularly those run by minorities and women, out of business and forcing others to suspend work, costing thousands of jobs.
They argue that the impact is as high on government projects as it is on private ones, and that the soaring cost of liability insurance is forestalling the repair and construction of public works projects, such as schools, bridges and roads. The New York City School Construction Authority said in a statement on Monday that its liability insurance costs for 2014 would be nearly as much as those for the three-year period from 2011 to 2013.
But in recent weeks, the law’s defenders have employed a new gambit, demanding that the insurance companies open their accounting ledgers to prove whether the Scaffold Law is, in fact, responsible for the rate increases. Insurance executives have vowed to fight any demands to disclose proprietary information that might somehow undermine their competitive advantages.
State Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, a Democrat who represents a heavily immigrant and Latino area of Queens, said he planned to submit a bill that would expand reporting requirements for insurance companies and help lawmakers assess whether the Scaffold Law needed to be changed.
“Show us how much the payouts are,” Mr. Moya said. “Once we see that, we’ll have a better understanding.”
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Protesters to Call on Dimon, Schwarzman to Quit Trump Council
Jamie Dimon and Stephen Schwarzman are facing renewed criticism for their ties to President Donald Trump. Protesters...
Jamie Dimon and Stephen Schwarzman are facing renewed criticism for their ties to President Donald Trump.
Protesters will descend on JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s headquarters in New York on Wednesday with more than 400,000 petitions collected across the U.S., according to a statement from groups including the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York. The groups are calling for Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan, and Schwarzman, Blackstone Group LP’s CEO, to quit Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum.
Read the full article here.
Sorry: You Still Can't Sue Your Employer
From Applebee's to Uber, employers require workers to waive their rights to class-action lawsuits—but there's something...
From Applebee's to Uber, employers require workers to waive their rights to class-action lawsuits—but there's something cities can do to help them.
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Fed Up Coalition comes to Jackson to join the conversation on Economic Policy
People in green shirts stating “Let Our Wages Grow” and “Who’s Recovery?” are all over the main lobby and outdoor areas...
People in green shirts stating “Let Our Wages Grow” and “Who’s Recovery?” are all over the main lobby and outdoor areas of the lodge.
As officials meet for the Economic Policy Symposium, the Fed Up Coalition consisting of workers, economists, and allies are holding a conference simultaneously to discuss ways to foster full employment, higher wages and racial equality.
Ed Donaldson, who is with the San Francisco Alliance of Californians for Community Emplowerment is here to join the conversation on interest rates, unemployment and how the decisions of the Federal Reserve impact Americans.
“We are here exercising our democracy,” said Donaldson. “Monetary policy and the activities of the Federal Reserve are so very important.”
Between 75-100 representatives for the Fed Up Coalition from all over U.S. are at the Jackson Lake Lodge to voice their opinion.
“We have people here who represent every Federal Reserve district across the country. Many have met with Federal Reserve presidents in their area, which has been a very interesting dialog,” he added.
According to Donaldson, instead of looking at abstract data, it is important to have people who can tell you first hand how the economy is impacting them.
“I don’t think numbers tell the whole story about what’s going on. We have a high number of long term unemployed people and a high rate of underemployment. The Federal Reserve assisted Wall Street in getting them out of trouble and we think it’s only democratic that they begin to look at main street and look at ways they can help,” he added.
The Fed Up Coalition’s voice is beginning to be heard. Donaldson mentioned that the Federal Reserve is creating a Community Advisory Counsel, where they will select 15 people to help get insight from the ground.
“I am happy to be here. I think in many ways this is historic,” said Donaldson. “We sort of butted into the conversation, but I think it is far too important of an issue to let this conversation take place and not ask questions.”
The 2015 Economic Symposium’s central theme is “Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy,” and takes place August 27-29 at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.
Source: Buckrail
America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
America’s Biggest Corporations Are Quietly Boosting Trump's Hate Agenda
Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda......
Corporate Backers of Hate campaign calls on companies to end practices that benefit from Trump's agenda...
Read full article here.
The Retail Industry is Marginalizing Women and People of Color. This Has to Change.
The Retail Industry is Marginalizing Women and People of Color. This Has to Change.
Source: In These Times...
Source: In These Times
The National Retail Federation is fond of pointing out that “retail means jobs.” And it’s true: the retail industry today provides one in ten private-sector jobs in the U.S., a number set to grow in the next decade.
Yet new findings show those jobs may be keeping retail workers and their families from rising up the career ladder, exacerbating our country’s growing inequality. The findings from the Center for Popular Democracy demonstrate that, for women and people of color especially, working in retail often means instability and low pay. Both groups make up the lion’s share of cashiers, movers, and other poorly paid positions and barely figure in the upper ranks of management. In general merchandise—including big-box stores such as Target and Wal-Mart—women hold more than 80 percent of cashier jobs, the lowest-paid position. And in the food and beverage industry, women make up approximately half of the workforce but less than a fifth of managers.
People of color in the retail industry are often relegated to the least lucrative jobs as well. In home and garden stores like Home Depot and Lowes, for example, employees of color account for 24 percent of the total workforce—but 36 percent of jobs that pay least.
The findings are especially disappointing given the opportunities available for those who succeed. Certain areas of retail, such as home and garden stores and car dealers, offer living wages to workers—but both women and people of color are largely shut out of these sub-sectors. And management jobs across the industry provide wages and benefits that can allow workers to support themselves and their families—but they are closed off to many.
Reducing these disparities will take more than a bigger paycheck. Retailers must make a concerted effort to establish policies that ensure women and people of color are equally represented in management positions and develop more robust training programs for workers just starting out that give them the chance to advance.
Many retailers have training policies in place, but they can be far from meaningful. Wal-Mart, for example, recently announced it was raising wages to $10, dependent on completion of a six-month training program—an onerous requirement to earn a pitifully low wage that lags well behind the retail sector average. Real training can introduce employees to a range of job duties and responsibilities, incentivizing them to learn specialized skills that allow workers to pick up shifts, advance to higher-paying positions, and bring home a full-time paycheck. Sectors like finance long ago recognized internal barriers to promotion and created programs to promote equal opportunity. Why do we not expect the same of retail?
Retailers that lack such programs, from Walmart to Gristedes, have faced multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuits from women harmed by policies that prevented them from moving upward. Companies that fail to enact real advancement policies can expect similar pushback.
Moreover, workers at the lowest levels are doubly punished with erratic, last-minute scheduling that wreaks havoc on their lives. These schedules are particularly difficult for women. Unable to find childcare at the last minute or unwilling to miss bedtime every night, moms in retail are often deemed ineligible for promotion. Ironically, climbing up the job ladder is the only way to obtain stable hours that let working women and their families thrive.
As these practices have grown worse, many workers have started fighting back, demanding schedules that let them plan their lives, be there for their families and pursue education.
Facing outside pressure, policymakers have also stepped in and accelerated the pace of change. Retailers demonstrated how fast they could change last year when they received a letter from New York’s Attorney General into their use of on-call scheduling. Within months, major retailers like The Gap agreed to significant reforms—and a quarter of a million workers no longer had to put their life on hold for a shift.
State and city policymakers are also leading the way to raise workplace standards, pursuing policies to raise wages to $15 per hour, secure improved work schedules, and guarantee earned sick time. Creating higher-paying, more secure retail jobs will boost the economy, as the low-income retail workforce will likely use any additional earnings to cover basic expenses.
Yet if industry leaders want retail to mean good jobs, they must step up to the plate. Retail workers are the neighbors who shop in our local small businesses; parents trying to help their kids with homework; students working their way through college. It’s clear that retail jobs are holding too many women and people of color back. Rather than superficial fixes, we need bold solutions that move all retail workers forward and allow their families to thrive.
Legal Experts Pan US for Disappointing Human Rights Record
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a...
MSNBC - April 17, 2015, by Willa Frej -The United States has a record of human rights abuses despite its position as a leading voice on human rights issues worldwide, legal experts said at a forum here on Friday, from water shutoffs in Detroit and widespread police brutality to Guantanamo Bay and drone strikes. The alleged abuses include asserting immunity from and not ratifying certain international rights laws and treaties, not joining the International Criminal Court, and supporting governments with abysmal rights records of their own.
Experts at the forum, which took place at Hunter College and previewed the country’s upcoming human rights review by the United Nations, acknowledged that the U.S. is not typically considered an egregious human rights abuser. But a simple look beneath the surface, panelists said, uncovers a staggering range of human rights issues:
Lack of healthcare. Despite the Affordable Care Act’s success in promoting healthcare access, affordable health insurance is not available in many states and not accessible to undocumented immigrants. In a state like Texas, where restrictions sharply limit access to reproductive health, Latina women are twice as likely to contract cervical cancer and 30% more likely to die from it, Katrina Anderson from the Center for Reproductive Rights said.
Water shutoffs. In Detroit, 14,000 households and 38,000 people were without water at the end of 2013, according to Rob Robinson of the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, after the city implemented a program that shut off water in households that couldn’t pay their bills. More 80% of the city’s population is African American, he added, and 40% live below the poverty line.
Police brutality. The U.S. is now experiencing what it’s like to be both over-policed and under-protected, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Marbre Stahly-Butts argued. From the gripping videos capturing instances of police violence to the ensuing national outrage, there’s a new level of awareness around law enforcement abuses.
The response, which has largely centered around the implementation of body camera use by police, has felt inadequate to many, Stahly-Butts said, especially given the billions of dollars allocated to fighting terrorism overseas. “Why no war on racism?” she asked.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died as a result of a police chokehold last year, put a human face to the issue. “If there’s a crime, there should be accountability, whether you’re wearing blue jeans, a blue business suit, or a blue uniform,” she said. His tragedy, she said, was her motivation for speaking out on behalf of human rights, specifically urging police to abide by the same laws they enforce.
Indefinite detention and drone strikes. Despite an early push by President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay, 122 men remain in the prison without charge or trial. Fifty-six of these men have been cleared for transfer out of the prison, but just five transfers have taken place so far in 2015. In another counterterrorism offensive, the Obama administration has expanded the drone strike program in Pakistan and Yemen. The Center for Constitutional Rights’ Baher Azmy told the audience that the program has killed more than one thousand civilians since 2002.
Out-of-control surveillance. The U.S. government’s large-scale data dragnet, revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, is inconsistent with the universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to Faiza Patel, a co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. The “collect-it-all” approach to surveillance eviscerates privacy, Patel argued, by allowing the government to listen in on Americans’ phone calls and read text, email and other online messages without sufficient oversight.
Other speakers were more hopeful. Catherina Albisa, a human rights lawyer with the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative, said the U.S. began as a fierce champion of human rights and described an “emerging landscape” of young people and protesters committed to economic justice through human rights. But government commitments to those rights have languished, Albisa argued, noting America’s “manufactured” water crisis and the closing of abortion clinics in Texas as evidence of deteriorating rights for U.S. residents.
Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, went further, suggesting the U.S. government undermines human rights standards. The U.S. is an active participant in the United Nation’s human rights review process, she explained, but the last set of recommendations resulted in zero domestic reforms. That lack of responsiveness could undermine the review’s credibility going forward, she warned.
The U.S. is set to undergo its second United Nations review in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 11.
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The #MeToo Movement and Everyday Industries, Part 2
The #MeToo Movement and Everyday Industries, Part 2
The Center for Popular Democracy reports that 18 percent of women have upper-management positions, even though they...
The Center for Popular Democracy reports that 18 percent of women have upper-management positions, even though they make up 60 percent of first-line supervisors. People of color, namely black and Latino, are also delegated to low-level, low-paying positions, such as cashiering. Older, experienced employees often do not receive benefits or long-term rewards, according to The Washington Post.
Read the full article here.
Host of issues converge to bring about scrutiny of NY Fed pick
Progressive groups focus on unemployment. The "Fed Up" campaign has advocated keeping monetary policy stimulus in place...
Progressive groups focus on unemployment. The "Fed Up" campaign has advocated keeping monetary policy stimulus in place longer to drive unemployment lower. Fed officials, including John Williams, have favored raising the federal funds rate in small steps to avoid stimulating the economy too much and generating a large burst of inflation that could prove difficult to control.
Read the full article here.
Education “Reformers’” New Big Lie: Charter Schools Become Even More Disastrous
Salon - March 2, 2015, by Jeff Bryant -What fun we had recently with North Carolina’s recently elected U.S. senator,...
Salon - March 2, 2015, by Jeff Bryant -What fun we had recently with North Carolina’s recently elected U.S. senator, Republican Thom Tillis, who insisted we didn’t need government regulations to compel restaurant employees to wash their hands in between using the toilet and preparing our food.
His solution to proper sanitation practices in restaurants – “the market will take care of that” – was roundly mocked by left-leaning commentators as an example of the way conservatives uphold the interests of businesses and moneymaking above all other concerns.
Fun, for sure, but it’s no laughing matter that the Tillis plan for public sanitation appears to increasingly be the philosophy for governing the nation’s schools.
Rather than directly address what ails struggling public schools, policy leaders increasingly claim that giving parents more choice about where they send their children to school – and letting that parent choice determine the funding of schools – will create a market mechanism that leaves the most competent schools remaining “in business” while incompetent schools eventually close.
Coupled with more “choice” are demands to increase the numbers of unregulated charter schools, especially those operated by private management firms that now have come to dominate roughly half the charter sector.
As schools lose more and more students to the charter schools, parents then “vote with their feet,” choice advocates argue, and the market will “work.”
Why the “Tillis Rule” that seems so wrong for public health has been declared the wave of the future for the nation’s schoolchildren and families seems to hardly ever get questioned.
Tarheel School Choice Extravaganza
The Tillis Rule is certainly now the driving force behind new education policy in North Carolina, as rapid charter school expansions and a new voucher plan have opened up public schools to various “market forces.”
How’s that working out?
So far, not so hot. For instance, in Charlotte, at least three charter schools abruptly closed down this year alone, some after having been in operation for only a few months. The most recent shutdown was particularly noticeable.
That school, Entrepreneur High, focused on teaching students job skills, so they could be financially independent when they graduated. Turns out the school had its own financial problems with only $14 in the bank and $400,000 in debt. In fact, the school never even really had a financial plan at all.
In other news from the front of “school choice” in the Tarheel State, left-leaning group N.C. Policy Watch recently reported about a state auditor who checked the books of a Kinston charter school and found the school overstated attendance–thereby inflating its state funds by more than $300,000.
The school shorted its staff by more than $370,000 in payroll obligations, according to reports, while making “questionable payments of more than $11,000″ to the CEO and his wife. And the CEO’s daughter was being paid $40,000 to be the school’s academic officer even though she had zero experience in teaching or school administration.
When the reporter, Lindsay Wagner, tried to contact the school’s CEO to question him about the auditor’s findings, she discovered he had left his position and was working elsewhere in the state – running a different charter school.
Meanwhile, the state has rolled out another school choice venture: vouchers, called Opportunity Scholarships, that allow parents to pull their kids out of public schools and get taxpayer funding to enroll the kids in the schools of their choice. Wagner, again, wondered where the money was heading and found 90 percent of it goes to private religious institutions.
More recently, Wagner’s account of this money found “more than $4,000,000 worth of taxpayer-funded school vouchers have now been paid out to private schools.” Of the top 12 private schools benefiting from this money, all are religious schools.
Also, Wagner reported, voucher funds come with “virtually no accountability measures attached … Private schools are also free to use any curriculum they see fit, employ untrained, unlicensed teachers and conduct criminal background checks only on the heads of schools. For the most part, they do not have to share their budgets or financial practices with the public, in spite of receiving public dollars.”
It’s unfair, however, to single out North Carolina for school choice shenanigans.
Charter Corruption Spreads, Grows
In Ohio, for instance, a recent investigation into charter schools by state auditors found evidence of fraud that made North Carolina’s pale in comparison. The privately operated schools get nearly $6,000 in taxpayer money for every student they enroll, but half the charter schools the auditor looked at had “significantly lower” attendance than what they claimed in state funding.
One charter school in Youngstown had no students at all, having sent the kids home for the day at 12:30 in the afternoon.
This form of charter school fraud is so widespread, according to an article in Education Week, many states now employ “‘mystery’ or ‘secret shopper’ services used in retail” that pose as inquiring parents to call charter schools to ensure they’re educating the students they say they are.
Enrollment inflation is not the only form of fraud charter schools practice. In Missouri, a federal judge recently fingered a nationwide chain of charter schools, Imagine, for “self-dealing” in a lease agreement that allowed it to fleece a local charter school of over a million dollars.
“The facts of the case mirror arrangements in Ohio and other states,” the reporter noted, “where Imagine schools pay exorbitant rent to an Imagine subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. The high lease payments leave little money for classroom instruction and help explain the poor academic records of Imagine schools in both states.”
A charter school manager in Michigan is about to go on trial for steering nearly a million dollars in public funds targeted to renovate his charter school into his own bank account.
In Washington, which was late to the game of charters and choice, the state’s first charter school is already under investigation for financial and academic issues.
Investigators in the District of Columbia, recently uncovered a charter school operator who “funneled $13 million of public money into a private company for personal gain.”
A recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy looked at charter school finances in Illinois and found “$13.1 million in fraud by charter school officials … Because of the lack of transparency and necessary oversight, total fraud is estimated at $27.7 million in 2014 alone.”
One example the CPD report cited was of a charter operator in Chicago who used charter school funds amounting to more than $250,000 to purchase personal items from luxury department stores, including $2,000 on hair care and cosmetic products and $5,800 for jewelry.
The report made specific policy recommendations, including financial reviews and a moratorium on new charters, to increase the transparency and accountability of these schools – the type of policy recommendations charter and school choice fans continue to fight at every turn.
Voucher Ventures Expand Across the Country
While charter school operations continue to waste public money on scandals and fraud – all in the name of “choice” – newly enacted school vouchers divert more public school dollars to private schools.
In parts of Ohio, “the state-sponsored voucher program has increased or even doubled enrollment at some private schools.”
In Indiana, which has the largest taxpayer-funded school voucher program in the country, according to a local source, virtually all of the participating schools, 97 percent, are religiously affiliated private schools.
In Louisiana, over a third of students using voucher funds to attend private schools are enrolled schools “doing such a poor job of educating them that the schools have been barred from taking new voucher students.”
In parts of Wisconsin, “private schools accepting vouchers receive more money per student than public school districts do for students attending through open enrollment.”
Despite the obvious misdirection of taxpayer money, more states are eager to roll out new voucher plans or expand the ones they have. As the Economist recently reported, “After the Republicans’ success in state elections in November, several are pushing to increase the number and scope of school voucher schemes,” including Wisconsin, where probable presidential candidate Scott Walker has proposed to remove all limits on the number of schoolchildren who could attend private schools at taxpayer expense.
Of course, not all voucher-like schemes are called “vouchers.” According to a report from Politico, some states are considering voucher-like mechanisms called Education Savings Accounts that allow parents to pocket taxpayer money that would normally pay for public schools to be used for other education pursuits, including private school and home schooling. Two states – Florida and Arizona – already have them, but six more may soon follow.
Vouchers Hit the Hill
Support for vouchers extends to Congress, as another Politico article reported, where Republican, and some Democratic, lawmakers are “proposing sweeping voucher bills and nudging school choice into conversations about the 2016 primaries.”
According to a report from Education Week, congressional Republicans leading the effort to rewrite the nation’s federal education policy, called No Child Left Behind, are “intent on drafting the most-conservative version of the federal K-12 law possible,” which would include a voucher-like scheme allowing federal money designated as Title I funds, the program for schools with low-income students, “to follow those students to the school of their choice, including private schools.”
In fact, working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives currently is a bill called the Student Success Act that would provide for this “Title I Portability.” In the U.S. Senate, according to Education Week, Title I Portability is also included in a draft bill to rewrite NCLB introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
“Everyone should care and learn about Title I Portability,” warns public school advocate Jan Resseger on Public School Shakedown, a blog site operated by the Progressive magazine.
Resseger points to a statement by the National Coalition for Public Education stating, “This proposal would undermine Title I’s fundamental purpose of assisting public schools with high concentrations of poverty and high-need students.” Resseger also cites, from the Center on American Progress, a brief opposing Title I Portability. “According to CAP,” Resseger explains, Title I Portability would be “Robin Hood in Reverse … taking from the poor and giving to the rest,” ignoring the long-known fact that socioeconomic isolation has a devastating impact, as, on average, “school districts with highly concentrated family poverty would lose $85 per student while more affluent school districts would gain, on average, $290 per student.”
Despite the damage that Title I Portability could do to public schools serving our most high-needs students, charter school advocates appear to back the measure, according to a recent post at Education Week. “By and large, we feel that when the dollars follow children to the school that they select, you create a better marketplace for reform,” the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Nina Rees is quoted.
What about those charters that continue to commit waste and fraud while they funnel public money into privately operated businesses? Will “the market will take care of that”?
Where Choice Fails
Back to the Tillis Rule, consider another example of leaving public health policy up to individual choice: the recent measles outbreak.
That outbreak made it abundantly clear that where parents have the good fortune to be “safe in the herd” of vaccinated children, they often don’t feel an obligation to vaccinate their own offspring.
One can be sympathetic to parents with religious beliefs, or parents who simply hate seeing their babies being stuck with needles, and still justifiably point out to those parents that their “principles” come at the expense of other people’s potential inconvenience, expense and, possibly, suffering.
If those parents lived in a very different country that didn’t provide safety in the herd – or, in the case of Sen. Tillis, didn’t provide for basic sanitation – they’d probably feel quite differently about imposed health regulations.
Certainly comparing healthcare policy to education is not a false equivalency. The two policy arenas are strongly interrelated. The positive correlation between numbers of years of education to healthcare outcomes is well documented.
Further, parents clustered around schools often may share the same information and attitudes, which also can affect health outcomes.
In the case of the recent measles outbreak in California, University of Maryland sociologist Philip N. Cohen took numbers initially crunched by Duke University sociology professor Kieran Healy and found, “Runaway vaccine exemptions are problems of the private and charter schools … The average charter school kindergartner goes to school with classmates almost five times more likely to be non-vaccinated; and charter school kids are more than 3-times as likely to be in class with 5 percent or more kids exempt.”
As Cohen revealed, charter schools he examined have “fewer kids eligible for free-lunch than regular public schools (43 percent versus 55 percent). … Rich charter schools on average have the highest [vaccine] exemption rates, while poor schools – charter or not – are heavily clustered around zero.”
Cohen concluded, “Because they are more parent-driven, or targeted at certain types of parents, charter schools are more ideologically homogeneous. And because anti-vaccine ideology is concentrated among richer parents, charter schools provide them with a fertile breeding ground in which to generate and transmit anti-vaccine ideas.” (H/T Ron Wile.)
Better Than Choice: A Guarantee
Tillis Rule notwithstanding, most people understand that public health policy should be guided not by desires to maximize personal choice but by the need to guarantee public safety and wellbeing. That guarantee, rather than the maximization of choice, is what makes it possible to have the freedom to conduct commerce, live and work safely in our communities, and move about freely in society.
Why should that guarantee we insist on for public health be any different from what we insist on for public education?
Instead, with today’s school choice crowd, children’s guaranteed access to high-quality public education appears to be no longer the goal – either by policy or practice.
Under the Tillis Rule, it’s assumed some schools will be allowed to remain lousy at least for some substantial period of time (how long is anyone’s guess), while “the money follows the child,” “people vote with their feet” and “the market works.”
Any negative consequences to those students and families unlucky or unfortunate enough to be stuck in the not-so-good schools – after all, it’s impossible for every family to get into the “best school” – seem to not matter one whit.
And that’s really sick.
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3 days ago
3 days ago