Public Agenda: Public Engagers Newsfeed

You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform

Allison Rizzolo — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:25:04 -0500

Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.

A new book from Jean Johnson provides a resource for education leaders on a variety of reform areas, including evaluating teachers, turning around low-performing schools, and building support for world-class standards. You Can't Do It Alone, from Rowman & Littlefield, summarizes a decade of Public Agenda opinion research among teachers, parents, and the public. It offers tips on what leaders can do to more successfully engage these groups in reform areas and integrates a theory of change and public learning developed by our founder Daniel Yankelovich. It also provides some practical rules of the road for promoting the kind of dialogue that leads to consensus and action.

To propel change-and to sustain it-school leaders need to listen thoughtfully to the community, act in ways that alleviate negative response and engage teachers, parents, students and the broader community in the mission of reform.

Community Conversations: Working together to improve student success

Allison Rizzolo — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:02:51 -0400

The guest list for a community conversation in Coolidge, Arizona two weeks ago included small business owners, faculty and administration of colleges and universities, students, K-12 teachers and principals, representatives from local community-based organizations and even the chief of police. It was an impressively diverse group gathering to talk to about how to improve the success and completion rates of college and university students in their community.

The meeting is part of an initiative, funded by the Lumina Foundation, to increase productivity within US higher education nationwide, particularly among 2- and 4-year public institutions. As part of this effort, Public Agenda is training moderators and recorders for community conversations of this kind in multiple states.

After 2 hours of small group dialogues using our Choicework model as a discussion guide, the participants reconvened to share their thoughts on next steps. Every group agreed that partnerships between K-12 institutions, community colleges and universities will be essential for ensuring readiness and, ultimately, completion for their community's students. We are hopeful that communities across the country are able to capture the energy of dialogues like this one and mobilize to increase the success of students in their community.

Engaging Your Community: Core Principles Continued

Allison Rizzolo — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:12:29 -0400

Engaging the public in a genuine and robust manner will be central to moving our nation forward in these challenging times. Last week we described the first of the ten core principles that undergird our public engagement work. This week we bring you two more, both of which speak directly to the frustrations of the public in this moment:

Attend to people's leading concerns

It's a natural response to open up more readily to people who address your concerns, rather than ignoring them in favor of their own. Whether you are a leader in your community, engaging your constituents, or one community member trying to engage others, find out what matters to people, and keep those issues in mind. Especially when there are gaps between the priorities of different groups, people will be most receptive to your concerns if the issues that they feel most concerned about are acknowledged and addressed.

Reach beyond the "usual suspects"

It's easy to bring together and talk to those people who are already powerfully involved in an issue, as well as those who love to sound off in public. Finding ways to include or represent the broader public, especially those whose voices have traditionally been excluded, is a more challenging proposition. This takes special, creative approaches to public outreach, dialogue and engagement. For examples of this in action, check out our list of case studies, as well as Planet Forward-- an innovative, multimedia example of ambitious grassroots engagement.

Look for more principles of public engagement here in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you have any questions, just ask—either here, in the comments, or on our Facebook page or via Twitter. If you are looking for more tools, including information about our Choicework guides, which are deliberative discussion starters for flexible use among diverse participants, and their corresponding videos, as well as case studies in public engagement, check out the public engagement section of our website.

Occupy Wall Street: Can it become a force for change?

Allison Rizzolo — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:21:08 -0400

Our system is broken. While our leaders bicker about inconsequential issues and refuse to have constructive dialogue about the important ones, the voice of the average American is lost entirely.

Members of the public feel frustrated, powerless and dissatisfied over the way issues are being addressed and who has access to that conversation. This frustration has frequently bubbled over into protest the past few years. The latest manifestation of a variety of populist movements, Occupy Wall Street, seems to have caught on as it overflows into other cities.

Some have criticized the Occupy Wall Street movement for being unclear and not iterating actionable solutions. We are most concerned that this populist phenomenon could get unwieldy without a positive vision of a better way to solve problems.

The public, for all of its frustration, IS optimistic. In a recent poll from CNN, 81% of respondents said the government can be fixed. Can the Occupy Wall Street movement become a force for change, rather than degenerating into an oversimplification of the nation's problems or adding to the us-versus-them, name-calling status quo?

An essential part of this will be a clearer vision of an alternate way forward, one that is pragmatic and that doesn't oversimplify the many challenges, economic and otherwise, facing our nation.

Public Agenda believes that a better way exists, one that is less polarizing and that channels conflict into a resolution instead of gridlock. We believe that diversity of opinion is healthy, but that disagreements must not be emphasized so much that shared aims are lost completely, and that pragmatic solutions to the real needs that people are struggling with must take precedence over partisan gamesmanship or ideological purity.

We are optimistic that our country can have productive conversations that include diverse points of view, reach resolution and work together to move forward as a people. Working toward this goal is the challenge of our times.

Photo by Mat McDermott via Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Engaging Your Community: Core Principles

Allison Rizzolo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:04:06 -0400

We are swiftly approaching the heart of another election cycle, and the town halls and open forums have begun. If past election seasons are any guide, at best these will be genuine, though inept attempts at including the public's voice. At worst, they will be a calculated farce. Meanwhile, the government again barely averted a shutdown, and partisan bickering has moved into the territory of twitter hashtags.

What is the failure of events like town halls? As Dan Yankelovich, cofounder of Public Agenda, points out, during these public hearings, in which citizens supposedly express their views, two kinds of “voices” tend to predominate: the angriest and the most organized. The general public, and certainly those who have been traditionally marginalized, are rarely represented in any meaningful fashion.

Authentic public engagement, by contrast, is a highly inclusive problem-solving approach through which regular citizens deliberate and collaborate on complex public problems. While this may sound complicated, and even overwhelming, there are a number of logical and concrete considerations to take into account. Paying attention to them will increase your success in initiating more inclusive dialogue, deliberation and collaboration on tough issues in your community.

But why should you? If we want to solve the complex and urgent problems we face as a nation, we must have more honest, authentic, well-designed dialogue that gives voice to the broader public to counterbalance the partisan ideologues that tend to dominate the airwaves. Rather than relegating people to the sidelines, authentic engagement invites them to join the public dialogue surrounding a problem and provides them the tools to do so productively. As a result, leaders know where the public stands as problem solving progresses, while citizens themselves contribute to solutions through their input, ideas and actions.

In short, authentic and skillful engagement with a broad cross section of community members improves results by:

Bringing together multiple points of view in order to inform decisions.
Creating legitimacy and a sense of shared responsibility by involving the public and diverse
stakeholders early and often in a change process, rather than after decisions have been made.
Fostering new allies and collaborations.
Stimulating broad awareness and momentum for change.

While broad-based public engagement is not possible or appropriate for every decision, it can be the right move for addressing many kinds of public problems and developing and implementing many important decisions and initiatives—particularly those whose success and long-term sustainability will depend on the support and concerted actions of many varied stakeholders.

Now, where to begin? Whether you are an expert on the policy issues facing your community or simply someone eager to start productive dialogue and actually get things done, there are a number of principles to keep in mind.

Based on our three decades of experience in engaging various publics in important issues, we have formulated ten principles of public engagement in a "primer" on the topic, published by our Center for Advances in Public Engagement. In the coming weeks, we will break these down for you step by step, examining each part of the process individually and in more detail.

First and perhaps foremost among these is:

Begin by listening

Understanding the public's starting point—where they enter the conversation Be alert to the issues that people in your community care about, the language they use to discuss them, and their concerns, aspirations, knowledge base, misperceptions and initial sense of direction with respect to solutions. Doing so will allow you to meet people where they are and engage them in ways that are meaningful in light of their interests, concerns and natural language. It will help you avoid making faulty assumptions about people’s positions or using jargon that, however useful to experts, is counterproductive when it comes to engaging the public.

Supported Students Graduate: Training for new college completion initiative kicks off in Miami

Allison Rizzolo — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:53:06 -0400

College completion can be a precarious path for many students, especially those enrolled in community college. Students need support to succeed, and providing this support is the aim of Completion by Design.

This new initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, imagines a world where community college students receive the support, inspiration and challenge they need to succeed. The partners in Completion by Design aim to prevent loss and increase momentum throughout the college process, from before students set foot on campus to the moment they graduate.

To kick off the planning year of Completion by Design, several of our staff members headed to Miami Dade College for an engagement facilitation training session. The event brought together over 70 participants from each of the CbD community colleges. These participants represented colleges in four different states and ranged from faculty and administrators to financial aid associates and student counselors.

At the end of the training, our goal was to send these representatives back to their campuses, ready to facilitate and record productive and engaging meetings on their campuses about the success of their students.

Public Agenda's Will Friedman, Alison Kadlec, Isaac Rowlett and Jyoti Gupta joined our partners at the Center for Civic Participation and the Center for Public Deliberation, and used some of our tested and proven methods to train the participants in basic facilitation skills for small group discussions. The participants took turns role playing and practiced the skills of moderating and recording. After each session, participants, observers and trainers debriefed, assessing themselves and others and offering comments and feedback.

"People at the beginning felt very confident that facilitation was easy," said Isaac. "They run meetings and head up classrooms on a regular basis. Yet what we heard is that they found true facilitation to be much more complex than what they had anticipated, and they were eager to continue to learn more."

Challenges to meaningful, authentic and comprehensive facilitation abound. Ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to speak, remaining neutral, balancing competing perspectives, dealing with time constraints and addressing some deeply and personally important issues are just some of the skills the facilitators worked to develop at this training.

Following the training, the representatives headed back to their campuses prepared to facilitate, throughout the next year, internal discussions with faculty, administration, student services and others about the challenges behind college completion, focusing especially on preventing loss and improving momentum. By encouraging these discussions, community colleges will determine where they are losing students and work to fix these loss points.

"The exciting thing," said Jyoti, "is that the energy around facilitation and the local and campus capacity building this training provided can be applied to any student success effort going forward in the future."

Don't Know Much About FAFSA

Allison Rizzolo — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:33:07 -0400

What does "FAFSA" mean to you?

Were you able to recognize the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the gateway paperwork to both federal and institutional aid? If not, you’re not alone: a full half of all young adults—those who benefit directly from the FAFSA—don’t know what it is, according to a new Public Agenda survey, One Degree of Separation: How Young Americans Who Don't Finish College See Their Chances for Success. What’s more, among young people with only high school diplomas, less than three in 10 know that FAFSA has something to do with financial aid.

The survey, the third in a series probing young people's attitudes on higher education and college completion, examined the views of more than 600 young adults aged 26 to 34 years old, both those who completed either a college degree or postsecondary certificate and those whose highest credential is a high school diploma.

Last month we told you how, among participants in the first survey of this series, seven in 10 of those students who left college before getting a degree did not have financial aid or scholarships. Meanwhile, previous Public Agenda research shows that the public's belief that a college education is necessary to get ahead is rising. These knowledge gaps about how to find help to pay for school, then, can be fatal hurdles for young people.

It’s not that young people with only a high school diploma don’t want to pursue higher education. Among participants in One Degree of Separation, nearly 4 in 10 say they've given "a lot of thought" to going back to school. And students who don’t have a college diploma are less confident about their financial future: only 36 percent of high school graduates say it's "very likely" they'll be financially secure in their lifetime, compared to 55 percent of college graduates.

Yet, while high school graduates admit to doubts about their financial future without a college degree, they are also greatly skeptical that going into debt for college would be worth it. Only 37 percent of high school graduates "strongly agree" that, even if you have to take out a loan, going college is worth it in the long run. Some 54 percent of college graduates strongly agree. Among both groups, almost nine in 10 agree that students have to borrow too much money to pay for college.

What do you think? Did you or your children complete the FAFSA form? Do students these days have to take out too much money to pay for college? Is a college education worth it in the long run?

The complete One Degree of Separation report, including full survey details and methodology, is available at www.publicagenda.org/onedegreeofseparation. Previous surveys in this series, which was sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, revealed other critical hurdles that keep young people from completing their education, such as the difficulty of juggling school, work and family life; and the limited counseling many students receive. Have a look at the reports in the series and weigh in on your thoughts here.

The Optimism Gap: Are Washington and the Public on the Same Track?

Scott Bittle — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:17:17 -0400

Reprinted from The Huffington Post

Part of leadership is conveying an air of optimism and confidence. Any management book, any memoir by a general, politician or basketball coach will tell you that. But what does it mean when leaders are more optimistic than the people they're supposed to be leading?

That's certainly been the situation in Washington over the past year. As part of a project to track attitudes about the national debt, Public Agenda has been using a Harris Interactive survey to examine the views of "Beltway influencers" -- which include executive and legislative staff, media, and executives in nonprofits and interest groups who shape policy. And these policymakers are significantly more confident that the country is "moving in the right direction," as opposed to being "seriously off on the wrong track," than the general public.

About half of the leaders we've surveyed since March 2010 say the country's moving in the right direction (48 percent said this in our most recent round of research, completed in April).

By contrast, 70 percent of the public told the CBS/New York Times survey in April that America is on the wrong track: a more than 20-point gap. What's more, this gap has widened: in February and October 2010, the CBS/Times survey (which uses the same wording as Harris) showed about six in 10 saying the nation's "seriously off on the wrong track."

The right direction/wrong track formulation has been around for decades now, and one reason why pollsters love it is that it's a gut-check question. You don't need to follow the news closely to answer it. Even the image is powerful and clear: is the country going off the rails or not?

Americans have always seen themselves as an optimistic nation. We've had generation gaps, credibility gaps, all kinds of divides between how leaders and experts look at problems compared to the public at large. But an optimism gap is something fundamental. There are multiple signs that the nation is in an uneasy mood, and has been for a while. The CBS/Times survey hasn't found a majority of the public saying we're moving in the right direction since 2003. Just last week, Gallup reported that fewer than half of Americans say young people today will have a better life than their parents, the first time that's happened in 30 years.

One possible reason is that the public sees a slipping of fortunes in their lives that they haven't seen before. In another Public Agenda survey, we found a significant number of Americans, even the four in 10 who say they're "struggling a lot" in the current economy, are more concerned about sliding down the ladder in the long term than about getting by today. They're more worried about paying for college and having a secure retirement than about paying the rent or mortgage in the short term. They also say that doing something about higher education costs, job training and preserving Social Security and Medicare would help them more than short-term fixes.

Another explanation may be about the leaders. President Obama likes to say "we are the people we have been waiting for," and people in Washington may take this to heart. Whatever their partisan differences, people believe they're inside the Beltway for a reason. They believe their policies are right and will work -- and if their party has been elected to office, they believe the public is behind them. This is just as true of Obama supporters as it is for the Tea Partiers. So if your side holds the reins of power -- and in a divided government both parties can make that claim -- then you've got reason for optimism. You might win. The world you're trying to create may still come to pass.

Plus, at least the Washington elites are at the table, and they generally understand the choices they face. That isn't always true of the public -- and that's not entirely the public's fault.

The problem is that the obsessive maneuvering, the bitter rhetoric, the obscure parliamentary tactics that are all part of "winning" the Beltway game don't look like progress to the public. They look confusing, off-putting, and not particularly relevant to what's worrying most Americans. At any given moment, it's very difficult for the average American who isn't obsessed with politics to figure out how any of this debate will really improve their lives. They don't get much help in sorting through the options before them, or the challenges the country faces. They're not sure whether a better world is on the way, because the way politicians and the media operate make it difficult to choose between different visions, or even see if what they're being offered is a better world at all.

That, in the end, may be the real threat in the optimism gap. It's another sign of a broader disconnect between leaders and the public. Leaders who can't make the public share their sense of optimism and promise may be managing the country, but they're not leading it. And unless those inside the Beltway do a better job of conveying why what they're doing matters -- why there's grounds for optimism -- then it's hard to see how that inside-the-Beltway sense of progress will carry over into outside the Beltway support.

The only way to ruin Social Security

Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:04:12 -0400

Reprinted from The Hill's Congress Blog

Let's start with the obvious. Social Security is a beloved and vital program that needs changes. Politicians are afraid to touch it, and some its staunchest supporters say we don't need to talk about it now because its problems aren't all that serious. The irony is that not talking about Social Security -- and not touching it -- is the riskiest choice of all.

If you've been following the debate over Social Security, maybe you've seen the year 2037 popping up regularly. That's when the Social Security system empties the assets from its Trust Fund, at least based on current projections. In 2037, Social Security will only be able to pay 78 percent of promised benefits, not the full amount people are expecting (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2010/tr2010.pdf).

It seems strange to us, but some people use this projection to argue that the situation with Social Security isn't so dire, and that we shouldn't be discussing it in the context of debate over the country's massive deficits (including columnist Bob Herbert, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/opinion/25herbert.html, or http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/11/09/deliberate-distortions-create-false-se...). Some argue that any discussion of Social Security's finances is just a stalking horse for a radical conservative plan to get rid of the program in favor of private accounts.

But there are multiple reasons to be alarmed by these numbers and multiple reasons to start talking about how to stabilize Social Security's funding now, not later:

Reason No. 1: "Having money" in the Trust Fund isn't as reassuring as it sounds.

For decades now, Social Security has been running a surplus, and the government has been using the extra revenue to pay other bills and avoid raising taxes. It's been putting special Treasury bonds into the Trust Fund in return. The government is obligated to pay the $2.6 trillion in special Treasury bills -- no doubt about that. That's only fair. The people who have been paying into the Social Security system for decades will get their checks. Unfortunately the Congressional Budget Office says Social Security will need to start dipping into the Trust Fund this year, and the money to cover the Treasury bills (estimated to be some $600 billion over the next decade) has come from somewhere. Since the government doesn't have the cash on hand, it will need to cut other spending, borrow even more money, or raise other taxes. This means there'll be even more pressure on the budget.

No. 2: Whatever we do to stabilize Social Security will work better if we do it earlier, and don't wait until the last minute.

If you believe the best solution is for higher income workers to pay Social Security taxes on more of their salaries (In 2011, Social Security taxes stop when your income hits $106,800), then it's better to start while most of the huge baby boom generation is still working and in the peak of their earning years. If you believe in trimming benefits for affluent retirees or pushing back the retirement age, then it's much better to let people know what to expect early, while they have time to make adjustments in their own planning. When it comes to retirement, you can put most of us into the "please don't surprise me" camp.

No. 3: A 20 percent drop in Social Security payments would be devastating.

The idea that Social Security could still pay 78 percent of what it's promised to pay shouldn't comfort anyone. Using current numbers as an analogy, the average payment would fall from around $1,200 a month to less than $1,000 -- that's $12,000 a year. (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/). Since low-income seniors get about 80 percent of their income from Social Security, the effect on them would be disastrous. Social Security makes up more than half of the income for seniors overall, so middle-income retirees would take a hit as well.

No. 4: 2037 isn't that far away.

True, it's not right around the corner, but as the saying goes, time flies. Most people can envision the time a couple of decades away when their small children finish college or when they finally pay off their mortgage. Most of us, in fact, make all sort of financial decisions with these future events in mind. And realistically, the country will start feeling the pinch much sooner than that, as the government works to come up with the money needed to repay the Social Security Trust Fund.

So if you care about Social Security and want it to remain strong, here's the dilemma: Are we going to start making the changes that will put it on a sound financial path, or are we going to keep procrastinating? Being seduced by the juggling act of trust-fund accounting carries real risks. If we let this problem go for another decade, all that's going to do is to let a relatively manageable problem grow into a terrible one. Right now, we can still implement relatively acceptable fixes, such as raising taxes on higher income workers or recalculating benefits for future retirees to protect lower-income Americans while asking more of Americans with means. Changes like this could take this problem off the table for a generation. But if we convince ourselves that the problem isn't so serious and wait until 2037 is breathing down our necks, the fixes will be big, jarring, and probably unfair.

So are we going to let 2037 be the year we break our promise to Americans who have worked hard for decades and counted on this country's sense of fair play? If we do, 2037 will be the year Americans should hang their heads in shame.

© 2011 Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson, authors of Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis

Scott Bittle, author of Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, is the executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, twice nominated for the Webby Award as best political site. He is also an award-winning journalist.

Jean Johnson, co-author of Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, is the Executive Vice President of Public Agenda, has more then 20 years of experience understanding public attitudes on a broad range of issues. She has also written for various publications such as USA Today, Education Week, and the Huffington Post.

Would Getting the Economy On Track Give Us A Free Pass Out of the Federal Budget Mess?

Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:50:27 -0400

Reprinted from Dallas South News

It looks like the country might finally be gearing up to tackle our massive federal deficits and growing federal debt. If history is any guide, serious debate about unpleasant things like cutting popular programs and raising taxes will be accompanied by plenty of people hawking miracle cures that will take away our pain.

So it’s no surprise that a lot of commentators, on both the left and the right, say that the real answer to the deficit and national debt is to fire up the economy and “grow our way out of it,” with some even calling economic growth “the miracle deficit cure.”

There’s hardly anything more popular than prosperity. Business people thrive when the economy is growing; it creates jobs and rising incomes so workers like it too. If you’re a comic book fan, even super-villains like Lex Luthor and the Penguin enjoy the benefits. With their far-flung business dealings, they pretty much pursued a pro-growth policy. For them, a growing economy meant there’s that much more to steal.

The truth is that we do need healthy economic growth to balance the budget. The other truth is that a growing economy simply won’t be enough.

If the economy grows, the government takes in more tax revenue, because businesses are more profitable and people are earning more money. Plus, if the overall economy is growing faster than the government is piling up debt, then the national debt keeps becoming a smaller and less troublesome part of the overall economic pie. Think of it like swimming with the tide, rather than against it. This is exactly what happened after World War II, when the national debt was at its historical peak in comparison to the whole economy. The post-war boom played a huge role in getting the debt down.

So why isn’t economic growth enough? The first catch is that all the projections say the national debt is going to grow faster than the economy, not the other way around.

Because of the double whammy of rising health care costs and an aging population, spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will grow faster than the overall economy will. Without changes, spending on these programs will grow so fast that there’s no way the economy could keep up.

What’s striking is how many analysts agree on this. That’s the assessment of all three of the government’s budget agencies: The White House Office of Management and Budget (under both Bush and Obama), the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and the Government Accountability Office. It’s stated flatly in the Financial Report of the United States Government, the government’s equivalent of a corporate annual report. Independent experts tell exactly the same story: “No reasonably foreseeable rate of economic growth would overcome this structural deficit,” concluded the Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States, a panel set up by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration. Those projections are the reason why all these groups consider the federal budget “unsustainable.”

There’s also the irritating fact of life that experts can’t agree on what we should do to unleash all this growth anyway. In fact, you can easily find an economist or a think tank who will argue that almost anything will expand the economy. Anything.

“Cut taxes! Cut regulation! Get government out of the way! It’ll spur growth!” say the conservatives.

“Spend more! Crack down on Wall Street! Close the income gap! Invest in education, and infrastructure. It’ll spur growth!” say the liberals.

And even with a growing economy, we still need to get spending in line with revenues. You know all those athletes and Hollywood stars who make millions and still wind up in bankruptcy court? Even when the money pours in, you still have to make ends meet.

We absolutely need economic growth. We need it to help solve our fiscal problems, and we need it for the jobs and prosperity all of us want. But there’s a big difference between “we can’t solve our budget problems if the economy doesn’t grow” and “if the economy grows everything will be fine.”

In the end, we have to make some decisions – - like deciding what we want the government to do for us, and what we’re willing to pay for it.

Scott Bittle, author of Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, is the executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, twice nominated for the Webby Award as best political site. He is also an award-winning journalist.

Jean Johnson, co-author of Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, is the Executive Vice President of Public Agenda, has more then 20 years of experience understanding public attitudes on a broad range of issues. She has also written for various publications such as USA Today, Education Week, and the Huffington Post.

For more information please visit WhereDoesTheMoneyGo.com

Turning the Clock Back Isn't Enough: The Nasty Surprise Awaiting the GOP on Health Care and the Deficit

Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:34:47 -0400

Reprinted from the Healthcare Blog

The Republicans who will take control of the House this January have made it clear there are two things they hate: deficits and President Obama’s healthcare reform. They’ve promised to reduce the first and repeal (or at least hobble) the second. But if you’re worried about deficits, repealing the Obama plan won’t do any good unless you’ve got a better idea. In fact, the numbers say repealing it could make the government’s budget problems worse.

Despite the outrage over spending on the Wall Street bailout, the stimulus or the Iraq war, at least these costs are temporary. But the combination of an aging population and health costs that keep rising faster than inflation means that spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are going up – - and they’ll keep going up for years on end. With an aging population, there will be more older people eligible for these programs. The health care they need will cost more on top of it.

When people argue about the costs of an aging America, they often lump Social Security and Medicare together like they were the identical twins of public policy. If they are twins, they’re more like the 1980s movie Twins, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as the world’s most improbable pair of brothers. Maybe you remember the iconic movie poster. It shows the two dressed alike, but with an enormous Schwarzenegger looming over DeVito. In the budget world, Medicare and Social Security are both problems, but Medicare is definitely played by Arnold. Here’s why.

Health care spending has been rising faster than the inflation rate for decades. In 2007, the Consumer Price Index went up 2.8 percent, and health spending went up 6 percent. In 1997 inflation went up 2.3 percent, and health spending went up 5.4 percent. In 1990, when inflation was 5.4 percent, health spending climbed nearly 11 percent.

That’s why Medicare is the real budget buster. The Government Accountability Office likes to explain the budget problem by talking about the $56 trillion in “unfunded liabilities,” the country faces over the next few decades, commitments the government has made to provide Social Security and Medicare for people paying into these programs now. About $34 trillion of that is Medicare alone.

That’s a mind-boggling number. You could throw out the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, the $787 billion stimulus package, the more than $1 trillion spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, even the $4 trillion the government will take in if we let the Bush tax cuts expire, and in the long term, we’ll still be in trouble if Medicare stays as it is now.

That means – and so few people in politics will say it flat out –that the government will go broke if it doesn’t either change Medicare or the broader health care system to control costs. That was true before the Obama plan was ever passed.

And after? Yes, the Obama plan costs more than $800 billion over the next decade to expand coverage and implement other changes. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says because the plan reduces Medicare spending, it will trim the deficit slightly over the next decade ($143 billion by 2019) and by $1 trillion or more after that. Plus, the Medicare trustees say the changes in the bill extend the life of Medicare’s trust fund by 12 years, to 2029, which is significant.

How can that be? Well, the Obama plan cuts what Medicare pays to doctors and hospitals down the line, raises some fees and taxes, and pays for research on ways to provide health care more cost-effectively. The projections depend on Congress following through on these changes planned in the law. If it doesn’t, there obviously won’t be any savings. What’s more, the projections assume the law actually succeeds in making the health care system more efficient, such as through new research into the best ways of providing care. If that doesn’t work – - and critics, including Medicare’s own actuary, are skeptical – - Medicare will cost more than projected.

So if we just repeal the Obama plan, and don’t find another way to cut Medicare’s costs, we’re back where we started: on our way to national bankruptcy. The same is true if Republicans go through with their plan to block the various provisions in the law. Given the way Washington often works, it would be easy – - all too easy – - for Congress to jettison the unpopular cost-cutting provisions of the Obama plan and keep the expensive (but more popular) parts that will expand and improve coverage.

In today’s hyperpartisan political climate, too many people believe it’s enough to block the other guy’s plan. That counts as a victory. But the truth is the status quo is not an option. And it’s not at all clear that the Republican ideas on health care, such as a voucher system for Medicare or eliminating the tax breaks to employers to provide insurance, are going to be any more popular with the public than the Democratic plan or do any more to reduce costs. The Republicans have mostly ridden the wave of “not this.” They haven’t done the hard work of preparing the public for “what now?” But “what now” on health care is the question that really matters on the budget. If we don’t answer it, a lot of the other ideas might turn out to be Band-Aids.

Scott Bittle, author of “Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis,” is the executive editor of Public Agenda Online and has won two Golden Quill awards for feature articles and was honored by the Philadelphia Press Association for daily newspaper writing.

Jean Johnson, co-author of “Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis,” is the Executive Vice President of Public Agenda, Jean Johnson has more then 20 years of experience understanding public attitudes on a broad range of issues. She has also written for various publications such as USA Today, Education Week, and the National Institute of Justice Journal.

For more information please visit PublicAgenda.org and follow the authors on Facebook and Twitter.

The Need to Speak Truth to Power

Scott Bittle — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:05:14 -0400

The Need to Speak Truth to Power

by Scott Bittle

Sometimes, the world turns on one person in a room willing to buck the trend.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, several key advisers were pushing President John F. Kennedy to order air strikes to take out Soviet missile bases, said Ambassador Donald Gregg, former envoy to South Korea and speaker at the June 15 Public Agenda/Maxwell School Policy Breakfast. Then Gen. Walter Sweeney, the head of the Strategic Air Command, told the president candidly: "I can't guarantee you I can hit every missile in Cuba."

"If it comes to the point where you have to break a rule or disobey orders or quit, do it," argued Donald Gregg, left, with Robert Siegel of NPR. (Photo courtesy of the Ford Foundation)

That turned the tide, away from air strikes and toward the blockade strategy that succeeded in ending the crisis, Gregg said. But that kind of candor is also still unusual in government and the military.

"Saying 'we can't complete the mission you want us to' is terribly, terribly important and very rare," Gregg said. "In Vietnam, it was always, 'yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full.'"

That kind of honesty is also critical as the United States faces critical decisions in places like Afghanistan and the Korean peninsula, he said in a conversation with Robert Siegal, the NPR journalist who moderates the breakfasts at the Ford Foundation.

Gregg started his career at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951, serving in Burma, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea. Later, he became national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, and was named ambassador to South Korea in 1989. He is also a former chairman of the Korea Society.

Next year will be a critical year for both Afghanistan and Korea, Gregg said. The Obama administration will be making preliminary decisions on the direction of the Afghan war this year and "really tough decisions" next year.

It's important for the United States to "leave respectably," and leave something positive behind us there, he said. A positive sign, he said, is the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in both Iraq and Afghanistan, to lead the CIA, and who might have more freedom to speak there than he did as a military officer.

Next year will be important in Korea as well, and one of the difficulties is that we still have trouble understanding the isolated North Korean regime, Gregg said.

"I call North Korea the longest-running failure in the history of American espionage, and I can say that because I was part of that failure for 30 years," he said. "We still don't know what they're thinking."

But from the North Korean point of view, Gregg said, the United States has been inconsistent as well, contradicting ourselves on decisions like whether to hold military exercises and including them in the "Axis of Evil" after making overtures for talks.

On the other hand, the United States has a good relationship with South Korea, a "very dynamic democracy" which has the potential to play a crucial role in Asia, he said.

A general Gregg knew in Vietnam once told him there were two kinds of commanders: "butt-kickers" and "example setters." Overall, Gregg said, the risk is that the "butt-kicking" type of leader will end up stifling creative thinking among their subordinates.

"The butt-kickers don't get nearly as good advice as the example-setters," he said.

We can also deceive ourselves when we "demonize" our opponents, he said. In cases like Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, we ended up clouding our own judgment. That's all the more reason why it's important to speak up.

One of the proudest moments of his career, Gregg said, came when he was CIA station chief in Seoul during a South Korean crackdown on dissent. Gregg said he disobeyed orders to lodge a personal protest over the case of a professor who died while in the custody of the South Korean intelligence service. Shortly after, the head of the agency was replaced.

He tells that story when he speaks to CIA recruits.

"The ability to speak truth to power is terribly important to a society," Gregg said. "If it comes to the point where you have to break a rule or disobey orders or quit, do it."

Watch video of the event:

Getting Across the Finish Line in Education

Scott Bittle — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:21:06 -0400

There's good news this week on getting more young people through high school – and bad news on getting them beyond it.
The "Diplomas Count" report, produced by Education Week and Editorial Projects in Education, found high school graduation rates have increased significantly after two years of decline. The high school graduation rate is 72 percent, a jump of three points in just a year. But 1.2 million students still fail to earn diplomas. And a staggering number of those dropouts, fully one in five, come from just 25 school districts, almost all major urban school systems.
Those diplomas are crucial if students are to get the post-secondary education they increasingly need to get ahead. While that's usually been defined as a four-year college, in fact there are many other options, such as community colleges and trade schools, and the report looks at the challenges facing those students.
One of those challenges, of course, is money. In a separate report, The Education Trust concludes the average low-income family must pay or borrow a much bigger share of its annual income – 72 percent -- to send a child to a four-year college. By contrast, middle-class families only need to contribute 27 percent of their income, and high-income families 14 percent.
Young people who don't complete postsecondary education are more likely to be lower-income – and they're mostly facing the financial burden on their own, according to Public Agenda's With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them study. Nearly 6 in 10 students in our study who left higher education without graduating say they had to pay their own college costs, rather than being able to count on help from their families. About 7 in 10 of those who leave school report that they did not have scholarships or financial aid, compared with about 4 in 10 of those who graduate.
And 3 in 10 of those who didn't graduate said they have college loans, giving them the worst of both worlds: no diploma, but still with loans to pay.
In the end, young people told us the biggest factor in failing to get a diploma is the difficult juggling act they face in handling school, work and family obligations. Frequently, something's got to give, and the thing that often gives is completing school.
Our statistics tell the story, but this tale is something young people can tell themselves: have a look at this video, which Public Agenda produced in partnership with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Pathways Project.

Jeremy Hess

David White — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:27:15 -0400

Jeremy works within the Research department to help develop and conduct Public Agenda's many research projects. He brings to the research team background in quantitative and qualitative research, digital communications, and social issue advocacy. His research interests lie in the intersection of technology and social policy: the patterning of social relations according to the logic of new media.

He is a graduate of Macalester College, where he earned a BA in Sociology.

College Presidents Are Too Complacent

Scott Bittle — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:54:48 -0400

The Chronicle of Higher Education is calling its new major survey of the public and college presidents "A Crisis of Confidence," but Public Agenda co-founder Daniel Yankelovich has a different take. He argues that data shows more complacency among college presidents than crisis.

The Chronicle survey, conducted with the Pew Research Center, finds the public's concern about college costs at an all-time high, and that 1 in 3 college presidents say higher education is moving in the wrong direction.

Yankelovich argues that the survey also shows a lot of satisfaction with things as they are -- perhaps too much:

Though some Americans grumble about not getting great value for their money, the vast majority are pretty well satisfied with the performance of higher education. Most Americans who have been exposed to higher education feel that their investment has been a sound one. A majority of college presidents believe that higher education is moving in the right direction. Almost four out of five (76 percent) say they are convinced that our higher-education system is doing a good or an excellent job of providing value for the money spent by students and their families.

That could mean both the public and college leaders are still reacting to the "old normal," and not grappoing with the trends that threaten social mobility, he writes.

From the perspective of the trends that trouble me, this high level of satisfaction signals a lack of awareness of the dangers that lie ahead. The message I get from the survey of college presidents is, "We are doing just fine under difficult circumstances. If you send us more money and better-prepared high-school students, we can do an even better job." Neither the general public nor the presidents of our colleges seem conscious of the seriousness of the threat; they therefore lack the sense of urgency needed to confront it.

You can read Yankelovich's full op-ed at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For more on the challenges facing higher education -- and how both the public and college stakeholders see them, check out Public Agenda's research on higher education.

The Optimism Gap: Are Washington and the Public on the Same Track?

Scott Bittle — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:35:03 -0400

Part of leadership is conveying an air of optimism and confidence. Any management book, any memoir by a general, politician or basketball coach will tell you that. But what does it mean when leaders are more optimistic than the people they're supposed to be leading?

That's the question raised by the latest edition of Public Agenda's survey of Beltway influencers, The Buck Stops Where? What D.C. Influencers Say About The National Debt. About half of the leaders we've surveyed since March 2010 say the country's moving in the right direction (48 percent said this in our most recent round of research, completed in April).

By contrast, 70 percent of the public told the CBS/New York Times survey in April that America is on the wrong track: a more than 20-point gap. What's more, this gap has widened: in February and October 2010, the CBS/Times survey (which uses the same wording as Harris) showed about six in 10 saying the nation's "seriously off on the wrong track."

So what are the implications? Have a look at the full blog post on the subject,available at the Huffington Post.

The Buck Stops Where? May 2011

David White — Mon, 09 May 2011 10:54:33 -0400

The Buck Stops Where?

May 2011 Update:
What D.C. Influencers And The Public Say About The National Debt

Research And Analysis Prepared For The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation As Part Of Choosing Our Fiscal Future

See Full Survey Results
Download News Release (pdf)

Part III in a series of Public Agenda reports

By Scott Bittle and Jon Rochkind, with Samantha DuPont

For further information, contact: Michael Remaley at 917-753-4890 or mremaley@publicagenda.org

D.C. Leaders More Worried, Yet More Optimistic
About Solving Nation’s Fiscal Problems

With a shutdown barely averted and another crisis looming on extending the nation’s debt ceiling, the federal deficit and national debt has more than doubled as a concern for “movers and shakers” in Washington, according to a new survey by Public Agenda. But even within the Beltway elite, there are major differences in perceptions on the chances for solving the problem.

While the economy and jobs remain the most important concerns for Beltway influencers, as they are for the rest of America, their specific concerns about the deficit and national debt have increased. The percentage who say the deficit, debt, or the budget and government spending are the most important problems have increased to 25 percent, on a par with the economy.

This is the third round of "The Buck Stops Where? What D.C. Influencers Say About the National Debt," a series of surveys designed by Public Agenda, fielded by Harris Interactive and supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is committed to informing the American public and policymakers of the fiscal realities facing the country. The research has been conducted at six-month intervals to track how “movers and shakers” in Washington view this vital issue. This latest survey was conducted among 305 Beltway Influencers* between February 28 and March 28, 2011.

The survey was in the field as a new Congress took office and during the run-up to the debate over a possible government shutdown and raising the nation’s debt ceiling. The goal is to provide a running assessment of how those who set the debate and make the decisions in Washington view this problem.

The more than 300 influencers surveyed break down into two groups:

"Leaders" included high-level federal government staffers in the executive and legislative branches, as well as media, nonprofit and interest group executives who are key players in crafting and implementing policies.

"Opinion elites" included politically active citizens in the Washington metro area. This group may not be formally part of the government, but they are educated, affluent and regularly participate in civic activism. They're not decision makers, but they do provide the context in which decision makers operate.

The level of concern among both leaders and elites specifically about the national debt has increased significantly over the year we’ve been conducting this survey. Taken as a group, the percentage who said the federal deficit, national debt, or the budget/government spending was the most important problem rose 14 points, from 11 percent to 25 percent, while concern about the economy has fallen from 36 percent to 23 percent.

The two groups do show differences, however. In March 2010, 35 percent of leaders and 37 percent of elites cited the economy generally as the most important problem facing the country. This stayed at the same level for leaders but jumped to 43 percent for elites in October. By this April, however, that fell 12 points for leaders to 26 percent and 22 points for elites to 21 percent.

By contrast, the percentage over the past year who said the federal deficit and national debt was the most important problem rose 15 points for leaders, from 13 percent to 28 percent, and 12 points for elites, from 9 percent to 21 percent.

Other surveys show concern about the budget rising among the general public, although the economy remains the public’s primary worry. A Gallup poll in April showed 17 percent citing the budget as the most important problem facing the nation, the highest level since 1996. But that is still behind the economy overall (26 percent) and unemployment (19 percent).

The other major trend is that leaders, the actual decision-makers in the nation’s capital, have grown more optimistic about the chances for solving the problem – but the opinion elites are as skeptical as they ever were.

For example, leaders are notably more likely to report that “elected officials are often factoring in the national debt in their decisions”: 41 percent say this, a 19-point increase from a year ago. Also, while a majority of leaders still believe that “pragmatic solutions to the national debt will be impossible to achieve due to partisan politics,” that number has fallen from 78 percent a year ago to 66 percent now. For elites, the number really hasn’t changed at all (83 percent now vs. 85 percent last year). Yet both groups do believe solutions exist. Over the course of the survey, the number of both leaders and elites who say there are “at least several practical approaches” to solving the nation’s fiscal problems has held fairly stable, at about 8 in 10.

Then again, leaders are more optimistic overall than elites -- and, for that matter, the general public. Nearly half of leaders, 48 percent, say the country is going in the right direction, while 44 percent say it's “off on the wrong track.” Among Washington elites, 62 percent say the country’s on the wrong track, which is much closer to the general public (70 percent in the April New York Times/CBS News poll).

Finally, the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats on this issue can be enormous, both in terms of perception and intensity of feeling. For example:

Nine in 10 Republicans say they “strongly agree” that “if we do not act to get the national debt under control, it will overwhelm the federal budget and damage the economy in the long run.” Only 40 percent of Democrats strongly agree.

Nine in 10 Republicans (93 percent) say the new health care reform law will increase the national debt over the next 10 years; 58 percent of Democrats say it will decrease the debt.

Seven in 10 Democrats (68 percent) strongly agree that both cutting spending and raising taxes will be needed to reduce the debt; only 24 percent of Republicans say the same.

However, strong majorities of both Democrats (90 percent) and Republicans (77 percent) say there are practical approaches available to meet the country’s needs without causing the national debt to significantly rise.

“The actual decision-makers in Washington, both in and out of government, seem to be growing a little more optimistic that they can solve our fiscal problems,” said Scott Bittle, executive vice president and director of public issue analysis at Public Agenda. “But they’re not communicating that optimism to the chorus of Washington onlookers. Making the positive side of the debate clearer might help build an environment where solutions can be found.”

Other Reports In This Series

Part I in this series of reports by Public Agenda, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of the Choosing Our Fiscal Future initiative, was released in June 2010. Part II was released in November 2010.

Methodology

This Beltway Influencer survey was conducted by Harris Interactive® on behalf of Public Agenda and the Macarthur Foundation between February 28 and March 28, 2011, among a total of 305 Beltway Influencers, comprised of 150 DC Opinion Elite, and 155 “Leaders,” which consist of 50 Government (Congressional Staffers and Executive Branch), 45 Media, and 60 Thought Leaders from NGO’s, Interest Groups, Foundations and Associations. Elite surveys were conducted online and figures were weighted on age, sex, education, race, household income and education where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the DC Opinion Elite population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for the D.C. Opinion Elite respondents’ propensity to be online. The Leader group survey was conducted via telephone and was not weighted.

For more information please contact Michael Remaley at (917) 753-4890 or mremaley@publicagenda.org.

To learn more about this update of "The Buck Stops Where?", see the full survey results. Also available: the first report in this series of surveys, released in June 2010, along with its Powerpoint presentation, the full survey results and video of a Washington, D.C., panel discussion of the findings of that report.

About The Choosing Our Fiscal Future Initiative

"The Buck Stops Where?" series of public opinion surveys on the national debt is a companion project to Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future, a report which was the culmination of two years of effort by the Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States, organized by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Comprised of experts who represent a diversity of disciplines, a wealth of experience, and a wide range of political and policy views, the report not only lays out the consequences of inaction, but also shows a variety of paths toward a sustainable fiscal future for America. In addition, it provides a set of practical tests that can be applied to assess the fiscal prudence of federal budget proposals. You can find out more about the report at OurFiscalFuture.org.

About Public Agenda

Founded in 1975 by social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich and former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Public Agenda's mission is to improve public problem solving through nonpartisan research, engagement and communications. Our main web site is PublicAgenda.org, and we're also on Facebook and Twitter.

You can also learn more about the nation's finances on the Our Fiscal Future web site, Facebook page, and on the @FiscalFuture Twitter feed.

Office: 6 East 39th Street, 9th Floor | New York, NY 10016 | T: 212.686.6610 | F: 212.889.3461

About The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.

The MacArthur Foundation is on the web at MacFound.org and is also on Twitter.

Sober Views on a Future Slipping Away

Scott Bittle — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:18:17 -0400

A USAToday/Gallup poll this week reached a milestone, and not a good one: for the first time in nearly 30 years, most Americans say today’s youth won’t be better off than their parents.

The survey found only 44 percent of the general public believe today’s young people will be better off, and there’s even greater doubt among older people (only 36 percent of those aged 50 to 64, for example) and among those who make more than $75,000 a year.

This is an even lower rating than at the height of the Great Recession (59 percent in 2009) or the dark days after 9/11 (71 percent in December 2001).

Our Slip-Sliding Away survey released earlier this year may shed some light on those results. In our survey, we found that four in 10 Americans say they’re struggling “a lot” in the current economy. But the striking thing to us what that even those who are struggling to pay bills in the here and now are more concerned about their long-term security. They’re more worried about being able to retire and pay for their children’s college education than they are about making their current bills.

And when asked what would help struggling people the most, the public leans toward higher education, job training, and preserving Social Security and Medicare – all questions focused on the future.

Based on this, there’s a pervasive worry about permanently sliding down the economic ladder – and this could be reflected in the data about how young people will fare in the future.

Young Texans Talk About Barriers to College Completion

Katherine Fung — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:54:56 -0400

As part of the Lumina Foundation’s Productivity Initiative, Public Agenda partnered with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) and the Pathways Project to elevate the voices of students in the state level conversations around retention, persistence, and completion of postsecondary education. Public Agenda conducted a series of focus groups across Texas with both current students and those who started but didn’t complete their education at two- and four-year institutions for the report "With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them". In this video, students talk about the barriers they face and the ways that high schools and colleges help or hurt them in reaching their goals.

David Brooks at Maxwell School/Public Agenda Policy Breakfast

Katherine Fung — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:30:29 -0400

David Brooks, op-ed columnist at the New York Times, discussed his new book "The Social Animal" at the Maxwell School/Public Agenda Policy Breakfast at the Ford Foundation on April 18. The journalist sat down with with Robert Siegel, senior host of All Things Considered on NPR, to talk about the basis of human decision-making, which he argues is emotion and not rational calculations as most people believe. Brooks spoke about the shortcomings of numerous rational policy models, including privatization in the former USSR and the handling of the current budget crisis, where decision makers failed to consider how people's emotions would guide their reactions to policies.

In Their Own Voices: Young Texans Talk About Barriers to College Completion

David White — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:06:43 -0400

In Their Own Voices: Young Texans Talk About Barriers to College Completion

The statistics around college completion are powerful, but the voices of the students struggling to achieve their educational goals are even more powerful.

Through its ongoing work as part of the Lumina Foundation’s Productivity Initiative, Public Agenda partnered with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) and the Pathways Project to elevate the voices of students in the state level conversations around retention, persistence, and completion of postsecondary education.

To help inform the Board’s efforts, Public Agenda conducted a series of focus groups across Texas with both current students and those who started but didn’t complete their education at two- and four-year institutions. We tried to better understand the barriers these students face and the ways that high schools and colleges help or hurt them in reaching their goals. We hope this report will help add texture and depth to the Pathway Project’s ongoing research around issues associated with college completion. This project builds on recent research conducted by Public Agenda on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the reports With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College and Can I Get a Little Help Here: How an Overstretched High School Guidance System Is Undermining Students’ College Aspirations.

You can get the full report here. Based on the focus group research, Public Agenda also created this video, where the young people speak for themselves.

Key findings from the report include:

Finding 1: Postsecondary attainment is highly valued by all, though some question whether or not it is worth the effort
The value of receiving a college degree and the associated benefits of getting a diploma are clear
to all audiences. At the same time, concerns about debt and the economy cause some to wonder
if a degree is really worth the effort.

Finding 2: Inadequate academic preparation and poor advising in high school set the stage for failure
Expectations for student achievement, especially among challenged students, appear to be
diminished through a focus on standardized tests at school and a lack of good advice from
faculty, school counselors or family.

Finding 3: For those without strong support systems, solid preparation, and a clear sense of purpose, the transition to college can quickly lead to a desire to give up
Between more challenging academics, financial issues and family concerns, pressures mount
quickly and powerfully to derail students, particularly those who enter college without clear
goals.

Finding 4: Faculty at two-year institutions get better marks than faculty at four-year
institutions or advisers at any type of institution
The intimacy of the small class structure and the quality of interaction between faculty and
students generally make the experience at two-year institutions more positive for students, yet
the advising system leaves many feeling adrift.

You might also be interested in these other Public Agenda reports on higher education:

With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them Our national survey of young adults on post-secondary education, funded by the Gates Foundation. Young people told us the juggling act between work, school and family was the greatest challenge they faced.

Can I Get a Little Advice Here? Our second survey on college completion asked young Americans how much help they received from the high school guidance system when it comes to choosing a college or career or getting financial aid for college. In too many cases, young people tell us, the answer is "not much."

Engaging Adjunct and Full-Time Faculty in Student Success Innovation This report, the first in the Cutting Edge series by our Public Engagement team for Achieving the Dream, explores how to get both full-time and adjunct faculty engaged in changing institutions and closing student achievement gaps.

Video: Tackling the Cutting Edge Issues and Engaging Faculty in Student Success

Scott Bittle — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:58:44 -0400

One of the big opportunities in turning around the nation's dismal college completion numbers is engaging faculty members in changing institutions. And that means both full-time and adjunct faculty, who bear a lot of the teaching load but who are often overlooked when it comes to attacking this problem.

Public Agenda's new Cutting Edge paper on engaging faculty has been getting a lot of attention, and President Will Friedman participated in a panel discussion on the challenge at the Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute in February. You can see video of the session below (it's in two parts). Or, you can follow these links to Part 1 and Part 2 of the session.

If you want to know more about our work on college completion and faculty engagement, just contact us.

'Educate Your Emotions': David Brooks at Policy Breakfast

Scott Bittle — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:56:53 -0400

As a society, we often misunderstand the links between emotion and reason – and as a result we often make poor decisions on issues ranging from education to the federal budget to foreign policy, says New York Times columnist and author David Brooks. As the latest speaker in the Maxwell School/Public Agenda Policy Breakfast series, Brooks said we have to “educate our emotions” through the arts and sports, because emotion influences our rational choices. “The more you make your emotional responses subtle and widen the repertoire of your emotions, the more rational you're going to be," he said. You can read more about his talk, or watch the video here.

The Right Word of Advice, at the Right Time

Scott Bittle — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:22:45 -0400

A new survey underlines one of the increasingly important problems surrounding education: are students getting the help they need to make the right decisions?

An AP-Roper survey of 18-to-24 year-olds released this week found that most gave their schools low marks for helping them find the right college, choose a field of study, or come up with ways to pay for their schooling.

Public Agenda research last year, “Can I Get a Little Advice Here?”, found very similar results. Based on a national survey of young adults, ages 22 to 30, we found six in 10 of those who went on to further education gave their high school counselors poor grades for their college advice, and nearly half say they felt like "just a face in the crowd."

What’s more, young people who say they got poor counseling are more likely to say that they would have attended a different school if money were not an issue, by a 46 percent to 35 percent margin. They are also less likely to say that they received a scholarship or financial aid for college; only about 4 in 10 say they got financial help compared with more than half of those who believe that they received better counseling.

There’s a lot of evidence that the nation’s badly overstretched guidance system is a factor in our college completion problem, particularly for students who are the first in their family to go to college and don’t have many other sources of advice. Federal statistics show nearly 6 in 10 public school students are from families where neither parent has completed college. But while there’s consistent feedback from students that the current system isn’t working, more needs to be done to act on that feedback.

Those students’ voices should be heard – and if they’re not, the nation’s efforts to solve the college completion problem could still be derailed.

Which Came First: The Reason or the Emotion?

Allison Rizzolo — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:29:27 -0400

Which Came First:
The Reason or the Emotion?

By Allison Rizzolo

Are you a very important person?

In 1950, Gallup asked this of high school seniors. Twelve percent responded "yes." When asked the same question in 2005, 80% responded affirmatively. According to journalist David Brooks, this is symptomatic of a profound shift in emotion and culture in the United States, a shift that has turned us from a nation that celebrated citizenship at the expense of individualism to one that does the opposite, raising the individual above society.

"Emotion is the foundation for reason," argued David Brooks, left, with Robert Siegel of NPR. (Photo courtesy of the Ford Foundation)

Brooks, op-ed columnist at the New York Times and recent guest at the Maxwell School/ Public Agenda Policy Breakfast series, authored the book The Social Animal, in which he explores the interplay of emotion, reason and culture. Brooks sat down with fellow journalist Robert Siegel, senior host of All Things Considered on NPR, April 18 at the Ford Foundation, to discuss this interplay. (You can watch video of the event here.)

According to Brooks, while we often assume that human decision-making is based on rational calculations and incentives, research increasingly shows that emotion is in fact the foundation for reason in guiding behavior.

"What emotion does is it assigns value to things, it tells you what you want. When you look at something, you react to it, with a desire for it or an aversion to it, with an admiration for it or contempt to it. If you don't have that emotional repertoire, then you can't make rational decisions," said Brooks.

We have the power to educate our emotions and develop that repertoire, Brooks said.

"We have to educate our emotions, through poetry, music, sports. The more you make your emotional responses subtle and widen the repertoire of your emotions, the more rational you're going to be," he said.

Brooks came to explore the interplay of emotion and behavior after observing and covering the failure of numerous rational policy models throughout the course of his career. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Brooks notes, teams of economists were sent in with privatization and hard currency plans. Yet the economic efforts struggled because we misunderstood the cultural context of a nation that had lived under suspicion and dictatorship for decades. "We assumed their fundamental problems were all economic," Brooks said. "But the fundamental problem was the lack of social trust."

More recently, we have seen policy failures in Iraq, where the United States was oblivious to the psychological effects of the Hussein regime on the Iraqi people, and during the financial crisis, when we trusted financiers to make rational decisions under stress and underestimated what Brooks calls "emotional contagions" that swept through the profession, leading bankers to fail to identify risk.

For Brooks, the problem with the current heated budget debate is also a cultural one. During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, Brooks notes that people saw themselves as a member of a chain of generations. As such, society had a "visceral horror" against exacting a cost on future generations.

During the dramatic cultural shift of the 1960s, prevailing social attitudes attacked conformity, and in the time since, we have lost that sense of common citizenship. The result, said Brooks, is that we want more government than we are willing to collectively pay for.

Can we ever regain that sense of common citizenship? Brooks thinks so.

“Science puts bounds around our free will, but it doesn’t go away, because we have the power to educate our emotions," Brooks said.

Emotional education starts early and is intrinsically linked with personal relationships. In education, Brooks said, "the things that really matter are your ability to establish a connection with a teacher, your ability to control your impulses, your ability to establish social relationships with peers."

Brooks is "very optimistic" about education reform, with a caveat.

"My only concern is that as we cut, we're going to cut based on an old version of human capital, which says that the things we count are things we can measure, all other stuff is peripheral, and so we'll focus on the reading and math, which is important, but we'll cut the art and music, because we think that's peripheral, but if we pay attention, that's actually central," Brooks said. Things like poetry, sports and music also help keep kids in school.

“The things we think are ‘soft and squishy’ are actually hard and practical,” he said.

Watch video of the event:

Engaging College Faculty, in 10 Slides

Scott Bittle — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:30:29 -0400

Getting college faculty engaged in reform -- both full time instructors and adjuncts -- is critical for student success, but also a big challenge. But we've managed to boil it down to 10 slides in this presentation prepared for the American Association of Community Colleges conference.

Of course, there's also the full version, which you can find here in the first of our Cutting Edge series of working papers. This is all part of Public Agenda's work with Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, where we've developed core principles and promising practices for engaging faculty in changing institutions and closing student achievement gaps.

Better Than Chicken: Getting the Public Engaged

Scott Bittle — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:41:28 -0400

Is free chicken better than rhetoric when it comes to getting people to vote?

The blogosphere was buzzing this week over an experiment reported at a political science conference. A Utah researcher traveled door-to-door in the last election, offering two different pitches to go out and vote: a well-reasoned argument about democracy, or coupons for things like fried chicken. The coupons, perhaps not surprisingly, won.

At Public Agenda, we actually have evidence that the voting experience is better than fast food. But we also think the problems in our democracy go deeper than what happens on Election Day.

Certainly America’s low voter turnout is a longstanding problem, and troubling on a number of levels. When Public Agenda examined this in our Voting Experience Survey after the 2008 elections, we found that, despite concerns about long lines and problematic voting machines, actually going to the polls was a positive experience for most voters.

The vast majority of the voters we surveyed, 9 in 10, said they had a positive experience and that poll workers did a good job. Very few reported problems with long lines, technical problems or improper practices.

In fact, polling places got good marks compared to other places where people transact business in person. We didn’t ask about chicken specifically, but when it comes to being “very well-organized,” polling places beat out fast-food franchises by a wide margin (79 percent to 35 percent). Polling places were essentially tied with banks, and ahead of other government agencies where people tend to wait in line, like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Voting is often used as a yardstick for civic participation, and it’s important. But it’s also important to remember that the public needs to be engaged in ways beyond just voting. In between elections, we’re still making decisions as a society, and the public should be involved in those decisions, too. We’re facing a series of difficult public problems that are made much more difficult because leaders and the public frame them in different ways, and can’t reach across the divides in how they see them.

We go into elections with a public that isn’t getting much help understanding the choices they face – not the choices between candidates, necessarily, but the choices for actually solving the nation’s problems. We hear a lot more about personalities and character than options and tradeoffs. Character matters, clearly. But so does understanding the problems we face, and the options for dealing with them.

It’s that challenge – laying out the options in a way that people can understand, and helping people climb the “learning curve” they face – that trips the nation up between elections, when the real governing happens. And that’s not a problem that can be solved by voting people out of office. Or free chicken.

Connecting With the Public on Energy – But Which Public?

Scott Bittle — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:19:09 -0400

This week President Obama called for the nation to cut its oil imports by one-third by 2025 – no mean feat, given that the United States hasn’t been energy independent since cars had tail fins (1957, to be precise).

Energy security is important to the public, and $100 per barrel oil and unrest in the Middle East shows they’re right to be concerned. But over the years we’ve had enormous difficulty moving from debate to decision on this topic. With another energy plan on the table, it’s worth revisiting how the public thinks about this problem.

When Public Agenda conducted its Energy Learning Curve survey, we included a “cluster analysis,” examining the data in terms of how people are grouped naturally based on knowledge and beliefs. On energy, we found the public divided into four groups: the Anxious (40 percent), the Greens (24 percent), the Disengaged (19 percent), and the Climate Change Doubters (17 percent).

Each of the four groups has a distinctive set of values, beliefs or concerns that shape how they approach the energy problem. The key point here is that if leaders are trying to build public support for an energy policy, understanding the public’s motivations is critical. What motivates one group might leave another cold or even repel them. The environmental arguments that resonate with the Greens, for example, would turn off the Doubters.

But there are also opportunities. One of the most intriguing findings is that so many people reach similar conclusions from completely different starting points. For example, both the Anxious and the Greens support alternative energy, but for entirely different reasons. The Anxious are worried about the price and supply of energy, and believe bringing new energy sources on line will help. The Greens, naturally, back them because they’re concerned about global warming and pollution.

Change, particularly when you’re dealing with a subject as complex as energy, requires knitting people with different concerns together. To
help the public move up its “learning curve” on this issue, it’s fundamental to understand how people can see a problem through different lenses but still end up at the same place.

Video: Students and College Completion in Their Own Words

Scott Bittle — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:36:41 -0400

There's nothing more powerful than hearing people talk about their challenges in their own words -- and this video of students discussing the juggling act they face in trying to balance work, family and school is a great example.

The plenary session at the Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute in February featured a panel of students from Ivy Tech Community College and Santa Fe College, moderated by Public Agenda President Will Friedman. If you want to see how students meet this challenge -- one of the biggest when it comes to turning around the nation's college completion rate -- have a look at the video below (you can also find it here).

Also, for statistics that back up the stories here, visit our survey report, With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them.

Scaling the Summit on College Completion

Scott Bittle — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:13:04 -0400

This week the Obama administration laid out a new “college completion tool kit” and called on every state to hold a summit on how to turn around the dismal statistics on how many students actually get a degree. As higher education leaders consider how to pick up that challenge, we’d suggest two voices that policymakers should make sure to have at the table.

One is faculty. Engaging faculty -- both full-time and adjuncts—in this effort is essential, in fact its difficult to see how we can solve this problem without them. Yet lots of institutions still find this kind of engagement difficult to pull off. Faculty members often enter the debate with very different concerns than, say college presidents or financial officers. In partnership with Achieving the Dream, we’ve developed core principles and promising practices for engaging faculty in changing institutions and closing student achievement gaps. You can find our first Cutting Edge Series paper on this here.

The other is young people themselves. In surveys of young people we’ve conducted for the Gates Foundation, we’ve found that people who don’t complete college tell an unexpected story, one that’s very different from a lot of the common perceptions. Most of them are paying their own way through school, and get relatively little help from the guidance system as they do it.

More than anything else, these young people are students under pressure: school pressure, work pressure, and family pressure. And when that pressure gets to be too much, it’s school that usually gets sacrificed. That’s why when we asked these young people what would help, they point to ideas that would give them more flexibility and ease the juggling act they find so difficult.

If we’re going to make a real difference in this problem, we need to make sure the challenges students face are front-and-center – and that the faculty members on the front line are full partners in meeting them.