Growth & Justice Blog

Recommended Reading: Ember Reichgott Junge on charter schools, and John Watson Milton on Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr.

For lovers of Minnesota, for history buffs and for students and practitioners of public policy, I highly recommend two outstanding books released this week.

One is "Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story,'' by former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, a key state leader in education, human services, and governmental redesign and a primary champion of the school-choice and charter school movement of the 1980s and 1990s.  Reichgott Junge skillfully weaves the story of emerging education innovation in Minnesota, from the influence of union leader Albert Shanker, through Gov. Rudy Perpich's bold effort to push through public-school choice, to her own championing of the fights for post-secondary options and finally, Minnesota's emergence as the leading model state in the charter school movement.   Controversy still surrounds charter schools, but they are here to stay, and I'm personally glad that this option was available when my own daughter sought an alternative to her big public high school a few years ago.  (If you buy the book online between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.on May 9, Ember tells me, there's a chance amazon.com will help with promotion.) 

The other is "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-81,''  by former state Sen.  John Watson Milton, and who served with Majority Leader Coleman in a heyday of progressive reform.   This golden decade, in which Coleman arguably had more influence than any other leader, stretched from the Minnesota Miracle and greater state responsibility for education funding and quality,  to putting teeth in civil rights legislation and expanding the rights of women and minorities and gays and lesbians, to campaign finance reform, to environmental cleanups, to progressive tax overhauls.   As former vice-president Walter F. Mondale writes in the foreword:   "In many ways, (Coleman) and Roger Moe, his successor as Senate majority leader, were more important than many governors we've had _ lasting longer, creating a revolution, and elevating the legislative branch to an equal footing with the executive...Nick Coleman was one of the brightest and most effective people in public office I've ever known.''

Both books will serve as reference works for years to come.   And they are a reminder of what's possible in our political process, and an inspiration for future stewards of our state government.

 

Dane Smith

 

Rothschild book offers business sense for all social justice enterprises

There are limitations to the truism that "government ought to run more like a business," or that everything ought to be run like a business, but there's a new book out with a lot of wisdom and practical tips on how every enterprise focused on social justice can learn from business principles. The book is "The Non Nonprofit" and the author is Steve Rothschild, a prominent Twin Citian who was a successful vice president at General Mills and the even more celebrated founder of Twin Cities RISE!, a program that's shown real results in reducing poverty. Steve's a clear and convincing writer and the book is full of real world examples that will resonate with Minnesotans. He offers seven principles on which nonprofits and those of us interested in expanding prosperity should focus, focus, focus:

1. Have a Clear and Appropriate Purpose, 2. Measure What Counts, 3. Be Market Driven, 4. Create Mutual Accountability, 5. Support Personal Empowerment, 6. Create Economic Value from Social Benefit, and 7. Be Learning Driven. And there's a great section at the back of the book with advice on what policymakers and government officials can do to instill these principles. Social justice has its own righteous purpose but linkage to business growth and business principles makes it all the more compelling.

Dane Smith   

Five Reasons For Optimism in 2012

Five reasons, small and grand, for optimism in 2012:

• Even Katherine Kersten is hopeful. I like much of what the conservative firebrand said in her latest Star Tribune column about the "debilitating hail" of news that emphasizes "crisis and decline" and how American success has been founded on the "virtue of hope." This was a nice break from her relentless negativity about any and all things public and progressive about our nation and state. She missed some points about how Americans were always hopeful for justice and greater equality as well as freedom and business growth. But a little ray of sunshine from KK is wonderfully refreshing.
• A good friend of mine may have turned the corner in treatment for a nasty disease. A big reason health care costs keep going up is that people live longer, and thus more people need more medicine and more doctors during more of their lives. I'll got out on a limb and declare that people living longer is a good thing. Another reason for rising health care costs and increasing under-insurance is expensive financial administrative costs in the health sector. Growth & Justice will produce a study early this year that takes a look a the costs and benefits of a universal and unified system of health care for Minnesota.
• The American people are hopeful, amazingly. Although most Americans overwhelmingly view 2011 as a bad year, a recent Associated Press poll found that almost 80 percent of Americans are optimistic about the future of their own families in 2012, and more than 60 percent are optimistic about 2012 for the country as a whole. The polls suggests that Democrats are optimistic than their candidate will be re-elected and Republicans are optimistic than they will win, but hey, it's all optimism.
• Things actually are getting better for humankind as a whole. As Harvard professor Steven Pinker recounts in his convincing and exhaustive new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature" (reviewed here), the current era is the safest and least violent in recent human history, and living conditions are improving everywhere. I like his theory about human progress being part of the “civilizing process," a term he borrows from the sociologist Norbert Elias, who attributes it to the consolidation of the power of the state above feudal loyalties, and to the effect of the spread of commerce. In other words: a happy synthesis of capitalism and good strong democratic governments.
• Finally, in Minnesota, we are well governed and our business leadership is better than elsewhere. Our public sector and our private sector are fundamentally sound, despite gridlock in Washington and depredations on Wall Street. I like what a recent Star Tribune editorial had to say at year's end about Gov. Mark Dayton taking us in the right direction, and the state Senate is now under the leadership of a Republican who is openly moderate.

The economic collapse of late 2008 turned out to be as big a hole as we thought and there is lots of room for improvement all around, from redesigning our governments to restoring our public investments in education and public infrastructure to reducing racial and income inequality. Lots of things can and will go wrong. But there's no future in pessimism. See the doughnut, not the hole.

--Dane Smith 

"More Bang for Your Buck" should be required reading for Minnesota policy types

Peter Heegaard is a former executive for a financial firm, and he's well-known in Minnesota public policy circles as a leader with a strong social conscience, a great combination of heart and  passion for progressive change and hard-headed analytical sense on dollars and cents.  His new book, "More Bang for Your Buck,'' should be required reading for policy wonks in Minnesota who want to be on the cutting edge of what works in human services, and more important, how to tell.  Two subtitles on the cover summarize the contents: "Good News for Taxpayers, Public Officials, Philanthropists & Non-profit Managers,'' and "How Cost/Benefit Analysis Can More Effectively Promote the Public Good."

The book brings state-of-the-art thinking and many actual case-by-case calculations to the emerging efforts to show the return from public and nonprofit invesments in human capital, primarily education, workforce preparation and other human services.  Heegaard's book explains with lively detail how leading Minnesota nonprofit groups, such as Admission Possible and Twin Cities Rise, and others, many of which benefit from taxpayer support, have been able to document with cost-benefit analysis that their work with human capital is in fact returning an investment to the economy and to society.

I like this passage in the introduction: "Enough examples of high payoff civic investments now exist to make a very strong case that the art of giving or philanthropic investing, including government budget decision-making, can create new solutions to age-old problems, while at the same time improving the returns on our taxable income.''  The book is available at Nodin Press.

--Dane Smith 

Lessons from Cincinnati: Total community effort begins to show results

Lynda Jackson is a southern lady with a sweet disarming drawl, but she's a steel magnolia when it comes to school improvement and demanding real results. Jackson is the superintendent of the school district in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, and she's steering this very poor school district toward individualized learning plans for every student. She also is transforming Holmes High School into an "early college high school," with a goal of every student earning at least 15 college credits before graduation.

Meanwhile, over in Cincinnati and on both sides of the river, the Ascend Performance Institute is developing high-performing teams of principals and teacher leaders through intensive, accelerated sessions featuring best practices and case studies and taught by topnotch leaders in education, business and medicine. The template for this instruction was drawn from the Mayo Clinic model of integrated expertise and "putting the patient (students) first."

A pivotal catalyst for these efforts and countless others in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is the Strive Partnership, described as a "backbone organization" of truly comprehensive community sweep, dedicated to improving student success. Strive has more than 300 partners, including the region's leading corporations, regional business associations, the Catholic schools, lots of foundations and nonprofits, early childhood advocates, and of course, the school districts and higher education systems.

I'm privileged this week to be part of a "Student Success Core Team" from Grand Rapids with the support of the Blandin Foundation, taking an immersion course on the Strive model and other education reform efforts in the region. The Strive example also is being studied by a working group of Twin Cities’ advocates for improving school outcomes.

As we sat down to hear their story, we were warned at once by Strive leader Jeff Edmondson (see his TED lecture here) not to get too worshipful of the Strive model. Although groups of school and nonprofit leaders are descending on Cincinnati regularly to learn about the six-year-old partnership, Edmondson said progress has been painful, slow, uneven and even "ugly." Lots of mistakes have been made, he said, and he encourages each region that tries to replicate Strive to build its own set of standards and goals and prescriptions, from the ground up.

But there is some truly impressive progress to consider. On 40 out of 53 benchmarks for educational success set by the partnership, mainly basic test scores in 4th and 8th grade and measures of college retention and graduation, schools in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky have improved since the baseline year of 2005-2006. And that's despite a severe recession and worsening poverty rates in a region that's been struggling for decades with a decline in its industrial economic base. In Covington, the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, a standard benchmark of income status, is a staggering 90 percent.

Of all the many ways this Strive animal was described, I thought "Building a Cradle-to-Career Civic Infrastructure'' might have been the best. As developed here, the model consists of five goals: every child prepared for school, every child supported in and out of school, every child succeeding academically, every student enrolled in post-secondary study (college or instruction for a workforce credential) and every student graduating and entering a career.

"Strive gives air to good ideas and then helps implement them faster than they would be otherwise," said Leslie Maloney, a senior vice-president of a major foundation tied to a banking family, and a member of the Strive executive committee.

Almost everybody involved agrees that Strive's strength and its effectiveness so far has been drawn from good-faith buy-in and persistence by just about everybody with any kind of stake at all in the community, in every sector. The partners include corporate giants, the chambers of commerce and business moguls -- particularly Procter & Gamble, and nonprofits and funders such as the United Way and KnowledgeWorks, an operating foundation with a mission of school success and a sponsor of the Strive Partnership.

These partners are elites within the community. Grassroots support and commitment from more ordinary folks would be helpful to this "everybody in" philosophy, and we had the great fortune of listening to a guru on the theme of community vitality and how neighborhoods can be energized and empowered to improve themselves. Peter Block, a Cincinnatian and author of the book "The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods,'' spoke to our group to start the day. Block said that big system reforms can be an elusive mirage and while they "can deliver some things, the schools can't raise a child. ... I spent decades on school reform (before realizing) that the question is, `How do we raise a child?'" I'd highly recommend checking out his book or the website linked above for elaboration.

More tomorrow, in the third and final installment from Cincinnati. 

--Dane Smith 

 

What if Ayn Rand had to dig her own two-holer?

(Note: We hereby introduce Chuck Brown - a former business manager, a former city council member for the southern Minnesota town of Olivia, and a novelist – as a guest blogger for Growth & Justice.)

Conservative columnist Jason Lewis’ professed love for Ayn Rand and her novel, Atlas Shrugged, (Star Tribune, Apr. 17) struck a chord with me, but probably not one he intended.

Rand has long been deified by those who use the worship of individualism and capitalism (see this NY Times summary of her influence on right-wing business leaders) to deny the notion of common good and the enormous value of that which we do collectively, i.e. through our good governments. But Lewis, like Rand, goes even further to suggest that anything done collectively or altruistically results in a loss of freedom. In Lewis’ world “productive thinkers” are to be valued to the extent that we dare not ask any sacrifice of them or seek to limit the windfalls from their achievements. “Productive thinkers” sounds a bit like today’s sainted “job creators” who, we are told, will take their bat and go home, or somewhere else, if the game isn’t played exactly by their rules.

I’m not against productive thought any more than I’m against job creation, though it occurs to me that we can also have productive thoughts and create jobs when we work together, Rand and Lewis notwithstanding. But my chief aim here is to dispute the notion that all collective acts result in a loss of freedom. I’ll begin with some very basic and personal observations.

The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is turn on the lights. The second thing I do…well, I won’t go into detail on the second thing, other than to say that it concludes with a flush. The third thing I do is turn on the water and brush my teeth. Now my point here is that the first three things I do each day involve a good or service that I purchase from government. Most folks may not buy electricity from a municipal utility, as I do, but many of us in rural Minnesota do, and our basic power supply throughout this nation is properly regulated by public agencies. And most of us now are hooked up to clean and efficient "government-run'' water and sewer systems. These are things we have chosen to do collectively, not because we are knee-jerk collectivists, but because it simply made the most sense. It was the best way to get that particular job done in a way that produced value for the largest number of people. Ayn Rand may have found digging her own well and having a two-holer in the backyard to be more to her philosophical liking, but I can’t see how she could claim that I’ve lost freedom by enjoying public works. I might even argue that the convenience of these systems adds freedom, granting me time for things I want to do rather than, say, dig my own two-holer.

Public safety and common good requires that we obey the law and pay taxes, but only criminals risk serious loss of freedom in our democracy. The rest of us enjoy the freedom of an orderly society ensured in large part by taxes and governments and public works. National defense, one of our largest collective "government-run'' endeavors, has as its primary focus the defense of our freedom. Then of course there’s public education, which accounts for about half our state-local tax dollars, and it’s hard to imagine how we might be freer without it. In fact, the sages tell us, education sets us free.

We Americans are exceptionally individualistic, and so Ayn Rand and rugged pioneers and cowboys will always be part of our thinking. But many of our greatest national achievements have been collective efforts, and that’s not likely to change, even in the land of the free.

-Chuck Brown

 

Labor Day, economic justice, and progressive capitalists

For a second consecutive year on Labor Day Sunday, I had the privilege of delivering the sermon at my Unity Church in St. Paul (Unitarian Universalist).   I focused on the the great tradition of progressive capitalism in Minnesota,  embodied by people like William Drew Washburn, the founder of the forerunner of General Mills and the founder of the First Universalist Society of Minneapolis, and the subject of a new biography, "Prairie Ligthtning.''    Reviewing Washburn's enormous contributions and his serious shortcomings, I made this point: 

 There are a couple of key points in all this on Labor Day weekend, when we celebrate the vast majority of Americans and Minnesotans who labor for a living, and who mostly don’t OWN OR INVEST for a living, and with whose perspiration our  civilizations have been built.     The first point is a reminder, that some of our direct (Unitarian Universalist) intellectual and spiritual ancestors valued the “me’’ every bit as much or more than the “we.’’   They were intensely self-interested people, empire builders and capitalists, who also tried to balance that side with a conscience and recognition that public stuff, the things we do together for our common good with our  democratic governments, were every bit as valuable as the things we do for ourselves for own profit and enrichment.    Elites like the Washburns and Pillsburys and the Daytons passionately and personally invested in public interest,  and as the decades wore on Minnesota’s capitalists earned a reputation as among the world’s most generous and enlightened, unafraid of social experimentation and democracy, generally supportive of the idea of public-sector growth and  intelligent and humane distribution of an often unfair redistribution imposed by capitalism and the marketplace, on the sound theory that more sharing would be good for private-sector growth in the long run.

 Among the most eloquent and authentic Labor Day op-eds during  the last week was Janice Thurn's excellent commentary ("America Can't Rise Without Its Workers")in the Star Tribune Op-Ed section, and this very clear and compelling  answer to the question "What Does Organized Labor Want?", by AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Eliot Seide.

It will take a few days to process my latest Unity Church  sermon so that it's available online,  but here is a link to "She Works Hard for the Money (So You'd Better Treat her Right)", the Labor Day sermon I gave last year, focused in particular on the struggle for justice by women workers.

Solidarity Forever!

Dane Smith 

Round-up of good news and commentary for practical progressives

Here's a round-up of some particularly good fodder for practical progressives in the news recently:   

• Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus is continuing to develop as a thoughtful centrist heir to David Broder and she really hit the mark with her recent commentary (headlined in the Star Tribune, "If taxes never go up, we go down''). Marcus nailed Gov. Tim Pawlenty for his recent statement implying that the U.S. has higher taxes than most other nations, pointing out that our overall effective federal tax rate is much lower than it was a decade ago, and lower than all but Mexico, Turkey and South Korea among the 30 major world economies. Marcus skewered conservatives for continuing to claim that tax cuts actually produce more revenue and for their perennial complaint that "whatever level taxes are at, they are too high.'' Just a couple weeks ago, Marcus took on liberals and Democrats for refusing to acknowledge that some entitlement programs might have to be trimmed.
• One of the most refreshing "good that government does'' stories in recent memory landed on the St. Paul Pioneer Press front page over the weekend. An article headlined "Minnesota air pollution:  It's not as bad as you think,'' emphasized the rather astounding good news that since the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970, emissions from industrial polluters and vehicles have been slashed by 62 percent nationally and by half in Minnesota.
• Refuting a lot of conservative anti-Europe propaganda recently, author Steven Hill placed an op-ed in the Star Tribune pointing out that Japan and Europe and their more egalitarian market economies are doing quite well compared to the United States. Hill is the author of "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age.''
• Finally, we think we offered a strong rebuttal to the false claim by some conservatives that government can't create jobs, or more broadly, that government is a net drain on the economy and can only consume wealth. Our Star Tribune "Counterpoint'' piece reviewed a long history of business-building investment and job creation in the U.S. and Minnesota.

— Dane Smith

New Orfield book "Region," and new OPEN Society leadership, make the case for smarter growth and racial integration

"Region: Planning the Future of the Twin Cities,'' is an impressive new policy textbook, hot off the University of Minnesota Press,  that surveys the state of the metropolitan area and offers prescriptions for smarter growth and reducing racial and economic segregation. The book, co-authored by metropolitan governance experts Myron Orfield and Thomas F. Luce, Jr., belongs on the desks of Minnesota policy enthusiasts everywhere.   With its colorful maps showing racial and income disparities, and intriguing overlays featuring such factors as travel times and environmentally sensitive areas,  the book also works as a coffee-table conversation starter.   Orfield is a law school professor and he and Luce are directors of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. An unveiling and book-signing event Thursday evening, featuring a panel discussion on the issues raised, is set at Magers & Quinn. Orfield is among our  advisers at Growth & Justice and has been a leading force in the state for stronger efforts at regional planning and containing sprawl, with special focus  on the damaging effects of de facto economic and racial segregation, since his days as a state legislator in the 1990s.    Joining the authors for the forum will be Meg Tuthill, the new council member for Ward 10 in Minneapolis; Dave VanHattum of the nonprofit organization Transit for Livable Communities; and Jesse Mortenson of the nonprofit MetroIBA, which supports independent businesses in the Twin Cities. 

On another front in the fight for justice and integration, a 30-year-old civil rights organization, Fund for an OPEN Society, is moving it's leadership and headquarters to Minnesota. The new executive director of the group is Caty Royce, an experienced progressive leader from Minneapolis who headed the Community Stablization Project, was a leader for Catholic Charities and served in the Peace Corps. Royce says "she is convinced that we must attack residential segregation at the same time we address school segregation,'' and that the much deplored "achievement gap in education is just part of a much broader and more complex racialized opportunity gap.'' The website for Fund for an OPEN Society  is in the process of being updated  but Royce can be reached at croyce@opensoc.org.  Royce cites john powell (lower-case for the name is his preference), founder of the U of M's Institute on Race and Poverty, and his call for equalizing access to "structures of opportunity,'' as an inspiration for her group's work.

Dane Smith

Historian Alan Brinkley on right-wing populism and "fighting back''

Eminent historian Alan Brinkley (Columbia University professor, an authority on 1930s populist movements of the left and the right and the New Deal, also son of legendary TV anchor David Brinkley) was in town this week and offered some timely wisdom at the Humphrey Institute about the conservative populist uprising.

Brinkley is himself a progressive and a voice for "pragmatic liberalism.'' Although an admirer of President Obama and his agenda, Brinkley compared him unfavorably in some respects to Franklin D. Roosevelt, noting that FDR fought back against a right-wing populist revolt to his progressive agenda with passion and "almost incendiary'' rhetoric, sweeping to reelection in 1936. 

Brinkley said Obama has been too cool and passive and there has been "no effective rebuttal to many of the dishonest claims made by opponents of the health-care bill.'' And he suggested that for Obama, this is "not a time to conciliate, it's a time to fight.'' 

I liked his candid repsonse to a question I asked, as to whether progressives should be more clear about the growing economic inequality in the nation, and more honest about growing the public sector to provide more economic security, as insurance against private-sector abuse and failure. Brinkley said "progressives should talk about inequalities and (conservative) policies that have made (inequality) greater... Taxes do have to go up.'' 

But he added: "Nobody wants to be raising taxes and nobody wants to talk about inequality because nobody is sure how to fix it.'' 

— Dane Smith