Editorial: St. Paul makes wise hometown pick

Nov 24, 2009 at 07:01 PM

Valeria Silva

The community spoke, and the St. Paul school board listened. In veteran staffer Valeria Silva, the school board has selected a leader with city roots who expects to stay put for a while. Those qualifications were important for many citizens in the recent school board election.

Former Superintendent Meria Carstarphen left for a job with the Austin, Texas, schools this summer after only three years in St. Paul. Carstarphen was not known as a collaborative leader, and, earlier this year, a community survey revealed a desire for an open-minded schools chief who listens, understands the city and can improve achievement while building relationships.

In many ways, Silva, who was named to the top job Monday, fits the bill. During a Tuesday interview, she discussed the importance of longevity. National research, she says, shows that urban districts with long-term superintendents make greater student achievement gains. She wants to build that kind of record.

Silva also has shown she has the skills and sensibilities that should serve the district well. Her life story is American Dream material.

Silva, who did not speak English, was a 24-year-old teacher when she came to the United States from Chile for the first time to visit her sister. Later, she earned two degrees, became a Spanish teacher, a director of English language learning and a district administrator.

At age 48, she has spent more than 20 years with the district and has sent her two children to St. Paul schools.

Her life story alone is inspirational for all students and families faced with language and other obstacles to learning. Her experience speaks especially strongly to thousands of St. Paul students who come from immigrant families. Silva's success exemplifies what access to education can produce.

The new superintendent will face immediate challenges, including a projected $23 million to $28 million budget cut -- about 5 percent of the district's operating budget. Yet, as the current chief academic officer and former chief of staff, she has been involved in top-level budget decisions for much of the past decade. "I've been here through nine or 10 budget cut sessions. Every time we know we will affect students, but I want that process to be inclusive, transparent and produce what's best for kids.''

Another key challenge is the persistent achievement gap between white students and some students of color. On that score, Silva has demonstrated success with English language learners. Under her direction, St. Paul schools recorded the highest achievement gains in the nation among English learners. Consequently, Silva now serves on national education committees and has ties that can be helpful to St. Paul.

Though it remains to be seen how her leadership style will mesh with community and district needs, her track record shows great potential.

The new school chief's start date has not been determined, pending contract and salary negotiations.

Whenever Silva begins, interim Superintendent Suzanne Kelly will step down. Kelly merits praise for managing the district well for the past six months.

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St. Cloud Times: The Legacy Amendment: Any regrets?

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE ST. CLOUD TIMES| Nov 24, 2009 at 07:00 PM

Photo by New York Times

A scene from the 2008 election, when Minnesota voters agreed to raise the state sales tax to fund environmental, cultural and arts projects.

A lack of accountability to voters, a lack of details and constitutional paralysis on putting public dollars where they may be needed most -- for these and many reasons, we've long taken issue with Minnesota's Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.

Most Minnesota voters, though, thought otherwise in 2008 and agreed to raise the state sales tax one-eighth of a percent for 25 years so that $11 billion could be raised and spent on environmental, cultural and arts projects.

Now that the first returns on those investments are starting to come in, we can't help wondering how many Minnesotans might be having second thoughts about this amendment.

Look no further than a recent St. Cloud Times news report about Legacy Amendment funds for KVSC-FM -- the campus radio station at St. Cloud State University -- and grants from the Central Minnesota Arts Board.

KVSC stands to get up to $238,000 by the middle of 2011 from the tax. Among the uses: adding staff, improving and expanding its Web presence, expanding signal strength and providing live coverage of events as far away as Canada.

At a time when college students face rising tuitions, universities have endless lists of building projects, and faculty and staff face pay freezes, is this really the best use of $238,000 of public money?

Indeed, would you have voted "yes" if you knew expanding a campus radio station's signal to Alexandria and covering a musical festival in Canada were considered preserving Minnesota's arts and cultural legacies?

Similarly, your sales tax dollars will double -- to almost $500,000 -- the grants the Central Minnesota Arts Board expects to provide to area artists each of the next two years. Certainly, there is merit in providing assistance to help preserve, even expand, the arts. But doubling the amount in these economic times?

And those are just some local examples. A sampling of other recent news reports reveal a $268,000 award for programming to a Park Rapids, Minn., public library, not to mention an untold number of government jobs and internships being created to assess impaired waters, serve as naturalists, create trails and the like.

And remember, there remain 24 more years of funds to be doled out. Plus, you have little say in such matters and virtually no mechanisms for measuring accountability, much less success or failure.

As we have said from the start, yes, Minnesota's outdoors, culture and arts certainly deserve public help. But neither they nor any public interest should be provided with funds regardless of other fiscal needs -- and especially if voters have no realistic way to slow or even stop that funding stream for a quarter of a century.

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Bill Maxwell: The value of college, by degrees

BILL MAXWELL| Nov 24, 2009 at 06:58 PM

Americans are attending college in record numbers. According to a Pew Research Center study, 11.3 million Americans ages 18 to 24 attended college in 2008, continuing an upward trend that began 30 years ago.

Now, because of the deep economic downturn, high student debt, the failure of many students to graduate in four years and President Obama's call for every American to get at least one year of higher education or vocational training, many old and new issues are being hotly debated.

A growing number of outspoken education experts are arguing that too many young people are attending college.

The Chronicle Review, a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education, asked nine higher education experts, liberals and conservatives, to respond to questions. The two I found most challenging were these:

•"Who should and shouldn't go to college?"

•"Do we have a moral obligation as a society to work to send as many students as we can to college?"

Predictably, conservative and liberal experts answered differently. But this is a healthy debate.

Conservatives such as Charles Murray, political scientist and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, do not believe everyone should go to college who wants to go. Best known for his positions on race and intelligence, Murray argues that we should listen to the research.

"It has been empirically demonstrated," he writes, "that doing well [B average or better] in a traditional college major in the arts and sciences requires levels of linguistic and logical/mathematical ability that only 10 to 15 percent of the nation's youth possess. That doesn't mean that only 10 to 15 percent should get more than a high school education. It does mean that the four-year residential program leading to a B.A. is the wrong model for a large majority of young people."

On the other side, Daniel Yankelovich, founder and chairman of Viewpoint Learning Inc., which develops programs to resolve public policy issues, contends that college attendance has clear utilitarian value and should be encouraged: "In today's society and economy, virtually everyone who has the motivation and stamina should acquire some form of postsecondary education. That is a practical reality of today's economy."

The two camps sharply disagree on whether we have a moral obligation as a society to send as many students as we can to college.

Murray is unequivocal: "We have a moral obligation to destroy the current role of the B.A. in American life. It has become an emblem of first-class citizenship for no good reason."

Like Murray, Bryan Caplan, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, is blunt, if not cynical: "From a moral point of view, far too many students are going to college -- just as far too many people stand up at concerts."

W. Norton Grubb, professor of policy, organization, measurement and evaluation at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, argues the opposite:

"We do have a moral obligation, emerging from several centuries of concern with equity in a highly inequitable country, to make access to and completion of college more equitable," he writes. "But rather than proclaiming College for All, we should be stressing High School Graduation for All, emphasizing that such completion requires either college readiness or readiness for sustained employment -- or for the combination of the two that has become so common."

Along with the comments of the experts, the Review published the results of an OppenheimerFunds Inc. survey of some 1,000 parents of precollege children about their thoughts on the importance of college. The findings will not please the likes of Murray and Caplan. Nine of 10 said that although the economy is in the tank, they still believe that sending their children to college is essential.

Evidence shows that typical four-year graduates earn more than 50 percent more than typical high school graduates.

Even so, many young people can benefit from attending community colleges and trade schools to earn certificates and licenses that lead to better salaries and wages.

This is a debate that is worth having.

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Doyle McManus: Health care bill is politics (as usual)

DOYLE McMANUS| Nov 24, 2009 at 06:57 PM

As the Senate tackles the health care bill that may be its most important domestic legislation in a generation, you might have expected thousands of citizens to descend on Capitol Hill to demonstrate, for or against. But the important parts of this debate have moved into the Senate's back rooms.

The great health care debate hasn't been a triumph of mass politics on either side. Congress isn't being stampeded by the public -- and it's not being stopped by the public, either.

Instead, the debate has turned out to be a battle of old-fashioned special interests and parochialism. The most important players have been the insurance industry, the American Medical Association, labor unions and AARP, the senior citizens lobby. As for parochialism, last week's most blatant action may have been Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's insertion into the bill of a $100 million Medicaid bonus for Louisiana, whose senior senator, Mary Landrieu, has been one of the holdouts.

One reason for this resurgence of backroom politics is simple: Polls show the public to be fairly evenly divided on health care reform and understandably confused by its details.

In modern American politics, with its professional lobbyists and millions of dollars in campaign advertising, public opinion isn't always the most important thing.

"Winning public opinion is not the secret of legislative success," said Lawrence R. Jacobs of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "You want to hold your own in the court of public opinion, sure. But members of Congress have to worry more about what interest groups are going to do."

For members anticipating tough reelection campaigns, what's most important is not what voters think of health care proposals today but which interest groups will spend money in their states to shape voters' perceptions next year. Groups on both sides, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the unions, have already announced millions of dollars in planned advertising spending to do just that.

When he ran for president last year, Barack Obama said he'd try to change that system, in part by keeping his gigantic grass-roots network of campaign supporters together as a new, populist force in the legislative battles to come.

But that's not what happened. Members of Congress and their aides say the Obama organization, rechristened Organizing for America, or OFA, after the campaign, has had negligible effect on the debate.

That's primarily because the most important debate over health care is not between the two parties -- Republicans decided early that their goal was simply to stop a bill -- but among Democrats. And OFA, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee, has carefully refrained from criticizing any Democratic incumbents. One of its biggest efforts this fall, instead, was organizing rallies and letter-writing campaigns to say "thank you" to House members who voted in favor of health care reform -- lobbying with all the bite of a Hallmark greeting card.

OFA was also undercut by Obama's own strategy for winning health care reform, which began by cutting deals with the most important interest groups -- including, initially, the health insurance industry -- not by mobilizing public pressure.

"This is not being fought by the White House as a grass-roots campaign," Jacobs noted. "Civic engagement at the community level has largely been bypassed. ... The Obama strategy has been to neutralize the stakeholders so they don't block a bill."

Obama's choice of strategies may well turn out to have been good politics, especially on an issue as complex as health care. Well-funded, well-focused interest groups often wield power more effectively than the general public, even though the public has more at stake.

That's not a new phenomenon in American politics, but it's one Obama told his followers he wanted to change. If the president wins a health care bill, it will be a major victory.

But he will have won the old-fashioned way, not by reinventing American politics.

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Washington Post: Federalism isn't really catching on in Europe

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE WASHINGTON POST| Nov 24, 2009 at 06:56 PM

Who do I call if I want to call Europe? Henry Kissinger once famously asked. For eight years European federalists labored to produce an answer to that question -- staging a constitutional convention, ignoring repeated rebuffs by voters and bullying skeptical small countries.

At a summit last week they delivered a new president and foreign-policy chief for the European Union whose obscure backgrounds virtually guarantee that they will not supplant national leaders as figures on the world stage. That's probably just as well.

The new president of the European Council, Belgian Premier Herman Van Rompuy, and High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton are both described as capable by those who know them. But few do: Van Rompuy, 62, who was on the verge of retirement when he was drafted to head the Belgian government a year ago, is recognized by just 12 percent of Europeans, according to one poll. Ashton, 53, is a career apparatchik of the British Labor Party who has never been elected and has no background in foreign policy.

Far more distinguished candidates were available: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, others. Were Europeans genuinely committed to uniting behind a single figure to do business with the United States, Russia or China, it's likely that one of them would have been chosen. But, by European accounts, it was French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel who resolved that the new president would be a low-profile figure from a small country.

Sarkozy, Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown consequently can expect far more phone calls from the White House than the new European representatives can. That is appropriate. Though the European Union is growing stronger, most Europeans aren't ready to have their national governments supplanted in key matters of domestic and foreign policy.

Europeans worry that their lack of unity will exclude them from a new "G-2" composed of the United States and China. That's unlikely. Notwithstanding Kissinger's taunt, Europe's global influence will be determined by its economic weight and willingness to remain a military partner of the United States -- not by who answers the phone.

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Boston Globe: Lambert’s raunchy performance was merely about spectacle

Nov 24, 2009 at 06:56 PM

After gaining fame on "American Idol,'' openly gay singer Adam Lambert has treaded the line between being a flamboyant artist and a political figure, rolling out the news of his sexuality with caution, saying he doesn't want to stand for all gay men.

But Lambert, now free of the "Idol'' yoke, was waving a civil-rights banner Sunday night after his live performance on the American Music Awards -- which consisted of four minutes of simulated sex and bondage with his backup musicians and dancers, set to his single, "For Your Entertainment.''

Backstage, Lambert said it would be wrong for ABC to edit out the most suggestive parts of his performance for the West Coast feed. (The network ultimately did.) "Female entertainers have been risqué for years,'' Lambert told the Los Angeles Times. "Honestly, there's a huge double standard.''

He's right that artists from Madonna to Britney have used sex-charged stunts to win attention and distance themselves from the teenyboppers who made them famous. Miley Cyrus arguably crossed a bigger line when she pole-danced at the Teen Choice Awards, which is more vigorously marketed to 10-year-olds. Lambert at least performed at a time when most kids ought to be in bed.

Even so, the right to simulate sex on TV is hardly the most pressing cause for gay Americans. And the staging of yet another highly suggestive performance at yet another award show isn't a political statement for equality; it's a rehash of a now-familiar ploy.

Shock can be a great publicity tool, but as many seasoned artists learn, there is also beauty in restraint.

BOSTON GLOBE

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Letter of the day: Bishop's action on Kennedy was high above his pay grade

Nov 24, 2009 at 06:55 PM

Photo by Associated Press

Edward Kennedy Jr., left, and Rep. Patrick Kennedy

JAMES M. CAMPBELL, ST. PAUL

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Readers Write for Wednesday, Nov. 25

Nov 24, 2009 at 06:53 PM

WAR IN AFGHAINSTAN

Don't lose sight of the reason we're there

The Nov. 22 Star Tribune editorial, "Reject surge answer for Afghanistan," does not address the main goal for our troops being there or what could be achieved by a surge of 40,000 additional troops.

Our troops were sent into Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, which provided a safe haven for Al-Qaida from which to launch attacks on the United States. Our main goal was not to install a corruption-free government. Although a corruption-free government is desirable and would better contribute to the war effort, the fact that the present government doesn't meet our expectations shouldn't become the determining factor in how we conduct the war.

The option of sending additional troops should be examined with our main goal in mind. Allowing a stalemate to become the status quo would likely result in more casualties and greater cost in the long run than making a concerted effort to defeat the Taliban.

An example of a successful surge was achieved in Iraq. The Iraqi government is far from perfect.

ROBERT SULLENTROP, MINNEAPOLIS

FALLING TO NO. 6

Health care ranking should act as a warning

As a physician, I was concerned to see that Minnesota has lost its bragging rights as healthiest state in the nation, according to the recent America's Health Rankings report, published by the UnitedHealth Foundation (Star Tribune, Nov. 18).

After seeing Minnesota drop to the No. 2 position for several years, I thought perhaps it was temporary and that we would be back in the No. 1 spot soon enough. But this year's drop to sixth place is latest in a three-year slide and, I fear, could mark the leading edge of an ominous trend.

Although the report found that Minnesota is still a top performer in terms of health outcomes, it also indicated that Minnesota is starting to lag behind in some important areas that predict the future health of a community.

Significant changes that lowered Minnesota's health care status included lower immunization rates, higher rates of childhood poverty and lower rates of prenatal care. The state's rates of binge drinking and obesity are also causes for concern.

These factors have a direct impact on the health status of our communities and portend real increases in the cost of health care in the future. Health care costs are already high, but if we collectively fail to prevent communicable diseases, ensure healthy pregnancies and deliveries, or create the environments in which people can lead active, healthy lives, costs are certain to explode.

Physicians care about the health of their patients and the health of our communities. I am hopeful that all of us will see this report as a wake-up call to work to improve our individual health and to work within our communities to support investments in our collective health. If we don't, we will pay for it with more illness, higher health care costs and lower health rankings.

BEN WHITTEN, MINNEAPOLIS;

PRESIDENT, MINNESOTA MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

•••

Throughout the health care debate, I've been appalled at the reluctance of lawmakers to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Most Americans have utterly failed to maintain good health.

It is a colossal injustice when the federal government forces me -- a taxpayer -- to pick up the tab for health care reform, but doesn't ask anything in return from folks who continue to ruin their health with poor choices.

Washington expects CEOs to make sacrifices when receiving taxpayer bailouts for their companies. Similarly, why aren't citizens with pathetic health habits expected to make sacrifices when they receive their own government health care bailout?

Taxpayer-funded bailouts should come with strings attached. I'll be glad to pay for quality health care for Americans, but only when I see Washington hold citizens personally accountable for maintaining better health.

DAVID TITCHENAL, BURNSVILLE

CUTTING FUNDS TO THE POOR

We have to decide what is important to our state

Gov. Tim Pawlenty seems to have a guiding principle and he stands firm: The protection of Minnesota's poorest, neediest people -- those whose special dietary needs can no longer be met, and those who will be turned away from hospital clinics except in an emergency -- is not as important as avoiding income tax increases for the rich ("Cuts take away dietary program for state's poor," Nov. 22).

Surely, there has to be a way to help "those people" without raising taxes on the rich. The rich are going through rough times; while their 401(k) has tanked, the kid's Yale fund has dwindled, the country club dues have gone up, the lake home needs a new dock and the Lexus needs new tires.

Let's not focus on those without access to health care, governor -- let's overlook them.

ROY HALLANGER, MINNEAPOLIS

•••

Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson was incorrect when he said the decision to spend $14 million extra on a bridge to make it look cool was "a little crazy" (Letter of the Day, Nov. 21). The decision to spend $14 million extra for a bridge to make it look pretty is absolutely insane.

In the Nov. 22 Star Tribune, there was a story about poor people getting meal programs cut. I have a question for the six county commissioners who voted to waste $14 million on a pretty bridge: How many meals could $14 million buy?

JIM BENDTSEN, RAMSEY

CENTRAL CORRIDOR

Commentary was unfair to U's O'Brien

The Nov. 18 commentary by Adam Platt ("When it comes to LRT: It's not all about U"), was nothing more than a blatant personal attack on University of Minnesota Vice President for University Services Kathleen O'Brien. In her approximately 30-year career in public service, she has been shown to be a fiscally responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. If anyone knows the issues of the Minneapolis campus of the university, it is the former Second Ward Minneapolis City Council member and former Minneapolis city coordinator. Moreover, O'Brien has been a proponent of light-rail transit since the initial planning stages.

Platt is correct in one aspect: The U of M belongs to the citizens of the state of Minnesota, who have invested millions of dollars toward buildings and equipment and who help fund research. So why is it arrogant for the U of M to try to protect the taxpayers' investment?

In our rush to get dollars to fund LRT, let's not forget the dollars we have already spent. If there is any damage, we can fix it later? At what cost to the taxpayers of Minnesota? Who is being arrogant: those who discount the possible damage to the U of M infrastructure (money already spent) or those who do not care how much the taxpayers will have to spend to repair the damage (damage which could have been prevented)?

PATRICIA SWIDERSKI, ST. LOUIS PARK

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Editorial: Our boomer-elders are a state asset

Nov 24, 2009 at 02:44 PM

It's increasingly clear that money for public work is going to be scarce in Minnesota for a number of years. But the state's human capital forecast for the next decade is more hopeful. The reason: The number of 65- to 74-year-olds is about to spike.

Minnesota will soon be rich in physically active, well-educated, "young" senior citizens. That will be true for the rest of the nation, too, of course, as the first wave of the baby boom generation turns 65 in 2011.

What makes that gray wave especially good news for Minnesota is that its older adults already lead the nation in volunteering. They already have acquired the habit of regularly donating time for activities that shore up the quality of life in their communities -- delivering meals, stocking food shelves, mentoring young people, chauffeuring the nondriving elderly, caring for preschool children and more.

Data collected from 2006 to 2008 by the U.S. Census Bureau specific to the Twin Cities area show that more than 40 percent of boomers and more than 37 percent of people age 65 and older reported doing volunteer work in the past year. Those were the highest responses among 25 metropolitan areas surveyed. The number of people who have passed their 65th birthday is expected to double in the Twin Cities in the next 20 years, as the number of younger people stays flat.

Some of those "younger" elders will still be in the workforce for a while. Most economists now expect paid labor by workers past age 65 to become more common, even after today's rocky economy stabilizes. But the sheer number of boomers says that even if a larger share of them than their predecessors collect paychecks into their 70s, the number of 65- to 74-year-olds able to devote more time to volunteering will still swell in the coming decade.

That added human capital was mentioned repeatedly at a Nov. 17 conference at the University of Minnesota that considered ways to confront a looming problem for Minnesota: How will a financially strapped state deal with the rising cost of long-term care for the state's frail elderly?

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E.J. Dionne Jr.: Afghanistan plan may land in the middle

E.J. Dionne Jr.| Nov 24, 2009 at 02:45 PM

When there is no good solution to a problem, a president has three options. One is to avoid the problem. The second is to pick the least bad of the available options. The third is to mix and match among the proposed solutions and minimize the long-term damage any decision will cause.

Afghanistan has presented President Obama with exactly this situation, and he is soon likely to settle on something closest to the third approach.

This will make no one very happy. Yet it might be the least dangerous choice.

If we wanted to be successful in Afghanistan, we wouldn't choose to start from where we are now. We wouldn't have put this war on the back burner for so long, and we would have dealt much earlier with the debilitating deficiencies of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Obama can change none of this. And unlike enthusiasts for an all-out counterinsurgency strategy, Obama knows he has to make a decision that's sustainable over the long run, which means taking into account domestic economic and political realities.

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Pamela Alexander, Julie Stewart: Cocaine sentencing disparity must end

PAMELA ALEXANDER and JULIE STEWART| Nov 24, 2009 at 02:46 PM

We hope Congress was listening Wednesday when the nation's top prosecutor, Attorney General Eric Holder, told the Senate: "There are few areas of the law that cry out for reform more than federal cocaine sentencing policy."

Pending legislation in both houses of Congress would eliminate the so-called "100-to-1" ratio between crack and powder cocaine. That ratio means that offenders get a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for a crime involving 5 grams of crack -- but that it takes a hundred times that amount (500 grams) of powder cocaine to trigger the same prison term. Fifty grams of crack -- or 5,000 grams of powder cocaine -- garners a 10-year mandatory minimum.

Holder is right to put cocaine at the top of his reform list: No criminal-sentencing laws are more unjust and indefensible than those for federal crack-cocaine crimes. And for years, bipartisan support has been building to reform these laws. Republicans, Democrats, the Department of Justice, judges, the public, criminal-justice experts and the U.S. Sentencing Commission agree that the sentencing disparity isn't just unfair, it's also a nasty smear on the justice system.

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