Dear Commons Community,

The American Council on Education will be releasing a new report on race and ethnicity in higher education later today.  The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article summarizing the report’s key findings as follows.

“The key data points in the American Council on Education’s new report on race and ethnicity in higher education come as no surprise: College-student populations are growing more diverse, yet achievement gaps persist among different racial groups.

Still, the poor outcomes for black students in particular are glaring.

All students of color now make up more than 45 percent of the undergraduate population, compared with less than 30 percent two decades ago, the association’s report found. Nearly one-third of graduate students are now people of color. Hispanic students have shown the most growth; they are enrolling in and completing college at levels never seen before.

Black students, too, represent a larger share of the undergraduate- and graduate-student population than 20 years ago, and a larger share of the students who earn degrees. But black students who began college in the fall of 2011 had higher dropout rates and lower six-year completion rates — 46 percent at public institutions, 57 percent at private institutions — than any other racial group.

The gender gap for black students is wider than it is for any other group, as nearly two-thirds of black undergraduates, and more than two-thirds of black graduate students, are women. Black male students pursuing bachelor’s degrees were the most likely among any demographic group to drop out after their freshman year.

Black undergraduates also owed 15 percent more than other students after graduation: an average of $34,010, compared with $29,669 for all students. One-third of black students accumulated more than $40,000 in debt after graduation, versus 18 percent of students over all.

Even with a bachelor’s degree, black graduates between the ages of 25 and 34 had lower salaries than other graduates of a similar age, and their unemployment rate was two-thirds higher, on average.

Half of black students pursuing doctoral study are enrolled in for-profit colleges. Nearly all of them took out loans, and their debt burden is more than $128,000, on average.

Hispanic and Asian students, in contrast, took out loans at lower than average rates.

The reasons for these disparities are widely known in higher education: Black students tend to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, have families with little or no college experience, and graduate from underperforming high schools that didn’t prepare them well for higher education.

The racial composition of faculty and staff members, meanwhile, has not caught up with their increasingly diverse students, according to the association’s report. Just over one-fifth of all full-time professors are people of color. Among college presidents, about 17 percent are nonwhite. The most diverse group of campus administrators were in student-affairs offices; one-fourth of them identified as minorities.

The report used mostly federal data sources and compared changes over a 20-year period, either from 1996 to 2016 or from 1997 to 2017, depending on the most recent available figures.’

Important information for  higher education to consider especially for those of us in positions to admit and advise students and who hire faculty.

Tony

Ninth graders in a computer class in Brooklyn

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman this morning, looks at the question: Of all the skills and knowledge that we test young people for that we know are correlated with success in college and in life, which are the most important?   Referring to a conclusion of the College Board, his answer is the ability to master “two codes” — computer science and the U.S. Constitution.  Here is an excerpt from Friedman’s column:

“Since the two people who led this move — David Coleman, president of the College Board, and Stefanie Sanford, its chief of global policy — happen to be people I’ve long enjoyed batting around ideas with, and since I thought a lot of students, parents and employers would be interested in their answer, I asked them to please show their work: “Why these two codes?”

Their short answer was that if you want to be an empowered citizen in our democracy — able to not only navigate society and its institutions but also to improve and shape them, and not just be shaped by them — you need to know how the code of the U.S. Constitution works. And if you want to be an empowered and adaptive worker or artist or writer or scientist or teacher — and be able to shape the world around you, and not just be shaped by it — you need to know how computers work and how to shape them.

With computing, the internet, big data and artificial intelligence now the essential building blocks of almost every industry, any young person who can master the principles and basic coding techniques that drive computers and other devices “will be more prepared for nearly every job,” Coleman and Sanford said in a joint statement explaining their initiative. “At the same time, the Constitution forms the foundational code that gives shape to America and defines our essential liberties — it is the indispensable guide to our lives as productive citizens.”

So rather than have SAT exams and Advanced Placement courses based on things that you cram for and forget, they are shifting them, where they can, to promote the “two codes.”

In 2016, the College Board completely revamped its approach to A.P. computer science courses and exams. In the original Computer Science course, which focused heavily on programming in Java, nearly 80 percent of students were men. And a large majority were white and Asian, said Coleman. What that said to women and underrepresented minorities was, “How would you like to learn the advanced grammar of a language that you aren’t interested in?”

Turned out that was not very welcoming. So, explained Coleman, they decided to “change the invitation” to their new Computer Science Principles course by starting with the question: What is it that you’d like to do in the world? Music? Art? Science? Business? Great! Then come build an app in the furtherance of that interest and learn the principles of computer science, not just coding, Coleman said. “Learn to be a shaper of your environment, not just a victim of it.”

The new course debuted in 2016. Enrollment was the largest for a new course in the history of Advanced Placement, with just over 44,000 students nationwide.

Two years later The Christian Science Monitor reported, “More high school students than ever are taking the College Board’s Advanced Placement (A.P.) computer science exams, and those taking them are increasingly female and people of color.”

Indeed, the story added, “the College Board reports that from 2017 to 2018 female, African-American and Hispanic students were among the fastest growing demographics of A.P. computer science test-takers, with increases in exam participation of 39 percent, 44 percent and 41 percent, respectively. … For context, in 2007, fewer than 3,000 high school girls took the A.P. Computer Science A exam; in 2018, more than 15,000 completed it.”

The A.P. U.S. Government and Politics course also was reworked. At a time when we have a president who doesn’t act as if he’s read the Constitution — and we have a growing perception and reality that college campuses are no longer venues for the free exchange of ideas and real debate of consequential issues — Coleman and Sanford concluded that it was essential that every student entering college actually have command of the First Amendment, which enshrines five freedoms, not just freedom of speech.

Every student needs to understand that, as Coleman put it, “our country was argued into existence — and that is the first thing that binds us — but also has some of the tensions that divide us. So we thought, ‘What can we do to help replace the jeering with productive conversation?’”

It had to start in high school, said Sanford, who is leading the “two codes” initiative. “Think of how much more ready you are to participate in college and society with an understanding of the five freedoms that the First Amendment protects — of speech, assembly, petition, press and religion. The First Amendment lays the foundation for a mature community of conversation and ideas — built on the right and even obligation to speak up and, when needed, to protest, but not to interrupt and prevent others from speaking.”

This becomes particularly important, she noted, “when technology and democracy are thought of as in conflict, but are actually both essential” and need to work in tandem.

One must observe only how Facebook was abused in the 2016 election to see that two of the greatest strengths of America — innovation and free speech — have been weaponized. If they are not harmonized, well, Houston, we have a problem.

So the new A.P. government course is built on an in-depth look at 15 Supreme Court cases as well as nine foundational documents that every young American should know. It shows how the words of the Constitution give rise to the structures of our government.

Besides revamping the government course and the exam on that subject, Coleman and Sanford in 2014 made a staple of the regular SAT a long reading comprehension passage from one of the founding documents, such as the Constitution, or another important piece of democracy, like a great presidential speech. That said to students and teachers something the SAT had never dared say before: Some content is disproportionately more powerful and important, and if you prepare for it you will be rewarded on the SAT.”

Interesting commentary.  I don’t know if I agree with Friedman and the College Board folks but there is some logic to their thinking.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In yesterday’s edition, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Scott Carlson and Goldie Blumenstyk reviewed the decision of the trustees of Green Mountain College to close its doors at the end of this semester.  Their fundamental message was that even though GMC had a niche in higher education and an excellent reputation, it was not enough to fend off declining enrollment and financial pressures.  Inside Higher Education reported on GMC’s announcement earlier this year:

“The college, a small private institution in Vermont, has a 185-year history and is known for its environmental programs. But the college’s announcement said it couldn’t attract enough students or a partner to maintain operations in a way that served students. Closure is expected after the end of this semester.

The news is likely to add to concerns about the health of small private colleges that don’t have substantial endowments or large student bodies. New England institutions appear particularly vulnerable. … Hampshire College in Massachusetts announced that it was exploring partnerships and wasn’t sure it would admit freshmen for the fall. Another Massachusetts institution, Newbury College, announced in December that it would close at the end of this academic year. And Mount Ida College, located outside Boston, announced in April that it would close. Also last year, Atlantic Union College, also outside Boston, announced that it would close.

The College of St. Joseph, in Vermont, nearly closed last year but said it would try to keep operating. Its goal has been to hit an enrollment of 235.

Colleges in New England are not the only ones facing tough times. Bennett College, a historically black women’s college in North Carolina, is at risk of losing its accreditation, which would likely lead to the college’s closure.

Barbara Brittingham, president of the New England Commission of Higher Education, accreditor to all of these institutions, said via email Wednesday evening that the association has been in regular touch with Green Mountain.

“The leadership at Green Mountain College has worked very hard to find options for their students in these difficult circumstances,” she said.

Asked if she expected more closures, she said, “Likely so, though I wouldn’t put a number on it. The demographics in New England are very challenging, and the farther north you go, in general, the more challenging it gets.”

Robert W. Allen, Green Mountain’s president, announced the news in a letter on the college’s website.

“The decision to close Green Mountain College comes only after a tireless pursuit of multiple options to remain open, including the rigorous search for new partnerships and reorganization of our finances,” said the letter. “Despite our noteworthy accomplishments related to social and environmental sustainability, we have not been able to assure the economic sustainability of the college. Financial challenges are impacting liberal arts colleges throughout the country and Green Mountain College is no exception. These financial challenges, the product of major changes in demographics and costs, are the driving factors behind our decision to close at the end of this academic year.”

Green Mountain is working with Prescott College, in Arizona, to enroll its students who won’t finish degrees this year. Prescott and Green Mountain are members of the EcoLeague, a group of six liberal arts colleges with an environmental focus. Sterling College, which like Green Mountain is in Vermont and focuses on the environment, also announced that it would work to welcome students from Green Mountain.

As the article indicates, this is a very difficult time for small, private colleges with little or no endowments. We will sadly see more of them closing in the years ahead.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today examines the National Rifle Association and concludes it has not fared well during the Trump presidency.  Citing financial problems, a dubious relationship with the Russians, and inquiries by House Committees, the N.R.A. is on shaky ground right now.  Below is the entire editorial.

Tony

——————————————————-

New York Times

How Trump Has Hurt the Gun Lobby

His presidency hasn’t been the boon for gun-rights supporters that they might have hoped.

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 11, 2019

Last Valentine’s Day, a year ago this Thursday, classes were wrapping up at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a former student with a semiautomatic rifle murdered 17 people and wounded 17 others.

It so happens that this Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will move to advance legislation requiring background checks on all firearm sales. The killer in the Parkland, Fla., school massacre passed such a check, but this measure would close a loophole exploited by other killers that exempts unlicensed gun sellers from conducting background checks. Support for such a change is overwhelmingly popular, even among gun owners. The bill has an excellent chance of passing the Democrat-led House. Its prospects in the Senate, controlled by the Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, are bleak.

Even so, the very emergence of this bill is a reminder of how the gun debate has shifted since President Trump took office — and not in a direction that Second Amendment crusaders might have hoped. Politically, financially and legally, the gun-rights cause and, more specifically, the lobbying juggernaut that is the National Rifle Association have not fared well in the Trump era. If this trend continues — or accelerates — it could wind up being a rare silver lining to Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Some of the challenges facing the gun lobby are not specific to Mr. Trump. A gun-loving president always makes a less effective boogeyman than a gun-skeptical one. In that way, President Barack Obama was good for the gun-rights cause — and it was perhaps inevitable that, having labored to get Mr. Trump elected, the N.R.A.’s fund-raising would taper off. In 2017, the group’s revenues dropped by $55 million, or 15 percent, over its 2016 haul, driven largely by a decline in member dues. Combined with its heavy spending in the 2016 campaign, the group now finds itself in a deep financial hole, in debt to the tune of $31.8 million.

The N.R.A. has suffered Trump-specific turmoil as well. As part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has been exploring possible ties between the N.R.A. and Russia. Among Mr. Mueller’s top concerns is reportedly whether Russian interests funneled money to the Trump campaign via the N.R.A. — and, if so, to what degree the group’s leaders may have known what was happening.

In addition to Mr. Mueller’s interest in the N.R.A., there have been multiple congressional inquiries into a possible love triangle among the gun group, Team Trump and Russia. With Democrats now in charge of the House, expect the scrutiny to get more intense. Representative Adam Schiff, the new head of the Intelligence Committee, has said that under Republican leadership the committee did not delve deeply enough into the muck. “We were really not able to determine how the Russians used the N.R.A. as a back channel or look into allegations that the Russians may have funneled money through the N.R.A. to influence the election,” Mr. Schiff recently told The Times. “Those issues remain of deep interest to us.”

Beyond any legal missteps that may be uncovered, revelations that the N.R.A. was snuggling up to Russian officials and intimates of President Vladimir Putin already have proved a public-relations nightmare. Particularly embarrassing is the bizarre case of Maria Butina, the Russian graduate student who pleaded guilty in December to working as a foreign agent and who conspired to infiltrate the N.R.A. and the Republican Party in order to help Russia influence American politics.

While the Russia-N.R.A. bonds were years in the making, Americans can thank Mr. Trump for the intense spotlight on this unwholesome relationship.

Last year, for the first time in nearly two decades, polling indicated that more Americans held a negative view than a positive view of the N.R.A. There has also been an upswing in support for stricter gun laws.

Despite the will of the people, the Republican-controlled Congress clung to its do-nothing approach after the Parkland shooting and others like it. At the state level, however, there has been action. The private sector also got involved. Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart both halted the sale of assault-style weapons in their stores, along with the sale of guns and ammunition to customers under age 21. Companies ranging from MetLife to Delta to Alamo Rent A Car did away with discounts for N.R.A. members.

The political world has sensed this shift in the wind. Of late, more lawmakers have seemed willing to boast about their poor ratings by the gun lobby. The 2018 elections were the first in which spending for gun-safety advertising exceeded that for guns-rights ads, and candidates backed by gun-safety groups enjoyed important victories.

Not all of the change can be directly attributable to Mr. Trump, of course. But, much as women’s frustration over his presidency helped drive the #MeToo movement, his administration has energized gun-safety advocates, who have put the gun lobby and its cause on the defensive.

This won’t yield an imminent revolution on regulating firearms, especially within the overly cautious halls of Congress. The N.R.A. remains a political powerhouse, an increasingly conservative Republican Party still controls the White House and the Senate, and guns remain a centerpiece of the culture war.

But with a topic this polarizing, small steps deserve to be applauded — and encouraged. When lawmakers held a hearing on the background-check bill last week, it was the first hearing in eight years to broach the subject of gun violence.

With a little luck and some political spine, more such actions will follow. The victims and survivors of Parkland, and of the 339 other mass shootings in 2018 alone, deserve more than pious sentiment and political cowardice.

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, El Paso, Texas hosted two rallies:  one by Beto O’Rourke and the other by Donald Trump.  O’Rourke’s rally was a direct challenge to President Trump’s anti-immigration policies and painted the administration’s efforts to build a wall along the southern border as dangerous and divisive.  Trump continued his call for a wall, saying his plans along the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico were already moving forward.  Below is an excerpt of an article from the Huffington Post and local press on the two rallies.

“Speaking to a crowd of thousands within sight of the El Paso County Coliseum, where Trump spoke, the former Democratic congressman delivered an energized speech that recalled those he delivered in his unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign, a contest that vaulted him to the national stage. Amid wide expectation that he will launch a bid for the presidential nomination in 2020, O’Rourke evoked key themes he honed while campaigning across the state ― calling for a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants, and urging the country to welcome asylum seekers. 

In stark contrast to Trump’s doomsday vision of a crime-infested region under assault from foreign criminals, O’Rourke offered a glowing vision of the border zone. Noting that migrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than the native-born, O’Rourke insisted that cities like El Paso, his hometown, are among the country’s safest precisely because of their strong immigrant presence.

“In El Paso, we are secure because we treat one another with dignity and respect. That is the way that we make our communities and our country safe,” O’Rourke said at the event. “We know that walls do not save lives. Walls end lives.

Mr. O’Rourke debunked that claim on Friday in a lengthy post on the website Medium, in which he also tried to set out an alternative blueprint for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws. El Paso’s success, he said, repudiated Mr. Trump’s call for a border wall.

“He will promise a wall and will repeat his lies about the dangers that immigrants pose,” Mr. O’Rourke said of the president.

The speech marked O’Rourke’s first foray onto the national stage since conceding the Senate race to Republican Ted Cruz in November. Since then, he has maintained a low profile, rarely speaking to the press and offering only oblique remarks about whether he will launch a presidential bid. He told Oprah Winfrey earlier this month that he would decide before the month was out ― a remark he repeated to supporters who shouted the question at him during Monday’s event.

But the crowd seemed optimistic. Several people waved flags reading “Beto for president” or “Beto 2020.” The banners employed the same black-and-white graphics used in his Senate race, which saw voter turnout more than double in some border counties.

O’Rourke addressed the crowd at the same time Trump took the stage for his own rally just a few miles away. The president flew to the border city to make yet another public demand for $5.7 billion to begin construction on a border wall. Similar demands led to the country’s longest government shutdown shortly before Christmas and lawmakers have been stymied thus far in their efforts to negotiate with the White House on a government funding package that would keep the nation running for the rest of the year.

Trump cited El Paso in his State of the Union speech last week in an appeal to obtain money for the border wall, falsely claiming that the city was among the country’s most violent until the federal government began fencing it off from its Mexican neighbor of Ciudad Juárez. (In fact, the city’s decrease in violent crime predated the wall.)

It was those remarks, along with Trump’s choice to hold a campaign rally in the heavily Latino border town, that prompted more than 50 civil rights and advocacy groups to organize the rally where O’Rourke delivered the final address.

Trump doubled down on his calls for a wall on Monday, saying his plans along the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico were already moving forward.

“Today we started a big beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” Trump told supporters at the event, which was filled to capacity. “Right smack on the Rio Grande.”

The size of the crowds at the dual rallies symbolized a wider schism between the values of two social movements that will likely define the politics of 2020 ― one fixated on security that views the border as a threat and an alternate view that champions openness.

The president addressed the lawmaker’s competing event before flying out of Washington, telling reporters that he had a “very long” line at his rally and that, though O’Rourke had one too, “it’s a tiny, little line.”

O’Rourke’s rally, however, began with a large march through El Paso. Organizers estimated the crowd numbered 7,000 at its peak, citing law enforcement figures. 

John Campa, 30, said he had never attended a rally until two weeks ago. Monday night’s march was his second, and he anticipated he would join more in the future because of Trump’s hostility toward his hometown.

“Long story short, I don’t like what he has to say about El Paso,” Campa told HuffPost. “El Paso Is love. We gotta make our voices heard.”

Rally-goers at times chanted “no more lies” as they followed O’Rourke during the march, which numbered in the thousands, according to estimates by local media.

“We’re doing this because we’re a community that’s proud to be inclusive, proud to be welcoming ” said Robert Heyman, policy director for the Border Network for Human Rights. “We’re proud to stand against President Trump’s racism, against Trump’s wall.”

O’Rourke challenged his supporters to champion policies of inclusion during his speech, painting El Paso as a city built around community, not division.

“We are making a stand for truth against lies and hate and ignorance and intolerance,” O’Rourke said. “We are going to show the country who we are. We’re going to make a stand to ensure that we live up to our promise, to our potential, to our purpose as a country.”

Run, Beto, Run!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After negotiations between the Denver Public Schools and the local teachers’ union, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA), failed to reach a new salary agreement on Saturday, the union announced plans for a strike beginning today.

At issue is the school district’s method of awarding bonuses as performance incentives; the union is pushing for lower bonuses and higher, more consistent base pay. “Faced with a smoke-and-mirrors proposal that continues to lack transparency and pushes for failed incentives for some over meaningful base salary for all, the DCTA strike will commence for the schools Denver students deserve,” the union said.

“We’re disappointed that the DCTA walked away from the table,” Denver Public Schools tweeted late Saturday. “We presented an updated proposal that responds to what we have heard from teachers, aligns to our values of equity and retention, honors the ProComp ballot language, and significantly increases the base pay for teachers.”

While Monday classes have been canceled for many preschoolers in the district, most Denver schools will remain open Monday, operated by administrators and substitute teachers.  One report is that some students will stage a walkout to show their support for the teachers.

We wish the  teachers success in their negotiations with the school district.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The White House announced yesterday that President Trump is expected to sign an executive order today meant to spur the development and regulation of artificial intelligence.  As reported in the New York Times:

“A.I. experts across industry, academia and government have long called on the Trump administration to make the development of artificial intelligence a major priority. Last spring, worried that the United States was not keeping pace with China and other countries, Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, sent a memo to the White House imploring the president to create a national strategy on A.I.

Now, Mr. Trump is about to take that step, though this “American A.I. Initiative” may not be as bold as some had hoped.

The executive order aims to better educate workers in the field, improve access to the cloud computing services and data needed to build A.I. systems, and promote cooperation with foreign powers, a senior administration official said on a conference call with reporters on Sunday. But the order does not set aside funds for A.I. research and development, and the administration provided few details on how it will put its new.

The United States is engaged in an increasingly bitter trade war with China. And while American companies like Google and Amazon are now leaders in the field, A.I. experts are concerned that China could surpass the United States in the development of technologies that will power surveillance systems and autonomous weapons as well as driverless cars and a wide range of internet services.

In July 2017, Chinese unveiled a plan to become the world leader in A.I., aiming to create an industry worth $150 billion to its economy by 2030, and two Chinese cities promised to invest $7 billion in the effort. Other governments, too, began making large investments, including South Korea, Britain, France and Canada.

In the United States, the Defense Department has accelerated efforts to embrace A.I., shifting $75 million of its annual budget to a new office that will develop these technologies. Other government agencies also have major projects in the works. But many A.I. experts have worried that the top talent in the United States is moving to companies like Google and Amazon and away from government agencies.

Last year, these concerns increased when Google pulled out of a project to build A.I for the Pentagon after employees protested that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes. Companies like Google are also expanding their operations in countries like China, France and Canada, as the A.I. talent in those countries continues to expand.

In its briefing with reporters, the administration said it would increase efforts to educate American workers in the field. It plans to work with the National Council for the American Worker to create educational efforts through industry and academia, and it will call on government agencies to develop fellowships related to A.I.”

A.I. is becoming more commonplace in the news even though it is in its infancy.

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, has an op-ed today (see below)  in the New York Times reminding Democrats and progressives that there has been little mention of universal day-care on their national agendas.  There have been many proposals from potential presidential nominees and others calling for free public college tuition, universal health care, and higher minimum wages but precious little about day-care which is a critical need  for many working-class and poor families and especially for single mothers. 

The cost of day-care has risen dramatically in the past decade.  In New York, the average cost is $14,144, in  Illinois: $12,964 and in California: $11,817.  In these three states, the cost of tuition at a public college is lower.

Pollitt makes her case as follows:

“Affordable high-quality child care is an idea that should appeal to everyone, including the elusive white working-class voters whom Democratic strategists spend so much time worrying about. It’s good for workers and employers, for communities and families and children. It would create lots of jobs. It would allow lots of people to go to work. It would raise incomes and relieve a lot of stress and unhappiness and give children a good start in life. So why isn’t it on the front burner of the revitalized left?”

Right-on!

Tony

———————————————————-

New York Times

Day Care for All!

By Katha Pollitt

Feb. 9, 2019

When Bernie Sanders ran for president, he promised to fight for free public college, universal health insurance and a $15 minimum wage. He drew huge crowds, but many Democrats declared his proposals impractical and naïve. “We are not Denmark,” Hillary Clinton tartly observed, even as she tweaked her platform to acknowledge the popularity of these ideas. A few years later, these supposedly pie-in-the-sky proposals are wildly popular among Democrats and have entered the political mainstream as important topics of discussion.

Free public college, health care for all, a living wage: These are all important causes that will improve life for millions. But there’s another proposal that belongs on the progressive to-do list: universal affordable high-quality child care. In fact, I would put it ahead of free public college: It would help more people and do more to change society for the better. Only about a third of Americans age 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, after all (although more would surely try if they could afford it). But by the time American women are 40 to 44, 86 percent of them are mothers, and unless they are affluent — or have a retired but still energetic grandma who’s willing to pitch in full time when the kids are little — the child care crisis hits families hard.

How hard? As any parent can tell you, child care is one of the biggest costs a family faces. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s state-by-state tables, in Alabama it’s $5,637 a year for an infant and an only slightly less daunting $4,871 for a 4-year-old. That’s 69 percent of the average rent and 33.7 percent less than the cost of in-state tuition at a four-year college. At the other end of the alphabet, West Virginia parents are worse off: For them, infant care, at $7,926, is 32 percent more than the cost of college.

Pick a state at random and the results are no better. New York: $14,144, or double the cost of a year of college. Illinois: $12,964. California: $11,817. No wonder child care is affordable for only a small minority of families, meaning they pay 10 percent or less of their income for it: 17.8 percent of families in Minnesota, 18.7 percent in Massachusetts, 37.7 percent in Georgia. And that’s for just one child. Most families have more.

Parents who pay for formal day care or a full-time nanny have less money for other important things, to say nothing of fun, and that means more stress and anxiety. Parents on tight budgets may be forced to seek informal, cheaper care. A neighbor offering in-home care might be a godsend — or she might just plunk her little charges in front of a TV, take in too many children or not know how to handle a medical emergency. The high cost of child care doesn’t even have the silver lining of providing decent jobs for child care workers, who are so poorly paid they may be eligible for food stamps. In most states, if child care workers have children of their own, their childcare costs would eat up half their pay or more.

The child care crisis has a huge effect on women’s employment. It keeps women at home who need and want to work. When women miss work because jerry-built arrangements fall apart, they can be fired — it’s perfectly legal. Lack of stable, affordable child care is one of the reasons women’s work force participation has stalled despite women’s increased education and the growth of fields where many women work, such as health care.

I say women for a reason: Many mothers are single, and even when a mother has a partner, when a parent has to quit a job to stay home, most often it’s going to be the mother. I’ve often heard women explain that child care eats up so much of their paycheck that it doesn’t make sense to work. Note the unconscious sexism embedded in that calculation: child care costs shouldn’t be weighed against only the mother’s earnings. They’re a father’s responsibility, too.

In any case, the decision to quit working has more implications than loss of a paycheck right now. Think lost Social Security, fewer promotions, rusted skills, lost contacts and social isolation. Lack of child care also promotes the less quantifiable but real tendency of parenthood to turn previously egalitarian couples into gender stereotypes. He becomes the chief breadwinner, she’s responsible for children and home, and it stays that way even if she goes back to work.

Social conservatives have typically opposed government-funded child care. They describe it as an overpriced boondoggle, another huge government bureaucracy, anti-family, a way of imposing liberal values on helpless children. When, at the behest of his adviser Patrick Buchanan and the nascent Christian right, President Richard Nixon vetoed the 1971 Comprehensive Child Development Act, he blasted it for committing “the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing” in opposition to “the family centered approach.” That was the end for a bill that had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and it was the last time Congress took the issue seriously.

Nearly a half-century later, times have changed. Working mothers of small children are the norm and hostility to them is, finally, ebbing. Distrust of child care — remember the day care sex-abuse panic of the 1980s? — is ebbing, too. As for the fear of communism that Nixon appealed to — there is just about no communism left. Socialism, or more properly the mixed-economy social-democratic welfare states of Scandinavia, France, Germany and other Western-European nations, is hugely popular, especially among the young who flocked to Bernie Sanders.

Affordable high-quality child care is an idea that should appeal to everyone, including the elusive white working-class voters whom Democratic strategists spend so much time worrying about. It’s good for workers and employers, for communities and families and children. It would create lots of jobs. It would allow lots of people to go to work. It would raise incomes and relieve a lot of stress and unhappiness and give children a good start in life. So why isn’t it on the front burner of the revitalized left?

Maybe the newly radicalized young haven’t had kids yet. For them, student debt is a more immediate problem. And maybe parents are just too tired to fight for it when they need it, and then the kids are in school and they don’t need it anymore. The child care crunch is a bit like childbirth. Once it’s over, it’s over, and you’re in a new place in your life. And in that new place it’s easy to forget how expensive and frustrating the quest for good reliable child care was, and for women to rationalize lost opportunities and less equality at home as just some of the many trade-offs motherhood involves.

Still, let’s be bold. Women are exercising their political power as rarely before. Democrats are looking for big, unifying themes. Nearly 50 years after President Nixon’s veto, the time is right to put child care back on the Democratic agenda. And this time let’s put it at the top.

Die-In at Guggenheim Museum

Dear Commons Community,

Protesters  staged a die-in at New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum last night and demanded the museum end its ties with the Sackler family ― the owners of Purdue Pharma, manufacturer and marketer of the prescription painkiller OxyContin.  The museum’s Sackler Center for Arts Education, which includes 8,200 square feet of multimedia labs and lecture theatres, was a gift from the family and opened to the public in 2001.

Video (see above) of the incident show leaflets being thrown from one of the museum’s upper walkways as some protesters. Designed to look like prescription slips, the leaflets were a response to allegations made in a court filing that a member of the Sackler family had predicted the launch of the opioid painkiller would be “followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”

Oxycodone, the drug’s active ingredient, is among the most common painkillers in prescription opioid deaths. As reported in the Associated Press, Purdue Pharma, its executives and members of the Sackler family were recently accused of deceiving patients and doctors about the risk of opioids and allegedly pushed prescribers of the drug to keep patients on it for longer.

The latest demonstration comes after protesters targeted the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year for its ties to the family, tossing mock pill bottles into the moat at the Temple of Dendur ― housed in the museum’s Sackler wing ― which were labeled: “Prescribed to you by the Sackler Family.”

After leaving the Guggenheim, protesters marched down Fifth Avenue with a barrier that read “Shame on Sackler.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared stunned by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, bashing his testimony as virtually worthless.

In a CNN interview last night, Clapper told the network’s Don Lemon that Whitaker’s remarks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election weren’t all that credible, suggesting the testimony was a complete disaster.

The hearing began sliding downhill once Whitaker responded to a question from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) by telling him that he’d reached his time limit (see video above).

“His performance was truly cringeworthy starting with reminding the chairman that his five minutes was up,” Clapper said. “Boy, you just don’t do that and I thought that was truly amateur hour.”

Feeling Whitaker’s testimony couldn’t be trusted, Clapper said “he was terrible and obviously in over his head.”

Furthermore, he argued that the hearing in which Whitaker refused to defend the integrity of the Mueller inquiry was “a reminder of how the independence of the Department of Justice has kind of taken a beating with him as the acting AG.”

Asked whether he was overseeing a so-called “witch hunt” in regards to the Russia inquiry, Whitaker declined to answer, contending that it would be inappropriate for him to comment on an ongoing investigation.

While Whitaker testified that he has not interfered with Mueller’s work, speculation has swirled over his previous criticisms of the investigation, which he has voiced publicly.

Whitaker and a lot of other Trump appointees are amateurs but they are in critical positions in our government and can do a good deal of harm to the country.

Tony