Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
How Residential Mobility Patterns Perpetuate Segregation
Could young adults at their most experimental phase disrupt the cycle of segregation?
Britton did pull out one promising finding from an otherwise bleak report: Blacks and Hispanics who grew up in integrated neighborhoods later lived as adults in integrated neighborhoods, too, even after moving long-distance. That suggests at least a "bulwark against re-segregation," Britton says. "But," he adds, "it doesn’t point to a lot of reasons for optimism about major declines in residential segregation – particularly between blacks and whites, and even increasingly between Latinos and whites – over the next couple of decades."
There is one other way to interpret these findings: They suggest that fair-housing measures that enable black and Hispanic families to live in more integrated neighborhoods are all the more important because they have such long-term consequences. Those neighborhoods will likely impact not only the minority families living there, but also the types of neighborhoods their children grow up to live in. If there is a bright spot in this research, it is that integration may perpetuate itself in much the same way that segregation does.
Britton did pull out one promising finding from an otherwise bleak report: Blacks and Hispanics who grew up in integrated neighborhoods later lived as adults in integrated neighborhoods, too, even after moving long-distance. That suggests at least a "bulwark against re-segregation," Britton says. "But," he adds, "it doesn’t point to a lot of reasons for optimism about major declines in residential segregation – particularly between blacks and whites, and even increasingly between Latinos and whites – over the next couple of decades."
There is one other way to interpret these findings: They suggest that fair-housing measures that enable black and Hispanic families to live in more integrated neighborhoods are all the more important because they have such long-term consequences. Those neighborhoods will likely impact not only the minority families living there, but also the types of neighborhoods their children grow up to live in. If there is a bright spot in this research, it is that integration may perpetuate itself in much the same way that segregation does.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Selling the Public on Public Housing
Sixty-three percent of those surveyed say they would support public housing in their communities, but 53 percent don’t want to live close to it. Sixty-one percent believe that public housing has some positive impact on its residents, but nearly a third of respondents (31 percent) don’t think public housing residents are hard-working members of society.
Nationally, according to ReThink, 2.2 million people live in public housing. At least 500,000 are on waiting lists, including 70,000 in Washington, D.C., where there are just 8,000 units. The long economic downturn has intensified the demand, while belt-tightening in Washington has meant budgetary pressures on housing authorities. The sequestration alone has meant a loss of $1 million a month for the DCHA, says Todman.
"That is an American success story that does not occur without support."
DCHA’s Todman agrees that addressing the root causes of poverty is essential. "Until we get a grasp on how to generate our youth out of poverty, as a country we’re not going to get any better."
But she argues that public housing remains an essential part of that effort. "It’s something we need to look at as a country,” she says. "[Public housing] is actually an asset that belongs to us all."
Nationally, according to ReThink, 2.2 million people live in public housing. At least 500,000 are on waiting lists, including 70,000 in Washington, D.C., where there are just 8,000 units. The long economic downturn has intensified the demand, while belt-tightening in Washington has meant budgetary pressures on housing authorities. The sequestration alone has meant a loss of $1 million a month for the DCHA, says Todman.
"That is an American success story that does not occur without support."
DCHA’s Todman agrees that addressing the root causes of poverty is essential. "Until we get a grasp on how to generate our youth out of poverty, as a country we’re not going to get any better."
But she argues that public housing remains an essential part of that effort. "It’s something we need to look at as a country,” she says. "[Public housing] is actually an asset that belongs to us all."
Technology Alone Won't Save Poor Kids in Struggling Schools
Our results indicate that computer ownership alone is unlikely to have much of an impact on short-term schooling outcomes for low-income children. Existing and proposed interventions to reduce the remaining digital divide in the United States and other countries, such as large-scale voucher programs, tax breaks for educational purchases of computers, Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), and one-to-one laptop programs, need to be realistic about their potential to reduce the current achievement gap.
The Dependency Paradox
Those who know me best understand that I am a deeply philosophical person. One of my favorite topics in the science of relationships is an existential paradox, or what Dr. Brooke Feeney calls “The Dependency Paradox.”1
As I described in a previous post, humans have a fundamental need for connection to others, or “relatedness.” But we also need “autonomy” (a sense of independence and the feeling that we have personal control over our behavior).2 Intuition tells us that these needs are distinct, and possibly conflicting. But the “paradox hypothesis” suggests the opposite—people who are more dependent on their partners for support actually experience more independence and autonomy, not less. Logically this is a contradiction, but only to the untrained eye.
In a laboratory study, experimenters asked one member of a couple to report how much he/she accepted the other’s dependency (e.g., “I am responsive to my partner’s needs”); higher scores indicated more dependency. The other member of the couple was put in a separate room and given some challenging puzzles to complete. The couples were also given computers to communicate via instant messaging (IM), but this was a ruse. Participants completing the puzzles thought their partners were on the other end of the computer, but really it was an experimenter delivering IMs with direct assistance (hints, advice, or in some cases, solutions to the puzzles).
One might think that the participants with more dependency in their relationships would freely accept this assistance, but instead, the opposite pattern emerged. Those with more dependency actually completed more of the puzzles on their own, independently, and were more likely to reject IMs that contained hints or solutions. Paradoxically, dependence and independence went hand in hand.
In a second study conducted outside the lab, participants listed a personal goal that they would like to achieve on their own in the near future. After 6 months, the experimenters asked participants if they accomplished their goals. Those participants who independently achieved their personal goals (without their partner’s direct assistance) were the ones with more dependency in the relationship.
How can we explain this paradox? One perspective stems from attachment theory, and it works like this: when you are an infant, you are helpless and you have no choice but to depend on others. You need your parents (and sometimes others in your immediate/extended family) to help you learn, grow, and develop into a fully functioning person.3 The same process continues across the lifespan. Babies and children who are confident that their parents are available to support them grow up to function at a higher level emotionally, socially, and academically later in life. That is also why developmental psychologists label “secure” attachment as “autonomous.”4
John Bowlby himself said it best: "Paradoxically, the healthy personality when viewed in this light proves by no means as independent as cultural stereotypes suppose. Essential ingredients are a capacity to rely trustingly on others when occasion demands and to know on whom it is appropriate to rely."5
When I teach relationships research to my students, I especially emphasize this point: if you feel comfortable depending on others (and having others depend on you) that goes hand in hand with independence, motivation, curiosity, achievement, and general mental health.
For more on this topic (and some pop culture references), see this ar
As I described in a previous post, humans have a fundamental need for connection to others, or “relatedness.” But we also need “autonomy” (a sense of independence and the feeling that we have personal control over our behavior).2 Intuition tells us that these needs are distinct, and possibly conflicting. But the “paradox hypothesis” suggests the opposite—people who are more dependent on their partners for support actually experience more independence and autonomy, not less. Logically this is a contradiction, but only to the untrained eye.
In a laboratory study, experimenters asked one member of a couple to report how much he/she accepted the other’s dependency (e.g., “I am responsive to my partner’s needs”); higher scores indicated more dependency. The other member of the couple was put in a separate room and given some challenging puzzles to complete. The couples were also given computers to communicate via instant messaging (IM), but this was a ruse. Participants completing the puzzles thought their partners were on the other end of the computer, but really it was an experimenter delivering IMs with direct assistance (hints, advice, or in some cases, solutions to the puzzles).
One might think that the participants with more dependency in their relationships would freely accept this assistance, but instead, the opposite pattern emerged. Those with more dependency actually completed more of the puzzles on their own, independently, and were more likely to reject IMs that contained hints or solutions. Paradoxically, dependence and independence went hand in hand.
In a second study conducted outside the lab, participants listed a personal goal that they would like to achieve on their own in the near future. After 6 months, the experimenters asked participants if they accomplished their goals. Those participants who independently achieved their personal goals (without their partner’s direct assistance) were the ones with more dependency in the relationship.
How can we explain this paradox? One perspective stems from attachment theory, and it works like this: when you are an infant, you are helpless and you have no choice but to depend on others. You need your parents (and sometimes others in your immediate/extended family) to help you learn, grow, and develop into a fully functioning person.3 The same process continues across the lifespan. Babies and children who are confident that their parents are available to support them grow up to function at a higher level emotionally, socially, and academically later in life. That is also why developmental psychologists label “secure” attachment as “autonomous.”4
John Bowlby himself said it best: "Paradoxically, the healthy personality when viewed in this light proves by no means as independent as cultural stereotypes suppose. Essential ingredients are a capacity to rely trustingly on others when occasion demands and to know on whom it is appropriate to rely."5
When I teach relationships research to my students, I especially emphasize this point: if you feel comfortable depending on others (and having others depend on you) that goes hand in hand with independence, motivation, curiosity, achievement, and general mental health.
For more on this topic (and some pop culture references), see this ar
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests
Our technology may be getting smarter, but a provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.
What exactly explains this decline? Study co-author Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence. This negative association between I.Q. and fertility has been demonstrated time and again in research over the last century.
But this isn't the first evidence of a possible decline in human intelligence.
"The reduction in human intelligence (if there is any reduction) would have begun at the time that genetic selection became more relaxed," Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, told The Huffington Post in an email. "I projected this occurred as our ancestors began to live in more supportive high density societies (cities) and had access to a steady supply of food. Both of these might have resulted from the invention of agriculture, which occurred about 5,000 to 12,000 years ago."
As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants' so-called visual reaction times -- how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. Reaction time reflects a person's mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.
In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, the analysis showed. In 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds. Even though the machine gauging reaction time in the late 19th Century was less sophisticated than that used in recent years, Dr. te Nijenhuis told The Huffington Post that the old data is directly comparable to modern data.
Other research has suggested an apparent rise in I.Q. scores since the 1940s, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. But Dr. te Nijenhuis suggested the Flynn Effect reflects the influence of environmental factors -- such as better education, hygiene and nutrition -- and may mask the true decline in genetically inherited intelligence in the Western world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/people-getting-dumber-human-intelligence-victoria-era_n_3293846.html
What exactly explains this decline? Study co-author Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence. This negative association between I.Q. and fertility has been demonstrated time and again in research over the last century.
But this isn't the first evidence of a possible decline in human intelligence.
"The reduction in human intelligence (if there is any reduction) would have begun at the time that genetic selection became more relaxed," Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, told The Huffington Post in an email. "I projected this occurred as our ancestors began to live in more supportive high density societies (cities) and had access to a steady supply of food. Both of these might have resulted from the invention of agriculture, which occurred about 5,000 to 12,000 years ago."
As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants' so-called visual reaction times -- how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. Reaction time reflects a person's mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.
In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, the analysis showed. In 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds. Even though the machine gauging reaction time in the late 19th Century was less sophisticated than that used in recent years, Dr. te Nijenhuis told The Huffington Post that the old data is directly comparable to modern data.
Other research has suggested an apparent rise in I.Q. scores since the 1940s, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. But Dr. te Nijenhuis suggested the Flynn Effect reflects the influence of environmental factors -- such as better education, hygiene and nutrition -- and may mask the true decline in genetically inherited intelligence in the Western world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/people-getting-dumber-human-intelligence-victoria-era_n_3293846.html
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Does Living Near Fast Food Restaurants Increase Your Risk of Obesity?
Because fast food is particularly affordable, it might have greater appeal among individuals with limited funds devoted to satisfying dietary needs. For these individuals, a greater number of FFRs around the home might make the consumption of fast food convenient in the context of their daily travels, or might represent ready destinations for socialization with friends who live nearby. Perhaps the greater number of FFRs functioned as a cue for the craving of calorie-dense foods among those who tend to patronize FFRs.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
My Hero
“Denby, three years ago, was a warehouse for children,” said Wilbourn, a Spelman College alumna who is currently working on her PhD in education. “It was plagued by gang activity, a lack of culture, direction, and vision, and had undefined roles for adults and children. It wasn’t safe.”
Her stated goal is to help Denby become one of the city’s top high schools, which is a distinction currently reserved for Renaissance, Cass Technical, and her alma mater Martin Luther King High School, better known in DPS as the “Big Three.” Her hope is that Denby becomes “The Renaissance of the East Side.”
Wilbourn has made waves by being the rare administrator in the Detroit Public Schools to vocally challenge the city on the issue of blight, which surrounds Denby along Kelly Road. The school is located in the 48205 zip code, which the FBI named the deadliest section in the city last September.
“I’ve driven through parts of this city and this neighborhood and, as a former social studies teacher, it reminds me of the days of slavery,” Wilbourn said. “I’m waiting for the North Star and Harriet Tubman. That’s just how desolate it is. How can you drive down a street, and if you didn’t know it was 2012, you could very easily think this is the 1800s?”
In the area surrounding Denby, 37 abandoned properties sit within a two-block radius. These, along with alleyways and very few, if any, working streetlights, lead to the area being compared to a war zone. That analogy often rubs Detroit city leaders and residents the wrong way, but Wilbourn refuses to back down from it.
“It’s worse than a war zone on so many levels,” Wilbourn said. “You have better odds as an African-American male going to Afghanistan than surviving the streets of Detroit. So when these young people show up every day, I get it.
“We’re talking about children that are in poverty, the highest level in the United States right here in Detroit.” On April 22, Wilbourn and her son led a group of Denby High students, along with volunteers from the nonprofit organization Better Detroit Youth Movement, in boarding up and cleaning three abandoned duplexes across the street from the school.
While she respects the hard work the city has done in trying to bring back downtown, she stands by her position that the city’s “comeback” has a lot of work left. “Truthfully speaking, I would say Detroit is coming back, but who is it coming back for?” Wilbourn said.
“Just like we speak of ‘No Child Left Behind’, there are communities and groups of people who are being left behind. Until we have that conversation about what it means to be disenfranchised, what gentrification looks like and who will be displaced, then we’re not ready to have the true conversation about what it means for Detroit to come back.”
Wilbourn is not the only principal who feels this way about the conditions surrounding her school and the city. She is just the most outspoken. The neighborhoods around nearby Osborn High School, along with Cody High School on the city’s west side, have deteriorated as well. She sees the myriad of issues as systemic throughout DPS and the city itself, and feels that the city has not taken enough ownership.
“I think we have begun to give other groups of people too much credit for why we as a people are in this situation,” Wilbourn said. “I think for the city of Detroit in some ways, and I know some folks won’t like to hear what I’m saying, is that we’ve forgotten about the back of the bus. If you remembered the back of the bus, you would fight like hell to have your place in the front of it.”
She also feels that an inordinate amount of blame has been placed on teachers for many schools’ problems: “It takes an entire village to have both hands, both feet, heart, head, and habits of mind on creating a better community.
“The young people who robbed Pastor Winans, those are the same kids who sat in somebody’s classroom in Detroit. If they have the mindset to be so brutal with (Winans), imagine what a teacher has to deal with everyday? The city of Detroit is perfect. It’s the systems and the people in it that gives [sic] it the reputation.”
Her love for her students and the school come through in how emotional she becomes while talking about them. She credits her assistant principal, Tracie McCissick, and the rest of the faculty with much of her success, but knows there is so much more work to be done at Denby, as academic standards have not improved nearly to her or anyone’s liking. The school tested in the bottom five percent in the state in 2010.
“If I have to hold a parent accountable for his or her child and get them to the place where they move beyond their current socioeconomic and academic status, that’s what we’re going to do. We need to have that hard conversation with parents, community, and ourselves to why we are failing.
“Relative to the city of Detroit, it’s going to take new leadership. It’s going to take vision. It’s going to take some of the stuff that Coleman Young was made of. It’s going to take come of the stuff that Mayor Dennis Archer brought to the table.
“Whether people want to hear it or not, it is even going to take some of the stuff that Kwame Kilpatrick brought to the table — the positive elements. This city is not the ‘diamond in the rough,’ it is the actual diamond.”
http://thegrio.com/2012/06/04/detroit-principal-fights-for-troubled-school-in-troubled-city/
Her stated goal is to help Denby become one of the city’s top high schools, which is a distinction currently reserved for Renaissance, Cass Technical, and her alma mater Martin Luther King High School, better known in DPS as the “Big Three.” Her hope is that Denby becomes “The Renaissance of the East Side.”
Wilbourn has made waves by being the rare administrator in the Detroit Public Schools to vocally challenge the city on the issue of blight, which surrounds Denby along Kelly Road. The school is located in the 48205 zip code, which the FBI named the deadliest section in the city last September.
“I’ve driven through parts of this city and this neighborhood and, as a former social studies teacher, it reminds me of the days of slavery,” Wilbourn said. “I’m waiting for the North Star and Harriet Tubman. That’s just how desolate it is. How can you drive down a street, and if you didn’t know it was 2012, you could very easily think this is the 1800s?”
In the area surrounding Denby, 37 abandoned properties sit within a two-block radius. These, along with alleyways and very few, if any, working streetlights, lead to the area being compared to a war zone. That analogy often rubs Detroit city leaders and residents the wrong way, but Wilbourn refuses to back down from it.
“It’s worse than a war zone on so many levels,” Wilbourn said. “You have better odds as an African-American male going to Afghanistan than surviving the streets of Detroit. So when these young people show up every day, I get it.
“We’re talking about children that are in poverty, the highest level in the United States right here in Detroit.” On April 22, Wilbourn and her son led a group of Denby High students, along with volunteers from the nonprofit organization Better Detroit Youth Movement, in boarding up and cleaning three abandoned duplexes across the street from the school.
While she respects the hard work the city has done in trying to bring back downtown, she stands by her position that the city’s “comeback” has a lot of work left. “Truthfully speaking, I would say Detroit is coming back, but who is it coming back for?” Wilbourn said.
“Just like we speak of ‘No Child Left Behind’, there are communities and groups of people who are being left behind. Until we have that conversation about what it means to be disenfranchised, what gentrification looks like and who will be displaced, then we’re not ready to have the true conversation about what it means for Detroit to come back.”
Wilbourn is not the only principal who feels this way about the conditions surrounding her school and the city. She is just the most outspoken. The neighborhoods around nearby Osborn High School, along with Cody High School on the city’s west side, have deteriorated as well. She sees the myriad of issues as systemic throughout DPS and the city itself, and feels that the city has not taken enough ownership.
“I think we have begun to give other groups of people too much credit for why we as a people are in this situation,” Wilbourn said. “I think for the city of Detroit in some ways, and I know some folks won’t like to hear what I’m saying, is that we’ve forgotten about the back of the bus. If you remembered the back of the bus, you would fight like hell to have your place in the front of it.”
She also feels that an inordinate amount of blame has been placed on teachers for many schools’ problems: “It takes an entire village to have both hands, both feet, heart, head, and habits of mind on creating a better community.
“The young people who robbed Pastor Winans, those are the same kids who sat in somebody’s classroom in Detroit. If they have the mindset to be so brutal with (Winans), imagine what a teacher has to deal with everyday? The city of Detroit is perfect. It’s the systems and the people in it that gives [sic] it the reputation.”
Her love for her students and the school come through in how emotional she becomes while talking about them. She credits her assistant principal, Tracie McCissick, and the rest of the faculty with much of her success, but knows there is so much more work to be done at Denby, as academic standards have not improved nearly to her or anyone’s liking. The school tested in the bottom five percent in the state in 2010.
“If I have to hold a parent accountable for his or her child and get them to the place where they move beyond their current socioeconomic and academic status, that’s what we’re going to do. We need to have that hard conversation with parents, community, and ourselves to why we are failing.
“Relative to the city of Detroit, it’s going to take new leadership. It’s going to take vision. It’s going to take some of the stuff that Coleman Young was made of. It’s going to take come of the stuff that Mayor Dennis Archer brought to the table.
“Whether people want to hear it or not, it is even going to take some of the stuff that Kwame Kilpatrick brought to the table — the positive elements. This city is not the ‘diamond in the rough,’ it is the actual diamond.”
http://thegrio.com/2012/06/04/detroit-principal-fights-for-troubled-school-in-troubled-city/
The Link Between High Levels of Homeownership and Unemployment
A majority of Americans also say home ownership has lost its economic allure as an investment for the future. Nearly seven in 10 Americans (69 percent) report that "it is less likely for families to build equity and wealth through homeownership today compared with two or three decades ago." Most of all, three in five adults (61 percent) believe that "renters can be just as successful as homeowners in achieving the American Dream." This sentiment was felt among more than half of home owners (59 percent) and more than two-thirds (67 percent) of renters.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/05/link-betweeen-high-levels-homeownership-and-unemployment/5520/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/05/link-betweeen-high-levels-homeownership-and-unemployment/5520/
Putting Inner City Students on a Path to High-Paying Jobs, For Real
The regular school day may be over at the Global Technology Preparatory school in New York’s East Harlem, but the students are still hard at work.
In rooms all over the building, kids are learning how to make video games, create and market products, run for political office, and much more, all under the instruction of professionals who are volunteering their time to teach kids real-world skills.
It’s all part of a program called Citizen Schools, which aims to enrich the offerings of urban public schools by extending the school day and bringing in members of the private sector to share their knowledge and expertise.
Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance.
Eighth-graders in the video-game workshop, taught by employees of Intent Media, are riveted to the lines of code on their screens, creating games incorporating images they find online, and in some cases their own original artwork. In an entrepreneurship workshop run by staff from the asset management firm AllianceBernstein, sixth-graders are coming up with hypothetical snack foods and marketing plans. One team has decided to go with individually packaged red velvet cake, calling them Dynamite Cakes. "The slogan is, ''Taste the blast!'" says a boy named Eric.
The Citizen Schools program, founded in 1995 in Boston, brings people from corporations such as Google, Raytheon, Microsoft, Amgen, and many more into 31 middle schools in low-income neighborhoods around the country. There, the professionals teach 10-week apprenticeships that lead up to a final presentation called WOW!, where the students show off the work they have accomplished. In the case of the entrepreneurship group, they’ll be pitching their ideas to a panel of AllianceBernstein staff who will react as potential investors. The kids watched clips from the reality TV show "Shark Tank" to prepare.
The central idea of Citizen Schools is to extend and complement the work that teachers are doing with the kids during the regular school day. Many of the apprenticeships focus on STEM skills – science, technology, engineering, and math. Volunteers from Google have helped kids build computers. Texas Instruments and Apache Corp. have mentored students in building electric cars.
East Harlem’s Global Tech Prep is typical of the schools served by the program. Eighty percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and it is what Citizen Schools defines as a school with high academic need: only 34 percent of its students meet proficiency standards in English, and 49 percent in math. The extended school day keeps middle-schoolers engaged in productive and positive activities during the tough after-school hours, when many kids find themselves at loose ends.
Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.
Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance. Students learn, for instance, that graphing skills can come in quite handy when you’re trying to work out the logistics of a video game. Maybe the Pythagorean theorem isn’t completely pointless, after all.
Apprenticeships meet twice a week. On the other days, students get academic support and guidance from Citizen Schools staff. The program also helps them make decisions about what high schools to attend. As part of the Citizen Schools "8th Grade Academy" program, students visit college campuses and learn about their options for attending and paying for college.
Citizen Schools now serves about 5,000 middle school students each year across eight participating states, and the program documents lasting effects for its participants. Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools in middle school are less likely to be absent from high school, and graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.
Michael Andrew says he knows participating in the program had a positive effect on him. When he was a fourth- and fifth-grader in Boston, he was one of the earliest enrollees. Now, he’s a 24-year-old graduate of Syracuse University who works at AllianceBernstein in information technology. And he’s back with Citizen Schools, this time as a volunteer.
"I was a popular kid, one of those kids who thought he was cool," says Andrew, who says he sometimes played the class clown. "In the program, I didn’t have to be that person. I met a whole new group of friends. Nobody was trying to show off." He admits that he did try to win over a girl he liked by demonstrating his ability to sew in a quilting class. "I made sure my skills were tight so that I could impress," says Andrew. "The pillows I made are still in my parents’ house today." He also built an engine in another apprenticeship that impressed in a different way -- when he fired it up at the WOW! demonstration, it was louder than anybody else's.
Andrew says his time as a Citizen Schools student gave him skills that he has used in all the years since, in school and at work. The program improved his once-shaky public speaking, says Andrew, and built up his leadership potential. "The teachers I worked with were awesome," he remembers.
Now he wants to be one of the teachers that the sixth-graders he’s working with today remember when they grow up. "I want to help inspire young black men and men in general," says Andrew, who is black. "It only takes one teacher to inspire you for life. I want to be able to do that. If I can only do that for one student each semester, it’s well worth it."
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/putting-inner-city-students-path-high-paying-jobs-real/5526/
In rooms all over the building, kids are learning how to make video games, create and market products, run for political office, and much more, all under the instruction of professionals who are volunteering their time to teach kids real-world skills.
It’s all part of a program called Citizen Schools, which aims to enrich the offerings of urban public schools by extending the school day and bringing in members of the private sector to share their knowledge and expertise.
Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance.
Eighth-graders in the video-game workshop, taught by employees of Intent Media, are riveted to the lines of code on their screens, creating games incorporating images they find online, and in some cases their own original artwork. In an entrepreneurship workshop run by staff from the asset management firm AllianceBernstein, sixth-graders are coming up with hypothetical snack foods and marketing plans. One team has decided to go with individually packaged red velvet cake, calling them Dynamite Cakes. "The slogan is, ''Taste the blast!'" says a boy named Eric.
The Citizen Schools program, founded in 1995 in Boston, brings people from corporations such as Google, Raytheon, Microsoft, Amgen, and many more into 31 middle schools in low-income neighborhoods around the country. There, the professionals teach 10-week apprenticeships that lead up to a final presentation called WOW!, where the students show off the work they have accomplished. In the case of the entrepreneurship group, they’ll be pitching their ideas to a panel of AllianceBernstein staff who will react as potential investors. The kids watched clips from the reality TV show "Shark Tank" to prepare.
The central idea of Citizen Schools is to extend and complement the work that teachers are doing with the kids during the regular school day. Many of the apprenticeships focus on STEM skills – science, technology, engineering, and math. Volunteers from Google have helped kids build computers. Texas Instruments and Apache Corp. have mentored students in building electric cars.
East Harlem’s Global Tech Prep is typical of the schools served by the program. Eighty percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and it is what Citizen Schools defines as a school with high academic need: only 34 percent of its students meet proficiency standards in English, and 49 percent in math. The extended school day keeps middle-schoolers engaged in productive and positive activities during the tough after-school hours, when many kids find themselves at loose ends.
Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.
Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance. Students learn, for instance, that graphing skills can come in quite handy when you’re trying to work out the logistics of a video game. Maybe the Pythagorean theorem isn’t completely pointless, after all.
Apprenticeships meet twice a week. On the other days, students get academic support and guidance from Citizen Schools staff. The program also helps them make decisions about what high schools to attend. As part of the Citizen Schools "8th Grade Academy" program, students visit college campuses and learn about their options for attending and paying for college.
Citizen Schools now serves about 5,000 middle school students each year across eight participating states, and the program documents lasting effects for its participants. Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools in middle school are less likely to be absent from high school, and graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.
Michael Andrew says he knows participating in the program had a positive effect on him. When he was a fourth- and fifth-grader in Boston, he was one of the earliest enrollees. Now, he’s a 24-year-old graduate of Syracuse University who works at AllianceBernstein in information technology. And he’s back with Citizen Schools, this time as a volunteer.
"I was a popular kid, one of those kids who thought he was cool," says Andrew, who says he sometimes played the class clown. "In the program, I didn’t have to be that person. I met a whole new group of friends. Nobody was trying to show off." He admits that he did try to win over a girl he liked by demonstrating his ability to sew in a quilting class. "I made sure my skills were tight so that I could impress," says Andrew. "The pillows I made are still in my parents’ house today." He also built an engine in another apprenticeship that impressed in a different way -- when he fired it up at the WOW! demonstration, it was louder than anybody else's.
Andrew says his time as a Citizen Schools student gave him skills that he has used in all the years since, in school and at work. The program improved his once-shaky public speaking, says Andrew, and built up his leadership potential. "The teachers I worked with were awesome," he remembers.
Now he wants to be one of the teachers that the sixth-graders he’s working with today remember when they grow up. "I want to help inspire young black men and men in general," says Andrew, who is black. "It only takes one teacher to inspire you for life. I want to be able to do that. If I can only do that for one student each semester, it’s well worth it."
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/putting-inner-city-students-path-high-paying-jobs-real/5526/
Transforming Public Housing, Minus the Wrecking Ball
From Baltimore to Los Angeles, Chicago to New Orleans, public housing authorities have demolished low-income housing projects and replaced them with privately built mixed-income developments, often based on New Urbanism’s principles of low-rise, high density neighborhoods arranged along traditional streets and parks.
The thinking is this: economically segregated housing built on architecturally modernist superblocks doesn’t work, so it’s better to start from scratch. Give tenants rent vouchers to move to private market off-site locations, demolish the projects and erect new buildings where some project tenants can return to live among middle-class neighbors.
In New York City, the potential for an alternative model for redeveloping public housing has only fairly recently emerged. In the face of cuts in federal support for operations, the New York City Housing Authority announced plans to lease 14 sites within eight Manhattan projects for the development of privately built mixed-income housing. The sites, currently parking lots and playgrounds, are usually at the projects’ edges and face streets and avenues, leaving the majority of open spaces in the middle of the projects undisturbed.
Approximately 4,300 apartments will be constructed, 80 percent as market-rate units and 20 percent of them reserved as "low-income affordable" housing (in New York City, open to four-person households with annual incomes slightly above $51,000, more than twice the NYCHA average of $23,000). The idea is that such development would generate revenue that will help address NYCHA’s annual $57 to $67 million operating deficit as well as years of backlogged building repairs.
Perspective shows new buildings in blue inserted among existing Lower East Side public housing projects. With up to 22 million square feet of development potential in the area, there is room for a rich mixture of uses, included college campuses and reserarch centers. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
In a city of giant development deals, NYCHA’s plans for just a few of its properties are relatively modest. On the other hand, their implications are profound. If NYCHA were to execute a comprehensive plan for all of its 343 projects, an arc of new neighborhoods covering 2,500 acres could be built across New York. It’s a chance to go beyond developing the occasional parking lot by re-imagining projects and aligning them with New York’s 21st-century future in technology, the arts, research, health care and higher education – not just for the benefit of NYCHA’s bottom line but for the city as a whole.
Recently groups of architects, urban planners and landscape architects enrolled in my studios at the University of Michigan Master of Urban Design Program focused in on this re-imagining New York City’s public housing. Held before NYCHA’s plans were announced, I organized the studios to 1) address through design and programming the near-universal criticism of public housing’s superblock planning and segregation of low-income people; 2) leverage the projects’ development potential toward the benefit of their residents and surrounding communities; 3) identify development opportunities to help address NYCHA’s well-known annual deficit.
Figure ground of Astoria housing projects illustrates potential development sites (red) that define new streets as well as courtyards that preserve open space. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
The students looked at two different neighborhoods with large concentrations of NYCHA projects – the Lower East Side in Manhattan and Astoria in Queens. Their discovery: the projects offer room not only for new, revenue-producing housing but whole neighborhoods featuring schools, work places, retail space, recreation facilities and cultural venues. And because so many project superblocks leave 80 percent and more of their land open, such development can occur without demolition and displacement, preserving the projects as one of New York’s most important sources of low-income housing. (Public housing currently serves more than 400,000 New Yorkers. That’s a population larger than Cleveland as a whole.)
Here are some of the ways Michigan MUD studios re-imagined New York City’s housing projects:
Identify and capitalize on community economic and demographic trends (e.g., in the Lower East Side the growth of nearby New York University and in Astoria the emergence of arts and technology-related businesses both in the neighborhood and nearby Long Island City).
Mix training and workplaces in new buildings so that project and neighborhood residents can enjoy pathways to economic development.
Include primary, secondary and post-secondary schools to help prepare young people for the future.
Open up project superblocks with new streets and public spaces that make new services and amenities visible and accessible to people inside and outside the projects.
Incentivize services and amenities by allowing developers to build taller and more profitably if they include them, just as zoning does elsewhere in the city in support of public benefits.
To address NYCHA tenants’ likely concerns about development, the studios recommend making them part of the "deal" by assuring them the continuance of low-income housing through new subsidies brought by development, giving them priority for new and/or improved apartments, or offering them equity stakes in new development.
They also propose that tenants be engaged in shaping project plans, not just for their input but to make the process a community-capacity building tool, especially for young people who can be introduced to the fields of architecture, urban planning, engineering, construction and real estate development (perhaps for school and college credit). Here’s a way to help grow the city’s next generation of thinkers and builders that should inspire parents in the projects to support the plans.
If coordinated across NYCHA projects, similar plans could create new neighborhoods extending from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Sound View in the Bronx, intersecting with the ongoing redevelopment of areas such as downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City and Harlem as well as with new parks, ferry systems and climate-change projects along the waterfronts to help define 21st-century New York. (Citywide coordination of NYCHA properties also opens options for transferring "air rights" between sites to keep development scale appropriate for different projects and their surrounding neighborhoods.)
View of proposed new housing and work places along streets, bikeways and soil channels inserted between NYCHA buildings in Astoria. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
And with such plans, New York’s public housing will be treated differently from the way it has been in the rest of the country. It will be identified as an asset worthy of investment and revitalization rather than a problem to be demolished, as is appropriate for the city that built the nation’s first public housing in 1935.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/05/transforming-public-housing-minus-wrecking-ball/5532/
The thinking is this: economically segregated housing built on architecturally modernist superblocks doesn’t work, so it’s better to start from scratch. Give tenants rent vouchers to move to private market off-site locations, demolish the projects and erect new buildings where some project tenants can return to live among middle-class neighbors.
In New York City, the potential for an alternative model for redeveloping public housing has only fairly recently emerged. In the face of cuts in federal support for operations, the New York City Housing Authority announced plans to lease 14 sites within eight Manhattan projects for the development of privately built mixed-income housing. The sites, currently parking lots and playgrounds, are usually at the projects’ edges and face streets and avenues, leaving the majority of open spaces in the middle of the projects undisturbed.
Approximately 4,300 apartments will be constructed, 80 percent as market-rate units and 20 percent of them reserved as "low-income affordable" housing (in New York City, open to four-person households with annual incomes slightly above $51,000, more than twice the NYCHA average of $23,000). The idea is that such development would generate revenue that will help address NYCHA’s annual $57 to $67 million operating deficit as well as years of backlogged building repairs.
Perspective shows new buildings in blue inserted among existing Lower East Side public housing projects. With up to 22 million square feet of development potential in the area, there is room for a rich mixture of uses, included college campuses and reserarch centers. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
In a city of giant development deals, NYCHA’s plans for just a few of its properties are relatively modest. On the other hand, their implications are profound. If NYCHA were to execute a comprehensive plan for all of its 343 projects, an arc of new neighborhoods covering 2,500 acres could be built across New York. It’s a chance to go beyond developing the occasional parking lot by re-imagining projects and aligning them with New York’s 21st-century future in technology, the arts, research, health care and higher education – not just for the benefit of NYCHA’s bottom line but for the city as a whole.
Recently groups of architects, urban planners and landscape architects enrolled in my studios at the University of Michigan Master of Urban Design Program focused in on this re-imagining New York City’s public housing. Held before NYCHA’s plans were announced, I organized the studios to 1) address through design and programming the near-universal criticism of public housing’s superblock planning and segregation of low-income people; 2) leverage the projects’ development potential toward the benefit of their residents and surrounding communities; 3) identify development opportunities to help address NYCHA’s well-known annual deficit.
Figure ground of Astoria housing projects illustrates potential development sites (red) that define new streets as well as courtyards that preserve open space. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
The students looked at two different neighborhoods with large concentrations of NYCHA projects – the Lower East Side in Manhattan and Astoria in Queens. Their discovery: the projects offer room not only for new, revenue-producing housing but whole neighborhoods featuring schools, work places, retail space, recreation facilities and cultural venues. And because so many project superblocks leave 80 percent and more of their land open, such development can occur without demolition and displacement, preserving the projects as one of New York’s most important sources of low-income housing. (Public housing currently serves more than 400,000 New Yorkers. That’s a population larger than Cleveland as a whole.)
Here are some of the ways Michigan MUD studios re-imagined New York City’s housing projects:
Identify and capitalize on community economic and demographic trends (e.g., in the Lower East Side the growth of nearby New York University and in Astoria the emergence of arts and technology-related businesses both in the neighborhood and nearby Long Island City).
Mix training and workplaces in new buildings so that project and neighborhood residents can enjoy pathways to economic development.
Include primary, secondary and post-secondary schools to help prepare young people for the future.
Open up project superblocks with new streets and public spaces that make new services and amenities visible and accessible to people inside and outside the projects.
Incentivize services and amenities by allowing developers to build taller and more profitably if they include them, just as zoning does elsewhere in the city in support of public benefits.
To address NYCHA tenants’ likely concerns about development, the studios recommend making them part of the "deal" by assuring them the continuance of low-income housing through new subsidies brought by development, giving them priority for new and/or improved apartments, or offering them equity stakes in new development.
They also propose that tenants be engaged in shaping project plans, not just for their input but to make the process a community-capacity building tool, especially for young people who can be introduced to the fields of architecture, urban planning, engineering, construction and real estate development (perhaps for school and college credit). Here’s a way to help grow the city’s next generation of thinkers and builders that should inspire parents in the projects to support the plans.
If coordinated across NYCHA projects, similar plans could create new neighborhoods extending from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Sound View in the Bronx, intersecting with the ongoing redevelopment of areas such as downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City and Harlem as well as with new parks, ferry systems and climate-change projects along the waterfronts to help define 21st-century New York. (Citywide coordination of NYCHA properties also opens options for transferring "air rights" between sites to keep development scale appropriate for different projects and their surrounding neighborhoods.)
View of proposed new housing and work places along streets, bikeways and soil channels inserted between NYCHA buildings in Astoria. Image courtesy of the University of Michigan
And with such plans, New York’s public housing will be treated differently from the way it has been in the rest of the country. It will be identified as an asset worthy of investment and revitalization rather than a problem to be demolished, as is appropriate for the city that built the nation’s first public housing in 1935.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/05/transforming-public-housing-minus-wrecking-ball/5532/
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Why Your 'Green Lifestyle' Choices Don't Really Matter
That's because energy isn't about your personal choices, and it's not even exactly about the sources we use at a regional or local scale. Energy is systems. And all the green lifestyle changes in the world don't alter the fact that fossil fuels are safely embedded at the center of our global energy system.
Like it or not, what Mann's article shows us is that climate change and environmental sustainability aren't grassroots issues.
In fact, that's exactly what economists told me two years ago, when I was researching Before the Lights Go Out, my book on electricity infrastructure in the United States. Energy is a systemic issue. If you want to change it, you have to start at the level of systems -- not with the downstream effects.
That's why economists think carbon taxes are such an important idea. There are multiple benefits. Taxing carbon means accounting for currently ignored costs of fossil fuels -- in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that Americans spend $120 billion every year dealing with the health effects of air pollution. Carbon taxes also incentivize and simplify sustainable personal decisions -- instead of doing lots of research to buy just the right green product, all you have to do is buy the thing that's cheaper.
Most important, though, is the effect on infrastructure. We're going after unconventional fossil fuels today because of economic incentives that have made once too-expensive sources of energy appealing. We're willing to develop new technologies and set up whole new industries to get at those fuels. There's no reason why the same thing can't happen to the wind, the sun, the waves and other non-fossil fuel based sources of unconventional energy. If we price carbon at what it's really worth, then the forces that Mann shows as working against us can start to work for us.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/05/why-your-green-lifestyle-choices-dont-really-matter/5501/
Like it or not, what Mann's article shows us is that climate change and environmental sustainability aren't grassroots issues.
In fact, that's exactly what economists told me two years ago, when I was researching Before the Lights Go Out, my book on electricity infrastructure in the United States. Energy is a systemic issue. If you want to change it, you have to start at the level of systems -- not with the downstream effects.
That's why economists think carbon taxes are such an important idea. There are multiple benefits. Taxing carbon means accounting for currently ignored costs of fossil fuels -- in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that Americans spend $120 billion every year dealing with the health effects of air pollution. Carbon taxes also incentivize and simplify sustainable personal decisions -- instead of doing lots of research to buy just the right green product, all you have to do is buy the thing that's cheaper.
Most important, though, is the effect on infrastructure. We're going after unconventional fossil fuels today because of economic incentives that have made once too-expensive sources of energy appealing. We're willing to develop new technologies and set up whole new industries to get at those fuels. There's no reason why the same thing can't happen to the wind, the sun, the waves and other non-fossil fuel based sources of unconventional energy. If we price carbon at what it's really worth, then the forces that Mann shows as working against us can start to work for us.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/05/why-your-green-lifestyle-choices-dont-really-matter/5501/
A Gun Giveaway Program, Coming to a City Near You
No doubt the ACP will face stricter opposition still in some of the other target cities they officially announced this weekend at the NRA convention in Houston. They include Baltimore and Detroit, which have two of the highest big-city homicide rates in the nation, and New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent millions advocating for stricter gun policies in New York and nationwide. Even legal loaded guns lead to accidents, opponents point out, and some counter the presence of a gun may actually encourage break-ins: it's valuable loot.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/gun-giveaways-coming-city-near-you/5504/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/gun-giveaways-coming-city-near-you/5504/
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