Will it take a hurricane?

Note to Readers:  To their credit, the editorial board of our local Rochester news daily (D&C) has decided to focus its attention on our failing city school district this year (last in the nation by some measures). They have reported on successes in other cities, pointing to models that we might follow.  Last month, our local school board trained its sights on its latest scapegoat, the now former school superintendent Barbara Dean-Williams. Within days, the D&C summarized the systemic failures in an editorial, It’s Time to Declare an Emergency. Here’s my response, which was printed the following weekend: 

The Sunday editorial, It’s Time to Declare an Emergency, finally said what needed to be said.  It is indeed time to declare a state of emergency. Our city’s school system is broken and hiring another superintendent of schools without addressing the core challenges is nothing more than lining up the next scapegoat.  

What will it take for the school board to wake up?  

What it took in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.  The storm, which took 1800 lives, also wiped out most of the city’s infrastructure and scattered its citizens all over the region.  Many have not returned. 

In it wake, the Recovery School District (RSD) turned all of New Orleans schools into Charter Schools. By 2014, the percentage of students testing at grade level had improved from 35 to 62 percent. Before the storm, 62% of New Orleans students attended schools designated as failing.  By 2016, that number had dropped to 6%.

David Osbourne, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, tells the story of New Orleans schools in a book, Reinventing America’s Schools. His book outlines core principles of leadership and management that have succeeded not only in New Orleans but also in Denver, Washington, D.C., and Indianapolis. He outlines seven key strategies that are common to the school districts of those cities and others.  Among them are decentralizing control by giving school principals autonomy to develop best practices; empowering parents by providing them choices of different kinds of schools, with public money following them; and, creating incentives and consequences for performance through competition.

The 20^thCentury model of public education created unified school districts that were critical to the development of human capital that made the United States the most innovative and competitive economy in the world.  Although that system continues to work well in many districts, particularly suburban districts where parents are engaged and intolerant of failure, it has stopped working in large bureaucratic inner city school districts burdened by federal and state mandates that haven’t translated to classroom achievement.  

In each example provided in Osbourne’s book, there was one person who was the prime mover.  One person who was unafraid.  One person who led the charge.  In some cases, it was a mayor.  In others, a member of the school board or the superintendent of schools. I am left to wonder who will lead the revolution in Rochester.  And, what will it take to break us free from a bureaucracy that perpetuates failure? A hurricane? 

WHO WILL LEAD?

As Simple as ABC: Anyone But Cuomo

Note to readers: I have lived in five states in the last 35 years, all but one of them swing states (NJ, CO, PA, FL and, now, NY). New York is the deepest of Blue States and the sensibilities of most people I meet are decidedly liberal.  Our governor, Andrew Cuomo, is running for reelection to his third term.  Polls show him with a substantial lead.  I have written this post for a New York audience but think it relevant for national consideration.  Will failure of the Blue State model make a dent in Cuomo’s chances?  It’s not likely, unfortunately.

Andrew Cuomo

Governor Cuomo bolsters his argument for reelection by touting his economic record.  In truth, not only has the governor failed in his efforts to revive Upstate New York’s economy but also he has been dishonest in portraying his record of achievement. Upstate’s economic recovery has been among the weakest of any region in the nation. 

Let’s start with employment. The governor points to the creation of over 1 million jobs during his administration.  However, peeling back a layer or two of the onion, we find a more nuanced picture.  According to the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL), New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley had the highest rate of job growth in the state while Upstate had job growth at about one third of both the downstate and national rate during the period from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2018.  NYSDOL surveys employment quarterly in cooperation with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.  From 2010, the quarterly census reports Upstate job growth at 6.3% compared to a US growth rate of 17.8% and a downstate rate of 21.2%.  Monroe County private payrolls grew a bit over 20,000 jobs or 6.6%, less than 1% per year. 

It might be said that, absent the improvement in Wall Street’s prospects, job growth would have been negative.  And, I doubt the millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street would give the governor credit for their success. 

Despite this dismal track record, the governor consistently doubles down on his approach to

Stephanie Miner

economic development characterized by high taxes and a central government creating criteria for distribution of the funds collected. This approach has taken the form of an effort to invest in a photonics center in cooperation with the federal government that has yielded little to nothing, a distribution of a half billion dollars to the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council that has yielded little to nothing, and myriad attempts to revive our downtown by sprinkling millions on a variety of projects. 

Most galling, perhaps, is the dishonesty that characterizes his rhetoric around such activities. Rather than transparently defining our economic challenges and listening to the concerns of business owners, he describes his approach to economic growth as “a ‘ground-up’ strategy that focuses on cooperation and investing in regional assets to generate opportunity.”

Marc Molinaro

This year, New Yorkers are spoiled for choice in the gubernatorial election.  While some third party candidates represent the political extremes, there are two that can only be described as moderate: Republican Marc Molinaro (who might have been described as a Rockefeller Republican in times gone by) and Stephanie Miner, a Democrat turned Independent who demonstrates a deep understanding of the challenges facing Upstate. 

And, that’s why I say you should vote for anyone… and I mean ANYONE but Andrew Cuomo. 

WHO WILL LEAD?