How hateful rhetoric connects to real-world violence |
- Biden’s China policy needs to be more than just Trump lite
- A little cash goes a long way to support early childhood and development
- How technology is transforming mental health assessment and treatment
- Addressing Africa’s dual challenges: Climate change and electricity access
- Zombie diplomacy and the fate of Syria’s constitutional committee
- Why aren’t more adults finishing community college?
- Crime and anti-crime policies in Mexico in 2022: A bleak outlook
- New Zealand’s bipartisan housing reforms offer a model to other countries
- A regressive student loan system results in costly racial disparities
- Global education trends and research to follow in 2022
| Biden’s China policy needs to be more than just Trump lite Posted: 25 Jan 2022 01:54 PM PST By Jeffrey A. Bader The Biden administration has prided itself on breaking with the policies and practices of its predecessor, which did untold damage to U.S. foreign policy and domestic tranquility. But curiously, when it comes to the greatest foreign policy challenge facing the United States — how to deal with the rise of China — Biden's team have continued and mimicked Trump's destructive approach. This has prompted glee among departed Trump officials, who proudly declare themselves innovators and the Biden administration unimaginative and dutiful implementers. Biden officials begin their defense of their China policy by citing supposed strong bipartisan support for their tough line. When asked to distinguish their China strategy from their predecessor's, they say little more than that they favor a multilateral approach of rallying allies, in contrast to the unilateralism of the "America First" practitioners. Yet, it is intellectual laziness to justify policy on the basis of bipartisanship rather than formulate one based on national interests. In no other instance, e.g. policy toward Iran, Ukraine and Russia, NATO and the EU, has the administration sought to duplicate Trump policy. Rather, Biden's team has figured out its own approach, and then tried to sell it to both parties. DEMOCRATS LIKE CHINA MORE THAN REPUBLICANS DOWhat's more, the pretense of bipartisanship is a stretch. A recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs showed large gaps in views of China between Democrats and Republicans:
The pursuit of a so-called "bipartisan" policy toward China in practice has been the adoption of the Trump policy, at the expense of grassroots Democratic views. It is easy to be bipartisan when you simply surrender to the perspective of the opposing party. How Trump fanned the flamesWhat has this meant in practice? The Trump administration preached a zero-sum policy of confrontation with China. Speeches by its senior officials depicted a nation of intellectual thieves and economic predators that had advanced in the world through treachery and cheating. They suggested cooperation with such a regime was impossible, and all but called for regime change in China as necessary for coexistence. They saw a China whose DNA was an urge to domination, and contended that 45 years of complex interaction with China since Nixon was appeasement. They viewed international diplomacy as a chessboard in which every country became a zone of combat against a Chinese adversary. They undertook a strategy of "decoupling" from China — high tariffs contrary to U.S. legal obligations, an FBI "China Initiative" that has been wielded as a blunderbuss against Chinese Americans and Chinese conducting research at American universities, and shutdown of exchange programs like the Fulbright program and Center for Disease Control cooperation with Chinese counterparts. They also began to dismantle the foundations of America's four-decade-old "one China" policy (that is, the U.S. acknowledgment of the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China) and the unofficial character of our relationship with Taiwan that, along with military deterrence, has underpinned peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait for 50 years. The Biden administration generally has kept intact these Trump policy approaches, albeit with less incendiary language. They have echoed the Trump administration in declaring the era of engagement over. In essence, they argue that they can fight the adversary more effectively than Trump could. What Biden's team should do insteadWhat should be the approach of a Democratic administration seeking to project American values and protect U.S. interests? Here are the broad brushstrokes of the principles that should apply. A sound policy should begin with the recognition that China is a major power. In the MAGA world there was an obsession with being number one. In the real world, there are competing and coexisting major powers, none of which are likely to disintegrate in the face of foreign disapproval nor to achieve an across the board victory. The challenge for the U.S. will be to lead, live, compete, and cooperate with a rising China. There is no higher priority than avoiding a slide toward war, which would be with a nuclear power expected to have 1,000 warheads by 2030. Policies that heighten confrontation and risk of overt conflict should be scrupulously avoided. Both countries bear responsibility for preventing the emergence of a relationship where war could be seriously contemplated. There are international crises that demand major power cooperation. Combating climate change, for which the U.S. and China bear principal responsibility, is high on the list. So is preventing the next pandemic by working with foreign scientists, including the Chinese, who have considerable expertise. Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and defanging North Korea's nuclear program — both vital American interests — will not succeed without Chinese support. Decoupling the world's two largest economies is a formula for making each poorer. Lifting the high tariffs on Chinese imports that were the centerpiece of Trump policy would be a good place to begin to reverse the previous administration's destructive economic disengagement. The tariffs contribute selectively to higher prices and therefore to inflation. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has publicly criticized the tariffs, but the administration has been unwilling to take the political risk of eliminating them in a reciprocally beneficial negotiation. By the same token, economists and strategists alike understand that Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has taken the U.S. off the field on economic and trade issues, which are the highest international priority of Asian countries, and threatens to deprive the U.S. of important growing markets. China wants in to TPP, just as the U.S. walks away. This is no way for us to compete. Maintenance of Taiwan's separate status from the Chinese mainland, until and unless there is an uncoerced resolution of differences between the two sides, is in our and Taiwan's interest. Acknowledgment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the sole legal government of China, which the U.S. provided in 1979 when we established relations, and conduct of relations with Taiwan on an unofficial basis, are foundational principles. China's continued tolerance of a separate Taiwan depends on its understanding that the U.S. has not excluded the possibility of peaceful reunification, regardless of how difficult it is to foresee at present. When administration officials deliver Congressional testimony calling Taiwan critical to U.S. defense of its vital interests, they are implicitly suggesting that Taiwan's future is not for the two sides of the Strait to work out but America's to decide. That is an inadvertent invitation to confrontation. The U.S. can lead by exampleXi Jinping's China is politically oppressive at home and has undertaken brutal crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Targeted punitive responses are necessary for us to keep faith with our values. We should repair our broken politics at home so that we can once again serve as a model inspiring people living in authoritarian systems, a mission Biden has rightly stressed. The soft power of our hopefully improved example offers the best means to support human rights progress in China and elsewhere. Most importantly, the U.S. needs to pursue a long-term, steady approach, not pander to domestic politics whenever there is an attention-getting headline. Since its establishment in 1949, the PRC has undergone dramatic swings in policy and governance, from isolation to opening, from extreme repression to opening and back toward oppression. To assume its current oppressive incarnation is permanent is to ignore the lessons of the past 70 years and to turn our backs on a worldly younger generation that could support a positive relationship with the U.S. if given a chance to do so. Keeping the door open to Chinese students, researchers, and visitors is essential if we want to build a foundation for a constructive relationship with the next generation, not to mention make up for the large shortfall in trained American experts in math, science, and technology. I am confident that Biden sees the need for a relationship with China that is not a pale imitation of his predecessor's. He has shown he understands the possibility of something better, for instance in initiating a call and virtual meeting with Xi and stressing his desire for competitive coexistence. Given the attitudes of Democratic voters, the challenge is not as great as some of his advisors may be telling him. There is no hardline policy on China Biden can pursue that will insulate him from attacks from the right by the Rubios, Pompeos, Hawleys, et al. who will make demonization of China a calling card in their likely presidential runs. Biden should do the right thing for U.S. national security and values, not chase the will-o'-the-wisp of a bipartisan policy that will forever remain out of his grasp. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| A little cash goes a long way to support early childhood and development Posted: 25 Jan 2022 08:04 AM PST By Molly Scott, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek The Build Back Better bill has stalled. On one point, we agree with Senator Joe Manchin that it is time for Congress to start with a "clean sheet of paper" by evaluating how each policy in the legislation betters American society. In this context, the portions in the bill targeting children and families are an imperative. They offer a particularly strong return on investment and just released data underscore this point. A little cash goes a long way to support children's short- and potentially long-term outcomes. A research paper was released yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) from the Baby's First Years study. In an ongoing randomized controlled trial, 1,000 mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds are assigned to either a high-cash gift group ($333 per month) or a low-cash gift group ($20 per month). Participants receive this support in the form of a debit card and may spend the funds however they choose. Mothers live in cities across the U.S.—the Twin Cities, New Orleans, Omaha, and New York City. After receiving just 12 months of cash gifts funded by charitable foundations, lead author Dr. Sonya Troller-Renfree and her team measured infants' brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). What they found is game changing: Babies whose mothers were assigned to the high-cash gift group had more high-frequency brain activity compared to children in the low-cash group. Previous research links this high-frequency activity to the development of thinking and learning. According to the team's lead neuroscientist, Dr. Kimberly Noble, less than $4,000 a year "must have changed children's experiences or environments, and their brains adapted to those changed circumstances." In short, this is the first causal link between poverty and brain activity. There are numerous pathways through which the cash might be impacting children's brains, and research is currently seeking to understand the mechanisms. And this is just the beginning—the cash payments are ongoing, with plans to directly assess children's development at age 4.
A separate facet of the Build Back Better bill aims to invest in education by addressing educator recruitment and retention. Again, the science shows that investments positively impact children's development and that teacher turnover and retention directly relate to child outcomes. In particular, teacher stability in the earliest years is linked to higher social skills in kindergarten. Importantly, these skills go on to predict children's academic outcomes. In a recent study led by Dr. Daphna Bassok, researchers asked how an initiative called the Teacher Recognition Program, made possible by federal funds, impacts teacher retention. The program Bassok and her colleagues studied across the state of Virginia gave just $1,500 to eligible early childhood educators who on average made $12 per hour for working at least 30 hours per week with children from ages 0 to 5. After 8 months, the researchers checked in with the child care centers enrolled in the program and found that this meager amount of money cut the rate of teacher turnover by half. When asked about the additional support, teachers stressed how much the incentive assisted with things like groceries and bills. American families are struggling. After the end of the child tax credit, which kept about 3.7 million children out of poverty just a month ago, families that were lifted out of poverty are once again feeling financial turmoil. A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development policy report shows that the United States has among the worst child poverty rates in the industrialized world. The data released this week and in the past month demonstrate conclusively that relatively minor investments in families and teachers can impact children’s growth trajectory. It is a small price to pay for a stronger future. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How technology is transforming mental health assessment and treatment Posted: 25 Jan 2022 07:03 AM PST By Gregory Ferenstein In 2020, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure to legalize a psychedelic substance, psilocybin, which is still undergoing clinical trials. Now, the Oregon Health Authority is tasked with the unprecedented challenge of creating its own state-level versions of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) processes, from health provider certifications to accepted use cases. Traditional sources of evidence, such as experimental academic studies and laboratory clinical trials, are still relatively scarce, so state officials will have to use the very same sources that originally fueled the state's political movement: the internet. Because of the illegality of their use, much of the innovation around psychedelic therapy has happened through underground networks of uncertified therapists and the wild west of music festivals. Researchers often turn to Internet forums, YouTube videos, and online health surveys to understand all the ways in which these substances could be used to treat a range of mental health disorders. For instance, an early study on psychedelics for tobacco addiction noted:
Spurred by the 21st Century Cures Act, the FDA has begun implementing regulatory guidelines for collecting health data from online sources, but it has been too slow for the peculiarities of psychedelic pharmaceuticals. To be clear, many online reports come from situations resembling medical oversight—they are not simply from people "tripping" on their own at parties. Decades of underground therapy have also resulted in a loose collection of safety standards and training manuals that inform many academic studies, including FDA-approved trials. For instance, Vet Solutions funds special forces veterans to receive overseas psychedelic treatments, including Iboga, a potent shrub that is a promising treatment for opioid addiction. In these settings, new patients follow a long list of safety procedures—from medical intake forms to cardiac monitoring—throughout the psychedelic experience. Despite the strict medical processes, there is still only observational evidence in academic journals for the efficacy of Iboga out of countries, such as New Zealand, where psychedelic treatments are not explicitly illegal. That is one of the reasons why the influential editorial board of The Oregonian pleaded with citizens ahead of the 2020 election not "to jump ahead of the science too quickly." However, patient groups, eager for solutions to treatment-resistant illness, have formed overwhelmingly powerful political groups pressuring states to move faster than the relatively glacial pace of decades-long clinical trials. Some Possible Policy ResponsesMuch like the legalization of cannabis, voters may have pushed laws faster than some legislatures would have liked. But, now, the way in which lawmakers respond to this pressure can impact public health. In the cannabis market, too many early restrictions on drug access allowed the black market to thrive, and, as a result, laws are being revised. With psychedelics, to balance safety and the demand for access prior to FDA approval, here are a few policy options. 1. Follow the lead of other nationsUsing a legal framework of "international reciprocity," health boards can adopt the practices of nations where there is demonstrated safety and efficacy. Psychedelic therapy and ceremonial use are common worldwide; when I visited Amsterdam, where psilocybin is sold in retail shops, I found a thriving cottage industry of health retreats. Even in a highly open regulatory system, one study found that there are virtually no incidences of harm or criminality. Thus, state lawmakers can be confident that strict medical oversight of this particular substance may be unnecessary. Both foreign and native-territory guidelines can also guide riskier drugs. Substances traditionally used in spiritual ceremonies, such as Iboga or the Amazonian tea, ayahuasca, carry more risks, yet are still on the path toward legalization in America. The treatments can involve extreme nausea, heart complications, or detoxification. Over the years, indigenous peoples and doctors practicing in nations outside the US have developed guidelines that reduce medical risks. 2. Legalize a path from social sharing to scientific researchPsychedelic use is quite common, yet it is difficult for researchers to collect data on best practices and adverse events. A promising solution to both increase safety and inform public health comes from California State Senator Scott Weiner, who has introduced legislation to legalize "social sharing" for a wide range of psychedelics and which could pass as soon as next year. The California bill would not permit a large market like the cannabis industry but would permit small-scale non-commercial use in the kinds of scenarios where psychedelics are commonly used, such as festivals, underground ceremonies, or in nature with friends. Under this new legislation, rampant psychedelic use could come out of the shadows and be available for study. There are still many nuances to psychedelic-assisted therapy and what settings should be permitted. For instance, during the pandemic, some practitioners risked the spread of COVID-19 and continued to host in-person events. Indeed, I discovered one popular practitioner who held Zoom events of dozens of participants with the novel compound MDA, and I reported my findings through an ethnographic study. Additionally, the prestigious journal Nature recently published a study from app data that finds a correlation between increased mental wellness and frequent low-dose "microdosing," which is often done at home. That is, teletherapy may be an effective form of mental health treatment with psychedelics. Yet, because there is virtually no evidence published in the academic literature on remote facilitation, the Oregon Health Authority and a brand-new New York bill may only permit live, in-person psilocybin experiences. In Oregon, residents will certainly continue to flout the law. A regulatory system of social sharing similar to the one being proposed in California could provide vital information for how to shepherd the inevitable integration of psychedelics into the public health system. Agencies can then partner with a new cottage industry of psychedelic-friendly software companies, such as Maya Health and Quantified Citizen, to collect and publish findings. Professor Mason Marks, project lead at Harvard's new health policy center, Petrie-Flom, similarly concludes in an op-ed for the Journal of The American Medical Association that, "for 50 years, prohibition of psychedelic substances impeded research and deprived people with mental health conditions (many of whom are members of historically marginalized or underserved populations) of viable treatment options." 3. Sandboxes for insurance reimbursement of lower-cost treatmentDemonstration projects, such as "regulatory sandboxes", are a way in which states can pilot novel, but risky commercialization. Demonstration projects are used by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce the costs of diabetes, or, in Singapore, to test out telehealth services, which also can be less expensive. Demonstration projects are regulatory exemptions that are time-limited, have increased reporting requirements, and involve more stringent informed consent protocols. Politically, they are safer than traditional deregulation, which does not have built-in sunset provisions. Service providers apply to be included in a demonstration project (such as a doctor offering telehealth services) and are approved by an agency overseeing the project. In the case of psychedelics, demonstration projects could help control sky-high costs. Psychedelic therapy has already received criticism because of its relatively high cost, which can be upwards of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. In the middle of a mental health crisis, one-on-one, in-person licensed therapy is in short supply, which drives up prices. There are a variety of lower-cost strategies. For instance, a new mental health hotline, Fireside, offers peer telehealth counseling for those going through very challenging psychedelic experiences as an alternative to traditional emergency services. Peer counseling and other roles that do not have lengthy occupational licensing standards may be an essential solution to both increase the supply of health counselors and decrease their cost. Government health insurances are still reluctant to cover treatments outside of FDA approval, even if a state has legalized it and it is more cost-effective. And, as a result, agencies and government insurances cannot utilize lower-cost treatments in states that jump ahead of the FDA. In these cases, if outcomes from a demonstration show promise for a particular drug or counseling service, the state could legislatively include it for insurance reimbursement, improving access for patients, and saving the state money. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Addressing Africa’s dual challenges: Climate change and electricity access Posted: 25 Jan 2022 07:00 AM PST By Jeanine Mabunda Lioko
The global response to climate change must incorporate the historic emissions context. As has been widely noted, China, Europe, and the United States bear the most responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. Prioritizing the transition to renewables and imposing higher emission reduction requirements on the EU, U.S., and China will ease the burden on those nations that still need a variety of power generation methods to increase energy access. Not only does Africa bear the least responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, but the forests of the Congo Basin (second only to the Amazon) are vital to absorbing the CO2 emitted from other continents. Keeping the lungs of the world intact must be more valuable than cutting them down. Maintaining these natural resources is essential to combatting global climate change and requires external support to properly value and incentivize their preservation. Another big challenge is the lack of access to electricity. Today nearly 600 million of the 1.2 billion Africans lack access to electric power. In sub-Saharan Africa, 12 million new people enter the workforce every year. Our prosperity and peace are incumbent on powering our economic development and creating enough gainful employment opportunities for our growing population. That is not something that can be done in the dark. Without achieving universal access to electricity, we will be vulnerable to underdevelopment, high unemployment, a migration crisis, and instability. Given the close interplay of these challenges as well as their threat to the overall region, we must find a way to solve both if our continent is to realize a peaceful and prosperous future. To narrow the energy access gap as quickly as possible, Africa must employ a variety of power sources already utilized by the U.S., EU, and China while simultaneously phasing out coal. Such a shift requires mobilizing development financing to support natural gas, hydro, and geothermal projects, as well as wind and solar energy. Importantly, the double standard for those nations in the Global North with universal energy access was on full display at COP 26. For example, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said, "[The European Union] will have to also invest in natural gas infrastructure. As long as we do it with an eye of only doing this for a period, then I think this is a justified investment." The EU and U.S., who control significant voting stakes in the largest international financial institutions (IFIs), then led a pledge by 20 countries to stop financing gas projects abroad. Without support from IFIs, African nations will be unable to build and maintain the infrastructure required to utilize our natural gas. This sharp contrast in words and actions sends the message that natural gas is considered a bridge to renewables in the Global North—where access to electricity is secure—while natural gas is an unnecessary luxury to Africans who still do not have access to reliable electricity.
Finally, African nations must capitalize on the green economic revolution. The global transition to renewable energy will mean exponentially scaling up the production of batteries, electric vehicles, and other renewable energy systems, which depend on Africa's natural resources. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounts for 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, the mineral vital to battery production. With the demand for cobalt expected to at least double by 2030, it is unfathomable that the miners, who provide the world with the material essential to the energy transition, return to homes without electricity. We need to leverage our control over such markets to elevate working conditions, move beyond raw material exports toward manufacturing and processing capacity, and capture greater portions of green energy supply chains. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of past economic revolutions. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Zombie diplomacy and the fate of Syria’s constitutional committee Posted: 24 Jan 2022 01:23 PM PST By Steven Heydemann, Karam Shaar In March 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding dignity and an end to endemic corruption. Bashar Assad's regime responded brutally, quickly turning civil unrest into an all-out war that has been ongoing for nearly 11 years. For almost as long, international actors have claimed there can be no military solution to the conflict. Even as the military balance on the ground has shifted, efforts to negotiate a political settlement have lurched along, with nothing to show for years of United Nations-led mediation between the Assad regime and the opposition. Undermined by the recalcitrance and obstructionism of the Assad regime, the so-called Geneva process has become little more than zombie diplomacy, kept alive not by any expectation that it will produce a result but by the absence of alternatives and the reluctance of the United States and European Union to let go of the only negotiating framework accepted by all members of the U.N. Security Council. Every month, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, currently veteran Norwegian diplomat Geir Pedersen, updates the Council in terms that have become as repetitive as they are predictable: We have made no progress, but opportunities remain to be explored. Pedersen's cautious optimism is laudable. Yet however modest his aspirations, there is no longer any meaningful opportunity to salvage the Geneva process. Russian officials have expressed frustration that they have not been able to wring a more accommodating posture out of their client in Damascus. Simultaneously, regional states have begun a gradual process of normalization — establishing diplomatic ties to the Assad regime and initiating discussions about bolstering trade and investment — that has further diminished whatever incentives might have existed to prod Assad into taking the Geneva process seriously. To be sure, the Geneva talks have faced daunting odds from the outset. In December 2015, two months after Russia's military intervention to rescue Syria's dictator, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 2254 calling for fair elections, a new constitution, and credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance. The resolution was, and remains, the most promising basis for a political settlement that is more than a fig leaf legitimating the status quo. In line with the spirit of that resolution, Pedersen's predecessor from 2014 to 2018, Staffan de Mistura worked to move intra-Syrian talks toward an encompassing agreement on four baskets: a credible non-sectarian transitional government; a future constitution; U.N.-supervised elections; and support for anti-terrorism efforts within Syria. Despite reservations, opponents of the Assad regime agreed to de Mistura's framework and participated in the talks in good faith. Assad, however, was never interested in any part of the political process. He once described Syria’s membership in the U.N. as "a game we play.” As the impact of Russia's military intervention became more apparent, regime negotiators turned the process into a farce. Nor did Russia's military support for Assad translate into political leverage. Even as Russia committed itself to the survival of Assad and his regime, it invested political capital in a diplomatic process it viewed as the pathway to an internationally accepted political settlement that would, in turn, make possible an easing of sanctions and access to funds for reconstruction. Yet Assad's dependence on Russia notwithstanding, he has consistently treated the Geneva process with derision, refusing to play along — an object lesson in the ability of weak clients to resist pressure from influential patrons. De Mistura labored on, but as the regime's military position improved, Assad and his Russian backers lost interest in negotiating the meaty issues of political transition and early elections, narrowing the Geneva process to the matter of constitutional reform. Even so, it took 18 months after the establishment of a "constitutional committee" before talks once again got underway, with Pedersen as the U.N.'s special envoy. Since its formation, the committee has met in Geneva six times without meaningful progress. From its inception, Assad's delegates have succeeded in derailing, stonewalling, and otherwise undermining the talks. Russia has occasionally attempted to pressure Assad to take the process more seriously, to no avail. Assad's intransigence is paying off, as it has so often in the past. Recently, Moscow seems to have given up on Geneva entirely. Last month, Russia's presidential envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, said, “If somebody pursues the aim of creating a new constitution for the sake of changing the powers of the president, and thereby trying to change power in Damascus, this road leads nowhere.” Shortly after this statement, Ibrahim al-Jebawi, one of the 50 opposition bloc members of the constitutional committee, announced his withdrawal in a televised interview. He later stated that the Russian envoy's statement "assured my previous convictions and let me withdraw," further adding that he now considers the committee worthless. What is painfully clear from both Russian and Syrian regime statements is the belief that Geneva is no longer needed as a pathway to normalization for the Assad regime. Overtures to Damascus from Arab capitals won't confer legitimacy on Assad. Nor will they bring sanctions relief or Western support for reconstruction. Yet as normalization creeps forward — and if and when Syria's full membership in the Arab League is restored — the Assad regime might be well on its way to international acceptance, its culpability in war crimes and crimes against humanity be damned. Russia will then be able to breathe a bit easier knowing it will not be stuck in the lead role of shoring up a critically unstable pariah regime. If the Geneva process was always an exercise in the power of hope over experience, it has now been reduced to an empty shell, a form of zombie diplomacy that should be put out of its misery. Ending the process, however, does not mean that the U.N. will become merely a bystander in efforts to respond to the mass violence perpetrated on civilians by the Assad regime. In its place, the U.N. should invest more heavily in the work of the mechanisms it has created to pursue accountability for perpetrators of war crimes in Syria, especially the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism established by the General Assembly for this purpose. It should also seriously consider the formation of an additional mechanism focused on the fate of the hundreds of thousands detained and missing, mostly at the hands of the regime but also by extremist armed groups. The end of Geneva would permit Syria's opposition to turn its attention to institution building and improving governance in areas outside of regime control. Shifting its focus in this way will improve the opposition's legitimacy among international backers and, more importantly, in the eyes of the disgruntled and impoverished population it claims to represent. For their part, the U.S., EU, and other international actors should continue to support Resolution 2254, maintain current sanctions policies, more actively work to prevent normalization of the Assad regime, encourage judicial processes under the principle of universal jurisdiction, and support Syrians in areas outside regime control to help them rule themselves more sustainably. What ending the Geneva process will do, therefore, is shift the landscape of Syria diplomacy. Such a step would remove a framework that has become a counterproductive obstacle to progress. It would move to the fore alternative means for the U.N. and other actors to shape the outcome of the Syrian conflict, provide a measure of justice to victims of the regime, and contribute to the longer-term stability and security of the Syrian people. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Why aren’t more adults finishing community college? Posted: 24 Jan 2022 12:51 PM PST By Kelli Bird, Ben Castleman, Brett Fischer, Benjamin T. Skinner Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, community colleges across the country have grappled with substantial enrollment declines. Even with the resumption of in-person learning at many institutions this fall, community college enrollment is 6% lower than fall 2020 and 14.8% lower than fall 2019. College enrollments had been slowly declining through much of the 2010s, in part stemming from demographic trends toward a smaller population of traditional college-age youth, though the pandemic further accelerated these trends. In the face of these challenges, many states and colleges have looked increasingly to older adult populations to offset enrollment declines among the youngest adults. Numerous states have made substantial policy investments to increase enrollment among older adults; a prominent example is Tennessee Reconnect, a state-funded, last-dollar scholarship program targeted specifically to adults 25 and older in Tennessee. Increasing state investments in older adult enrollment (or re-enrollment) is driven in part by data suggesting that, across the United States, there are tens of millions of adults with some college credits but no degree or credential. From a policy perspective, this population seems like low-hanging fruit to increase college enrollment and graduation. These students have already participated in college and made progress toward a credential, so they have demonstrated some inclination and potential for postsecondary success. The monetary benefits of a college-level credential are large and growing, so supporting adults to finish would presumably improve their labor-market prospects. And yet, existing evidence suggests that efforts to increase enrollment and re-enrollment among adults have had limited success. For instance, sending former community college students in Florida text messages with information about re-enrollment had no effect on adults coming back to college; including tuition waivers only led to a modest increase in re-enrollment. Why wouldn't more adults choose to complete their programs, given the numerous benefits associated with earning a credential? To shed light on why more adults do not finish community college, we investigated the labor-market trajectories of adults who had earned some college-level credits from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) but who stopped out before completing their credential. Our analysis includes students who left VCCS between summer 2009 and spring 2014 and did not re-enroll or attend a different institution for at least three years. Several key insights emerge from our analysis:
These combined results highlight that the share of adults with some credits but no credential who might be receptive to and would benefit from re-enrollment efforts may be substantially lower than policymakers anticipate. In fact, our analyses suggest that, among adults who made substantial academic progress before stopping out of college, fewer than 1,000 adults of approximately 26,000 in our analysis (about 3%) could fairly easily re-enroll in fields of study from which they could reasonably expect a sizable earnings premium from completing their credential. Increasing re-enrollment and success among adults would, therefore, require a comprehensive and likely resource-intensive strategy. One important area to start is to reduce stop-out among adults with substantial credits. We find that a sizeable share of adults who leave college were performing well academically for most of their terms in college, but they experienced a substantial decline in performance in the term immediately preceding their departure. Investing resources to identify students whose academic performance suddenly declines and to intervene with additional supports could lead more adults to stay on track for completion. Both for adults who have yet to stop out and those who left college years earlier, interventions should draw on existing evidence-based approaches to increase completion among higher-risk student populations, including: intensive coaching and advising; structured learning and financial supports like CUNY ASAP; and increased grant assistance to improve college affordability. You can read the full journal article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis: “Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults With Substantial College Credits But No Degree.“ This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Crime and anti-crime policies in Mexico in 2022: A bleak outlook Posted: 24 Jan 2022 11:42 AM PST By Vanda Felbab-Brown It might seem that 2022 is starting off with important positive news about the crime and security situation in Mexico. The Mexican government announced that homicides declined by 3.6% from the previous year to 33,308, just below the 33,739 in 2018 when Andrés Manuel López Obrador became president. And in December, the new U.S.-Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities went into effect, replacing the Mérida Initiative that López Obrador intensely disliked while his administration severely minimized U.S.-Mexico security cooperation. Yet, the 2022 outlook for both the rule of law and public safety in Mexico and meaningful U.S.-Mexico security cooperation remains bleak. In October and November, I spent several weeks in various parts of Mexico researching the evolution of crime and security policies. The picture is not good. The decline in homicides is welcome. But the size of the decline is just noise in the tempo of Mexico's criminal violence. The reduction is not fundamentally due to improved security policies. Mexico's law-enforcement forces still lack incapacitation and deterrence capacities. Brazen homicides persist at unacceptable levels. Their ebb and flow largely reflect choices and tit-for-tat responses by criminal groups toward one another. Reductions in fighting, such as in Michoacán's Apatzingán or Guerrero's Acapulco where I conducted fieldwork, occurs mainly because a particular group or criminal alliance manages to establish temporary territorial control, a "narcopeace": be it Cárteles Unidos in that part of the Tierra Caliente, or Caro Quintero's and Los Chapitos' branches of the Sinaloa Cartel in high-value extortion and drug trafficking in Acapulco. Elsewhere, they have to live with sharing, like the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) do in the fentanyl and meth precursor hub Lázaro Cárdenas. Nor do reductions in murders mean other forms of violence, such as extortion, or criminal groups' control over territories and people, have lessened. In much of Michoacán, Guerrero, Tamaulipas, and Veracruz, local politics, economics, and much of people's everyday life is arbitrated by the narcos. As a government official in Tierra Caliente told me: "Frankly, public security here, all life really, is totally managed by the narcos." Yet the criminal groups' capacities to hold turf often remains flimsy, with groups like CJNG brazenly seeking to conquer entire territories with drone-mounted bombs, and groups like the Sinaloa Cartel taking over legal and illegal economies and politics in a more buttoned-down and less blatant manner, but no less systematically. As my fieldwork showed, in Baja California Sur, Baja California, and Sinaloa, criminal groups, often the Sinaloa Cartel, are muscling their way into new economies, systematically seeking to dominate both legal and illegal fishing, fish processing, and seafood sales along the entire vertical supply chain. Legal and illegal fishermen and entire associations and industries feel they have no backup from the Mexican government to resist the narcos' takeover. The overarching bipolar rivalry between the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG spans not just Mexico but violently all the way to Colombia and non-violently into the Asia-Pacific. Underneath that macro-war, many violent micro-conflicts play out in Mexico, as smaller criminal groups fight over drug, extortion, and other criminal markets and seek to control local politicians and populations. Areas of violent contestation, such as Zacatecas or San Luis Potosí, can become almost anarchical with violence. Self-styled militias, sometimes fronts for rival criminal groups, other times with great proclivity to slide into many facets of criminality, persist and proliferate as the government looks on. To various degrees, the criminal groups build political power by intimidating and bribing government officials, and obtain political capital with local populations by giving social handouts and organizing narco courts to arbitrate disputes. For the past two decades, criminal groups have violently meddled in Mexico's elections, particularly at the municipal and state level. But the 2021 midterms showed to an unprecedented degree that the criminal groups are no longer satisfied to coopt elected officials. Now they seek to influence with violence and money who can run and win to begin with. The Mexican government's response remains deeply troubling — mostly a hope the criminals will sort it out among themselves. Whether in high-value targeting, countering violence and criminality in natural resources, or suppressing robberies and extortion, Mexico's various military and law enforcement forces are instructed to only undertake operations without the visible use of force — even when criminal militias take over new territories and declare autonomy, or cartels bomb local populations. When forces such as the Mexican Army (SEDENA) and Navy (SEMAR) or the National Guard, now numbering perhaps 100,000, are deployed, they are mostly sent to patrol the streets without active operations against local criminal groups. Unlike the Federal Police which the López Obrador administration dismantled, the National Guard is nominally supposed to be stationed in a locality permanently. That's not always the case. Most importantly, the force was conceived as a backup to the state police, not a first responder. And indeed, it doesn't respond. As a security official in the Tierra Caliente explained to me, the objective of the deployments of the National Guard or joint patrols is not to fight the criminals, or even to deter them: "We send the National Guard in joint patrols with state police or the military to stand on the street. Seeing them with arms and trucks gives people confidence." Well, it didn't to the local people with whom I had a chance to speak. As a lawyer there put it: "The National Guard are the most expensive mannequins in Mexico." The National Guard, like SEMAR and SEDENA, lacks an investigative authority. Thus, they can act against crime and arrest people only when they see crime happening in flagrancia. And the state police forces can only investigate ordinary crime, not organized crime. Yet the dismantling of the Federal Police also led to a profound reduction in the number of investigators and investigative capacity in Mexico — by some 70-75%, Mexican lawyers and security officials estimated in conversations with me. No wonder, the effective prosecution rate for homicides in Mexico continues to hover around 2%. The López Obrador government blames poor security on state authorities, and state authorities blame it on municipal ones. But the federal government has dramatically cut budgets to both and thus gutted the already often-inadequate local capacities, even though its own 2019 security strategy centered on relying on municipal police for security. At all levels, police reform has mostly stalled. Occasionally, though, such as in Oaxaca, or Chihuahua City, local governments have succeeded in improving the effectiveness of municipal police forces. Instead of police reform, López Obrador has intensified militarization of public life in Mexico — not just in security, but also in the economic domain. His administration has given SEDENA and SEMAR responsibilities for custom collection and awarded them contracts for building airports, luxury apartments, and presumed critical infrastructure (sometimes foolishly environmentally-damaging infrastructure like the Mayan Train), while promising to exempt them from all kinds of oversight. López Obrador has cut budgets and personnel to many Mexican institutions and left them with minimal regulatory, oversight, and minimal capacities. Amidst this systematic weakening of Mexico's institutions, the effort by López Obrador and his Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero to gut and reverse Mexico's judicial reforms toward an accusatorial system and weaken judicial independence are among the most detrimental. Instead of using force and judicial prosecution, López Obrador seeks to reduce crime in Mexico through socio-economic anti-crime programs, part of his overall vastly popular redistribution strategy for Mexico's many poor and marginalized. A socio-economic component to enable local populations access to legal income is important, though not a replacement for good policing. And from the Sembrando Vida program to grow fruit trees to vocational programs for youth at-risk of succumbing to criminality, these López Obrador administration programs have been riddled with problems. In one such program I encountered in Michoacán, for example, teenagers were paid by the government to receive training as hairdressers while the hairdressers were paid for the teaching. But the boys merely paid off or intimidated the hair salons into certifying the boys' participation in the training without actually attending it. Both the boys and their hairdresser trainers pocketed the government money and went about their lives, criminal or otherwise, as before. Under the Mérida Initiative, the U.S. often provided the crucial and only anti-corruption, anti-collusion oversight in Mexico's security strategies and tactical operations as well as a stimulus and reinforcement to Mexico's will to take on criminal groups and the lack of rule of law. The Bicentennial Framework is unlikely to restore that. Details of what bilateral cooperation will be preserved are supposed to emerge from the U.S.-Mexico working groups this month. But what I heard from interlocutors in Mexico was a most problematic vision of the U.S. Mexico Bicentennial Framework by the Mexican government — namely, that the United States should only take care of its own territory by reducing drug demand and retail in the United States and the flows of drug money and weapons to Mexico, while Mexico will do whatever it wants, without U.S. input, in Mexico. Even if that means succumbing to the narcos. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| New Zealand’s bipartisan housing reforms offer a model to other countries Posted: 24 Jan 2022 11:23 AM PST By Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy Over the past decade, many cities around the world have experienced a significant rise in housing costs, and the large cities of New Zealand are no exception. The small nation's median house price rose by approximately 130% between 2011 and 2021, far outpacing household income growth and eroding housing affordability. Undersupply has contributed to these rising housing costs. Census data reveals that New Zealand's population increased by 10.8% between 2013 and 2018, but the stock of occupied dwellings only increased by 6.6% over the same period—indicating that there are chronic shortages of housing in the locations where people want to live. In response, the New Zealand government recently passed sweeping zoning reform legislation to permit medium-density housing in all of the country's major cities. This policy builds on the earlier success of upzoning in the country's largest city, Auckland, to redress housing shortages by encouraging higher-density housing. The reform is also part of a broader policy shift to encourage housing construction by allowing cities to build up. New Zealand's past zoning restrictions have led to increased housing costs and decreased homeownership ratesIn October 2021, New Zealand's center-left Labour government announced the zoning reform to stimulate housing construction through redevelopment. The so-called "Medium Density Residential Standard" will require the country's most populous cities to permit up to three stories and three dwellings on all existing residential parcels of land. The policy would allow a parcel with a detached single-family dwelling to be redeveloped into row houses or a small apartment block.
The reforms represent a significant reversal in the nation's approach to urban planning and development. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has adopted land use policies that encouraged low-density housing in residential areas, entrenching detached single-family housing in its suburbs. Consequently, construction of high-rise apartment buildings has been limited to central business districts and areas zoned for commercial use. Construction of medium-density housing, such as the rowhouses that are commonly found in the cities on the East Coast of the United States, has been missing from the mix. Although local governments are responsible for the design and implementation of zoning regulations, the prevalence of low-density housing was underpinned by national-level legislation governing land use. The 1991 Resource Management Act restricted urban development and has been repeatedly criticized for insufficient recognition of housing and infrastructure in its purpose and guiding principles. The act not only presented an impediment to building vertically, but it also hampered the ability of cities to grow horizontally. A long series of official inquiries has identified its shortcomings. The Resource Management Act restrained housing supply and attendant infrastructure during a period of significant population growth. Between 1991 and 2018, New Zealand's population grew by approximately two-thirds. Over the same period, the social impacts of increasing housing costs have become more acute. Housing costs for low-income New Zealanders have doubled as a proportion of their income since the 1980s, and homeownership rates have fallen while household debt has increased substantially. Encouraging redevelopment is a bipartisan issueOver the past decade, both center-left and center-right governments have deployed policies intended to rein in runaway house prices. These include both demand- and supply-side policies, such as a capital gains tax targeted at housing speculation, a ban on foreign investment in residential housing, fast-tracked inclusive housing developments, and state-subsidized housing development projects. The effect of monetary and macro-prudential policy on house prices has also increasingly been put under the spotlight. Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's central bank dropped interest rates to all-time lows and removed macro-prudential restrictions on mortgage credit, fueling a further 20% to 40% increase in house prices in different regions across the country. The government reacted by pushing for the central bank to consider house prices when setting interest rates, raising concerns that the long-held independence of the central bank was being undermined. Typically, a political party's housing policies are criticized by the opposing party. However, the original announcement of the Medium Density Residential Standard in October was notable for being bipartisan. The minister for housing, Dr. Megan Woods, shared the podium with members of the opposition National Party when making the announcement, who made their own statements voicing their support. The bill was subsequently passed in December with bipartisan support. Bipartisanship lends the zoning reform credibility. Policies to promote redevelopment and densification are often unpopular with local residents, which raises the possibility that the policy will be overturned after the next election. But the opposition party's public support for the bill indicates that the law will remain in place even if it wins the next election in 2023. A bipartisan commitment removes political uncertainty and encourages developers and homebuyers to incorporate the policy changes into their decision making. Construction in New Zealand's largest city is boomingThis is not the first time New Zealand has turned to zoning reforms to encourage housing construction. In 2016, the nation's largest city, Auckland, upzoned approximately three-quarters of its residential land area under the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP). Auckland houses about a third of the nation's 5 million people, and is also the country's commercial capital, accounting for 38% of the gross domestic product. Although motivated by a variety of factors, the undersupply of housing and erosion of housing affordability were the prominent justifications for the zoning reforms introduced under the AUP. The municipal government for the entire metropolitan area, the Auckland Council, estimated that the plan tripled the dwelling capacity of the city. My work with Peter Phillips shows that the AUP has enabled a construction boom. New housing units permitted have increased every year since the policy was enacted, with all of these increases occurring in the city's upzoned areas.
Immediately prior to the plan, new housing units permitted peaked at about 6,000 in 2015. By 2020, that figure had climbed to over 14,300. The policy also shifted residential construction into attached multifamily housing. Immediately prior to the plan, new dwelling permits for attached housing peaked at 1,300 in 2015; by 2020, that figure had climbed to 8,100. This means that most of the 14,300 new dwelling permits issued in 2020 were for attached housing. The policy also stimulated an increase in detached housing, but the increase is not nearly as great. Prior to the policy, detached permits peaked at about 4,700 in 2015; by 2019, that figure had risen to just under 6,200.
Upzoning also encouraged a more compact city by stimulating construction in Auckland's inner suburban areas, which span a radius of approximately 20 to 25 kilometers from the central business district. In 2015, about two in three housing permits issued were in the inner suburbs. By 2020, six out of every seven permits issued were for construction of a home in the inner suburbs. The success of upzoning in Auckland provided the blueprint for more recent national zoning reforms, with the business case for the policy change based on construction activity and outcomes in the city's medium-density zones. Transit-oriented housing development further encourages more compact citiesThe Medium Density Residential Standard comes on the heels of another national policy directive to encourage housing densification along public transit corridors. In 2020, the Labour government issued the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, which requires large cities to zone for residential structures of up to six stories within walking distance of rapid transit stations (approximately 800 meters, at the minimum recommendation). In addition to redressing the housing shortages that have accumulated over the past three decades, transit-oriented housing development is intended to lower energy consumption through shorter commutes and increased patronage of public transit, assisting the country to meet its carbon neutrality goals. New Zealand's reforms have increased housing construction, but home prices are still highNew Zealand's three zoning reform policies enacted over the past five years—the Auckland Unitary Plan, the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and the Medium Density Residential Standard—add up to a shift to encourage more housing construction through a more compact form of urban development. The results from Auckland to date indicate that these reforms can enable housing construction and redevelopment. This is important, as rezoning reforms do not always achieve their anticipated goals. Understanding and identifying the catalysts that enabled construction in Auckland can help policymakers in the design and implementation of zoning reforms in the future. What remains to be seen is the extent to which zoning reforms can enhance affordability. If the increase in housing supply in Auckland and other cities can bring down house prices in the years to come, New Zealand's reforms can be a model for other countries struggling with housing affordability to follow. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| A regressive student loan system results in costly racial disparities Posted: 24 Jan 2022 10:52 AM PST By Louise Seamster, Alan Aja With Senate and House resolutions to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student debt for borrowers, following a proposal from Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), and broad public support for cancellation, advocates are still pushing hard for cancellation to resolve the currently $1.75 trillion student debt crisis. But some persistent narratives have attempted to foil the promise of student loan cancellation. One strain of thought alleges cancellation would supposedly be "regressive," that most student loans are held by rich people, and cancellation would most benefit those who need it least. But this argument ignores who exactly is borrowing, and what constitutes undue burden of student debt. We argue that it's not student loan cancellation that is regressive, but the student loan system itself. Focusing only on "successful" student borrowers—arguing that much debt is held by high earners, or that college graduates "tend to earn more" over a lifetime—only captures half of a system with divergent outcomes. By placing emphasis on student loans' regressive design, we can understand how they disproportionately burden those least able to pay, while also bringing lower rewards. With coauthor Raphaël Charron-Chénier, Brookings Fellow Louise Seamster has shown that Black households are more likely to hold student debt at most income levels. In another study, a team including Seamster found that the median student debt for Black borrowing households has increased nearly 100% in only six years. Within the burgeoning racial wealth gap literature, some research has shown debt can worsen racial inequality through disparate structures, terms, and/or returns to "Black debt" and "white debt." Black and white borrowers tend to experience debt very differently—specifically because it is structured regressively. Not only do Black borrowers have to borrow more to offset racial differences in wealth, but they have to pursue even more education to get equivalent returns—a problem of increased "credentialization." Prior research indicates Black borrowers' greater difficulty with repayment comes from structural factors: lower salaries, lower returns to education, and lower likelihood of graduation. Our current system tells Black and Latinx borrowers to leverage debt to offset their own labor market discrimination—credentials for which they must pay more, both upfront and over time. These factors produce a racial debt gap that expands over decades, affecting the life course in ways experienced much less often by non-Latinx whites (see, for example, the crucial research of Fenaba Addo and Jason Houle). Twenty years into repayment, the median Black borrower still owed 95% of the original amount they'd borrowed, while the median white borrower had almost fully repaid their loan. While this shocking statistic illustrates how student debt can widen racial inequality, we take it as a measure of student debt's regressiveness. Many borrowers in financial distress are likely to end up paying more than better-off borrowers over the lifetime of their loan, not less. Student loans "cost" less to borrowers who are able to repay them faster, through family resources, higher incomes, and private refinancing. Collectively, better-off borrowers can move through this system as it was originally intended. But worse-off borrowers remain trapped in it for decades. In 2009, around 18% of borrowers had been in repayment for over seven years. Ten years later, that was true for half of borrowers. A 2021 data request by Sen. Warren revealed that 4.4 million borrowers have been in repayment for over two decades. This finding also overlaps with the growing number of borrowers over 60, the age group experiencing the largest increase in student loan debt over the last decade. How have so many people wound up as life-long student borrowers? Millions of borrowers are in too much financial distress to pay their debt at all. But many more borrowers making regular payments struggle to make a dent in their loan balance. We don't know how many, because we lack information on cash flows on student loans. Without that, it's hard to calculate how many people have static or rising balances despite regular payments. But many borrowers are caught in what Mark Huelsman of the Higher Education Policy Project aptly describes as a "debt trap." Basically, once borrowers experience rising balances through unpaid interest ("negative amortization"), it is difficult to make it out of their initial position. For example, the Washington Post recently asked its readers what "they would change" about their student loan debt. Almost all contributors mentioned student loan interest as part of their payment struggles. These testimonies illustrate a growing body of evidence of the regressive role of interest. For instance, research by Looney and Yannelis found that by 2012, 57% of borrowers two years into repayment owed more than when they'd begun (as compared to only 9% of borrowers in 1986). And there's evidence that growing balances are racialized as well. Recent research found that by 2018, 62% of borrowers under 35 in majority-minority neighborhoods had increasing balances. Borrowers with growing balances are often stigmatized for not making "progress" in paying down the debt balance, a narrative stressing "individual responsibility" in spite of systemic regressivity. Many student loan "reforms" to date have extended the system's regressivity by extending the loan repayment period. Various income-derived repayment (IDR) programs, which lower payments and extend the repayment period, have offered the promise of eventual loan forgiveness. However, early indicators of the extremely low (statistically zero) number of loans forgiven through IDR, and high attrition at the beginning of the program, raise doubt that IDR forgiveness will ever take place for most, absent major changes. And yet a 100% persistence and forgiveness rate for IDR enrollees is assumed in models calculating the supposedly more "progressive" aspects of twenty-plus years in IDR, relative to immediate cancellation. The success of the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program has shown the federal government can execute loan programs that deliver forgiveness when it wants to. For student debt, only its regressive components seem to be playing out as promised—the components that extend the loan term and increase total interest. Finally, student loans are much harder to leave behind than other forms of debt. Changes to bankruptcy rules (initiated by then-senator Joe Biden) made student debt nearly impossible to discharge, with punitive, debilitating effects. At present, a quarter of borrowers overall, and half of Black borrowers, default on their student loans within 12 years. But defaulting on student loans does not mean loan forgiveness—it continues the debt obligation, on harsher terms. And even absent voluntary repayment, the government can still extract its due: taken off taxes and social benefits, garnished from wages, through civil suits. Undoubtedly, student loan cancellation is a matter of racial and economic justice. But when people in positions of privilege, whether Matthew Yglesias or Larry Summers, focus only on wealthy borrowers, they further erase how our regressive student loan system has disproportionately burdened Black, Latinx, and low-income borrowers. The Biden administration's incrementalist reforms to date have not seriously addressed the system's regressivity. In contrast, debt cancellation can potentially start a cascade of good changes and spur movements reshaping higher education financing. Most importantly, it can help dismantle the increasingly regressive and racialized structure of the student loan system. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Global education trends and research to follow in 2022 Posted: 24 Jan 2022 09:53 AM PST By Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Helen Shwe Hadani, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Maysa Jalbout, Elizabeth King, Jennifer L. O'Donoghue, Brad Olsen, Jordan Shapiro, Emiliana Vegas, Rebecca Winthrop As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students' and teachers' physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks? In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they'll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.
More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions. One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds, which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.
As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children's learning with a growing number of school closures. But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways. One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL)—installations and programming that promote children and families' learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes, as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.
The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report "A new path for education reform," in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a "whole child" approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector. The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I'll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning. Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly, with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers. The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.
In 2022, I'll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally, as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures. While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report's recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach. The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room.
This coming year I'll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems' ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains. In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.
By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls' educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends–lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty, conflict, and crisis. In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as "for which girls," "where," "when," and "why." And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls' and young women's rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together. At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls' education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls' can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.
Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I'm interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic "normal," or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement? In relation to this, one topic I'll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers' work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?
I'm interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we've only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It's all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I'll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we're going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.
In 2022, I'll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me, have provided estimates of the school closures' impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses, and an early systematic review finds that "Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be." Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools' and platforms' impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students. Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.
I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families. For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico to text message updates from teachers in India, new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I'm excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration! This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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