So what does Louisiana Progress stand for?

If businesses operated like schools, we would first need to break the United States into geographic areas. It would be the responsibility of the businesses in that area to hire every adult in the area between the ages of 18 and 65. The businesses would have to hire everyone: the medically fragile (and provide nursing care), the developmentally delayed, those with special needs, individuals who didn’t speak the language. This would include any adult with a drug addiction, criminal record, or mental illness—or who suffered abuse or was homeless.

Furthermore, it would be the responsibility of the businesses to provide motivating work for each individual. For any individuals who could not speak the language, it would be the responsibility of the business to teach them. If it was an engineering company, all would need to be taught to be engineers, remediating those who needed it and providing enrichment activities for those who excelled.

Childcare would need to be provided for those who had children, and lunch would have to be made available to everyone. It would be expected that the business would provide sports programs, music programs, and extra activities. If an employee was not motivated to work, it would be the responsibility of the business to find work that was motivating to the employee. No employee could be suspended for more than three days, unless he/she had a weapon, and then it would be necessary to have a hearing to truly expel the employee.

Each business would then be tested for its level of expertise. These results would be printed out and broadcast to the public for review and comment. And each employee would be tested by age for appropriate knowledge of that business. Never mind that the employee might be very talented in music. If it was an engineering firm, then the testing would be for engineering. If it was a music business and the employee was a gifted chef, it wouldn’t matter. He/she would be tested for music, not for crepes suzette flambé.

Businesses would be given a cutoff for the level of knowledge that each employee had. Businesses would be rated as an A, B, C, or D business based on the employees’ knowledge. (The productivity of the employee or what they could do would seldom if ever be tested. Only the knowledge base of the employee would be tested. It wouldn’t matter that there is a direct correlation between what you know and what youproduce.) Businesses would then be identified as failing or exemplary. If a business was in a geographic zone where there happened to be an unusually high number of employees with strong resources, that business would be touted as exceptional.

Each boss would be assigned 30 employees to oversee. They would all work in one room so he/she could watch them. Out of 30 employees, there could be five non-English-speaking individuals, two autistic employees, three developmentally delayed workers, four gifted individuals, two homeless adults, two bullies, five employees who only wanted to socialize (and had no desire to work), eight employees who were really interested in working and producing, and miscellaneous others.

If the bullies started a fight, work would be suspended until the matter could be addressed, the gifted would be assigned to help the developmentally delayed, and the autistic employees would periodically scream. But it would be the boss’s job to make sure all employees were working and loving the work. The boss wouldn’t be allowed to put anyone out of the room for any period of time. The boss would have to make a specialized plan for the special-needs employees and adapt the work to their individualized plans.

To govern each business, there would be an elected board of directors from that geographic area. This board would be elected by the individuals who were working in the geographic zone (who were also in the business). They could vote to generate more money for the business by raising taxes. Many times they would be reluctant to do so because it also would mean less money for them.

These elected individuals wouldn’t need to know anything about the business; they would only need to get elected. By the very nature of their election, they could then make the decisions about the business, even though they knew very little about it. They also could use their influence to get their relatives hired and promoted to better positions that paid more. In addition, they would make sure their favorite projects had business funds spent on them: sports facilities, lunches, music uniforms, etc.

The board of directors also would hire and fire the business’s chief executive officer and chief operating officer. So if the CEO and COO did something the board members didn’t like, they would just fire them. This could be done because the CEO and COO didn’t come from that geographic zone. (Individuals could go to different zones for work; the business had to hire all of those in that zone who did not choose to go elsewhere for work.) Some boards would spend most of their time fighting each other, so very few substantive decisions would be made about the business.

Reports would be made and printed out in the newspapers and reported in the electronic media about how and why the businesses in America weren’t competitive in the global market. Comparisons would be made about the amount of subsidies the businesses got from the government. Managers and bosses would be verbally abused at every turn for failure to be competitive. Never mind that in other countries of the world businesses were allowed to operate differently. In other countries of the world, it wasn’t expected that businesses would employ everyone in their geographic zone—or that they would be responsible for the homeless, the mentally ill, the medically fragile, those with special needs. It also wouldn’t be expected that everyone in a given business would be engineers. Furthermore, in other countries of the world, if an employee created disturbances at work, he/she was fired. Most businesses elsewhere in the world were allowed to specialize and select.

The government could put pressure on the businesses by saying it was mostly the fault of the businesses that corporations in America weren’t competitive with others in the world. Managers and bosses would be to blame. Boards would be exempt from the blame as would the employees. The managers and the bosses would be videotaped to see how they interacted with the employees. Again, there would be little attempt to look at productivity—what the employees actually did. But the businesses would give a paper/pencil test to the employees to test their knowledge. Some of the employees would speak a different language, would have only been working in the business for a couple of months (anyone in the geographic zone had to be employed immediately), and perhaps could not even read the test—no matter.

If the United States were to adopt this model with corporations and businesses, think about how much money could be saved. No unemployment! No welfare! No prisons! Hospitals could make a profit on their emergency rooms because the corporations would be providing nurses. Never mind that the businesses themselves would be having difficulty making a profit. All the government would need to do is tell them the amount of profit they should have. If they failed to make that amount of money, the government could chastise them in the newspapers and the electronic media for their failure to turn a profit.

Last but not least, school people could serve as consultants to businesses and show them how to improve their profit margins. What a blessing that would be for the businesses of America.

The point is this:  Schools are inclusive and relational.  Businesses are competitive and autonomous.

It is almost impossible to make the two compatible.  Is it even desirable?

On Monday January 30th an impressive group of national charter school and education experts including Joel Klein and Mark Sternberg and rising Republican stars including Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett and former Governor Jeb Bush presented their points of view at the Governor’s Leadership for Change Education Summit.

The audience of 800 included key legislators, business leaders, civic and philanthropic leaders from around the state.  The message that all parents deserve a choice in where to send their children to school is very appealing.  All students deserve a first class education is easy to agree with as is the assertion — don’t make any child go to a school where you would not send your child.  But what are the implications of a school privatization strategy based on vouchers?

If you think that the public school system merits saving, where do we go from here?  Let’s invite educational leaders into the discussion of how to improve public education.  Teachers, principals, superintendents and school board members have vital perspectives to what is really happening in our schools and with our families.  The charter school leaders and the nonprofit education policy and advocacy organizations also have very informed perspectives.  We need to move past the politics and focus on solving problems.  We need to unilaterally disarm the rhetoric and focus on results.

We talk about education and economic development, but we do not want to do what it takes to improve education for all students.  Dr. Howard Fuller summed it up, “We are all for change, as long as nothing changes. “  Change is needed, but we may differ on what changes and how.

In fact the Louisiana Department of Education has issued some very good blueprints to improve schools.  The Urgency of Now- No Time for Excuses and Louisiana’s Comprehensive Learning Support System: The Design Document- Addressing the Internal and External Barriers to Learning and Teaching are both excellent reports that offer clear paths for public school improvement.  Progress is being made in the Turnaround Schools and Recovery School District.  New superintendents in several parishes are implementing innovations.  The new Lafayette Superintendent Pat Cooper turned around West Feliciana and McComb Mississippi schools before spearheading the Mahalia Jackson Center in New Orleans.

Let’s not give up on quality public education.  We need to stay the course on accountability and quality improvement efforts.  We must support innovation and leadership in public schools.  We must give superintendents and principals more authority to make school based decisions.  We need to use nonprofits and other public sector resources to help meet the needs of children and families.  We need to focus on a cradle to career continuum of solutions to move children and families out of poverty. We need to focus on early childhood education and parent engagement.

The Governor’s Agenda – Private School Vouchers Option

Currently there are less than 450 private schools that serve less than 150,000 students.  Most private schools have waiting lists, entry requirements and higher tuition than the amount discussed for vouchers.  In the Governor’s plan, nearly 300,000 students who are in C, D or F schools would be eligible for vouchers.  There are probably less than 10,000 additional places in the existing private and parochial schools statewide.   Are vouchers a realistic option?  Maybe for F schools in some locations as a pilot just as in New Orleans, but in the short term capacity and costs are limitations.

Scale Scope and Sustainability- Rapidly Expand Charters Option

Based on the experience in New Orleans, starting  successful new charter schools can take up to two years of planning, leadership recruitment and faculty selection, resource development, site selection, and student recruitment.  Most of the successful charter schools in New Orleans needed plenty of help from national organizations, charter management organizations and foundations to get a successful start.   Local philanthropists also were an integral component in providing resources and community leadership and accountability

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) has demonstrated results in helping disadvantaged children learn and succeed.  Their model of extended days, Saturday School, summer school and parent engagement works.  Unfortunately, there are only 100 plus KIPP schools in the country.  The real issue is how to scale innovation.   Excellent charter schools just don’t appear overnight.

The charter school movement was intended as a means to identify innovation in teaching and then scale those innovations in the public school system.  Louisiana has been experimenting with charter schools for more than a decade with a real concentration in New Orleans since 2006.  Has the state devised a strategy to translate what works into public schools?  Are there innovations to be scaled?  What have we learned?

Focus on Accountability, Continue to Innovate and Fix the System

Supporting teachers, training principals, providing support services for students are the means to fix a broken public education system.  Not just more of the same… the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

We do want to measure schools and teachers on how students are learning and empower teachers and parents.  We want parents to have options for public schools that work and meet the needs of their children.  We want parents to be informed and engaged in schools and at home to provide leadership and structure to support their children’s success.  We all agree that all children can learn, but they may not learn at the same speed in the same way in the same classroom.

Excellent teachers are essential. We need to support teachers and compensate effective teachers.  Measuring the impact of teachers on student learning and achievement makes sense.  We need competent school principals and leaders to support good teaching and create supportive environments for success. Talented school leaders can transform a school.  Creating a pipeline of competent, engaged and committed school leaders will transform the public school system.

In order to change how we evaluate teachers, Louisiana has to have an effective coherent value added measurement system in place.  Louisiana is making strides with the implementation of Act 54, but all the details are not ironed out and it has not been fully implemented yet.

We need to assess what works in schools and implement innovation and accountability.  We agree that parents and the public and all stakeholders need to put pressure on the educational system to yield results.

In order to turn around a school district, you need leadership, perseverance and talent.  You have to articulate a vision and foster commitment to change by developing school leaders, supporting new and experienced teachers and relentlessly pursuing excellence.  By promoting the creation of public charter schools, identifying quality operators and visionary school leaders, you can change the culture of a school and a district.   But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.  We have some great schools, but need more excellent public schools, with brilliant and talented teachers and fantastic principals.  By setting the standard that all children deserve an excellent education and embracing the fierce urgency of now, schools can be changed.  Lives can be changed.

We need to fix the public school system.  One speaker recommended that we should blow up public education.  He used the analogy of starting a forest fire and not settling for small scale change.  Too bad if he burns the forest down, while the kids are still in the tents…

Louisiana Department of Education website

The Urgency of Now- No Time for Excuses

Louisiana’s Comprehensive Learning Support System: The Design Document- Addressing the Internal and External Barriers to Learning and Teaching

In the 1990’s Louisiana privatized juvenile prisons and started an odyssey of abuse leading to a comprehensive reform effort in 2003.  The problems in juvenile justice in Louisiana drew the attention of national foundations and advocacy organizations which mobilized to force the closing of the Swanson Center for Youth at Tallulah, the closing of the Jena Juvenile Center, and the downsizing of the Jetson Center for Youth.  Much progress has been made in Louisiana from incarcerating more than 2000 young people in 2000 to under 500 in 2011.  However, there is still much more to be done to improve services for children and families to continue to prevent incarceration and continue to decrease the number of juveniles in secure facilities.  More focus on prevention and early intervention models, school retention programs and truancy centers as well as community based services are needed to divert juveniles from the criminal justice system.

Over the last ten years, the MacArthur Foundation with Models for Change, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Children’s Defense Fund and others have highlighted the need for Louisiana to fundamentally reinvent our juvenile justice system.  In 2003 under the leadership of then State Representative Mitch Landrieu, Supreme Court Justice Kitty Kimball and a network of advocates including the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Louisiana began a journey to improve services for families and children in the juvenile justice system.  Yet, there is continued need for advocacy and accountability to insure the successful implementation of a long term reform agenda.

James A. Richardson, alumni professor of economics at Louisiana State University, conducted an economic impact analysis for the LHA to measure the economic activity generated by hospitals in the state. According to the report, the healthcare sector in Louisiana employed approximately 269,200 people, or 16.2 percent of the state’s workforce. Hospitals contributed 99,351 jobs and $4.4 billion in pay. Overall, hospitals generated more than $27.1 billion annually in economic activity.

“People often do not realize that hospitals are huge contributors to our economy, even during economic recession,” John Matessino, LHA president and CEO, said in a statement. “Every dollar spent by a hospital supports 95 cents of additional business activity, and each hospital job supports approximately 1.4 additional jobs.”

Cuts in Medicaid would negatively impact economic activity in the state, according to the analysis. About 19 percent of net revenues in the state are Medicaid-related, the report found; Medicaid-related expenditures resulted in 47,483 jobs and $1.8 billion in personal earnings.

Richardson pointed out that historically the federal government provides 65 cents for every 35 cents spent by the state on Medicaid. Consequently, a state cut of $150 million in direct expenditures for Medicaid would create an additional loss of $340 million in federal match funds. The effect of the overall loss would be 6,764 fewer jobs statewide, $258 million less in personal earnings and an $800 million reduction in business activity.

The report also included results from a 2011 LHA survey of hospitals. The survey found that 70 percent of hospitals reported a decrease in patient account collections; 41 percent noted a decrease in elective surgeries; and 54 percent saw an increase in emergency room visits by uninsured patients.

Market conditions also forced cost-cutting changes, with 46 percent of respondents saying they froze or reduced capital purchases; 23 percent pulled back on construction, equipment purchases and other projects; 51 percent eliminated vacant positions; 19 percent reduced services; and 15 percent cut community benefit programs. A smaller percentage of respondents said they also were considering cutbacks in each of the categories.

The LHA is a non-profit organization that represents hospitals and healthcare systems in Louisiana. The 44-page report is available here.

In the past four years, Louisiana’s unemployment rate has doubled to 7.5 percent. Approximately 66 percent of the children in our public schools are on free or reduced-price lunches, a primary indicator of poverty.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation ranks Louisiana 49th in child well-being, which means this state is failing on all major indicators — including infant mortality, teen pregnancy, juvenile incarceration and high school dropout rates, just to name a few.

We need to use the latest data as a reason to focus on solutions to poverty. If Louisiana wants to improve the quality of life for our state’s children and families and improve our public education and health care systems while promoting economic development, then we must seriously address the main challenge in this state — too many people are extremely poor.

Multifront challenge

Too many citizens lack education, parental skills, jobs and decent housing and are not in the mainstream economy. We have to find ways to create pathways to prosperity for families trapped in poverty. We have families — both black and white — in every corner of the state living lives of quiet desperation without access to quality education, health care and job training and who continually are dismissed as the problem, not as fellow citizens worthy of concern and care.

Government, businesses and nonprofits must work with neighborhood leaders, churches, schools and parents to create expectations for children and families. We have to move past a sense of isolation and victimhood to focus on individual and community responsibility. But there is a role for government in alleviating human suffering and helping families move out of poverty.

Our leaders need a push

Our elected officials are not talking about poverty or solving our systemic problems. They gloss over the tragic reality many of Louisiana’s families face every day. The agenda of systematic cuts to child care, prekindergarten, elementary and secondary education and universities only compounds the situation for Louisiana’s working families.

Parents can’t work without access to quality, affordable day care. With cuts to public transportation, people can’t get to work to support their families. Without access to quality education and work force development, many adults continue to be unemployed. And with adult illiteracy rates at astoundingly high levels, many are unable to find jobs.

Time for pathways

Louisiana always finds money to build more prisons since we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. But we do a terrible job of educating and employing people to stay out of prison. We have to address the problems of pervasive poverty and the cradle-to-prison pipeline.

We do a great job of blaming the poor, scapegoating children and driving up the heated political rhetoric of class warfare — us against them. We need to realize that we are all Louisiana citizens and worthy of respect. We need a strategy to help families help themselves. Most people need and want a hand up, not a handout. Yet we fail to help families find the pathways out of poverty to self-sufficiency and ultimately to prosperity. We all share in the failure, and we will all benefit from success.

Now is the time to refocus on strategies to help families move from poverty to prosperity. Louisiana Progress is launching a Pathways to Prosperity initiative to focus on solving problems in Louisiana and encourage philanthropic investment in programs that are making a difference to help families move from poverty to prosperity.

Partners in the effort

We should work with the private sector on job creation targeted to local neighborhoods that have the highest unemployment and poverty and identify enterprise opportunities for small businesses to put people to work.

The state of Louisiana has an opportunity to work across its departments and agencies and partner with local governments, nonprofits and churches to focus on reducing the number of families living in poverty.

Improve services

There is a role for state government. Health and Hospitals (DHH) could make health care services more accessible for children and families on Medicaid or without insurance. DHH could expand family planning services to help young women and men plan for their future, and avoid unwanted pregnancies so they can finish their educations and be self-sufficient. If young people have unplanned pregnancies, the state could fully fund the Nurse Family Partnership to help young mothers get the parenting skills and support they need.

The Department of Children and Family Services should focus on helping strengthen families by funding access to child care and parental education programs to ensure families are self-sufficient. The Education Department could fully fund the LA-4 program.

We need to work across party and political lines to focus on what Louisiana needs to move forward. For this to be a state to be proud of, we need to help all Louisianans be self-sufficient, better educated, employed and contributing members of society. We know the problems Louisiana faces, and we know what the solutions are. We all share the responsibility. If we want to move Louisiana forward, we need to commit to reducing the number of families living in poverty. Together, we can solve problems and help families be self-sufficient.

Yesterday the Census Bureau released the latest data on poverty, income, and health insurance in America. The data confirm that millions of Americans continue to cope with the Great Recession’s enduring effects, and they show the strength of our safety net and our need for good jobs now.

Here are the top 10 most striking findings from the data:

1. Record numbers of people are poor and without health insurance. One out of every six Americans, or 46.2 million, lived in poverty in 2010. This is an increase of almost 3 million since 2009, and it’s now the highest number of people living in poverty since the Census started keeping track 52 years ago. Similarly, the number of Americans living without health insurance set a record high in 2010 at 49.9 million, up from 49 million in 2009.

2. More than a third of our population is living on a low income. In 2010, 103.6 million people were living below $44,000 for a family of four (two times the federal poverty line).

3. Income inequality increased from 2009 to 2010. Households in the bottom 20 percent by income saw their incomes fall by 4.5 percent, more than six times as much as the households in the top quintile.

4. Young people are getting hammered in this recession. More young adults (age 25-34) are moving in with their parents: 5.9 million young adults lived with their parents in 2010, up from 4.7 million before the recession. If you look at only the young adults’ income (instead of their parent’s income), the poverty rate among this group would be 45.3 percent. Households headed by a young person (age 15-24) saw the largest income decline of any age group as their income fell by more than 9 percent in the last year.

5. Racial and ethnic disparities widened in 2010. Poverty rates among African Americans and Hispanics, 27.4 and 26.6 percent respectively, are more than double that of whites, which is now 9.9 percent, up from 9.4 percent in 2009. African Americans and Hispanics also saw their incomes decline steeply from 2009 to 2010.

6. More than one out of every five children is living in poverty. For African American children, the poverty rate is nearly 40 percent, a stark contrast with the poverty rate among white children, which was 12.4 percent in 2010.

7. Some good news: Poverty did NOT significantly rise among seniors. This is a testament to the effectiveness of programs such as Social Security, which kept more than 20 million people, including nearly 14 million seniors, out of poverty last year.

8. The percentage of people receiving health insurance from their employers continues to decline. Approximately 1.5 million Americans lost their employer-sponsored health insurance in 2010. Yet programs such as Medicaid stepped up, covering 48.6 million people, and it mitigated the number of Americans who lost health coverage.

9. Safety net programs give needy families a leg up when they fall on hard times. Unemployment insurance, which provides critical support to the jobless and stimulates economic activity, kept 3.2 million Americans out of poverty in 2010. An alternative poverty measure that tracks the impact of the earned income tax credit shows that the EITC kept5.4 million people, including 3 million children, from slipping below the poverty line last year.

10. Poverty affects everyone: While 15.1 percent of Americans lived in poverty last year, this number is only a snapshot. Throughout 2009, close to a quarter of Americans (23.1 percent) spent at least two months in poverty, and only 7.3 percent were in poverty the whole year. This tells us that the poor are not a static group and that widespread economic insecurity can push families into poverty for short spells. What’s more, these trends affect all of us. More people in poverty means fewer consumers for American goods and services, which slows our economic growth and costs us jobs. More people in poverty means less worker productivity, higher health costs, and a less-educated workforce to build the jobs and industries of the future. But it does not have to be this way.

So what do we do?

We can’t just throw up our hands and consign over 100 million people to poverty and hardship. We need to create good quality jobs, and do it now.

Congress should pass the American Jobs Act, which would help the 25 million Americans in need of full-time work and jump-start the economy. The American Jobs Act would extend benefits to the unemployed and create subsidized jobs for low-income youth and adults, benefiting millions of Americans but especially communities of color who have seen declining incomes paired with rising poverty and unemployment. The American Jobs Act would help children who are particularly hard-hit by providing needed aid to states and localities so that they can keep teachers in classrooms and modernize school buildings.

The data should also remind policymakers that we should not pursue deficit reduction that exacerbates growing poverty and inequality. The only good news out of the new data is that programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment insurance, SNAP/food stamps, the earned income tax credit, and Social Security are working to prevent further poverty and hardship. With low-income households and children bearing the brunt of the recession, it would be unconscionable to ask them to bear the brunt of deficit reduction by slashing the programs that support them when they fall on hard times. Instead, millionaires, billionaires, and our most profitable corporations need to contribute their fair share.

Congress and the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction should take bold action to put people back to work and protect the most vulnerable. The time to act is now.

Download this memo (pdf)

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Statement of John D. Podesta, CAP CEO and President, on the 2010 Census numbers

New Census Bureau data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage document the ongoing, painful impact of the Great Recession on millions of families and under- score the urgent need to create jobs. Shrinking incomes, rising poverty, a record number of Americans without health insurance, and greater economic inequality as more and more families are simply left behind all undermine the strength of the middle class, our country’s engine of economic growth.

Falling incomes hurt families and carry serious consequences for our fragile economic recovery. Declining incomes and rising poverty limit the demand for goods and services. This harms American businesses and decreases the incentive for firms to invest in new hires and job growth. Right now, businesses say that their biggest problem is having enough customers.

President Barack Obama has laid out a plan, the American Jobs Act, which will create millions of jobs, reduce unemployment, and strengthen our nation’s middle class. It will invest in infrastructure and teachers, which will put people to work. It will help the long-term unemployed, supporting those hardest hit by the recession as well as local economies. These efforts should give those who have been pushed into poverty a fight- ing chance to climb back up into the middle class.

We know these policies will work. Expansions of unemployment insurance have already kept 1.6 million people in jobs each quarter during the recession, and they kept 3.2 million families out of poverty last year alone. Increased government investments in infrastructure saved or created 1.1 million jobs in the construction industry and 400,000 jobs in manufacturing by March 2011. Almost all of these jobs were in the private sector.

Today’s numbers should be a wake-up call to Congress to act quickly. Yet even as 14 million languish in unemployment, conservatives are blocking efforts to create jobs. And even as 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty, conservatives are proposing dramatic cuts to antipoverty programs—all while protecting tax cuts for millionaires and profitable corporations. That’s just wrong.

The increase in the uninsured also underscores the importance of the Affordable Care Act: In a few short years, these uninsured Americans will have the insurance they are now going without. It is a tragedy that conservatives would rip this security out of their hands. Programs to protect health coverage should be safeguarded as policymakers lay out a plan to address our nation’s fiscal challenges.

As the super committee takes up work to reduce the long-term deficit, this new data calls attention to the need to protect low-income families, maintain the health care expansions in the Affordable Care Act, and strengthen the middle class. This can only be accomplished by balancing spending cuts with revenue increases that ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share. The poor and middle class didn’t get us into this mess. They shouldn’t bear the brunt of all the cuts.

Over the coming weeks, Congress must send a message that we will not stand by and tolerate a shrinking middle class as more families fall into poverty and lose their health care. We can and we must do better.