Charles Chieppo: Teacher-development programs a waste

BOSTON Given that it's become a truism that teacher quality affects student learning more than any other variable within the four walls of a school, the results of a new study of teachers' professional-development programs are particularly troubling. There are two main takeaways from the report by TNTP, a nonprofit formerly known as The New Teacher Project: Taxpayers invest a lot more resources in teacher-development programs than previously thought, and there is no link between these programs and improved classroom performance.

That second finding, in particular, will have a positive impact if it prompts school districts to clearly define what teacher effectiveness looks like and to measure professional-development programs in terms of how they help teachers get closer to that goal.

The study, entitled "The Mirage," was based on surveys of 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, along with interviews with more than 100 staff involved in teacher development. The surveys and interviews were conducted in three large school districts and a mid-sized charter-school network.

Improvements in performance that were found seemed to stem more from learning the job, almost invariably coming in the first few years of a teacher's career. The difference in effectiveness between the average fifth-year teacher compared to a rookie was more than nine times greater than the difference between the average fifth-year teacher and those in their 20th year.

There is plenty of room to improve. Using multiple measures such as teacher evaluations, classroom observation and student test scores, TNTP rated about half the teachers in their 10th year or beyond as below "effective" in core instructional practices such as developing students' critical thinking.

For this to change, districts need to begin by improving communication with teachers about their performance and areas where improvement is needed. The vast majority of teachers studied received ratings from their districts or charter operator of "meeting expectations" or better. Amazingly, fewer than half the teachers surveyed agreed that they had any weaknesses in their performance. Even among the few teachers who earned low ratings from their own school districts, 60 percent gave themselves high performance ratings.

The line from the study that jumps off the page is that the findings suggest "a pervasive culture of low expectations for teacher development and performance."

The problems are certainly not due to a lack of resources. The districts and charter-school network that were the focus of the study spent nearly $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development. They also dedicated 19 full school days, about 10 percent of a typical school year, to the programs. Based on these findings, TNTP estimates that the 50 largest U.S. school districts alone spend about $8 billion annually on teacher development, far more than was previously thought.

TNTP makes several common-sense recommendations for fixing the problem. In addition to giving teachers a much better picture of their own performance and progress, districts must explore alternative approaches to professional development. They should evaluate the effectiveness of all teacher-development programs based on the programs' ability to yield measurable progress toward a clearly defined standard for teaching and student learning. Resources should be reallocated to the programs that yield the greatest improvement.

"The Mirage" is no outlier. Over the last decade, two federally funded studies of teacher-development programs reached similar conclusions. School leaders should heed TNTP's recommendations, which would make for a good start toward changing that "pervasive culture of low expectations."

Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is a research fellow at the Ash Center in Harvard's Kennedy School. This piece originated on the Web site of Governing magazine (governing.com).

Partners invading the urgent-care-clinic industry

 

Prestigious Partners HealthCare,  whose flagship is the Massachusetts General Hospital, will  open as many as a dozen urgent-care clinics over the next three years, in Massachusetts, in a move that helps highlight the more general moves in U.S, healthcare from inpatient to outpatient services and from the use of very expensive physicians to cheaper nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

It also poses a threat to nearby, Rhode Island-based CVS, whose drugstores are rapidly adding urgent-care centers. The prestige of Partners'  famous hospitals may take some business away from CVS's urgent-care centers, which it calls MinuteClinics. It may also lighten the load a bit in some area hospitals' emergency rooms.

Partners is late to urgent care in Massachusetts. Steward Health Care System, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Lahey Health, and others are already in the business, either directly or with partners, The Boston Globe reports.

But, The Globe reports, "Partners has advantages in its size and reputation. It is the parent of 10 hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, and has 6,000 doctors, the largest network in the state. It also is planning more urgent care locations than most of its competitors.''

“This is more than a pilot for us,” said Dr. Gregg S. Meyer, chief clinical officer of Partners, told The Globe.  “These are meant to be extensions of availability and convenience for patients. We know we are not always as available as possible for our patients.”

Where Sloan went for fresh air

"Sunflowers, Rocky Neck'' (circa 1914, oil on canvas),  by JOHN SLOAN, at the Cape Ann Museum, in Gloucester, Mass.

The museum notes that he spent five summers on Cape Ann, using its Maine-like backdrop to "experiment with color and explore ideas about form, texture and light.''

His Cape Ann work does not evoke his far more famous and gritty pictures of life in New York City as a member of the "Ashcan School''.

Nancy Carriuolo/Tovah Reis: Planning before purging college library

 

An increasing number of institutions are freeing up shelf space in their libraries and moving in student services as well as a coffee shop and other lures such as flexible seating arrangements. Librarians are taking down the silence signs in all but the quiet study room and urging members of the academic community to meet, talk, research and incubate new ideas collaboratively as well as to engage in more traditional activities.

Of course, all of this change is jarring to traditional academics, despite many good arguments about saving space, saving funds and drawing greater numbers of thinkers to the library to create new knowledge. The question is how to make the change and communicate the change successfully. As more libraries remove printed materials from shelves, few have shared their successes and mistakes in doing so.

Planning before purging

At Rhode Island College (RIC), the James P. Adams Library’s print collection was not growing as fast as in the past, as most journals and many books were increasingly received electronically. To create space in the building for more student collaboration and relocation of student services, an estimated 30 percent of our collection of 300,000 books and other printed materials would need to be removed. The library director contacted Sustainable Collection Services (SCS), an organization that specializes in developing an evidence-based approach to reducing library collections. She asked them to submit a proposal.

The library director next presented the SCS proposal to the president’s cabinet, reasons for accepting their proposal and the cost. One of SCS’s points was that space is expensive: Maintaining a book on an open shelf costs $4.26 a year, while a book on “compact shelving” costs $0.86 a year. The library director, as well as the architects helping reconfigure the proposed freed space, suggested compact shelving (storage units fitted with wheeled traction systems). Compact shelving can be closely packed when access is not required, but easily moved to open up an aisle and allow access. By eliminating the need for a permanently open aisle between every unit, a smaller proportion of floor space can be used for storage than with conventional fixed shelving.

Even with compact shelving, 30 percent of the collection still would need to be removed from the library building in order to make the proposed changes. The cost of hiring SCS was viable considering the savings due to more efficient use of space and staff time.

Beginning of a persuasive communication plan

The proposal’s next audience was more than a dozen librarians and other library staff who have safeguarded the collection since RIC’s founding, in 1854. The consultants offered reassurances: For each book, we would receive data about its usage and whether or not it was accessible through another means, perhaps through the statewide consortium or in digitized form. The consultants pointed to data from other academic libraries for which they had provided their service. On average, 40 percent of the collections in academic libraries never circulated, according to SCS.

Part of reassuring the community was language-related: learning to refer to book selection and deselection rather than the common term weeding. The term deselection implies that removing printed materials involves the same care and thoughtfulness as selection. Deselection potentially touched everyone who had published, including the administrative team.

The college president broached the subject initially with the campus community at a monthly meeting of the governance council composed of faculty, staff and student representation. Concurrently, architects were working on a feasibility study regarding proposed renovation of the library space. Renovations were, at a later date, incorporated into the college’s planning documents, and the college’s board and the state commissioner of higher education were alerted as part of the president’s monthly board report.

What was the result of those discussions? The board and students raised no objections. Librarians, however, fretted that the consortium might not share their books if the college’s collection shrank. Librarians also pointed out that maintaining electronic collections and retrieving works from off-site storage sites is costly. The faculty was understandably more focused on the books in their disciplines: “How can we be sure that a seminal work in my field will not be discarded? What will happen to the printed materials that are removed? Just because a book was not used in 25 years does not mean that it won’t be used in the future.”

Experienced consultants—a company or librarian who has undertaken the deselection process—can respond professionally with data and the experiences of other institutions when faced with such questions that are likely to arise from an active, concerned faculty of the sort we have at RIC.

Trusted campus leadership is also important in communicating change. At RIC, the director of the library spoke individually with her staff. The vice president for academic affairs and the library director wrote to the entire faculty describing why and how the deselection process would proceed. Many, but not all, had already heard about the initiative through the governance council, where the matter had been discussed the previous month. In addition, the library director and several of the library faculty visited the academic departments to listen to and address their concerns.

We needed to acknowledge the protective feelings that many people had for the printed holdings. They remembered fondly browsing the stacks when they were undergraduates. They loved the sight, feel and smell of books. Those emotions—tied to such pleasant recollections—were not likely to change. They needed to be acknowledged at least. After all, we had those fond memories too. Even the president’s husband whispered to her: “Are you serious? As a student worker at Yale, I used to find unopened 18th  Century folios. Would they have been deselected?” (She reassured him that materials of historical significance were archived.) Those emotions needed to be acknowledged and questions answered, before the process continued.

Getting down to the hard work of deselection

The deselection process began with removal of printed journals available electronically. Journals take up entire shelves that can be emptied quickly. In beginning with journals, we visually signaled the start of the process.

Within six weeks, SCS provided a database from which the librarians created profiles to find the books with either no—or very low—use. The librarians ensured that even these books were available from other libraries, so if a need arose, the books would be available through interlibrary loan. Librarians posted lists online and notified faculty through their department chairs. The books were put on review shelves for two weeks. Faculty felt that two weeks was not always enough time, so the library staff extended the time for various compelling reasons such as if a faculty member were going to be off campus for the designated two weeks, or if the faculty needed to review subjects such as history or literature with large collections.

The librarians provided options so that the review process was not more onerous than necessary. Faculty could either review the lists, or they could go to the library and review the books on the special review shelves. Following their reviews, they could ask that the book be retained by making an email request or by filling out a slip and placing it into the book. If they requested the book be retained, the book would be returned to the stacks.

Once books were designated as deselected, their records were removed from the online catalog, and the books were removed from the library—with most sent to be recycled. However, some books were sent to Better World Books, a nonprofit that sells the books, with the library and their “literacy partners” receiving a portion of the proceeds; some K-12 schools also requested books. In addition to selling new titles, Better World Books supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of more than 2,300 college campuses and partnerships with more than 3,000 libraries nationwide.

So far, the company has converted more than 117 million books into over $15 million in funding for literacy and education.

By using the circulation system, the library’s work-study students searched out books not found on the shelves; duplicates were also identified. An additional benefit of the deselection process was a review and correction of the library’s records. Another byproduct was identifying interesting books that have not circulated. For example, the library has organized an exhibit around a series of never-circulated art books.

What to do with all those printed pages?

Removal problems arose. Maintenance workers complained the bins were too heavy. The campus sustainability coordinator recommended a company that recycles materials with the binderies intact. The college earned $10 a ton and, more importantly, knew that the paper was being recycled in a useful way.

A second unexpected problem was the ongoing influx of gifts. While deselecting, the library decided not to accept commonplace books and journals. The library director discussed this temporary policy change with the academic deans, who were helpful in communicating information and answering concerns. One professional-school dean noted that students should not be reading outdated “best practices.“

After the deselected become the dearly departed, then what?

The college is well on its way to the goal of deselecting one-third of the collection. The staff will oversee moving little-circulated, but retained, books to compact shelving, while opening up student service offices and new discussion spaces.

The new space for student services will be in the library in the center of the campus. The building will be open more hours, and library and student services staffs may share kitchens and conference rooms, which could also result in more interaction and cooperation. The space may also include a coffee shop and flexible and different seating arrangements to bring students and faculty to the library. Students will be able to learn with the assistance of a librarian who can help them not only to access prior knowledge (the traditional role of the library) but also to ponder new questions, solve problems and create new knowledge in such places as Maker Spaces.

The library, no longer silent, will host celebrations to introduce the community to the new spaces and the new ways of making knowledge.

Nancy Carriuolo is president of Rhode Island College. Tovah Reis is director of RIC’s James P. Adams Library. This piece originated at the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), where the overseer of New England Diary used to be on the editorial advisory board.

Daniel Valenzuela: Hitting housing lottery got me to Harvard

I grew up in an affluent corner of Loudoun County, Va., where the median household income is nearly $120,000. In September, I’ll start my junior year at Harvard College.

Coming from the richest county in the United States, where I graduated from a competitive magnet high school and had the opportunity to travel to Russia and Singapore as a teen, it may not seem like a big deal that I’m an Ivy League student.

But it is. My parents are low-income Central American immigrants. My mom, who moved to this country from El Salvador, cleans homes as a domestic worker. My dad, who came from Guatemala, is a retired line cook. A full-time minimum-wage worker can’t afford to rent, let alone own, a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the entire country, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition recently calculated. This crisis is acute in Northern Virginia because the high costs of housing in the D.C. area require a minimum-wage worker to labor nearly 100 hours a  week to even rent a one-bedroom unit.

Their great luck with housing in our suburb of Washington, D.C., helped my sister and me get great educations and strong starts in life. But for most working class families, it’s hard to own a home, send your kids to well-funded schools, and prosper.

My parents didn’t have to work 100 hours a week to cover the cost of our home.

After I was born in 1995, we moved into a townhouse in Sterling, a community on Loudoun’s eastern border. If somebody wanted to move into Loudoun now, they’d probably pay more than four times the $93,000 my parents paid for our home.

Considering that Loudoun budgets nearly $1 billion a year for its schools, it certainly seems like our family lucked out and won the housing lottery with a cheap ticket. But lingering segregation still takes a toll on the education that some American students are getting.

Had we lived in a lower-income area on the other side of the highway that cuts through Sterling, I probably would’ve attended a high school where two out of three students face economic disadvantages and where the average SAT score is lower than at most Virginia schools.

I might not have had the same opportunities that led me to Harvard. My sister might not have graduated from Virginia Tech and embarked on a successful career in education.

I’m thankful for the opportunities, but this isn’t right. Which side of the highway you call home shouldn’t define your ambitions.

At my high school, my friends’ parents were computer engineers, waiters, domestic workers and business managers. Their families had roots in Vietnam, Nigeria, Ireland, India, and Poland. They represented many faiths — Catholic, Protestant, Sikh, Muslim. Some grew up poor. Some grew up rich.

Because we shared the same high-school community, the wealth of experience and resources each family brought made all of us better off.

Experiencing all this diversity gave me a view of what’s possible. I’ve never doubted that I could be a lawyer or a doctor, or could pursue any other career. By living in a diverse community and a wealthy county, I saw what I could become and felt free to pursue those dreams.

That’s why it’s so important for affluent communities to find innovative ways to create diverse neighborhoods through affordable housing so that more low-income families can share in prosperity. By opening doors for the less fortunate, these communities become even richer with the assets that diversity brings.

After graduating from Harvard, I hope to make sure that other families have stories like mine. Securing affordable housing and all of the opportunities that go with it shouldn’t require the kind of good luck I had.

Daniel Valenzuela is a Next Leaders intern at the Institute for Policy Studies and a Harvard student. This piece originated at OtherWords.org.

'Nasketucket Bay is a local treasure'

 

On Nasketucket Bay (Buzzards Bay Coalition photo)

By ecoRI News staff

The Buzzards Bay Coalition recently celebrated with representatives from federal and state government and local town officials the protection of more than 400 acres of beaches, salt marshes, forests, fields and coastal farmland in Fairhaven and Mattapoisett, Mass., and the opening of a new public trail connecting the regional bike path with the Nasketucket Bay State Reservation.

Completed last December, the Nasketucket Bay Land Conservation Project is a four-year, $6 million initiative to permanently protect 416 acres on Nasketucket Bay. This project — the largest land-conservation effort completed on Buzzards Bay in 25 years — resulted in the expansion of the Nasketucket Bay State Reservation, the protection of 190 acres of active farmland and the preservation of 226 acres for public recreational use.

The effort was spearheaded by the Buzzards Bay Coalition (BBC), a membership-supported nonprofit that works to protect water resources in communities across the South Coast and Cape Cod.

“Few of Massachusetts’ scoastal bays have such rich natural resources as Nasketucket Bay, and that’s due in large part to protecting the forests, salt marshes and beaches that surround it,” BBC president Mark Rasmussen said. “By conserving this land and creating a new public trail, we are protecting clean water in Nasketucket Bay and improving the community’s access and connection with the shore.”

As part of the land conservation project, the BBC opened a new public trail that connects the popular bike path through Fairhaven and Mattapoisett with the state reservation and Nasketucket Bay. This trail, called Shaw Farm Trail, offers beautiful views of active farm fields as it crosses through forests, streams and meadows.

To create the trail, the BBC ensured rights to cross over private farmland and worked with volunteers and the community to improve the trail this spring. Local residents can access Shaw Farm Trail from the state reservation and from the bike path between Shaw Road and Brandt Island Road.

“I’m thrilled to see the completion of the Nasketucket Bay Land Conservation project after four years of dedicated conservation efforts,” said U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Bourne. “Nasketucket Bay is a local treasure. From its stunning scenery to its rich natural resources, Nasketucket has so much to offer to our community. That is why I am so proud that so many individuals and organizations came together in order to preserve and protect this unique natural resource.”

Funding to complete the project came from many sources, including the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Division of Conservation Services. Federal government support came from the Fish & Wildlife Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Services.

The project also received funding from the Bouchard B-120 Oil Spill Trustee Council, composed of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Fish & Wildlife Service.

Additional support from this project included the towns of Fairhaven and Mattapoisett, The Nature Conservancy, the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program, the Mattapoisett Land Trust and several private foundations and donors.

“Town Meeting members in Fairhaven and Mattapoisett should be commended for voting to support this project with Community Preservation funds, as well as the Buzzards Bay Coalition for providing the leadership to make it happen,” said Fairhaven Selectman Robert Espindola. “The bike path is one of our most treasured assets in town, and this was a great opportunity to enhance that asset with connectivity to hiking trails and the ocean, all while protecting Nasketucket Bay.”

Huge pay packages for 'nonprofit' hospital execs

Executives some big "not-for-profit'' hospital got huge pay raises in 2013, a review of the most recently available Internal Revenue Service filings shows. Will there be pushback from regulators and the public against massive pay for people who are technically working for charities?

Some "nonprofit'' execs nearing retirement get particularly huge bonanzas.

Transcendental photography

 

Images by SARAH BILLOTA (top) and MOLLY LAMB in the show "Inventory of Reverie: 5 Women Photographers,'' at the Hess Gallery, Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Sheets to the wind

"Revisiting Atticus' Laundry'' (oil on canvas), by ASHLEY BULLARD, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

When I was a kid we had an area for hanging laundry outdoors that was enclosed by high wooden fences, since public display of laundry was considered in bad taste. Driers weren't very efficient then, so the usual  practice was to hang laundry outdoors on sunny days. This was a long time ago, when refrigerators were still often called ice boxes.

But now,  letting laundry dry in the wind evokes praise for  the energy-consciousness it suggests.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Jim Hightower: Holder to serve corporate masters even more directly

Novelist Thomas Wolfe famously wrote: “You can’t go home again.” But Eric Holder has proven him wrong.

Holder, who served as President  Obama’s attorney general until stepping down earlier this year, recently returned to his old home — Covington & Burling.

Where’s that? Well, it’s not actually a place, but a powerhouse Washington lobbying and lawyering outfit. It runs interference in Washington for such Wall Street heavyweights as Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — and it’s a place where Holder definitely feels at home.

After serving as a deputy attorney general in the 1990s, Holder was invited in 2001 to leave his government job and join the corporate covey of Covington & Burling lawyers. There, he happily hauled water for corporations until tapped to re-enter the government in 2009.

The most striking thing about Holder’s six-year run as America’s top lawyer was his ever-so-delicate treatment of the Wall Street banksters who crashed our economy in 2008.

Despite blatant cases of massive fraud and finagling, Holder failed to prosecute even one of the top Wall Streeters involved. Indeed, he kindly de-prioritized criminal prosecutions of mortgage fraud, and even publicly embraced the soft-on-corporate-crime notion that Wall Street banks are “too big to fail” and “too big to jail.”

It’s no surprise that Holder is once again spinning through the revolving door of government service to rejoin his corporate family at Covington & Burling. In fact, in his years away, the firm kept a primo corner office empty for him, awaiting his return home.

In a way, he never really left. But now his paycheck for serving corporate interests will be many millions of dollars a year. That should make this a happy homecoming.

Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker.  This originated at OtherWords.org.

Don Pesci: Understanding Trumpism

Many Republicans, most scornfully Kevin Williamson in National Review, find Donald Trump abhorrent because he is a Republican In Name Only (RINO). Mr. Trump seems to gravitate between the parties as circumstances dictate.

A Williamson piece on The Donald titled “Witless Ape Rides Escalator,” opens brusquely: “Donald Trump may be the man America needs. Having been through four bankruptcies, the ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula is uniquely positioned to lead the most indebted organization in the history of the human race.”

Self-valuation sometimes rises to over-valuation. Mr. Trump, who claims whenever he mounts the political stump to be fabulously rich, values Trump Inc. at $8 billion. Others value Mr. Trump’s assets, the most expensive of which is the Trump brand, at about $4 billion, certainly not chump change.

For someone who has been conspicuously in the public eye during his meteoric rise to wealth and power, Mr. Trump has a remarkably thin political skin.  Some politicians, more used than Mr. Trump to the heat of political kitchens, are inclined to be less accommodating than others. Is it really necessary to observe the Reagan rule – speak not ill of other Republicans – when it is doubtful that a political opponent marching under the Republican banner might be an interloper? Mr. Trump, of course, gives as good as he gets – some would say with interest attached.

And it is this – the unscripted quality of Mr. Trump’s remarks on God and Man in the political universe – that endear him to frustrated anti-establishmentarian Republicans, the sort of people who would be inclined to vote against John Boehner as Speaker of the U.S. House; there is just now a move to replace Mr. Boehner with someone more fearsomely conservative.

Dave Bossie of Citizens United spoke for many conservatives when he said, “It was grassroots conservatives who put John Boehner in power, and we haven’t seen a positive conservative agenda for America as promised in the last several elections. Because of Boehner’s failure of leadership and a track record of broken promises, conservatives are ready for new leadership in the U.S. House now. Maybe newly empowered conservatives like Congressman Meadows will lead a revolt and finally take back the people’s House.”

Rep. Mark Meadows, of North Carolina. prepared a measure that would have removed Mr. Boehner as speaker. Mr. Boehner at first wanted the measure called immediately to embarrass Mr. Meadows. Mr. Boehner’s whips finding that support for their boss was shallow, the measure, which now will hang over Mr. Boehner’s head like a Damoclean Sword throughout the August recess, was not called for a vote.

Mr. Trump is the beneficiary of conservative frustration with Republican moderates in the Congress who will not move forward the conservative agenda. But that coin wears two faces. In 2016, the as yet unknown Republican nominee for president likely will be facing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The chatter just now is that Mrs. Clinton will have suffered by Election Day the death of a thousand cuts, mostly self-inflicted, but the memory of even recent times past is not very durable in the United States. Indeed, the Republican beef against Mr. Obama is that, a man of extraordinary rhetorical talents, he has been able to make the near past disappear before our eyes by conjuring up a bewitching but impossible future. Most Republicans feel that a win by Mrs. Clinton will result in an eight-year continuation of President  Obama’s ruinous reign. At the same time, it is true that the Republican Field BT (Before Trump) is extraordinarily talented.

To mention just one among many candidates, Carly Fiorina is, like Mr. Trump, a competent businesswoman and extraordinarily articulate. As a communicator, she has been compared favorably with Margaret Thatcher, a conservative revolutionist who, almost single handedly, changed  Britain from a socialist dystopia to a successful, economically competitive country. She did this by convincing the middle class in Britain that the socialists were bound sooner or later to run out of other people’s money.

Mr. Trump, whose real talent lies in advertising (mostly himself), is an ideological chameleon, full of a Babbit-like boosterism that occasionally may be mistaken for authenticity, quite like Mrs. Clinton, whom Mr. Trump has praised in the past.

God, it has been said, does not play dice with the universe. Neither should Republicans.

Don Pesci is a writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.

Beach blues

"Beach #1'' (gouache on paper), by LISA NOONIS, at Alper's Fine Art, Andover, Mass.

Artists on the edge

"Clam Warden's Domain at Dawn'' (oil on canvas), by SALVATORE DEL DEO, in a show opening Aug. 14, at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.

He focuses on the Outer Cape's dunes,  clam flats, sea, solitude, shacks and fishermen in all weather, and his work speaks to their relationship with Provincetown's large and storied arts community, in all its moods,  fads, sociability and reclusiveness.

The somewhat weird effects of having a busy town like Provincetown so close to a wilderness of  vast dunes adds, we suspect,  to the area's allure to so many artists, more than a few of them very eccentric.

Chris Powell: The thought police are prowling

MANCHESTER, Conn. Another college speech code was reported last week, this one at the University of New Hampshire. It was assembled two years ago by university staff and student groups purporting to represent women and racial and sexual minorities and was posted on the university's Internet site.

But when it was brought to his attention, the university's president, Mark Huddleston, purported not to have been aware of it and forcefully repudiated it, particularly for its assertion that "American" should not be used to mean citizens of the United States because doing so is disrespectful to residents of Central and South America.

"While individuals on our campus have every right to express themselves," Huddleston said, "the views expressed in this guide are not the policy of the University of New Hampshire. ... The only UNH policy on speech is that it is free and unfettered on our campuses. It is ironic that what was probably a well-meaning effort to be 'sensitive' proves offensive to many people, myself included."

Welcome, President Huddleston, to the political correctness that now permeates higher education in (North) America, even in the state whose license plates, bearing the state motto, simply yet eloquently rebuke all speech codes: "Live free or die."

That proscription of "American" in the UNH speech code is the least of it.

Also proscribed are "older people," "elders," "seniors," and "senior citizen," though the latter two are euphemisms of long standing. According to the speech code, "people of advanced age" is preferable, as if no one might take offense at that as well, and as if any euphemism could make people prefer to be 80 instead of 30.

"Poor" is to be replaced by "person who lacks advantages others have," and "people of size" is to replace "overweight," as if these euphemisms will make such people feel better too, as if such people are too stupid to notice euphemism, and as if the assumption of their stupidity wouldn't be more insulting than "poor" and "overweight."

Higher education in Connecticut came down with the PC plague early. Twenty-six years ago the University of Connecticut tried to ban "inconsiderate jokes" and "inappropriately directed laughter," proscriptions that were themselves laughed to death, though the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, increasingly PC itself, failed to petition the Motor Vehicles Department, as it should have done, for creation of a license plate reading: "Laugh free or die."

But it's not all so funny, for in "1984" George Orwell described the impulse to control language as an impulse to control thought. Orwell imagined a new language for the totalitarian state of the future, a language he called Newspeak for an ideology he called "Ingsoc," shorthand for "English socialism."

"The purpose of Newspeak," Orwell wrote, "was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable. ... Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought. ..."

A lexicographer who is developing Newspeak elaborates: "The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron -- they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. ... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

And now that universities have overtaken churches in the orthodoxy business, they even award degrees for it.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Trump movie: A fun slide down America's decline

We got so much reaction to the press release sent us by the producer of Trump: What's the Deal? that we're republishing it here. Links to the trailer and the movie are below. You can see the whole movie for free. The trailer is very funny-- and of course fast-paced. Listening to the utterly unique voice of Peter Foges, the narrator, is quite an experience.

The movie is an often hilarious and often enraging look at  crony capitalism, runaway narcissism and materialism, much of it within a time capsule of '80s kitsch.

American civic life has been heading  ever deeper into the sewer, but it's sometimes a fun ride.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For inquiries, please use:

press@trumpthemovie.com

DOCUMENTARY TRUMP SUPPRESSED TO BE RELEASED AFTER 25 YEARS

Trump: What’s the Deal? is an investigative documentary that was completed in 1991 --- but has never been seen by the national audience it was made for.  Trump took great pains to suppress the film, threatening networks, distributors, and the filmmakers.

Producer Libby Handros says: “Now that Trump is running for president, it’s time for the American people to meet the real Donald and learn how he does business. The old Trump and the new Trump? They're the same Trump.”

“While much has been written on Donald, few know how he built his business,” she explains. “This documentary, which we made at great personal cost over three years, is filled with vivid and dramatic commentary by Trump insiders and prominent outside observers, who expose how he operated as he rose to national prominence.”

NOT “SELF-MADE”

Trump has claimed to be a self-made billionaire. That’s the first myth this documentary punctures. Trump used his father's money and government connections in addition to taxpayer largesse to begin his empire.

“Donald is neither self-made nor anything like a true small-government conservative,” Handros says. “His father made huge profits off Federal Housing Authority loans, and with the help of his father’s friends in government, Donald used the same techniques to build what fortune he actually has.”

TRUMP’S “WEALTH.”

“We also launched one of the first investigations into Trump’s finances to reveal that he did not have nearly as much money as he says he did—a pattern of deception and aggrandizement that continues to this day,” Handros says. “Of all the damaging things we uncovered about Trump, that’s definitely the one that upsets him the most and led to him going after our film so hard.”

A HOST OF REVELATIONS

• Trump’s mob-connected contractor used illegal immigrant labor, provided with no safety equipment, to demolish the building that stood in the way of Trump’s first signature building: Trump Tower.
• Trump hired a company that specialized in psychological attacks and blackmail to move tenants out of a building he wanted demolished.
• Trump was a major factor in the implosion of the United States Football League, and made a failed bid to “buy” Mike Tyson.
• Trump was in bed with the Mafia to buy the land for his first casino, Trump Plaza; he had ongoing associations with known mob figures and drug dealers in Atlantic City.
• Trump’s compulsion, then and now, to verbally abuse his wife and other family members as well as his colleagues and employees.
• Trump bad-mouthed three top executives of his Atlantic City casinos after their death in a company helicopter crash, blaming them for the near collapse of his empire.
• Trump’s manipulation and lying to the press… and their complicity in making him the force he is today.
• Trump’s long battle to move the airport farther away from his mansion in Palm Beach.

And much, much more…

The film was a production of The Deadline Company and produced by Al Levin, an award-winning documentary film producer, (now deceased) and Libby Handros. When the film’s executive producer Ned Schnurman passed away, Handros inherited the piece.

Trump: What’s the Deal? was recently called “an unforgettable investigation into the mating of commerce, corruption and celebrity in America's latest Gilded Age. It explodes the Trump mythology and his presidential campaign with it.’’

To watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qy75pRQKMU

To watch the film: www.trumpthemovie.com

There's nothing to it but to do it

"The Inconceivable Is Unknown,'' by Walter Pashko, in the show "Walter and Me,'' at  the South Shore  Art Walter & Me: For Reasons Unknown Opens at South Shore Art Center 
Me,'' at the South Shore Art Center, Cohasset, Mass., opening Sept. 18. 

Marjorie Wood: Greedy CEOs pit Grandma against workers

Who will take care of grandma?

It’s a question we need to answer. As Baby Boomers grow older, the elderly population — seniors who are 80 and older — will increase almost 200 percent by 2050.

Our long-term-care system isn’t ready. Studies show that older Americans prefer home care over institutionalization. But because of low wages and poor working conditions, recruiting and retaining home health aides and personal care assistants is very difficult.

In the end, that means a lower quality of care and fewer home care workers for grandma.

Maybe the home-care industry just can’t afford to pay workers more?

Hardly. The industry has boomed over the past decade. According to the National Employment Law Project, its revenue increased 48 percent, while its CEO compensation ballooned by a whopping 150 percent.

In fact, home care today is a multibillion-dollar industry. Because of rising demand and skyrocketing revenues, Forbes called home health care one of the hottest franchises in the market.

Sadly, home-care workers haven’t shared in the industry’s prosperity. During the same period that revenue soared, average hourly wages for workers declined by 6 percent.

And that’s not the worst of it. Because of a “companionship exemption” to federal labor laws, more than 2 million home care workers today are excluded from minimum wage and overtime pay protections.

Ninety percent of them are women. More than half rely on public assistance to make ends meet.

The Department of Labor has tried to stop the industry from misusing the companionship exemption to pay home care workers less. It passed a new rule that was supposed to make these workers eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay this January.

But before the rule went into effect, several for-profit home-care associations — including the International Franchise Association — successfully sued the Department of Labor to prevent the change.

The industry is claiming that higher wages mean Grandma won’t be able to get the care she needs.

The truth?

Studies show that higher wages mean Grandma will be able to find and keep the best caregiver. And the 15 states that already provide minimum wage and overtime pay for home care workers prove that it’s feasible.

All told, Grandma will be more likely to get the care she needs when her caregivers can earn a living wage.

Marjorie Wood is a senior staff member of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of inequality.org. This originated at OtherWords.org. 

Economics lesson for stadium boosters

Read this article from The Atlantic, headlined "If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums'' It's "a lesson in public debt and defeat''.

A Mainiacal read

"Lobster Shack, Maine,'' by C. DAVIS FOGG.

Charles Chieppo: Can Mass. get its tax giveaways under control?

By CHARLES CHIEPPO 

BOSTON

A few months ago, I wrote about Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s plan to end the state’s film tax credit. Powerful opponents succeeded at killing the proposal, but if a pending piece of legislation becomes law, those special interests will have won the battle but lost the war.

Most states offer an array of business tax breaks that result in significant foregone revenue. In Massachusetts, the amount is in the billions. Legislation backed by state Auditor Suzanne Bump would give her office access to business tax returns solely for the purpose of auditing “tax expenditures,” as the various tax breaks are known.

Under the legislation, the auditor’s office would be able make sure businesses actually qualify for the breaks they receive; track whether state agencies are appropriately pursuing “clawbacks” that require businesses to reimburse taxpayers if the recipient fails to meet requirements of the tax-break agreement; and determine if commitments to job creation or other public benefits have been met.

Predictably, the bill has drawn howls of opposition from business organizations, and the legislature must indeed carefully craft any legislation to limit the scope of the auditor’s review of business tax returns to gathering tax-expenditure data. But the fact that 37 other states already grant the entity that performs their audit function access to this information demonstrates that it can be implemented without making a business that receives a tax break the victim of a public witch hunt.

Other Massachusetts agencies, including the Massachusetts Probation Service and the Department of Transitional Assistance, already have access to the returns. It seems appropriate that tools to make sure that people aren’t wrongfully collecting welfare benefits also should be available to government to ensure that businesses aren’t getting tax breaks they don’t qualify for.

Most business tax breaks are likely to be more effective than the film tax credit, which cost Massachusetts taxpayers about $88 million in foregone revenue during fiscal 2015. A Department of Revenue report found that state taxpayers paid nearly $119,000 for each job created by the credit in 2012.

And Massachusetts is hardly alone. A report from Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services estimated that, even assuming that every production filmed in that state would have gone elsewhere but for tax credits, state and local taxpayers would still recoup just 10 cents on every dollar awarded in credits between 2012 and.2016.

Government incentives to promote economic development are by no means always bad. But with one U.S. Government Accountability Office report finding that state and local tax revenues are not on track to return to pre-Great Recession rates as a percentage of gross domestic product until 2058, taxpayers deserve to know that any funds diverted from schools, transportation funding or other priorities are actually boosting the economy. Providing public auditors with the data to review those incentives is an important step toward providing that assurance.

Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is a fellow of the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. This piece first ran at governing.com.

Editor’s note from Robert Whitcomb: Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello seems determined to raid the Rhode Island state coffers to give what are now called the Pawtucket Red Sox a stadium in Providence with massive tax giveaways as part of the deal. Of course those who don’t get the giveaways will have to make up the lost tax revenue.

Male public officials like to be associated with professional sports teams as an affirmation of their masculinity and a opportunity to meet present and future sports celebrities. Photo ops!

They think it's glamorous to be in bed with these rather rapacious  and  usually very profitable sports businesses.

That even Major League stadiums rarely make macro-economic sense for their communities, let alone farm teams like the PawSox  in cool climates, gets swept aside in what is really a psychiatric and emotional problem. It isn’t serious public policy.

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