School 'reform' pushed at public university

The Arkansas Times this week examines the creation of a "Department of Education Reform" at the University of Arkansas, the state's flagship institution. The new department will be run by Jay Greene, a senior fellow from the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Needless to say, public education advocates were not pleased. The executive director of the Arkansas Education Association said:

“Dr. Jay P. Greene has devoted his career to promoting vouchers and other measures aimed to weaken or dismantle public schools. The Manhattan Institute, where he has worked for the past five years, is a far-right think tank funded by a handful of right-wing foundations and dedicated to eliminating the public schools. The Arkansas Education Association hopes that Dr. Greene will appoint faculty members with a wide range of views to the newly established Department of Education Reform he now heads at the University of Arkansas. On the other hand, if he chooses to staff his department with other ultra-conservative, anti-public education personnel, it will not bode well for the children or schools of Arkansas. The free-market solutions that ultra-conservatives peddle in the name of ‘school choice and competition’ are designed to harm public schools — not help children from low-income backgrounds who are most in need of great public schools.”

This is controversial ground for a public university to tread. Furthermore, it is suspicious in light of a recent $300 million gift to the UofA from the Walton family (of Wal-Mart), the largest donation ever to a public higher education insitution. As the article points out:

[. . .] the Waltons have been known to invest substantially in programs to benefit private schools in competition with public schools. One member of the family in particular, the late John Walton, was nationally recognized as a major contributor to school voucher and charter school programs across the country. Both concepts are repellent to public school advocates.

South ranks low for child well-being

An article in today's Tennessean brings to light the latest "Kids Count" Report (full report here) that shows a discrepancy in the well-being of children in the South versus the rest of the country. While the article focuses on Tennessee's unenviable ranking of the highest rate of teenage deaths, the most telling information comes from the broad overall rankings:

"The top-ranked states include New Hampshire, Vermont and Minnesota, and the bottom-ranked are Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Each state is evaluated in 10 areas and then compared with national averages as well as other states.

Tennessee's best ranking, 28th, is on the percentage of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment. It ranked 40 or below in four areas and had its worst ranking, 48th, in the state's infant mortality rate."

These are issues that should be at the front of every Southern progressive's agenda. Truly, what is a more "pro-life" agenda than reducing poverty, infant mortality and unemployment?

NAFTA Displaces Southern Jobs

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) cost the South 291,157 more jobs than it created between 1993 and 2004, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, D.C.

Approximately 30 percent of all the jobs lost nationwide to NAFTA came from Southern states. Texas, Florida and North Carolina ranked among the 10 states that lost the most jobs due to NAFTA. Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama joined those states in the top 20. The overwhelming majority of lost jobs came from the manufacturing sector.

EPI's report concludes that NAFTA should serve as a cautionary tale for the pending Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), which is modeled on NAFTA and could cost the South even more jobs.

"Without major changes in NAFTA ... continued integration of North American markets will threaten a growing share of the U.S. workforce. Expansion of NAFTA-style agreements ... will only worsen these problems and displace production that could support more U.S. jobs."

Metro areas, exurbs important in NC

The new issue of a newsletter (DOWNLOAD PDF) from our friends at the Program on Southern Politics, Media & Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill includes interesting data on the growing influence of ex-urban areas in voting patterns.

North Carolina's trend, which appears to be happening all over the South, shows a dominance of metropolitian counties in voting turnout (40 percent of total are from eight counties), while a ring of 27 ex-urban counties provided another 35 percent of the vote. The remaining 65 counties - - dubbed the "Country Crowd" - - provided only one in four voters.

So what does it mean? It seems to parallel conclusions drawn in last year's The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America, which suggested progressives needed to concentrate turnout in ex-urban and metro areas if they wanted to start winning more elections.

Where are moderates in the debate?

A story today on AlterNet poses an interesting question: Where in all of the hullabaloo about the pending Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process are the voices of moderate Republicans? And we add, where are the voices of moderate Democrats and independents?

"'It is mind-boggling to me that the press only focuses on right-wingers. Is it just because sensationalism sells?' asks Ann Stone, national chair of Republicans for Choice, a DC-based group that supports pro-choice Republican candidates. 'When moderates try to do something, it might get attention on NPR or in the Los Angeles Times, but the press here in Washington is pretty much ignoring moderates.'

"She's right. By reading news coverage of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, you wouldn't even know that moderate Republicans exist."

Needed: politicians with courage

If the country is going to move beyond the polarized edges of politics and the muddled moderate middle that's virtually spineless, it's going to need politicians with courage to break out of the pack, writes columnist David Brooks in today's issue of The New York Times. Examples: Franklin Roosevelt, Robert F. Kennedy, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani.

In other words, the country needs leaders.

Southern progressives ought to listen to his message and take hints, for it offers a way for them to distinguish themselves as regressive politicians lumber ahead and others battle to be marginalized:

"Yet the courage politicians are important these days, especially for those who hope to escape the current polarized landscape in Washington. If some new political force is to smash through the reigning orthodoxies and the stale hatreds, then a courage politician will be at its head.

"The center is weak in Washington because most moderates lack guts and ideas. They lack the courage to take on party leaders, and so almost always buckle when the heat is on. Furthermore, they have no cadres of foundations, think tanks and scholars to give them intellectual heft. You go to a liberal or conservative organization's dinner and the room is filled with scholars and writers. You go to a centrist dinner and the room is filled with lobbyists."

Clinton outlines progressive plan

Former President Bill Clinton shared steps for young progressives to build a movement and told them to be tough during a campus progressive conference this week in Washington, according to a report on Alternet. (View speech).

Clinton shared his insights about the fundamental nature of the modern world, progressive values, the role of government and what changes progressives need to make in their tactics. (Hint: be tough, stop whining, speak from the heart, and talk to the so-called red America.) (Alternet).

At the conference, which was sponsored by our friends at the Center for American Progress, Clinton told about 600 students:

"You don't have to wait until your party is in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world. This ain't supposed to be easy, and you have to work at it. I promise you our adversaries work at it." (Washington Post).

Sustainable agriculture taking off

The Columbia (SC) Free-Times this week takes a look at an organic revolution going on across the South as tobacco quotas have ended and farming is changing. In era of corporate factory farming, some folks are surviving by focusing on specialty markets, as outlined here:

"Small, diversified farms like Round River supplementing food produced by other local clean food growers and replacing distant industrial agriculture. In DeFelice’s vision, local agriculture provides local people with healthy food, good jobs and clean bills of health. Get rid of distant industrial monoculture farms —farms that produce one or two big crops rather than several small, diverse crops — and local job opportunities grow and rural communities stay strong rather than deteriorate.

"The clean food industry in the South is on the cusp of a marketing explosion. DeFelice says that nationally, organic farming is a $12 billion industry growing at a rate of 20 percent each year. But South Carolina has only one organic certifying agency, located in Clemson University, and as of 2002, only 174 certified organic farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That amounts to only 895 acres out of the 4.85 million acres of farmland in the state. "

A call for balance in religion and public life

There was an excellent piece in Sunday's Washington Post by Chattanooga, Tenn. native and Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. In it, Meacham outlines the need for religion's role in public life while underscoring the separation that has been the hallmark of our system of governance. As he puts it:

"Perhaps on this anniversary of our independence, then, we can rediscover that America is at its best when religion is one, but only one, thread in the tapestry of public discourse and life. The premise of the Founding, that all men are created equal, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian idea that we are all made in God's image and that, as Saint Paul wrote, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free; for all are one . . . . " The Constitution draws on classic theological principles like the supremacy of the individual. Yet the power of our civic religion lies not in any sanctions it imposes but in the moral sensibility it nurtures."

By putting the growing influence of conservative and fundamentalist religious groups in an accurate historical light, Meacham provides a blueprint for progressives, especially in the South, to assert a positive vision for the role of faith in public causes:

"If we want to be true to the American gospel, though, we should acknowledge that both sides have a legitimate point of view, and that our course should be democratically determined by the free exchange of ideas, not by turning cultural disagreements into total war."

It's hard to say it better or more eloquently than that.

(Also of interest is this discussion with readers held by Meacham on washingtonpost.com.)

Southern high school dropout rates higher

A new Harvard report examines graduation rates in five Southern states -- Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi -- and finds rates are lower in the South than nationally. Additionally while about 75 percent of white students graduate, only about half of minority students graduate, according to "Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in the South."

From the executive summary:

"This crisis is particularly acute in Southern states, which have some of the lowest overall graduation rates in the country. The South is a critical region to examine because it has a very large and rapidly growing population and has always been home to a majority of African Americans. In addition, several southern states are now in the epicenter of a huge Latino migration. The region also has a history of racial inequality including unlawful school segregation. As pointed out in this report, two independent studies show a high correlation between racially and socio-economically segregated schools and very low graduation rates. Not surprisingly, the research shows that poor, racially isolated Whites have low graduation rates that are nearly identical to poor, racially isolated Blacks. Nationally, few predominantly White schools have concentrated poverty, but there are significant numbers of these in parts of the rural South."

Click here for the full report.

Too dumb for an auto plant?

Canadian broadcasting reports that Toyota decided to locate a new automobile manufacturing plant in Ontario -- turning down millions of dollars in subsidies offered by southeastern U.S. states -- because the Americans were poorly educated and trained:

Industry experts say Ontarians are easier and cheaper to train - helping make it more cost-efficient to train workers when the new Woodstock plant opens in 2008, 40 kilometres away from its skilled workforce in Cambridge.

"The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States," said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.

Even worse:

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant
equipment.

"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

Shifting tax burdens show need for new approaches

An article in Sunday's Tennessean (with a followup piece today) highlights the shift in Tennessee's tax burden away from the state level and toward the municipal and county level.

During an era of federal income tax cuts and tight state budgets, Tennessee residents are seeing more of their tax burden shift from Washington and Nashville to their county seats and city halls.

More than two-thirds of Tennessee's 95 counties have raised property taxes since 2003. New tax increases are on the way for the upcoming fiscal year: the Memphis city rate going up 27 cents per $100 assessed valuation, the Davidson County rate rising 67 cents, and tax hikes still being considered late last week in Jackson and Madison County.

More revealing though, the piece points out that local governments are increasingly faced with the question of either raising taxes or cutting vital services. Once specific example cited is from Chattanooga, Tenn.:

In Chattanooga, the Hamilton County Commission has for two years narrowly voted down proposed tax increases, while the local school board has laid off administrators and teachers and threatened to eliminate middle school sports programs.

While Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) has been able to restore some of the state funding to counties to relieve the pressure, the state still faces massive cuts to its Medicaid program, TennCare.

It is clear that shifting the tax burden back and forth between counties and states is not a solution to how the government can best serve its citizens; the question we face is how to effectively fund government in a climate so vehemently opposed to tax increases.

More affected by poverty than you may think

In his latest weekly newspaper column, the Center for a Better South's Andy Brack explores poverty in South Carolina and finds it to be much more prevalent than most think. The same can be said for most Southern states.

"Imagine you had $1,612.50 per month - - just $58 per day - - to spend on your family of four for everything - - housing, child care, transportation, health care, food and clothing? Could you make it? Consider the following: ... If you spend the (SC) average on those four categories (rental housing, child care, transportation and health care) , you're left with a whopping $8.50 for food and clothing - - for the whole month!"

Most people in South Carolina don't realize there's poverty around them, says Bernie Wright, executive director of the Penn Center on St. Helena Island.

"'The establishment has to come to grips that there is a problem,'" Wright says. "'The guy who is leaving home at 5:30 in the morning and driving 70 miles to work at Hilton Head Island for $6.00 or $6.50 an hour isn't much better off than his father, who was picking tomatoes years ago.'"