Dear Commons Community,

Despite having the second-highest GDP, the U.S. falls shorts on basic human needs, health and wellness, and education according to a new global social progress indicator developed by researchers at the Harvard Business School.  As reported in The Daily Beast:

“New Zealand took the number one spot, followed by Switzerland and Iceland in a new global ranking of the world’s most socially advanced countries, according to a new global index released today by a U.S.-based nonprofit, The Social Progress Imperative (SPI). The United States came in 16th. And that’s despite having the second-highest GDP per capita (behind #5, Norway).

Created by a team led by Professor Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School, the Social Progress Index ranked 132 countries over three categories: basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity. Over 50 indicators were used to measure outcomes in each—including nourishment, access to water and sanitation, access to basic knowledge and advanced education, life expectancy, greenhouse gas emissions, and personal and political freedoms.

At first glance, the index seems obvious. Countries with the largest economies are near the top, while those with the lowest fill the bottom tier…But the SPI further evaluates each country in relation to others with similar GDP performance. This is where the index gets interesting and people (in theory, policy makers) can identify areas of excellence and those in need of improvement.

There’s one bright spot. According to the SPI, America is still the land of opportunity, mostly because we outperform other countries in our access to advanced education—our citizens go to school for more years and our universities are top-notch—but that’s where the celebration ends.

So what’s our problem? Why aren’t we number one?

“What you’ve got is a bunch of very marginalized people,” Michael Green, SPI’s Executive Director, told The Daily Beast.

Our biggest fails, according to the SPI:

• Basic Human Needs: Access to water, sanitation, are all worse in the U.S. than in countries with similar GDPs. But where we really lose it is personal safety, ranking 31st compared to Canada (9th), Germany (13th), New Zealand (17th), and the UK (21st). These numbers are partly due to an abnormally high number of traffic deaths.
• Access to Information and Communications: Just 81% of the population is Internet users compared to 87% in both the UK and Canada. While mobile telephone subscriptions (a little over 95 per 100 people) are also lower than in other countries.
• Health and Wellness: The United States ranks poorly here (70th), thanks in part to our obesity epidemic.
• Access to Basic Knowledge: We’re ranked 39th due to low primary school enrollment rates.”

You can view the full results in a heat map or play with SPI’s interactive data visualization tool here.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It was bad enough in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the US Supreme Court ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections but now a 5-4 ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission strikes down the limit any individual can contribute to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle.  This ruling significantly increases the role money plays in American politics.  The Sunlight Foundation commented:

“Once again, the Supreme Court has given more power to special interests and a tiny percentage of the very rich. Its Citizens United ruling four years ago opened up the floodgates for unlimited spending in our elections, and now it might as well have tied a big bow around Congress and deliver it to the 1%. By striking down the long-standing cap on total contributions individuals may give to federal candidates and political parties, the Supreme Court has permitted the unseemly spectacle of a single donor being able to contribute more than $3.5 million to one party during an election cycle (or double that, if he/she wants to hedge her bets).

In light of today’s decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, we need now more than ever real-time transparency of political spending so the public can know whether their elected officials are representing their interests or special moneyed interests. It’s technologically possible, so there’s no reason Congress should not act fast to enact legislation to mandate disclosure of all contributions of $1,000 or more to parties, candidates and political committees within 48 hours.

What this court fails to recognize is the First Amendment rights of the 99.9% of citizens who cannot buy access to elected officials in order to give voice to their issues. Seven-figure contributions are not a megaphone merely amplifying the voices of the donors, they are a sonic boom, overpowering to the point of silencing all other voices. Real-time transparency can foster accountability, deter corruption and act as a bulwark against the unfettered and wholesale purchase of our elections by the wealthy.”

Noam Chomsky was much more succinct in his commentary on the decision:   “Let’s forget about any pretense of being a democratic society”.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

California’s rules on teacher tenure, dismissal, and seniority are on trial in a lawsuit filed by the advocacy group, Students Matter, on behalf of nine students.  The basic issue is: Do these rules keep bad teachers in classrooms and doom some students to an inadequate education?

The plaintiffs in Vergara v. California argued that the state’s employment rules leave so many ineffective teachers on the job that some students – many of them low-income and minority – fail to receive the education guaranteed by the state constitution. The two-month trial ended last Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court. A ruling is expected in about two months.  The key issues in the case as reported by Forbes are as follows.

The case, named Vergara v. California, seeks to strike three labor laws in the state. They are:

• Tenure – California’s Permanent Employment Statute (or “Tenure Law”) mandates that administrators either grant or deny permanent employment status to teachers after only 18 months. However, the plaintiffs claim that the amount of evaluation time is not sufficient to determine a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom, as new teachers have yet complete their beginners’ program. L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent John Deasy seconded that assessment when he testified, “There is no way that this is a sufficient amount of time to make such an important decision.”
• Dismissal Statutes – Once teachers receive tenure, it is nearly impossible to remove them from the classroom for poor performance. State records indicate there are more than 300,000 teachers in California’s public schools. Yet, according to the nonprofit Students Matter, the sponsor of Veagara v. California, over the last 10 years, only 91 tenured teachers have been removed from classrooms. And of those dismissals, just 19 were due to poor performance in the classroom. The process to remove a bad teacher can take up to 10 years and cost millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, noted Deasy.
• Seniority – California law dictates that school districts must use the “Last In, First Out” Layoff Statute (or LIFO) if it ever has to lay off teachers. When it comes to making their choices, school boards are not allowed to consider a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. The Plaintiffs claim school districts are forced to retain ineffective teachers if they have been teaching longer, which diminishes the quality of education that students receive.

The verdict in this case will be watched closely in many other states. With appeals, it is very possible that the final verdict in this case is several years away.

Tony

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweADB78tBY[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community,

CBS’s 60 Minutes had a segment on Sunday with the author, Michael Lewis, whose new book posits that the U.S. stock market is rigged, with elite traders buying access to a high-speed network.  This access allows them to figure out what you’ve just ordered, order it first, then raise the price before your order is complete.  And according to Michael Lewis, author of a new book about high-frequency trading called “Flash Boys,” this form of “front running” is completely legal.

“The insiders are able to move faster than you,” Lewis said on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. “They’re able to see your order and play it against other orders in ways that you don’t understand. They’re able to front run your order.”

The advantage adds up to less than a second — in some cases a fraction of a millisecond — but thanks to the powerful computers masterminding the trades, it’s enough time to make serious money.

See the full segment above.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning is launching a CUNY Digital History Archive with a public program on Wednesday, April 9th entitled SAVING CUNY’S PAST — The Story of Open Admissions. Speakers and panelists will include public higher education advocates who were active in the fight for open admissions in the sixties and seventies and in the movement against cutbacks from the eighties to the present. The project is trying to recruit as many participants as possible from the CUNY community past and present to join the archive effort, tell their stories and contribute documents.

This is a most worthwhile endeavor.  Anyone interested in or who was a part of the CUNY community in the late 60s and 70s, will find this a most interesting evening.    For more information, see: http://psc-cuny.org/calendar/forum-saving-cunys-past-story-open-admissions

Tony