Have Faith in Catholic Education

Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.

Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.

Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.

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Theresa Park on How Immigrants Revitalize U.S. Cities

March 3, 2022/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Theresa Park, Deputy Director and Senior Executive Vice President at MassDevelopment, a group that offers financing and real estate solutions to drive economic growth across Massachusetts. An immigrant from Korea who moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, Theresa saw first-hand how immigrants built their lives from the ground up, and in so doing brought economic and cultural vibrancy to their new home cities. And when she went on to work for cities like Lowell and Lawrence, she herself was the one to reach out to immigrant-owned businesses, nurture their growth, and see their broad impact. In this week’s JobMakers, Theresa talks us through her experience with immigrant business owners, how she developed their trust, how she celebrates them, and the many ways they enrich their new homeland.

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Guest:

Theresa Park is Deputy Director and Senior Executive Vice President at MassDevelopment, the Bay State’s development finance agency and land bank. Theresa comes to MassDevelopment with 25 years of regional and municipal planning experience. She most recently served as the executive director of the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission. Theresa’s planning background includes serving as director of the office of planning and development for the City of Lawrence. Prior to that, she led economic development for the City of Lowell, was principal planner at the City of Newton, and held different roles in Cambridge. Theresa received her master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from The George Washington University and a bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. Her non-work hours are spent serving on boards, globetrotting, and learning home-improvement projects.

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed. And this is JobMakers.

Denzil Mohammed:

Immigrants have always been economic drivers and revitalizes, just look at lower mass or Lawrence, Massachusetts, or any of the gateway cities in your state. Immigrants tend to move into areas that are cheap, namely places in economic decline. Then they open up shops and businesses bring in goods and services and gradually revitalize these once downtrodden areas. For Theresa Park, deputy director and senior executive vice president at Mass Development, a group that offers financing and real estate solutions to drive economic growth across Massachusetts, she’s seen this up close and she’s lived it an immigrant from Korea who moved to Lawrence. She saw firsthand how immigrants built their lives from the ground up and in. So doing economic and cultural vibrancy to their new home cities. And when she went on to work for cities like Lowell and Lawrence, she herself was the one to reach out to immigrant or businesses, nurture their growth and see their broad impact. Theresa talks us through her experience with immigrant business owners, how she developed their trust, how she celebrates them, and the many ways they enrich their new Homeland in this week’s Jobmakers. Theresa Park, deputy director and senior executive vice president of MassDevelopment, welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?

Theresa Park:

I’m very well. And thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here today.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell us a little bit about the work you currently do.

Theresa Park:

So I’m now with MassDevelopment, a state agency. The bulk of my background is really in local government working in planning and development, economic development field. Last year I accepted a position with Mass Development. And Mass Development is the state’s financing agency,as well as its land bank. And so we get involved in a lot of development-related projects, primarily from the financing side, but we also provide real estate technical assistance, as well as offering grants and other programs,along with the states or through the states one-stop process, the application process and it’s a really good way to tap into other programs available through the state.

Denzil Mohammed:

And how does immigration figure into your work? When we see that one in seven Massachusetts residents is foreign-born and that they’re twice as likely to start a business, that they’ve been traditionally engines of economic growth in, you know, downtrodden parts of the country. And of course we have, Kendall square, for instance.

Theresa Park:

Right? So a couple things, one which is that you know, great things come from ideas, right? And you just never know where these ideas are gonna come from. And I think that immigrants by nature and we’ve heard said over and over again, which is that they already have a high tolerance for risk, right? Nobody leaves a country and goes to another country where they basically are complete strangers to the systems so many cultural aspects of it – but for the desire for a better opportunity and better life for their family. And I think that those drives translate very well in their ability to create and succeed in entrepreneurship and establishing new entities. And I think along that line, we also want to make sure as a state quasi agency, that the work that we do have can support good initiatives that we’re equitable in how we deliver those programs across the state, which is why we have programs that support business growth.

Theresa Park:

We have programs that support gateway cities. We have programs that support developers so that we could increase the housing that is in such great demand in the commonwealth. So we have a pretty good toolkit of programs and services that could be brought to bear. Now, we just want to make sure whether it is from the level of outreach, we do the engagement that we do, the people who can take advantage of those programs feel like we can be a partner to them. And so to that extent, the communications work that we’re doing, we want to make sure that whether it is I business started by immigrants, whether it is in communities where there may be a lot of immigrants. For example, you know, I live in the city of Lowell, for example, and they have, historically, been a gateway for immigrants in the beginning working in the textile industry, but that flow continues as well. And I think that there are great opportunities in places like Lowell and Lawrence and Lynn and other gateway cities. And we want to make sure that we get the word out and we make sure that we can deliver in a way that is meaningful.

Denzil Mohammed:

That is excellent. And I know that this is personal to you as well because you have your own immigrant story, is that right?

Theresa Park:

Yes. So I was not born in this country. I came from Korea at a very young age and when my family first moved here, we actually lived in the city of Lawrence a city that I would later come back and work as the planning director. And I think that experience where you are thrown into something just starkly different it’s kind of like the closest thing I could translate to right now is like, when you’re going on a trip, right, you leave one country, you get on a plane and you get on the other side. And then all of a sudden, like, there’s this sudden change in everything that, right. It’s just, everything is totally new and the immigrant experience is very similar in the sense that there’s this stark contrast, but at the same time, you’re making a much longer commitment.

Theresa Park:

And so you’re making a commitment to this new way of life. You’re making a commitment to, you know, from my parents’ perspective, like, you know, they worked hard for many, many years, so they can make sure that their kids get a good education and be successful. So I think that’s pretty typical of what other immigrant families experience. Some go on to, you know, start businesses,and succeed. I think the award dinner that you have every year, you know, recognizes the tremendous contributions that they have made from a job standpoint, the impact that they’ve had on neighborhoods as far as services.

Denzil Mohammed:

That is really well said. And I, I know this is directly from your experiences in cities like Lowell and Lawrence. Talk us through your experiences with the immigrant business community? How did you foster their growth? What was the response like from the rest of the community?

Theresa Park:

First of all, I love working in gateway cities. I feel like there’s a vibrancy. There’s a, there’s like, there’s this gumption, like, you know, you can throw an empty can or garbage and something beautiful can be made out of it. You know what I mean? It’s just like, you know, and I say this in the most positive way possible is that people can make great things with very little. And I see that in gateway cities, I think one of the beautiful things about both living and working there is one just, just the, the flavor, just the blending of this flavor, like, you know, and how it just adds to the, the vibrancy of life there. Right. And we have all these wonderful things like in Lowell, let’s take for example.

Theresa Park:

So we have the, National Historic Park, which looks at the history of the city and how that unfolded and how reliant actually was also in the immigrants to, to basically, you know, work the factories. We have a huge Cambodian population. So we had this amazing Cambodian neighborhood we all, but we also have folks from, you know, West and east Africa and south America. And it’s just like, it feels like a microcosm of the bigger planet. So for us trust building was a key part of our ability to succeed in working with small businesses, particularly immigrant entrepreneurs. So we made a point of being out in the neighborhood, visiting these businesses, not just once, but we appeared before them regularly. We knew we got, we heard their stories. We heard about what are the kind of things that could be helpful to them and when we can deliver on those things.

Theresa Park:

And we’re trying to make those connections point connection points to say that, okay, this is the what you had told us. This is what we can provide. And, and we, you know, and, and so we would make that connection. We had people on staff or within the larger department who could, who could speak different languages. So we try to take advantage of that from, so that it’s not always just you know, we could only interact in, in one language. Like we wanted to make sure that we could communicate at, at different levels. And to that extent, we want to make sure that, you know, whenever we did thing from marketing, for example, or pulling together collateral that talks about the work that we do, we were multilingual about it. We always made sure that the representation was very broad and encompassing of all the different types of businesses, not just the high tech, but the the neighborhood type mom and pop type of businesses because they will eventually hire people, right. Even, even though it was just like one or two jobs to me, that’s still, I mean, that’s still meaningful, right? Because that one person has a family. And because of that job, now they’re able to do these other things that they may not have been able to, to do before

Denzil Mohammed:

You brought up the immigrant entrepreneur awards, which my organization, the immigrant learning center hosts every year which is this year is happening in March 8th. And I have to say that we have a special category called business growth for fast growing businesses that are employing lots of people. And three of those winners were all Dominican American and all came from Lawrence. So lo you know, the reputation of certain cities like Lawrence they’re growing

Theresa Park:

People don’t invest in place without the belief that there is opportunity there.

Denzil Mohammed:

So how does being an immigrant, even though you were, you know, you arrived as such a young child, but you, you, you’re not only foreign born, but you also have a very global perspective having traveled around the world and continuing to do that. Do you think that that has given you a particular perspective in your work of planning and developing the development of cities?

Theresa Park:

I would say say one the best, the biggest life skill that I feel like I benefit from because of that immigrant experience, as well as the global travel is problem solving. You could present a problem, same problem in, in a lot of different places, you’re gonna get different kind of answers of different types of solutions. And I feel like if you travel and if you have the immigrant experience, it’s almost like you expand the range of your thinking in, in when you’re problem solving. Because it’s, you’re not just fixing a widget. You’re also thinking about in, in, in, I, I, for me personally, in a more complex way. And so, you know, so, you know, solving for problem X, all of a sudden you have all these different ways of addressing it.

Denzil Mohammed:

I remember a joke from tr ever know us of saying, you know, if you don’t like immigrants, then you’re not allowed to like immigrant food. So you just end up with a potato And we take grant, but

Theresa Park:

Some great things with that potato

Denzil Mohammed:

Of, of course, so many different things, but we take, we really do as people living in the United States take for granted the, the flavor that we are are given an offer every day in terms of food, in terms of holidays, in terms of cultures overall, though, you know, you’ve seen many different immigrant populations, starting businesses in different places. Have you, have you seen them integrate, you know, learning the language or, or, or their children being successful and things like that?

Theresa Park:

Yeah, I think, you know, so that has to do with when they come to this country, right. There’s a level, level of incarceration that needs to occur. Like, you know, if, you know, my parents came here when they were I think close to 40, maybe I, I can’t recall exactly, but, you know, like, and then they had to learn the language and, you know, they had to, you know gain, gain employment and so on. So I think the challenges are very real, real, I think it could be ease. So like I had mentioned earlier that when I came to this country that there weren’t a lot of Koreans. So we had to ACC ACC very quickly. I think that at the same time I think it could have been a, it could be lonely experience for people as well, where you don’t have your community.

Theresa Park:

I think the level of acculturation changes with the generation, I think when the parents first come here, they’re so busy working, whether that’s being, working for somebody or working for themselves. And you know, it’s really relying on the next generation to then more fully immerse take advantage of, you know, the well of the job opportunities that out there, the educational opportunities that are out there. So I think it happens immersion happens in a couple of different ways. I think if you come to a place where there is a ready community, I think that could help ease a transition. I think that is really important. Oftentimes you also find these cities, you, people who can act, provide be the connector to different kinds of programs and services, so they could get more so they could get grounded more readily, which hopefully means that they could then have more time to then you know, with there’s, you know, attending the kids parent-teacher meetings or whether maybe even attending a community meeting or it could be helping the next generation of immigrants that may be coming through the door, you know, help them with the acculturation.

Theresa Park:

But I think how quickly and how easily you can do that depends on how old you are when you come to this country. What kind of communities there to sort of ease a transition. And I think just remembering that people are always just trying to do their best and, and just always along and giving people the benefit of the doubt, because, you know, I, this is a really hateful rhetoric that’s come out of course. Right. and I think those either, and it’s based on some really unfounded misinformation, and I just hope that key people dig a little deeper people be a little bit more open minded and just remember that like for all part of the human race, right. And we have really have more in common than, than not

Denzil Mohammed:

That’s beautifully said. And I think at the end of the day, we have to remember that the economic development of immigrants through their businesses helped the entire community. It doesn’t just help that one immigrant it creates jobs, it creates more taxes, it creates a safer neighborhood increased goods and services. So you know, we did some research on immigrant essential workers during the pandemic and, you know, where they able left out of the cares act, for instance, things like that, impeded their ability to help all of us recover. We could have recovered faster. We could have recovered in a more efficient way. If you were to close off this, this podcast interview with a message for the us, when it comes to the value of the immigrant entrepreneurship and recognizing that value, what do you think would be,

Theresa Park:

I would say that if, if we were a formula, we’re a plus sign, not a minus sign from an immigrant standpoint, it’s not really for formula, but I would say that, you know, this, when we talk about immigration, we’re talking about people who are coming to this country because of what’s been touted about all that’s good about this country. And I think it was really important that we continue to prize what we hold dear in, in this country’s ability to be the beacon of light for freedom, for democracy and for opportunity for everybody.

Denzil Mohammed:

That’s very beautifully said, TheresaPark thank you so much. This was a wonderful interview. And thank you for sharing as well. Your own personal stories with us Theresa Park, deputy director, and senior executive vice president of Mass Development, thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast.

Theresa Park:

Thank you for having me, Denzil, so great to be here.

Denzil Mohammed:

Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contributions produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for today’s insightful conversation on how entrepreneurial immigrants are a rebound for cities in decline. If you know an outstanding immigrant entrepreneur we should talk to email Denzil that’s, D E N Z I L at Jobmakerspodcast.org. I’m Denzel. Join us next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.

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Linda Chavez on Hispanic Immigration, Assimilation, & Civic Education in America

March 2, 2022/in Featured, Podcast, School Choice /by Editorial Staff

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-host Cara Candal talks with Linda Chavez, a senior fellow at the National Immigration Forum and the author of Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation. She shares how her ethnic background, Catholic education, and experience working with legendary American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker, a great champion of civic education, shaped her outlook and public career. Ms. Chavez talks about why she ultimately parted ways with the teachers’ unions on key education issues. They discuss heated policy debates in American K-12 education regarding how to craft and deliver curricula that honor students’ diversity, while also educating for common ideals. Chavez sheds light on changing perceptions of Hispanic students, pointing to the wide variation in socioeconomic and academic achievement levels among those from different Spanish-speaking countries. She makes the case for a more flexible, broad, skills-based national immigration policy that responds to labor demands, and concludes with insights on why the country is struggling to unify around common civic values.

Stories of the Week: In Connecticut, a trend in the making? The state’s tech ed and career system, enrolling 12,000 students, is planning to become independent from the state education department, to increase its autonomy over finances and curricula. A new $100 million Google certification program could put students on the fast track to successful IT careers – bypassing a four-year degree.

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Guest:

Linda Chavez is a senior fellow at the National Immigration Forum. She is the author of Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, as well as her memoir An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal. In 2000, Chavez was honored by the Library of Congress as a “Living Legend” for her contributions to America’s cultural and historical legacy. She has held a number of appointed positions, among them Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and she was a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986. In 1992, she was elected by the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Chavez was also editor of the prize-winning quarterly journal American Educator (1977-1983), published by the American Federation of Teachers, where she also served as assistant to AFT president Al Shanker (1982-1983) and assistant director of legislation (1975-1977). Chavez was received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Colorado in 1970 and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from George Mason University in 2012.

The next episode will air on Weds., March 9th, with Leslie Hiner, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Director of Legal Defense & Education Center with EdChoice.

Tweet of the Week

"We know very little about the economic cost of running an electrical engineering program compared to, say, a history department, or the resource consequences of steering more students into these fields." https://t.co/O275Zfj4xX #HigherEd #EdChat

— Education Next (@EducationNext) February 28, 2022

News Links

Connecticut technical schools in line to break away from Department of Education, become independent agency

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-technical-schools-breakaway-20220228-y222576x2jegxkyecabupo4eay-story.html

Google’s Sundar Pichai Just Announced a $100 Million Educational Fund. It Might Mean the Beginning of the End for College.

https://www.inc.com/jeff-steen/googles-sundar-pichai-just-announced-a-100-million-educational-fund-it-might-mean-beginning-of-end-for-college.html

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

[00:00:00] Cara: Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Learning Curve. Well, we’ll be coming to you on March 2nd and I’m so excited because at long last here it is, the two co-hosts of The Learning Curve back together. I think that must be Gerard Robinson on the other end there – is that you Gerard?

[00:00:53] GR: It is me, back together again.

[00:00:55] That’s actually a riff from a seventies song.

[00:00:59] Cara: [00:01:00] Let’s go, sing it.

[00:01:01] GR: Oh no. was trying to think of all the lyrics and who sings it, but I can’t.

[00:01:06] Cara: I would probably know, but I think you were more cognizant in the seventies and I was

[00:01:12] GR: wait, you weren’t even born then,

[00:01:13] Cara: so yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:01:14] Right. Sure. Of course I wasn’t.

[00:01:17] Cara: No, I didn’t notice any bell-bottoms when I was a kid, none at all. Those aren’t even back we’ve we’ve passed bell-bottoms now it’s the nineties that are cool again. Right? I can’t even, I heard something on the radio this morning that the new nostalgia are wired headline.

[00:01:32] kidding, like three years ago, I’m like my husband still uses them. He doesn’t see the point in using Bluetooth. So I don’t know. I guess that’s, you know, you’re, middle-aged when Gerard, when the kids

[00:01:43] Cara: confused. Anyway,

[00:01:44] Cara: how have you been, you have had two fabulous co-hosts well I was away and I had a fabulous co-host where you were way.

[00:01:53] you don’t have to tell us where you were, but you want to update our listeners and some of your, fun, what have you been up to? This has all been work-related of course. No [00:02:00] fun for you.

[00:02:01] GR: So as many of you know, that I have a theme song on the road again by Willie Nelson. And so I was doing a lot of Willie Nelson on the road again, uh, , was in Birmingham, England, , meeting with scholars post-docs and fellows who work for.

[00:02:18] The Jubilee center at, university of Birmingham, , it’s funded by the John Templeton foundation. The current family foundation is also a, two funders of ours at the advanced studies and culture foundation and inviting me to really get a chance to see what they do. And they are one of the Nelly, countries, one of the world’s leaders in, , advocating only for characterization, but putting a research, spin to it.

[00:02:40] And so spent, five days. And then spend time rattled side of Macon, Georgia, meeting with some teachers at an elementary school. Amanda Miller, who is the assistant principal there also the 2015 Georgia teacher of the year, was one of the participants in a summer Institute. We had last year [00:03:00] where we talked about character education, world formation.

[00:03:03] And right now I’m in your neck of the woods, Chicago. I’m here for it. with other grantees and we’re here to talk about education, character, and.

[00:03:13] Cara: So my old

[00:03:14] Cara: neck of the woods, are you going to have a red hell your V you’re adhering to a vegan diet. You’re not going to have a red hot, but if I were there, you know, I would head on over to one of those fabulous establishments,

[00:03:28] Cara: well, you know, Gerard, while you were hard at work, I was hard at play. First visiting after a very, very long two years. , my in-laws and, , my husband is a very big family in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So we were there for a week. My children were reunited with their grandmother, , and all of their cousins and aunts and uncles.

[00:03:50] And it was pretty fabulous. I have to say, I know that Darell co-hosted with you. What are the days I was gone? And he would appreciate that we got stuck in traffic [00:04:00] because there was an enormous. Convoy of revert is one of the teams, the local inside a soccer teams, soccer fans, and boy, you have never seen party buses like these party buses.

[00:04:12] Let me tell you by friends. So that was a highlight. And then after that, we went from one hemisphere almost directly to the other and spent some time skiing with our neighbors to the north in Canada. in Quebec, which is actually just a short drive from here, not too far, but I made sure Gerard that while you were hard at work, I was doing as much relaxing as possible.

[00:04:31] So rest assured rest assured that I’m well rested.

[00:04:36] GR: Well, because of what you just said, I feel better. Cause I just lived through you vicariously through space and time. So this is a good thing. This is why this is the learning curve. We’re on a different curve on the earth. I’m still alive.

[00:04:49] Cara: At least one of us says, at least one of us.

[00:04:54] Well, I have to say I was learning a lot as listeners might have guessed our fabulous producers. are the ones [00:05:00] that push us. Jamie gas gets the credit for finding really cool articles and then tells us, you know, read a bunch of these and figure out which one you want to talk about today.

[00:05:07] And read a very, what I think is thought provoking for me at least article and learned a bit today from the Hartford. And this is about, , Connecticut from Hartford, Connecticut, and the title it’s by Seamus McEvoy. This article, the title is Connecticut technical schools, inline to break away from department of education and become an independent agency.

[00:05:28] Now, George is, is I think, you know, during my day job at Excel and ed, we’ve got this just crack team of folks who they focus on college and career pathways. And so I spend some of my time thinking about college and career pathways, mainly because I’m learning through them. I thought that this was a really interesting article because my knee-jerk reaction, as some of our listeners might understand by now to anything that smacks of like creating a new state agency or another body to regulate something, usually I’m like, oh yeah, let’s hold on.

[00:05:58] That that’s pause. That’s not a good [00:06:00] idea. But this article is all about the idea that number one, career and technical education in Kentucky. Is becoming just and more in demand. They’ve seen huge rise in demand in the past few years. And I think that for our listeners, that don’t think about this topic really important to know that some of the best schools out there are career and technical schools, very high-performing schools that provide kids with lots of different options, right?

[00:06:24] Like not only prepare them for college, but also give them opportunities to think about careers. That’ll take them directly into. Or maybe even for some kids take them into a job, that’s going to help them earn money while they are in college. So it’s just another way of providing options. And, this article is discussing how, when the career and technical education programs are housed in the department of education, departments of education, Are built.

[00:06:50] We’re built to oversee public school systems and career and technical education systems, especially at scale when they have lots of kids enrolled, have different [00:07:00] needs. And so they’re creating this new agency in order to provide administrators and career and technical education, more flexibility in how things are done.

[00:07:08] They’re going to be able to sort of manage the school finances differently. System of schools that they have manage curricula differently. And you know, one of the things I would say that really got me thinking is our folks at XL now have just done phenomenal work around not only assessing in different places, the availability Of courses and, course offerings in paths to career, to college and career that are aligned with the needs of the local economy. So we think that that’s one thing that a new entity like this could spend time doing, but as well as asking really important questions around how. Our students and parents that these diverse options are really available to them.

[00:07:48] And I think a lot of times what we have found is that, for various reasons, school counselors and others, either aren’t aware of the options that are available to kids or are of a mentality of a mindset that,[00:08:00] colleges the way and that there’s no sort of alternative way to get their alternative path that kids might actually.

[00:08:06] They don’t promote these programs as much. So I am heartened by this because I think it’s an opportunity for a new agency to really focus on this resurgence and the importance in the emphasis that many states are placing on career and technical education and to make super high quality. High skill high paying careers that don’t necessarily require a college degree available to kids, especially in a time when more and more people are quite frankly, just opting out of college for many reasons, but including the cost of a college education.

[00:08:38] So I loved this article. I learned a lot and I want to, I’m not gonna go down and visit Connecticut and see how they’re doing. What’s the new agency stuff. So I know that you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about career and technical education. Sure.

[00:08:51] Cara: What do you think? Well,

[00:08:52] GR: as you know, I’m a big fan of CTE and what we often forget is that CTE has got really long roots, deep roots [00:09:00] in our history.

[00:09:00] You know, you go back to 1879 in St. Louis where the first manual training school was created. And then you go to New York in 1881 where we have the first trade school. And so the whole idea of CTE began to mature. As did the United States as cities became larger. As people move from rural areas to urban areas, frankly, as more people decided, Hey, I want to go directly into a trade.

[00:09:26] You find that the K-12 schools are offering more CTE. And so I’m glad to hear this, the creation of another agency to work with it or to report or be responsible. doesn’t bother me. , if you ever want to see one field of education that will move from different spots. Look at early childhood education.

[00:09:47] In some states it’s governor’s office at another it’s education, another, it could be a combination thereof. So I’m glad to hear this. Connecticut is a state with a lot of good people [00:10:00] and hard workers. It’s been a blue collar state, , for many decades. Seeing something like this, I think moves us in the right direction.

[00:10:07] So I like that story. And in fact, it’s not too different from my story, which is that CTE in the same way, but it CTE in the career world. So my article is from Inc and the author is Jeff. Steve and Jeff was talking about, as you may know, Sundar, who’s the CEO of Google and alphabet announced a $100 million educational fund and the fund isn’t for higher education per se.

[00:10:39] He created the fund, to really do two things. Number one, you have 70,000 adults in the United States. Who’ve actually gone through a program where they’ve been credentialed by Google. And as you and I talked about effect, you just mentioned the whole idea that everyone may not go to college either directly at the high school or.

[00:10:58] There are people who simply [00:11:00] want certificate training, something to go into the workforce. And Sundar, I said, you know what? We need to do more of this. And so with the hundred million dollar fund is going to provide an opportunity to educate approximately 50,000 more people who will receive certification.

[00:11:18] And a great thing about the partnership he’s creating with Europe and other groups is that once you go through the training, there’s no upfront. Once you get a job, let’s say over $40,000, you can begin to payback into the fund. And those funds will be used to bring in the next cohort. I’m a big proponent of what I call stackable credentials, something, our friend, John Bailey champion of for a number of years, because as I’ve said, even from my own family, it’s by two younger daughters, decided not to go directly to college or to go to college.

[00:11:52] Or to leave high school with a certificate or licensure or something else, I’m all for it because the whole idea [00:12:00] of how and where you learned is different. Now, the Jeff was really interesting. He said, he’s not calling for the end of higher education. And to just paraphrase something from mark Twain, the death of higher education often been very exaggerated.

[00:12:14] but he did note his article that when you look at a report published by us news and world reports, the average cost for tuition fees to attend a ranked public college in 20 21 22 was roughly 10,000 for out-of-state students. Looking at 23,000 warrants, you’re looking at private schools is 38. But, you know, I know that’s the average.

[00:12:35] We have colleges right now, $70,000 and more. And so if you’re a student and you finishing high school and you want to go into tech or you want to become an entrepreneur, well, one option is to go to a four-year institution or two year institution, or with your article to participate CTE Sundar saying, well, Hey, we’ve got links to a lot of groups who would love to have someone qualified, like.

[00:12:58] So give us a look [00:13:00] and come get her certificate. I’d also like to end by saying, we think about pathways to careers. We all think that this is a 20 year endeavor, but since I’m in Chicago, I might as well give a shout out to the Donald’s because they created hamburger university in 1961. And. More than, oh, that’s, that’s some laughter ah, you must know about

[00:13:22] Cara: just the title. It’s amazing. It’s both hamburger university. And the fact that you always know the date and I know you haven’t looked it up, it’s impressive.

[00:13:29] GR: More than 5,000 students a year 10, hamburger university and get this. And over 275,000 people have graduated with a degree in Hamburgers.

[00:13:42] So there’s already been a template, to get people into the workforce. It’s also worth mentioning DEP and McDonald’s as a franchise is one of the top five in the country to create black millionaires. And so I’ve had a chance to see the impact it had on families and friends for years. So, Sundar, thank you [00:14:00] for what you’re doing.

[00:14:01] I like certificate idea.

[00:14:02] Linda: What about you? I

[00:14:04] Cara: have to say in reference to McDonald’s my brother-in-law, who I saw in politicized way. He worked here in the states for quite a long time. Went to business school at Cornell, , all of these prestigious things. And he too started off at McDonald’s and it made his career.

[00:14:18] so I, appreciate that reference Gerard. no, this is just, I love stories about. Any kind of new money flowing into the system, but when funders have a really clear and targeted idea of what it is they want to do in the, the space that they are going to fill. And I’m really hopeful that this is going to, help to continue to elevate the profile of, career and technical education, which, as I said at the outset is a really, current technical education.

[00:14:45] But. Alternatives to college opportunities too, which is really , what your article was about, because I can remember, when I was in high school, it wasn’t seen as any sort of a desirable path and boy, what, a tragic perception. So I think that, by putting an [00:15:00] emphasis on these issues in this way, we’re in a much better place than we were certainly, 10 years ago when I was in high school chart.

[00:15:07] Yeah, absolutely. We have coming up right after this. , we always have such, I, you know, especially given all, and we should’ve said at the outset, all that is going on in this world right now. Some of the really difficult things that are going on in Ukraine, what we are witnessing there and our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Ukraine at this moment.

[00:15:29] Our next guest is going to have a lot to say about it. She’s very experienced in issues of immigration to this country and very experienced in issues of global affairs. We will be speaking with Linda Chavez, whose lengthy bio I will read coming up right after this break.[00:16:00]

[00:16:19] Cara: Learning Curve listeners today, we are excited to host Linda Chavez. She is a senior fellow at the national immigration forum and author of, out of the Barrio towards a new politics of Hispanic assimilation, as well as her memoir and unlikely, conservative the transformation of an extra. In 2000 Chavez was honored by the library of Congress as a living legend for her contributions to America’s cultural and historical legacy.

[00:16:46] She’s held a number of appointed positions among them chairman national commission on migrant education, white house director of public liaison staff, director of the us commission on civil rights. And she was a member of the [00:17:00] administrative conference of the United States. Chavez was the Republican nominee for us Senator from Maryland in 1986.

[00:17:07] In 1992, she was elected by the United Nations human rights commission to serve a four year term at USF. To the UN sub commission on the prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities. Chavez was also the editor of the prize winning quarterly journal American educator published by the American Federation of teachers, where she also served as assistant to AMT president Al Shanker and assistant director of legislation.

[00:17:32] Chavez was received a bachelor’s of arts degree in English literature from university of Colorado and a master of fine arts in creative writing from George Mason university under Chavez. Welcome to the show and thank you so much for being with us today. It’s terrific to be with. Yeah. Wow. I mean, what a life of accomplishment I’m so excited to hear more about your career and your interests today.

[00:17:59] So you [00:18:00] were born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you have had, as I just outlined a remarkable career, you’re an influential author, you’re a columnist. You are an important public figure. One of the most important men he would say at the last 40 years. So could you talk to our listeners a little bit about your upbringing and how your life to date has shaped your.

[00:18:22] [Linda] Well, thank you. yes. I had a very interesting upbringing. My dad was a house painter with a ninth grade education. , his family, , the Chavez and army whole families had been in New Mexico. , almost from the founding of New Mexico. , the Chavez came in 1601 and the army hose came in 17. Oh. So very, very deep roots, , in what is now, the United States, but was a first, a Spanish and then a Mexican territory.

[00:18:51] my mother’s family, , also have deep roots. , my mother’s, , English ancestors were already here in the United States, uh, born on,[00:19:00] , what was then the colonies, , in the 16 hundreds. And her father’s family were immigrants from Ireland. So, , an interesting sort of microcosm of what America is all about with, both immigrant and deep native roots.

[00:19:17] I grew up in a lower middle class family, did not, , have a whole lot of, , material advantages. But my father was a great reader, despite only having a ninth grade education himself introduced me, , really as a young person, , to the great Russian writers, he loved Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Chekhov.

[00:19:42] And so, my love of literature, goes back to, to my father and growing up in that family. , and then, met my husband at a very young age. , met him when I was a freshman at the university of Colorado. , I was actually, living at home and [00:20:00] attending, , day and night classes. The extension center for the university of Colorado in Denver.

[00:20:06] And we were married a year and a half later and have been married ever since. So almost 55 years of marriage. So, and interesting, back.

[Cara] Wow. 55 marriage in and of itself is quite quite an accomplishment, especially in the grand scheme of all of the things , you have accomplished in your life.

[00:20:26] And that is right up there with them. So congratulations to you for, I think anybody. At that marriage, you know, two 19 year olds, one from a professional, upper middle class Jewish family, and another, from a working class, , Hispanic and Irish family, , would have not given us a whole lot of chances for success.

[00:20:46] A lot of people were betting on you, but you showed them I think. Right? Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. and fitting for someone with your bio, you seem like quite a persistent human being. so I know that a lot of our listeners [00:21:00] are going to be fascinated, , by your tenure with, , the AFT and your work with Al Shanker who , among education reformers, especially those of us who, um, we talk about school choice on this show, time to time.

[00:21:13] Al Shanker is both revered and, then sometimes the relationship with the teacher’s union when it comes to certain education reforms, a little more tense, but he was, by all accounts, he really was a great champion of civic education. Could you talk about what it was like working with Al Shanker and for the AST and why you ultimately decided to sort of part ways with the unions on some policy?

[Linda] [00:21:37] Well, I will tell you that Al Shanker was an exceptional man. he was brilliant. he was very, , creative, , very thoughtful about public policy issues. And even though he remained, , a liberal Democrat, uh, until his death in 1997, that did not stop him, , from reaching out. For example, to the Reagan [00:22:00] administration, once president Reagan was elected.

[00:22:03] he did believe very much in public schools. He was not opposed to public school choice, but he was very much opposed to school vouchers, , and federal, , money going to private schools. and I initially would. been, a champion of, of Shanker’s position on that is I was working for the union, but later came to differ with him that issue.

[00:22:29] I, myself, the product of Catholic schools for 12 years, , and I’ve often attributed, , to my, academic success to having gone to Catholic schools. So they were very critical in my development, but Shanker, I think first of all, he was interested in. Not just in domestic politics, but he was very interested in defense policy, very interested in foreign affairs and he was a Hawk, and very much an [00:23:00] anticommunist, very much, believed that, the United States, wasn’t.

[00:23:04] Exemplary in the world. , very much believed that, , without the United States role in leadership in the world, the world would have looked like a very different place. And you mentioned civic education. I actually, , became involved in, created a program to promote civic education. When I worked for Al Shanker as the editor of the American educator magazine.

[00:23:28] And we put together a teaching materials, , for teachers K through 12 to teach about civic values, such things as honesty, loyalty, courage, , and we put together materials that could be used in the classrooms. And I had a very interesting a partner in that. Process a fellow named bill Bennett, William Bennett, who, when I was working with him was a fellow at the national humanities center, but he later joined the Reagan administration became [00:24:00] the, head of the, , , national, , humanities foundation in the government and then went on to be secretary of education.

[00:24:10] And so, he was, as I say, Albert Shanker was perfectly willing, to work with people across the political spectrum so long as they shared, basic values, but his love for America, his belief. that in order to have an educated population, public schools performed, , , in indispensable role, and he believed that teachers needed help in getting materials.

[00:24:38] To their students to teach more about the civic responsibilities of citizenship. And this was in an era when there was a lot of movement to have education, become values, neutral that schools should no longer be teaching right from wrong. and Shanker really was a bulwark against, [00:25:00] uh, some of that. So I’m very proud of the work that I did with Al Shanker.

[Cara] [00:25:04] Absolutely. And it sounds like so much of that. I feel very, very relevant in the current moment, which I hope we can talk about in just a little bit, but I would be remiss not to ask you about your 1991 book out of the Barrio towards a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. and when that book was published, it received great acclaim, but also it was pretty controversial.

[00:25:29] So could you talk a little bit about the main arguments of that book? its reception and its role in sort of the heated policy debates about education at the time. Well, you know, it all sounds rather quaint right now because the view that I had about Hispanics, has become conventional wisdom. I mean, I had this very, , iconic classic view that Hispanics were not a permanently disadvantaged underclass of, people who had been discriminated against and were going to ever forever be downtrodden [00:26:00] without massive government.

[Linda] [00:26:01] My view was that Hispanics, who at the time, most were Mexican American. , but there were also, , Puerto Rican and, some, others, as well, immigrants from, from other countries and their children. particularly Cubans I should say. And what I found is that this book was published in 1999.

[00:26:24] And at the time, if you had turned on the television and heard a story about Hispanics in the U S and particularly about Hispanic education, you would have heard that Hispanics had a very high dropout rate that Hispanics were not succeeding, that they, , were not moving up the economic ladder, that many of them did not speak English.

[00:26:47] And it would have given you. a very distorted view of that population. And so what I did was when I started writing the book, I decided that I would gather research data and [00:27:00] I would look at the population through the lens of trying to look at each of the three major groups at that time separately.

[00:27:09] But not just looking at Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans and Puerto Rican’s, who are American citizens by birth, regardless of whether the court on the island or in the United States, , mainland proper. , and I would look at, , whether or not they were native born, in the U S or whether, they.

[00:27:29] Recently immigrated. And I found out that once you dis-aggregated the data and looked at education levels, earnings levels, English, language proficiency, whole host of, factors that what emerged was a picture that showed that Mexican Americans who were born in the UK. had been schooled in the United States were doing pretty well.

[00:27:52] They were graduating high school, , at rates, not all that different from non-Hispanic whites, and [00:28:00] Cuban-Americans were doing exceptionally. , Puerto Rican’s, depending on where they lived, uh, some of them were doing okay. And some of them were not. And the welfare state played a very big role in that Puerto Ricans living, , outside the high welfare states of New York and New Jersey were doing very well.

[00:28:17] those who lived in the New York, New Jersey area, where you had very high, , welfare payments and very high welfare rates, were not doing as well. And so. I tried to do is to say that, you know, looking at Hispanics as one big group undifferentiated, whether, they had come here recently or had been here generations, like my family had, was distorting the image.

[00:28:42] I said it was a little bit like looking at a picture, , in 19. Teen of the Jewish population, for example, in the lower east side of Manhattan. And if you were to look at the statistics about that population at that time, you would suspect [00:29:00] that Jews were poor. They were not English speaking. They were struggling.

[00:29:04] Yet that would not tell you very much about what the Jewish population would look like 50 years later, or you could do it with Italians. You can do it with German side and the 19th century could do what with almost any immigrant group. And so that was, big change in thinking about the Hispanic population.

[00:29:24] Interestingly, though, I think over time. my understanding of what was happening in the population has been born out. and today we see that, , the Hispanic population that is us born English speaking schools in the United States, , is doing, , quite well and are moving, into the middle-class.

[00:29:44] , up the ranks into the professional classes, but new immigrants, particularly those who are here without documentation who come across into the United States illegally, or who’ve excluded, have expired visas and therefore don’t have legal status. they’re not [00:30:00] doing as well. And, that, really does.

[00:30:03] you look at the whole group together and don’t separate out the groups, , it’s sometimes can give a distorted this.

[Cara] There are so many things I love about what you just said in particular. First of all, as a mother of three children who, , , I’m married to an Hispanic person and my three children probably identify as Hispanic.

[00:30:22] but I so much of what you said about not, painting, all people in a group with one broad brush, I think it’s so refreshing. And I do, I would agree that we’ve moved to a different place, but. Really homed in on, in terms of the language we use to describe people. I think even with, other groups in the United States, we sometimes fall into a trap of describing folks as, , either victims or , painting a picture , that is not always, , honest or helpful.

[00:30:50] So thank you for that. But really , there’s so much in what you said. You also touched upon new immigrants to the United States, and of course you have had a career that’s very [00:31:00] focused on the need for an open and diverse national immigration policy, as well as to some of what you were just talking about education that embraces learning English and shared civic ideals among other things.

[00:31:15] So could you talk to us a little bit about your views? On immigration and how they’ve formed over the years. Of course, you know, some of us came up in a generation. I would put myself here that, where we talked about a melting pot, and now we’ve moved to a place where that’s not how we talk about our nation.

[00:31:30] I’m curious as to your views on this and what are the implications for how we think about, immigration, the United States creating a shared civic society, civil values. are you thinking about that?

[Linda] [00:31:49] Well, you know, the only immigrants in my family came from Ireland. So we’re English speaking. you know, it’s not personal. It [00:32:00] has to do with my view of what this country is all about. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been so successful as a nation is that we’re constantly being infused with new people.

[00:32:11] And these are people who come here wanting a better lives, not just for themselves, but for their children. They’re strivers. they may not come with a lot of money or a lot of education or high skills. but they’re given an opportunity here and they will advance up the economic ladder, but more importantly, their children and grandchildren will advance either.

[00:32:32] further up , that ladder. So I’m for, , very generous legal immigration to the United States. I do believe that we need changes in our legal immigration system because right now our host system is based on family reunification. If you have relatives in the United States who are already. your chances of being able to immigrate if you were a close, relative, , are much greater than if you are [00:33:00] somebody who doesn’t have any groups here in the United States, but, perhaps has skills that we could, use.

[00:33:06] So I think we need to go to more skills spaces. Of immigration, and that we ought to be flexible in terms of the number you don’t want to be admitting lot of people at a time when the country is struggling, economically, if you’re in a recession or, worse, a depression, people aren’t going to be eager to have more people coming in to compete for, fewer jobs.

[00:33:29] But if the economy is growing and you’ve got job opportunities available, Bringing in more people actually helps grow that economy. So, I think we need a flexible policy. I’d like to see what based on skills, but I want to be very broad in my interpretation of what skills we need. We need lots of people at the high end.

[00:33:51] We need people who have engineering degrees, math degrees, science degrees, the whole, , stem. group, of, people with ABET [00:34:00] kind of education backgrounds, but we also need people who are at the, less skill level, who do jobs that frankly Americans feel too educated, , to want aspire to.

[00:34:14] There aren’t a whole lot of, Americans who say, oh, gee, I really hope my kids grow up and pick crops in California. , or, , gee, I really hope that, when my kids, uh, finished high school that, they can go out and, become janitors in our office buildings. We have needs for people to do jobs across the skill spectrum.

[00:34:35] So I would, create a system where you could admit people, who did not necessarily have high education and a high. engineering, computer, skills, but, who, were in their, young earning years, and who had a willingness , to be able to accept work, where we had jobs that are going [00:35:00] unfilled and that, ironically Is, what we have seen happen in a number of industries that employ a lot of people who are not legally in the United States, the meat packing industry, the agricultural industry, these are in fact, areas where a lot of undocumented immigrants are working. I’ll it working, you know, without legal permission.

[00:35:25] But they’re taking jobs, not that would otherwise go to those who are here legally or those who were us citizens, but rather jobs that probably would go on field. And so, I think we need to be very thoughtful about how we reform our immigration laws, , but that there is, , a need for labor.

[00:35:46] We have, about, 8 million jobs. Right now, are going, wanting that we can’t find people to take those jobs. And so we need to, have an immigration policy that encourages people who will come here to work. [00:36:00] But once they’re here, I do believe it’s important to learn English.

[00:36:03] I think that one of the reasons we’ve succeeded so well as an immigrant nation is that we welcome people from all sorts of backgrounds, but we want them to become part of our society. And so teaching, English, particularly to the children of immigrants who come is I think really important. And it’s important, not just for unification of the country, but it’s important for the success of those children to be able to move up that economic.

[Cara] [00:36:32] as a former ESL teacher and in various different settings, everything from factories in Detroit and Chicago to public school system, have to say, I don’t think I have ever met a person who had come to this country and said, I don’t want to learn English. Rather seem like something that is imposed, right?

[00:36:52] Like imposed on them by native speakers of English. And I also think that we shouldn’t confuse the desire to maintain one’s native language [00:37:00] with it. Doesn’t preclude you from learning English nor do people want to go. So it’s only that part of the. debate about the teaching of English, especially in our schools.

[Linda] [00:37:09] Is it fascinating and frustrating to some extent, because I think that so often it forecloses the voices of the people who are most effected right after this themselves. And I have been very, very active on that issue as you know, I have been a big champion of English learners and helping people, acquire English quickly, not just children, but adults as well.

[00:37:33] You know, I think that it would be helpful to, have classes on work sites, for, those janitors and ag workers and people who were involved in the meat processing industry, for example, they have, people they’re helping, during breaks or, after work, to teach English.

[00:37:50] But most importantly, the public schools have a role to play, and to quickly transition children into English. But as you say that doesn’t prevent you [00:38:00] from, using your native language at home, in your church, as, a Catholic, I very fond of going to the Spanish language masses. It sounds more like the Latin that I grew up with.

[00:38:12] So. that’s the American way. That’s always been the way Germans in the 19th century, who immigrated to the United States, set up their own schools and taught children in, German. in the lower east side of Manhattan, there were very active, , Yiddish theater, Yiddish radio, Yiddish, newspapers, Italians, as well, had very active.

[00:38:34] community groups that promoted Italian culture and Italian language. , but ultimately over time, the children and ultimately the grandchildren, tend to be, not just English speaking, but English dominant and sometimes, English monolingual.

[Cara]: So we have limited time left. If I can keep you for one more, which is probably a Whopper of a question, but, I’m sure you’ve answered many, many of those of your life and [00:39:00] want to just ask you about your memoir, entitled and unlikely, conservative the transformation of an ex liberal, and it talks about, you know, your life and career, and sort of, you mentioned this a little bit before you’ve used this shifted from.

[00:39:12] Well, some might say from the left to the right, , we’re in a moment, we have been in a long, long moment in this country where it seems like the chasm between. People different political parties and affiliations is wider and wider. We, I am talking to you during a really sad week when we’ve seen, Russia invade the Ukraine.

[00:39:33] And, it’s, I think in my lifetime, this is one of the most tense moments. I can remember both in our own nation and, and it seems to be across the globe. Can you give us your thoughts on why it is? We just can’t seem to make things work lately. We can’t seem to find any common ground with what.

[Linda] [00:39:52] That’s part of the problem is that we don’t have common ground. And I point the finger squarely at the [00:40:00] changes that have taken place in the media and by the media, I don’t just mean newspapers and television, cable news, et cetera, but social media and others, we basically have reverted to being very much, into our own clans, , into our own.

[00:40:17] subgroups, where we don’t watch the same programs. We don’t read the same articles. and therefore we don’t have a common, , sense of, fact, , we don’t all have a common sense of views and values and we become less, , respect. I have each other’s opinion. And I think that is a great tragedy, and does not bode well for the future of democracy in this country.

[00:40:43] I think we need to be able to have common reference points. And you mentioned, , the war in Ukraine, the launching of, a power grab and trying to take back and reconstitute the former Soviet empire that, blood under Putin [00:41:00] has been involved in. at one time, when something like that had happened, it would have been uniting to Americans and they would have all sort of gathered around their presence, whether they voted for him or not.

[00:41:10] There is a great deal that I don’t agree with. Joe Biden about, , But this is a time when we have to be United as a nation. And so I, think we’ve got to figure our way out of this mess we’re in or else. I think we are in jeopardy of losing, our more than 200 year history of a democratic Republic.

[00:41:31] we have to respect each other. We have to respect each other’s views. , but we have to have common core principles that we believe in, , in order to see.

[Cara] [00:41:40] Well, I hope people are listening. Linda Chavez. It’s been an absolute pleasure in a learning experience. Thank you so very much for your time today. And I know that this is going to be, quite a downloaded episode of the learning curve. so one form of media, hopefully getting the right message out there to [00:42:00] folks is yours seems right to me.

[00:42:02] thank you so much and I wish you all the best. Thank you.

[00:42:28] Cara: And of course, we always end with the Tweet of the Week. This week’s Tweet of the Week is from EducationNext, Gerard. And it’s a quote from an article from a really cool article, actually that I would highly recommend. And the quote is, we know very little about the economic cost of running an electrical engineering program compared to say a history department.

[00:42:47] Or the resource consequences of steering more students into these fields. And so this article from Education Next’s most recent issue – major differences and why some degrees cost [00:43:00] colleges more than others, I highly recommend. It’s a really cool, in-depth look at a question that we so rarely consider when we talk about college costs and that is,

[00:43:11] What’s the value of one degree versus another in terms of the resources that colleges have to put in? And so they really, they look at different fields of study and they talk about how, it’s more expensive for university to do one degree, to get a kid through one four-year degree than another.

[00:43:27] And this comes down to various things, including class size, to some extent faculty pay how different fields have changed over time. And. Here’s a big one use of adjunct faculty, a topic I hope we can talk about on The Learning Curve at some point, you and I have both adjunct it plenty before, Gerard. Next week, we are going to be speaking with a woman that I think many of our listeners will know – the wonderful Leslie Hiner, who is the VP of legal affairs at Ed Choice and just an all-around delightful person.

[00:43:58] So I’m looking forward [00:44:00] to that Gerard. Safe globe trotting. I wish you well, and it’s so lovely to be back with you again.

[00:44:09] GR: Ditto,

[00:44:09] Cara: Ditto, he says. Alright, listeners until next week, take care.

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Pandemic Dead Reckoning: Unseen Casualties of Public Health Interventions

March 1, 2022/in COVID Health, COVID Life Sciences, Featured, Healthcare, Podcast Hubwonk, rCOVID /by Editorial Staff

Hubwonk host Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Fellow Dr. Bill Smith about new evidence that during the past two years of the pandemic, there were as many unseen excess deaths from non-Covid-related diseases as seen from Covid. They discuss the need for public health leaders to pivot their messaging to address this hidden mortality.

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Guest:

William Smith is Senior Fellow in Life Sciences at Pioneer Institute. He has 25 years of experience in government and in corporate roles, including as vice president of public affairs and policy at Pfizer, and as a consultant to major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He held senior staff positions for the Republican House leadership on Capitol Hill, the White House, and in the Massachusetts Governor’s office. He is affiliated as research fellow and managing director with the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America (CUA), where he earned his PhD.

Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Joe Selvaggi:

This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi.

Joe Selvaggi:

Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. As the grim milestone of 1 million US COVID 19 deaths approaches new data reveals that as many people have died from the effects of the pandemic as have from the disease itself. This remarkable observation that the unseen deaths were equal to the number seen was not made by public health leaders at the CDC, but rather by actuarials of the life insurance industry, those experts tasked with measuring mortality rates to price, policy risks. Their analysis found in nearly 40% spike in year over year deaths from 2019 to 2020, but determined only half of those excess deaths were from COVID. These data suggests that the societal public health reaction to the virus, including mitigation and messaging strategies caused as many deaths as COVID 19. Now, as vaccine and acquired immunity have substantially reduced. Those seen COVID deaths, is it time to change our focus toward the unseen excess pandemic deaths to begin to subside that may last far longer and claim more lives than the COVID 19 virus itself?

Joe Selvaggi:

My guest today is Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Dr. Bill Smith. Bill has recently written extensively on the unintended and largely unnoticed consequences of pandemic mitigation measures. He has discovered substantial evidence that changes in individual behavior, such as foregoing medical screening, checkups, and chronic illness treatment have inevitably led to an increase in excess death. Bill will share his views on the failure of health leadership to use their high profile platform, to anticipate and address elevated risk from other human diseases and offer his thoughts on immediate steps. Healthcare leaders must take to stand the rise in non COVID pandemic related deaths. When I return, I’ll be joined by pioneer institutes, Dr. Bill Smith. Okay. We’re back I’m Joe Selvaggi. This is Hubwonk, and I’m now joined by Pioneer Institute senior fellow Bill Smith. Welcome back to Hubwonk, Bill.

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Glad to be here.

Joe Selvaggi:

Well, bill, it’s good to have you because we’re gonna cover a topic that we’ve covered quite a bit in the past. Of course it’s gonna have to do with COVID. But something that you and I have a little alluded to several times is that our focus on COVID and there’s a lot of other ways that people lose their lives or die. And just this past week in the Wall Street Journal, I saw two articles that really spoke to you are in my conversation about these excess deaths that are unrelated to COVID. In fact it was a piece entitled rise in non COVID. 19 deaths hits life insurers. They’re the people who pay out. They pay a lot of people to actuarials, a lot of money to actuarials, to decide how many people are likely to die in any given year.

Joe Selvaggi:

It’s fairly consistent. And suddenly we see a spike. One of the statistics side was a spike of 40% excess deaths in the us in, during COVID relative to years without COVID. So let’s start our conversation there. We’ve got 40% increase. Some of that has to do with COVID and some of it has to do with non COVID. So let’s start with you. You’ve recently had a presentation on this issue. So I’m gonna let you carry the ball and talk about COVID deaths relative to all the other ways people die in a given year.

Bill Smith:

Yeah, Joe. So I, you know, during 2021, I, I started, I, I constantly reading healthcare and life sciences blogs, and I kept noticing articles indicating that the, the number of people that were getting screened for traditional diseases, cardiovascular disease cancer, diabetes go down the list, even mental health, the number of screenings that were happening were just dropping through the floor. People were not going to the doctor. Primary care visits were down 20%. And so people weren’t getting blood pressure screenings, weren’t getting A1C screenings for, for blood sugar, weren’t getting cholesterol screenings. And so I wrote this paper as fall, where I, let me just read one line. I’m not gonna bore your listeners. But I basically said the difficult question that should be asked is did public officials create such a climate of fear around COVID that they neglected to encourage people to visit their physicians and receive regular screenings for chronic conditions.

Bill Smith:

And, and I think the question I raised is now coming home to roost the life insurers in this, in this wall street journal article are starting to report their earnings. And they’re not only paying out life insurance payments because of COVID deaths. They’re paying a lot out because of non COVID deaths. And the actuaries attributed this to the fact that people aren’t getting screenings or didn’t get screenings in 2020. And so their conditions got worse and their conditions were not monitored. You know, there are many, many conditions that have caught early even cancer if it’s caught early it it’s, it can be solved and, and there might not necessarily be mortality. And I think what we’re seeing is that that a lot of things were not being caught early.

Joe Selvaggi:

So let’s put this in perspective. I wanna put some, a fine point on, cause you do a nice job of quantifying. Let’s say how, how people died in 2020. COVID we hear a lot about the 375,000 people who died in 2020 of COVID. That’s a terrible number. Every one of the, every one of those lives is a tragedy, but in the same year, 691,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease, 600,000 deaths from cancer, 160,000 stroke and a hundred thousand diabetes death. If those conditions are not properly diagnosed and treated, if all those numbers go up suddenly it starts to eclipse even the large COVID death. Essentially. That’s what we’re talking about right now.

Bill Smith:

Yes, that’s what we’re talking about. And you know, I it’s a little bit of Monday morning quarterbacking public health officials had a very difficult challenge with COVID. It was a virus they hadn’t seen before. They didn’t know how, how dangerous and lethal it was. So I don’t wanna criticize them too much, but you should do Monday morning quarterbacking because you wanna see how you, how you perform poorly in the last game. And I think public health officials perform somewhat poorly in not reminding people to go get screened for traditional chronic conditions. You know, Anthony Fauci was on TV probably a thousand times during 2020. And I don’t recall him ever saying he, he talked a lot about vaccines and I’m I’m big on vaccines. But he, he, I don’t recall him ever saying, you know what, people shouldn’t ignore that traditional diseases that can kill them, go to the doctor and get screened, wear a mask social distance while you’re in the doctor’s office, but go to the doctor. And, and, and I didn’t hear a lot of public health officials saying that. And again, it’s Monday morning quarterbacking, but they, they should have been saying that because I think that the drop in screenings is having a, a devastating effect.

Joe Selvaggi:

Well, you even put a, a number on the drop in and screenings. You, you cite in 20, 20 alone primary care visits down 21% in the second quarter blood pressure screening down 50% cholesterol screening down 37% telehealth surge, 35%. And this podcast has been a big advocate of telehealth, but of course, telehealth can only do so much at this point we can’t, it, it can’t lay hands on a patient and can’t reach through the screen and, and screen you for so many of the other things that that can kill you. You also measure the the drug decline. In other words, those, those drugs that people take to mitigate these, these diseases such as well, I’ll let you go through, we talk about hypertension, we’re talking about all, all sorts of cholesterol medicine. So let’s go through those one at a time. Let’s talk about hypertensive. What, what kind of declines did we see with people addressing their high blood pressure?

Bill Smith:

Yeah. Again, hypertensives are cheap, generic medicines largely. So they’re not, not, they’re not expensive for patients to go get and they, they can be effective. There are some very good generic anti hypertensive medicines and sales worldwide of hypertensive medicines dropped almost 10% in 2020. And, and that, that shouldn’t be happening. I mean, I, I think with lockdowns, I, I think obesity and, and health problems that would cause hypertension probably accelerated. And yet you had declines in the sale of medicine. We saw a similar decline in atorvastatin. I think the, the Jamma did a study of the top 10 drugs in, in the United States and how their sales declined in during COVID and atorvastatin, which the brand name is Lipitor, but it’s now a generic is one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. And again, prescriptions for atorvastatin were down about 10%, which translates into 10 million prescriptions or more. So there were 10 million prescriptions for cholesterol lowering drugs that didn’t happen. And so you, you gotta think that this is gonna have some implications for cardiovascular disease. And, and I think the article in the journal the other day indicated that it has that, that, that cardiovascular disease accelerated in 2020, cause people weren’t diagnosed, weren’t getting medicines and weren’t being treated.

Joe Selvaggi:

So so in other words, we, we thought, okay in 2020, we’re focused on COVID as, as we should be, but we’re neglecting all these other reasons that people need to care for. So again, I tell you some St that you’re, I guess, fair to say twice as likely to dive a heart attack in a given year, then in the worst year of, of COVID. Well, one needs to take precautions if, if vaccines are around but one should pay at least as much attention to the other ways. We’re talking about things for heart attacks things for cholesterol, as you mentioned the data is clear that we all got a little bit fatter during this lockdown. So our, our hearts had a little more stress. Perhaps we were out there exercising a little less, I know running I’m a distance runner running with a mask made me less likely to put on the shoes. Yes. So we exercise less eight more and at all, all the while didn’t take our blood pressure medicine, our cholesterol medicine, and, and all of these these kinds of things. What, what else can you say? What are some of the other you mostly seem focused on heart and heart related. How does one in a sense hedge their beds against the, the dreaded killer of cancer? How, what could, what more could we be doing or could have been doing during the, the lockdown to address cancer?

Bill Smith:

Y yeah, Joe, honestly I, when I started the paper, I initially had the ambition of looking at all the major screenings and declines in all the major screenings. And the data was so overwhelming because cancer, diabetes, you name it every, every therapeutic area where there are diagnostic screenings had declined. And, and I just thought the subject matter was too voluminous to put in one paper. So I limited it to cardiovascular disease largely because CV disease is, is the number one killer. So I, I wanted to look at how diagnostic tests, but I seen anecdotal articles and studies. I about declines in mammograms, in A1C tests for, for diabetes, for mental health screenings, for in every therapeutic area, there were great declines. And you know, you know, what the traditional screenings are when you go get a physical for cancer, you get, you get a prostate screening. If you’re a man, you get a mammogram, if you’re a woman. And, and those, my, my strong sense. And I only, again, I didn’t Chronicle this into study, but my strong sense is those screenings decline dramatically.

Joe Selvaggi:

Yes, indeed. And again, you and I talked about an article. This is, we haven’t had my much time to digest this article. It came across R wire on the us news and world report talked about what, what seems in hindsight somewhat obvious threat to health is the spike in maternal death rates in, in 2020. And it’s very, it’s dramatic 40 an increase of maternal death, 44% in one year over the year compared earlier, let me see if I have that right. Yes, 44%. And again, I, I I’ll add some literal, some color to this that spike was not amongst non-Hispanic white women. They saw almost no spike. This was almost entirely amongst mothers expecting mothers of Hispanic or, or, or black. So this is a spike in the least or I would say the most vulnerable populations they perhaps were the ones most likely to avoid routine care or, or checkups that is so needed when one is expecting a child. Can you say anything about that and how it, it dovetails well with your, with your overall thesis?

Bill Smith:

Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s another story that similar to so many stories that just seem to be coming out about 2020 that the normal course of healthcare event. So if you’re a expected mother, my, my wife was constantly going to the doctor for prenatal visits and getting prenatal vitamins and doing all of those things that that mother expected mothers do. And it looks like there was a serious decline in the number of prenatal visits, which led to as particularly health disparities for Hispanic and, and black mothers expecting mothers. This is just at this point, it it’s just another area O of the healthcare system, where we saw such major declines in the preventative medicine that should have been happening. That again, I, I have to hold public health officials to task on this because they, they weren’t reminding people to go to the doctor.

Bill Smith:

They were constantly talking about vaccines and social distancing and masks. You couldn’t get away from that on the news when a public health official would appear, but I don’t ever recall them saying, you know what, go back to the doctor for your regular visits, because there’s a lot of, of things that should be happening to prevent worse outcomes in traditional disease areas. And, and I just don’t remember public health officials talking about that. And I think we’re starting to see the evidence roll in that, particularly in 2020, the, the decline in the number of diagnostic screenings that was happen has increased mortality in a variety of areas.

Joe Selvaggi:

Yes. I think particularly at this moment in time, again, we, we can do the money more quarterback is that, that’s how you describe it or some sort of reckoning and say, look, we should have done X instead of Y. But I suppose that’s water under the bridge right now on one has to assume now that we’re somewhat much more highly vaccinated and we’ve gone through this Omicron wave with you know, we’ve decoupled cases from deaths. We have a relatively low death rate when compared with, with infection cases. So I will say we’ve licked COVID, but it’s come down to very, very small numbers of deaths. One to assume the spike in deaths from a lack of care that happened in 2021. If people aren’t, you know, aren’t ready to roll their sleeves and get back to their doctor and get their screening. I would imagine this spike in non COVID or COVID related death or non COVID related deaths is gonna continue well after COVID is, is, is long gone. In other words, if you miss cancer today, you get it tomorrow. That, that excess mortality is gonna appear in next year or the following years numbers. Is that fair?

Bill Smith:

I think that’s right. I think that’s right. We’re gonna continue to see these spikes. And you know, again, not to carry the football analogies, but I don’t wanna spike the football in this and say I was right. We should have been talking about this, as I said, in my paper last year, but public health health officials should now say, okay, COVID is declining. People need to get back to the doctor and get screened. And there should be a, a, a, just a an entire campaign on the part of public health officials to remind people about the traditional diagnostic test that they should be getting. I, I, you, when I was writing the paper, there’s, there’s, there’s an agency, a federal agency called the us preventative healthcare task force. I think that’s the name. I forget the acronym, but it’s, it’s basically a bunch of voluntary physicians who come together and they suggest diagnostic tests that should be routine.

Bill Smith:

So they look at sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, every, every therapeutic area you could imagine. And they look at the test and they make a recommendation people above this age, for example, should get this test or that test. And, you know, I went on their website when I was writing the paper, and I’d seen all these studies with the declines in, in diagnostic screenings for all of these prominent killing eases yet the task force was making no recommendations. They were just going along with their business. They made a recommendation about chlamydia during 2021 at chlamydia screenings. I, I think they should have mobilized and said, Hey, we’re the group that’s recommending screenings. We should, they should have had a, and, and been ringing the alarm bell that these screenings that we’ve been recommending for decades are not happening. And, and there just was not, it was not an urgency in the public health community about this. And, and unfortunately we’re seeing the mortality results of that.

Joe Selvaggi:

Yes, indeed. I would say you know, it’s often been a criticism Lev it at the public health community that this terrible pandemic is made TV stars out of, out of many of them. But what you’re saying is despite their now their newfound power tension and voice that they’re not using that voice in the way that we would expect public health officials to use it. In other words, we have to prioritize based on risks and benefits with COVID now somewhat diminished in its risk and additional information, somewhat diminished in its benefit. The next, you know, marginal benefit of the advising for vaccines seems to be somewhat diminished. We really have a, a, a sort of silent killer that is killing at least as many people or more than COVID did at its peak. And, and we’re more or less ignoring it.

Bill Smith:

I, I would agree with all that. And I’d also add that the lockdowns were a killer for traditional diseases. They did simply were, you know, they kept liquor stores open. They kept grocery stores open. They should have been saying, don’t just go to the grocery store, go to the doctor and get your traditional screenings. And nobody was saying that, that I recall. So I, yeah, I think there should, there should be some Bundy morning quarterbacking going on to say, Hey, wait a minute. If another pandemic comes along, don’t lock down the whole public health community. Don’t lock down all physicians. There should be attention paid to traditional diseases.

Joe Selvaggi:

Do you see now, again, you, this is something you study all the time. We, you know, let’s hope this O Macron means the end or the end of O Macron may be the end of the pandemic. And we’re gonna have to deal with perhaps new variants that rear their ugly head. But we gonna live with this thing now. Do you see any signs, green shoots of healthcare people bringing this story to the forefront? Of course, we, we decided the wall street journal articles do public health officials have to, in a sense, take a blame, or can they just simply move on and, and realign and recalibrate their focus going forward.

Bill Smith:

I, I’m not seeing evidence that they’re recalibrating their focus and talking about this. I’m hoping the wall street journal stories and the editorial that the wall street journal wrote will instigate some change on the part of public health officials. And again, I don’t wanna engage incriminate recriminations. The, the COVID pandemic was a difficult challenge. It’s something we hadn’t seen before. But public health officials should now just say, okay, that was water under the bridge. We probably made a mistake in locking down physician offices and preventing people from getting screenings, but starting today, they should be saying, okay, let’s go back and let’s start doing the kind of things we should have been doing in 20 and 21. I, I’m hoping that somebody will say that that an Anthony Fauci or a CDC director, or somebody will say, okay, I’m, Aron’s way down. The pandemic seems to be waning. Everybody needs to go back and, and get screened for are diseases that are killing people at a greater rate than COVID

Joe Selvaggi:

Indeed. Again, I’ll take the, we’ll wrap up our conversation by bringing it back to where we began. You and I on earlier episodes of this podcast said we were concerned that this might be the case. It might be the case that fear of COVID could be killing more people than actual COVID. Now we have the actuarials at the life insurance company saying indeed you’re right. Only half of the excess tests were directly caused by COVID. The other half were by the neglect of all the other diseases that, you know, kill us every year. We now have that data it’s irrefutable and that should be the marked now for the public health community saying if it, as, as COVID receives, we have a new crisis that we need to roll up our sleeves and, and shine a spotlight directly on

Bill Smith:

That’s absolutely right. And, and, you know, the title of the paper that I wrote again, this was last year, asked the question in the title. Is there an impending, this tsunami in mortality from traditional diseases? And I think the data’s coming in that there is a, a tsunami that that’s happening and people are just dying in their fifties and sixties because they hadn’t been screamed in two years.

Joe Selvaggi:

Indeed. I think it’s a very powerful message. Very important message. I don’t understand why it isn’t the headline but who knows perhaps this, this this podcast can help move, move the ball a little bit. Where can our listeners learn more about your research? Is it published on the pioneer site?

Bill Smith:

It is published on the pioneer Institute site. And again, it’s the title of the paper is an I pen tsunami in mortality from traditional diseases. I think if you just, if you, if you Googled an impending tsunami pioneer Institute, the paper would come up

Joe Selvaggi:

Indeed. And, and these, this tsunami is gonna persist long after. COVID. I think tsunami’s a great, great analogy because it leads in its aftermath of a lot of, of a lot of suffering. For many years after the, after the wave hit, absolutely.

Bill Smith:

They think of a slow growing cancer, like colon cancer, if you’re not screened, you know, the results could show up five or six years later and, and the, the screenings are just not, they weren’t, they weren’t happening.

Joe Selvaggi:

Yeah, indeed. So, all right. That’s our call to action. And this, in fact, all our listeners should be calling their own doctors and getting those screenings taking the medicine they, maybe weren’t doing during the, the past two years and getting back on track, getting healthy maybe ho on a diet, all those good things and, move forward. So thank you for being on the show today, Bill, your always a wonderful guest.

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.

Joe Selvaggi:

This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support us. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, if you’d like to make it easier for others to find Hubwonk, it would be great. If you offer five star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas, suggestions, or comments for me about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.

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Theresa Park on How Immigrants Revitalize U.S. Cities

March 3, 2022/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed. And this is JobMakers.

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

I’m very well. And thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here today.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell us a little bit about the work you currently do.

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

That is excellent. And I know that this is personal to you as well because you have your own immigrant story, is that right?

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

People don’t invest in place without the belief that there is opportunity there.

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

I remember a joke from tr ever know us of saying, you know, if you don’t like immigrants, then you’re not allowed to like immigrant food. So you just end up with a potato And we take grant, but

Theresa Park:

Some great things with that potato

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Thank you for having me, Denzil, so great to be here.

Denzil Mohammed:

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The next episode will air on Weds., March 9th, with Leslie Hiner, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Director of Legal Defense & Education Center with EdChoice.

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

[00:00:53] GR: It is me, back together again.

[00:00:55] That’s actually a riff from a seventies song.

[00:00:59] Cara: [00:01:00] Let’s go, sing it.

[00:01:01] GR: Oh no. was trying to think of all the lyrics and who sings it, but I can’t.

[00:01:06] Cara: I would probably know, but I think you were more cognizant in the seventies and I was

[00:01:12] GR: wait, you weren’t even born then,

[00:01:13] Cara: so yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:01:14] Right. Sure. Of course I wasn’t.

[00:01:43] Cara: confused. Anyway,

[00:01:44] Cara: how have you been, you have had two fabulous co-hosts well I was away and I had a fabulous co-host where you were way.

[00:03:03] And right now I’m in your neck of the woods, Chicago. I’m here for it. with other grantees and we’re here to talk about education, character, and.

[00:03:13] Cara: So my old

[00:04:31] So rest assured rest assured that I’m well rested.

[00:04:49] Cara: At least one of us says, at least one of us.

[00:08:51] Cara: What do you think? Well,

[00:08:52] GR: as you know, I’m a big fan of CTE and what we often forget is that CTE has got really long roots, deep roots [00:09:00] in our history.

[00:13:22] Cara: just the title. It’s amazing. It’s both hamburger university. And the fact that you always know the date and I know you haven’t looked it up, it’s impressive.

[00:13:29] GR: More than 5,000 students a year 10, hamburger university and get this. And over 275,000 people have graduated with a degree in Hamburgers.

[00:14:01] I like certificate idea.

[00:14:02] Linda: What about you? I

[00:20:06] And we were married a year and a half later and have been married ever since. So almost 55 years of marriage. So, and interesting, back.

[Cara] Wow. 55 marriage in and of itself is quite quite an accomplishment, especially in the grand scheme of all of the things , you have accomplished in your life.

[00:30:03] you look at the whole group together and don’t separate out the groups, , it’s sometimes can give a distorted this.

[00:41:31] we have to respect each other. We have to respect each other’s views. , but we have to have common core principles that we believe in, , in order to see.

[00:42:02] thank you so much and I wish you all the best. Thank you.

[00:43:58] So I’m looking forward [00:44:00] to that Gerard. Safe globe trotting. I wish you well, and it’s so lovely to be back with you again.

[00:44:09] GR: Ditto,

[00:44:09] Cara: Ditto, he says. Alright, listeners until next week, take care.

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Pandemic Dead Reckoning: Unseen Casualties of Public Health Interventions

March 1, 2022/in COVID Health, COVID Life Sciences, Featured, Healthcare, Podcast Hubwonk, rCOVID /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Joe Selvaggi:

This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi.

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Glad to be here.

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.

Joe Selvaggi:

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Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.

“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”

Arlete do CarmoFramingham, MA

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Nate and Tennille CostonMidland, MI

“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”

Sarah MorinFall River, MA

“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”

Father Jay MelloPastor, St. Michael and St. Joseph Parishes

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History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.

The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.

in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.

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Theresa Park on How Immigrants Revitalize U.S. Cities

March 3, 2022/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Denzil Mohammed:

I’m Denzil Mohammed. And this is JobMakers.

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

I’m very well. And thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here today.

Denzil Mohammed:

So tell us a little bit about the work you currently do.

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

That is excellent. And I know that this is personal to you as well because you have your own immigrant story, is that right?

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

People don’t invest in place without the belief that there is opportunity there.

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

I remember a joke from tr ever know us of saying, you know, if you don’t like immigrants, then you’re not allowed to like immigrant food. So you just end up with a potato And we take grant, but

Theresa Park:

Some great things with that potato

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Denzil Mohammed:

Theresa Park:

Thank you for having me, Denzil, so great to be here.

Denzil Mohammed:

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Linda Chavez on Hispanic Immigration, Assimilation, & Civic Education in America

March 2, 2022/in Featured, Podcast, School Choice /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

The next episode will air on Weds., March 9th, with Leslie Hiner, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Director of Legal Defense & Education Center with EdChoice.

Tweet of the Week

"We know very little about the economic cost of running an electrical engineering program compared to, say, a history department, or the resource consequences of steering more students into these fields." https://t.co/O275Zfj4xX #HigherEd #EdChat

— Education Next (@EducationNext) February 28, 2022

News Links

Connecticut technical schools in line to break away from Department of Education, become independent agency

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-technical-schools-breakaway-20220228-y222576x2jegxkyecabupo4eay-story.html

Google’s Sundar Pichai Just Announced a $100 Million Educational Fund. It Might Mean the Beginning of the End for College.

https://www.inc.com/jeff-steen/googles-sundar-pichai-just-announced-a-100-million-educational-fund-it-might-mean-beginning-of-end-for-college.html

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Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

[00:00:53] GR: It is me, back together again.

[00:00:55] That’s actually a riff from a seventies song.

[00:00:59] Cara: [00:01:00] Let’s go, sing it.

[00:01:01] GR: Oh no. was trying to think of all the lyrics and who sings it, but I can’t.

[00:01:06] Cara: I would probably know, but I think you were more cognizant in the seventies and I was

[00:01:12] GR: wait, you weren’t even born then,

[00:01:13] Cara: so yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:01:14] Right. Sure. Of course I wasn’t.

[00:01:43] Cara: confused. Anyway,

[00:01:44] Cara: how have you been, you have had two fabulous co-hosts well I was away and I had a fabulous co-host where you were way.

[00:03:03] And right now I’m in your neck of the woods, Chicago. I’m here for it. with other grantees and we’re here to talk about education, character, and.

[00:03:13] Cara: So my old

[00:04:31] So rest assured rest assured that I’m well rested.

[00:04:49] Cara: At least one of us says, at least one of us.

[00:08:51] Cara: What do you think? Well,

[00:08:52] GR: as you know, I’m a big fan of CTE and what we often forget is that CTE has got really long roots, deep roots [00:09:00] in our history.

[00:13:22] Cara: just the title. It’s amazing. It’s both hamburger university. And the fact that you always know the date and I know you haven’t looked it up, it’s impressive.

[00:13:29] GR: More than 5,000 students a year 10, hamburger university and get this. And over 275,000 people have graduated with a degree in Hamburgers.

[00:14:01] I like certificate idea.

[00:14:02] Linda: What about you? I

[00:20:06] And we were married a year and a half later and have been married ever since. So almost 55 years of marriage. So, and interesting, back.

[Cara] Wow. 55 marriage in and of itself is quite quite an accomplishment, especially in the grand scheme of all of the things , you have accomplished in your life.

[00:30:03] you look at the whole group together and don’t separate out the groups, , it’s sometimes can give a distorted this.

[00:41:31] we have to respect each other. We have to respect each other’s views. , but we have to have common core principles that we believe in, , in order to see.

[00:42:02] thank you so much and I wish you all the best. Thank you.

[00:43:58] So I’m looking forward [00:44:00] to that Gerard. Safe globe trotting. I wish you well, and it’s so lovely to be back with you again.

[00:44:09] GR: Ditto,

[00:44:09] Cara: Ditto, he says. Alright, listeners until next week, take care.

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Pandemic Dead Reckoning: Unseen Casualties of Public Health Interventions

March 1, 2022/in COVID Health, COVID Life Sciences, Featured, Healthcare, Podcast Hubwonk, rCOVID /by Editorial Staff

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Guest:

Read a Transcript of This Episode

Please excuse typos.

Joe Selvaggi:

This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi.

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Glad to be here.

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Joe Selvaggi:

Bill Smith:

Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.

Joe Selvaggi:

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Watch: Catholic education forum highlights

Help preserve Catholic education!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Learn more about how you can help end bigoted education laws in your state!

support our work to end bigoted barriers to school choice

Yes! I want to help restore Catholic education

Get new episodes of JobMakers in your inbox!

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Get new episodes of Hubwonk in your inbox!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws