Dear Commons Community,

President Jennifer Raab sent out this exciting news to the Hunter College community earlier this evening.

Tony

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Dear Members of the Hunter College Community:

I am delighted to inform you that on Monday, September 10, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will hold a press conference to announce our joint project with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to build a new science and health professions building for Hunter College along with a new facility for MSKCC. Both buildings will be located on a site at 73rd Street and the FDR Drive. This joint venture represents more than a real estate transaction, but a deep and growing partnership among our two great Upper East Side institutions. It also represents Hunter’s enduring commitment to excellence in research and teaching in the sciences and health. In a few years’ time, Hunter scientists and health professionals will be conducting research and training students in world-class facilities, alongside colleagues from some of the world’s finest academic medical centers.

We wanted to share this exciting news with you as soon as possible. We will be providing you with more details as they become available, and consulting with you extensively as we move forward in our planning. We will provide a link to the news conference on our website as soon as we can.

I want to thank you all for your support of this project, and for the many collaborations and partnerships that inspired it and will animate it.

Best wishes,

Jennifer J. Raab
President

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Daily News had an opinion piece on charter schools yesterday by Adam Schaeffer, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.   The Cato Institute is a libertarian think-tank that receives funding from the likes of the Koch, Schaife, and Olin Foundations.  Schaeffer references a report that examines enrollment figures and concludes that a large percentage of students in charter schools is made up of students who previously would have or were enrolled in private schools.  Here is an excerpt:

“The Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom commissioned Richard Buddin, a former senior economist with the Rand Corp., to look at the enrollment effects of charter schools.

Buddin found that charters serving primary school students in highly urban districts take almost a third of their students from private schools, on average. Urban charters draw nearly a quarter of their middle school students and more than 15% of their high school students from the private sector. Even in nonurban districts, charters pull between 7% and 11% of all their students from private schools.

All this translates into about 190,000 students a year who otherwise would have been in private schools now attending public charter schools.

Charter students who migrated from private schools cost taxpayers about $1.8 billion a year, based on Buddin’s numbers — as well as figures from a Ball State University study on charter school funding. Since the most recent data available for the analysis are from 2008, that figure is likely much higher today…

And while charter schools may marginally improve the public education system on average, they are wreaking havoc on private education. Because charter schools take a significant portion of their students from private schools and cause a drop in private enrollment, they drive some schools entirely out of business.”

While Schaeffer does not mention parochial schools per se, many of them have had to close in the past decade precisely because of the growth in charter schools.

Schaeffer’s solution to this is to expand school choice to include tax credits for parents sending their children to private schools.  I don’t agree with his conclusion.  It seems we need to figure out how to concentrate resources to improve the public schools in our poorer urban areas first.

Tony
 

Dear Commons Community,

The Democratic National Convention came to a close last night with a number of its luminaries doing their thing.

John Kerry, senator from Massachusetts, referring  to the Republican election refrain, “Are you better off now than four years ago?” had a zinger of a response:

“Ask Osama bin Laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago.”

Jill Biden introduced her husband and referred several times to her life as a teacher at a community college in northern Virginia.

“For me, being a teacher isn’t just what I do—it’s who I am.”

Joe Biden gave possibly the best speech of the evening.  His comment:

“Osama bin laden is dead and General Motors is alive”  put the audience in a frenzy.

Lastly, the man  of the evening was President Barack Obama.  He was very good but I did not see the spark that there was four years ago.  David Brooks summed it up:

“The next president has to do three big things, which are in tension with one another: increase growth, reduce debt and increase social equity. President Obama has the intelligence, the dexterity and the sense of balance to navigate these crosscutting challenges. But he apparently lacks the creativity to break out of the partisan categories, the trench warfare gridlock.

Thursday night’s speech showed the character and his potential. It didn’t show audacity and the fulfillment of that potential.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, entitled, Learning as Freedom.  He reviews the importance of a liberal arts education both for our students as individuals and for our society as a whole.   Here is a sample:

“Conservative scholars like Charles Murray, Richard Vedder and Peter W. Wood ask why people destined for low-paying jobs should bother to pursue their education beyond high school, much less study philosophy, literature and history. The venture capitalist Peter Thiel has offered money to would-be entrepreneurs to quit college and focus on Web-based start-ups instead. ..From this narrow, instrumentalist perspective, students are consumers buying a customized playlist of knowledge.

This critique may be new, but the call for a more narrowly tailored education — especially for Americans with limited economic prospects — is not. A century ago, organizations as varied as chambers of commerce and labor federations backed plans for a dual system of teaching, wherein some students would be trained for specific occupations, while others would get a broad education allowing them to continue their studies in college. The movement led to the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which financed vocational education, initially for jobs in agriculture and then in other industries.

The philosopher John Dewey, America’s most influential thinker on education, opposed this effort. Though he was open to integrating manual training in school curriculums, Dewey opposed the dual-track system because he recognized that it would reinforce the inequalities of his time.  Dewey asked:

Who wants to attend school to learn to be “human capital”? Who aspires for their children to become economic or military resources?”

Great advice for education policy makers.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Bill Clinton stirred the audience at the Democratic National convention last night.  Without a doubt he was on his game.  He praised President Obama and the job he has done while taking smooth, measured swipes at the Republicans.  Here is a description from the Huffington Post:

“A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy,” Clinton told a spellbound audience of delegates at Time Warner Cable Arena. “If you look at the numbers, you know that employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend again, and a lot of housing prices are even beginning to pick up.

“But too many people do not feel it yet,” he said, and then vowed: “If will you renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel it.”

He paused, and then added, “Folks, whether the American people believe what I just told you or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know I believe it. With all my heart I believe it.”

The rest of Clinton’s nearly hour-long speech was a detailed litigation of the main charges that Republicans have made against Obama.

But those few sentences — an acknowledgment that the nation is still stuck in an economic slump, a promise that a second Obama term will bring better times, and a quick, sly slip into analyst mode — were the key moments of the speech.

It was an honest, forthright appeal to the voters who will, by all accounts, decide the election — those who voted for Obama in 2008, but who have found themselves disappointed, wanting to believe in the president they supported four years ago, but not sure they will. Strikingly, Clinton’s line about the possibility that Americans may not put their faith in the president was not in his prepared remarks.

Clinton only mentioned Republican Mitt Romney a handful times, but laid out a framework that he said defines this election. “If you want a winner-take-all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket,” Clinton said. “But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility -– a we’re-all-in-this-together society — you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

Clinton, whose mastery of the stage left him several possible ways to attack Romney, notably did not skewer the Republican’s record at Bain Capital, instead focusing his argument in general against the GOP philosophy. Holding fire on Bain left the speech absent a zinger to sum up Romney. Instead, Clinton saved the zinger for tax cuts for the rich, warning that Romney will “double down on trickle-down.”

In reframing last week’s GOP message, he employed equal parts mockery, wonkery and plainspeak.

Clinton hit Paul Ryan in the same style. The GOP vice presidential candidate had attacked Obama for cutting $716 billion from Medicare, when his own budget proposal included those same cuts.  “You gotta give him one thing. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did,” Clinton said.

I thought Clinton’s best line was:

“…the Republicans came to Tampa to deliver a simple message about Obama: “We left him a total mess, but he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”

Yea, Bill!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Democratic National Convention is in full swing. Michelle Obama was fine in letting the audience see her life with her husband and family.

The Democratic National Platform was also released and has a substantive section on education.  While a bit too general, it is far more gentle and sensitive to the needs of students, teachers and parents than  the Republican Platform.

Tony

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Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that TV viewership for last week’s Republican National Convention dropped sharply from 2008, suggesting interest in this presidential race falls short of some past contests. But the convention was a hit online and on social networks, the latest evidence of the political conversation’s gradual migration from traditional media to the Web.

“The Nielsen Co. estimates that about 30.3 million viewers across 11 television networks watched convention coverage Thursday night when Mitt Romney delivered his prime-time speech accepting the GOP presidential nomination. That’s a 23 percent plunge from the same night four years ago when nearly 39 million people tuned in to watch then-GOP nominee John McCain address the convention and the nation.

The erosion of TV viewership from 2008 was sharper still on Wednesday night when Romney running mate Paul Ryan drew about 22 million viewers for his acceptance speech. That’s a 41 percent drop from 2008 when some 37 million tuned in for vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin’s debut on the national stage.

The Republican convention drew an older audience on TV. Of the 22 million who watched Ann Romney speak on Tuesday night, Nielsen found that nearly 15 million were 55 or older. Only 1.5 million were age 18-34.”

It will be interesting to see how the Democrats do this week!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Joe Bruni in his New York Times column, reviews the downside of being a vice presidential nominee.  He advises anyone seriously considering a political career, to “run for the hills at any offer to be a party’s “veep” nominee”.

“The veep nod befouls everything. It’s a cruel pivot. One minute, you’re a largely respected, minimally dissected public servant sitting on some harmless commission or tending to some humdrum state. The next, you’re attaching gratuitous vowels to unsuspecting carbohydrates (Dan Quayle), spraying your septuagenarian hunting buddy with birdshot (Dick Cheney), espying Vladimir Putin’s reared head in the Alaskan airspace (Sarah Palin) or suffering delusions of marathon grandeur (Ryan). While the veep nod is only occasionally a springboard to the presidency, it’s almost always a trapdoor to mortification…

Look at Ryan. Mere weeks ago, he was as close to a matinee idol as a House Budget Committee could hope to produce, his crush on Ayn Rand noted in passing but his wonky earnestness taken on faith. Now he’s a veritable poster boy for hyperbole and hypocrisy, his record and words generating fresh headlines almost daily…

Look at that residence’s current occupant, Joe Biden. Before he was visited by the giddy dream of the vice presidency, his habit of unfiltered utterances was considered endearing. Afterward, he was deemed “a clownish gasbag” and “a human I.E.D.,” to cite two phrases from this week’s cover story on him in New York magazine”

Bruni’s conclusion :

“The role of running mate is a curse masquerading as a compliment, a hex in red, white and blue drag. Taking it on represents the triumph of hope over Thomas Eagleton, Spiro Agnew and the words of Daniel Webster, who reputedly turned down the assignment in the mid-1800s with this explanation: “I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Today while most of us will be celebrating the end of summer with family and friends, we should take a moment to remember the contributions and achievements of American workers.  They are truly the builders of America – its freedoms, accomplishments, and strengths.

Tony

Dear Commons Community

Sam Roberts of the New York Times has compiled a list of 50 objects (see below) that tell the story of New York City.  Inspired by “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” the British Museum’s BBC radio series and book, historians and museum curators were recruited to identify 50 objects that could embody the narrative of New York. Roberts has also set up a blog for people to add to the list.

Tony

The List

1. Mastodon Tusk, About 11,000 B.C.
2. Munsee Arrowhead, Pre-1700
3. The Schaghenbrief, 1626
4. The Flushing Remonstrance, 1657
5. Painting of New Amsterdam, 1665
6. The Oyster, Late 1600s
7. English-Dutch Dictionary, 1730
8. Beads From the African Burial Ground, 1700s
9. A Horse’s Tail, 1776
10. Washington’s Balcony, 1789
11. Wooden Water Pipes, About 1800
12. Randel’s Map, 1811
13. Lake Erie Keg, 1825
14. Singer Sewing Machine, 1851
15. Patent for Otis Elevator Brake, 1861
16. The Lefferts’ Cookbook, 1800s
17. Checks of Boss Tweed, 1866-1870
18. Edison’s Dynamo, 1882
19. Brooklyn Bridge Toll Ticket, About 1883-1898
20. Manuscript of ‘The New Colossus,’ 1883
21. Sculpture of the 1898 Consolidation
22. Child’s Shoes From the General Slocum, 1904
23. Tiffany Subway Throttle, 1904
24. Battle’s Badge, 1911
25. The Automat Machine, 1912
26. The Bagel, Early 1900s
27. 1913 Armory Show Stamp
28. First Yankee Stadium Program, 1923
29. Rivoli Air Conditioning Advertisement, 1925
30. Ticker Tape, 1929
31. The Artichoke, 1933
32. Tree of Hope, 1934
33. Time Capsule From 1939 World’s Fair
34. Levittown House, 1947
35. 1955 World Series Banner
36. Checker Taxicab, 1952-1986
37. Diplomatic Plates, 1960s Onward
38. ‘Tonight Show’ Audio Track, 1962
39. Greek Coffee Cup, 1960s
40. Bernstein’s Baton, 1969
41. Saturday Night Special, 1960s Onward
42. ‘FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD’ Headline, 1975
43. AIDS Button, 1980s
44. Loisaida Avenue Sign, 1987
45. The Boom Box, 1980s
46. The Phantom’s Mask, 1988
47. The MetroCard, 1994
48. 9/11 Dust, 2001
49. Mast Brothers Chocolate Bar, 2007 Onward
50. Meng Political Sign, 2012