BPR Spring 2018 Issue 2 by Brown Political Review

BPR Brown Political Review Sponsored by

Spring 2018. Issue II.

Masthead

Brown Political Review

Editors-in-Chief Aidan Calvelli & Noah Cowan Chief of Staff Michael Bass Associate Chief of Staff Ashley Chen Creative Director Klara Auerbach Senior Managing Editor Angie Kim Cover art by Jackson Joyce Editorial Board

Content Board

Media Board

Managing Editors Pieter Brower & Olivia Nash Associate Editors Taylor Auten Victor Brechenmacher Michael Danello Mary Dong Jack Glaser Michael Gold Christian Hanway Jordan Kranzler Anagha Lokhande Max Low Jared Samilow Lucy Walke Emily Yamron Gabriel Zimmerman

Content Directors Jordan Campbell & Matthew Meyer

Media Director Katie Scheibal Content Creators Sobhit Arora Luqmaan Bokhary Tal Frieden Jenna Israel Luke Landis Eileen Phou Jennifer Shook Yashi Wang

Data Board

World Section Managers Alessandro Borghese Allison Meakem Jeremy Rhee World Staff Writers Joshua Baum Vafa Behnam Stella Canessa Connor Cardoso Anna Corradi Michael Danello Dhruv Gaur Sean Joyce Christopher Kobel Annie Lehman-Ludwig Hans Lei ZoĂŤ Mermelstein Orwa Mohamad Anna Murphy Simran Nayak

Data Director Aansh Shah Associate Data Directors Julia Gilman & Zachary Horvitz Data Associates Rohit Chaparala Sarah Conlisk Michael Danello Amy Huang Tyler Jiang Malavika Krishnan Evan Lehmann Dheeraj Namburu Charlotte Perez Louise Tisch

Copy Editorial Board Chief Copy Editor Allie Doyle Associate Chief Copy Editor Sam Parmer Associate Copy Editors Miles Campbell Halle Fowler Gabriela Gil Will Gomberg Joseph Hinton Noah Klein Emma Kumleben Michael Power Nanicha Sethpornpong Brendan Sweeney

US Section Managers Taylor Auten Brendan Pierce Rachel Risoleo US Staff Writers AJ Braverman Ashley Chen Brionne Frazier Annie Gersh Zachary Goldstein Nicholas Lindseth Sophia Petros Nathaniel Pettit Ben Shumate Jamie Solomon Cartie Werthman Carter Woodruff

Culture Section Managers Alan Garcia-Ramos Madeleine Thompson Kion You Culture Staff Writers Noah Choi Jamie Flynn Tristan Harris Joseph Hinton Hugh Klein Nathaniel Kublin Jake Martin Andrew Rickert Olivia Rosenbloom Erika Undeland Alexander Vaughan Williams

Interviews Board Interviews Director Jack Makari Senior Editor Maya Gonzales Fitzpatrick Interviews Associates Cayla Kaplan Charles Saperstein Alexis Viera Joshua Waldman

Marketing, Operations, Business Board MOB Directors Owen Colby Bridget Duru Anna Marx MOB Associates Maria Hornbacher Calista Shang Will Pate Stephanie Kendler Kevin Garcia Karolyn Lee Alan Swierczynski Oona Cahill Graham Gonzales Austin Reynolds

Web Team Web Associates Hannah Chow Viknesh Kasthuri

Creative Board Creative Director Klara Auerbach Staff Artists Sarah Nicita Gabrielleg Santas

Brown Political Review

World 6 Genomes Unknown

Marianna Scott Raising the ethical bar for CRISPR research

Franco’s Phantoms Pieter Brower Why Spain can’t bury its authoritarian past

Bridging the Gap Ashley Chen Why China’s hukou system needs reform

Software Schooling Mary Dong The value of computer science in early education

Teach the Rainbow Mia Pattillo

Policing Priorities Michael Mills Education Behind Bars Lucy Walke How the education system is failing incarcerated youth

Let Them Eat Cheese Allison Arnold Zoned Out AJ Braverman How a bipartisan investment bill is ripe for abuse

Bars to Litigation Annie Gersh The case for repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act

5 Letter from the Editors

Data Feature 36 Model Learning Sarah Conlisk Closing the teacher diversity gap

The disparity between Chicago’s education and police funding

How vulnerable populations pay for the US cheese surplus

4 Magazine in Numbers

The necessity of LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education

US 38

3 Contents

The consequences of the Greek Orthodox Church’s land sale policy in Israel/Palestine

26 30

2 Masthead

The Lament Over Jerusalem Matthew Jarrell

Special Feature: Education 22

Contents

The Unions Strike Back Nathaniel Pettit Janus, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and the future of organized labor

Interviews 8

Debbie Veney

Andres Idarraga

John N. Friedman

Dr. Andre Perry

Lawrence Korchnak 3

Magazine in Numbers

1.2 billion pounds

82%

The size of a cheese surplus sitting in a Missouri cave

The proportion of teachers in the US who are white

99 years

1.4 million

The length of the lease on land owned by the Greek Orthodox Church on which the he Israeli Knesset sits

The number of unfilled computer science-related jobs projected by 2020

$40 The cost to buy your own personal CRISPR kit 4

Letter from the e ABC might be as easy as 1, 2, 3, but only for those with access to the e key to a better life: education. Historically restricted to the domain of the wealthy and privileged, education’s ti ’ vital it l iimportance t ttoday d makes k it a human right. Everyone, no matter their ideology or political party, now believes that access to education should be universal. From Brown v. Board of Education desegregating public schools to colleges opening their doors to women to a proliferation of nonprofits aimed at bringing learning to all corners of the globe, recent history has seen meaningful progress toward achieving that goal. Yet despite this ideological consensus and the efforts of activists, serious gaps in education quality and access persist. Fourteen percent of the global population is illiterate. Sixty-one million primary school-aged kids weren’t enrolled in 2010. Women and people of color are more likely to face formal barriers to schooling, and even when given opportunities to be educated, discrimination undermines their outcomes. The list of inequities goes on. Further, the 21st century demands new thinking about education, but providers haven’t caught up. Schools have been slow to integrate new technologies. Theories of best teaching practices abound, but social science has yet to find indisputable answers. External factors such as socioeconomic status, parental involvement, and even vision affect how well kids are able to learn once they’ve made it to school. Why are these challenges so pressing? Because in today’s world, an education isn’t just a nice thing to have; it’s a necessity. Increasing educational attainment correlates strongly with higher incomes, especially in developing countries, where each additional year of education can lead to 10 percent higher future deve incomes. income Better educated workers are more productive. Women with more schooling tend to have fewer children and are better equipped to prevent STIs. And these benefits don’t even factor in how education can connect people to the world, inspire creativity, broaden their horizons, create lifelong learners, and con foster democratic citizenship. d In our ffeature, we explore barriers to education as well as solutions to some of the most pressing problems in education. Lucy Walke castigates America’s failure to provide adequate education to those in prison, arguing that it deprives youth—especially those of color—of their rights and opportunities. Michael Mills highlights the irony that Chicago wants to build an expensive new police academy, yet hig mysteri ates for mysteriously can’t find the funds to support the city’s schools. Mia Pattillo advocates implementing more inclusive sexual education curricula in the US, given that many implem any states margi ology, marginalize or attack LGBTQ+ identities. And Mary Dong turns her eye to technology, showi that widespread computer science training is necessary for a modern educashowing tion. The cha challenges facing education reform are myriad, while the potential benefits are limitless. limitless We see this firsthand at the Brown Political Review: run by students privileged vileged enough to attend a university, BPR recognizes how powerful—but also how exclusive— sive— education can be. As we consider ways to bring better education to more people educat le across glo the globe, we have to remember not to leave anyone behind. Moving forward, we need to keep the words of Sonia Sotomayor in mind: “Until we get equality in education, on, we won’t have an equal society.” From ABCs to Diogenes and from coding to calculus, h us, education is the t first step toward equal opportunity for all.

We'd lilike to extend our gratitude to the Political Theory Project for their continued ontinued support of the Brown Political Review. – Noah and Aidan 5

GE N OM E S UNK N OW N Raising the ethical bar for CRISPR research

CRISPR:

Either it’s the best thing since the smallpox vaccine or it’s bound to plunge the human species into Aldous Huxley’s world of incubated tubes. But regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of biotech-induced paranoia, nearly everyone agrees that CRISPR is a major player when it comes to the future of the human genome. Though many fear CRISPR’s worst capabilities, calls to ban research using the technology propose the wrong way forward. The question facing the world today should be one of regulation, not prohibition. To ensure the safety and efficacy of CRISPR research, the international community must push toward codified, actionable, and enforceable regulations to ensure this revolutionary technology remains a force to fight pestilence, not people. To understand the functionality of CRISPR, it helps to understand its origin. The technology is, in essence, a defense system that allows bacteria to chop up the DNA of invading viruses. After a virus invades, the bacterial cell uses CRISPR to take a sample of the virus’s DNA. It then stores the viral DNA in a specific part of its genome—a genetic library of all of its enemies. Cas9 proteins in the bacterium then use this stored DNA to patrol the cell, looking for the genetic footprints of invading viruses. If the Cas9 protein encounters a match for the viral DNA it’s carrying, it destroys the virus, protecting the cell from an attack. Most relevantly, the Cas9 protein acts on any kind of DNA, even human. All a potential user has to do is identify a target sequence of DNA, and the Cas9 scissors will chop up that gene. As genetic mutations are responsible for a staggering variety of medical problems, the ability to use CRISPR-Cas9 to edit faulty genes could save millions of lives. These little DNA-cleaving

scissors could feasibly be used to make mosquitoes resistant to malaria, make plants resistant to disease, develop treatments for HIV, leukemia, and hemophilia—the list goes on. The potential upside is enormous. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Cutting out problematic genes isn’t quite that easy. CRISPR can identify a speciﬁc problematic segment of DNA, but a lot of DNA looks similar. So, CRISPR will often modify or delete other sequences in what are called “off-target mutations.” A 2013 study found that given a target sequence, CRISPR made edits in as many as 12 of the 46 potential off-target sites identiﬁed. Even when CRISPR does edit the right gene, some traits and diseases involve the interplay of so many genes that the desired edits could lead to undesirable consequences. Fears of CRISPR aren’t limited to human trials. One of the most alluring prospects for CRISPR is to prevent mosquitos from transmitting malaria; however, the sheer complexity of the animal kingdom suggests that the unforeseen consequences of doing so could be unconscionable. Without a predesigned plan to reverse any edits done to a species’ genome, such uses of CRISPR aren’t ethical; synthetic changes to a species’ genome could have substantial negative implications for that species and others. And here lies the real concern with CRISPR: Although much good could be done with this technology, until steps are taken to prevent off-target mutations, reverse edits, and limit unintended side effects, governments must ensure that CRISPR research be done carefully, methodically, and publicly. It costs about $40 for an individual to get a CRISPR kit. The costs of its consequences could be much steeper.

One oft-cited example of an uncertain— though not immediately realistic—prospect for CRISPR is its ability to make changes to the unborn. Most research done to date has targeted the DNA of somatic cells, DNA which is not passed on during reproduction. Still, the possibility of editing reproductive, or germline, cells sits tantalizingly on the horizon. In theory, germline therapies make a lot of sense. If scientists can ﬁx mutations in reproductive cells, there won’t be any need to ﬁx the same mutations in subsequent generations; children will simply inherit edited DNA from their parents. But any off-target mutations will also be passed on from generation to generation, with all the unintended consequences they carry.

To ensure the safety and efficacy of CRISPR research the international community must push toward codified, actionable, and enforceable regulations. The possibility of clinical germline editing is now only in the distant future. The technology is still in the earliest stages of development. Still, research in genetics moves quickly, and it’s critical to sort out regulations before any breakthroughs force a haphazard declaration of ethical use. Just after an Oregon study on germline editing—the first successful germline study conducted—was released, a team of international bioethicists published a statement regarding the future of the practice. The group, led by Stanford genetics professor Kelly Ormond, stated that editing the genes of an embryo intended for implantation was unethical, but that germline research itself should continue. Such research is highly sensitive and should be closely regulated and subject to public

oversight. Unfortunately, research regulations vary widely across countries, and many of the regulations currently in place make it more difficult to make informed decisions about the potential risks and benefits of CRISPR applications. For instance, the US does not support embryonic research. Germline research can take place there, but it can’t be publicly funded or directly supervised by the government. Such wide-ranging bans and regulations have the potential to drive research into regulatory havens—countries whose governments keep regulations lax in order to generate medical tourism. Ormond and her co-authors actively pushed for public funding for germline research, arguing that it will force transparency and openness in a way that private research will not. With such a sensitive ethical subject, lack of regulation could lead to serious violations. The best way to prevent these violations is to establish rigorous, legally binding, international standards for CRISPR research. International regulatory institutions are currently too weakly framed to properly protect against possible CRISPR misuse. The cornerstone of global medical research ethics, the Declaration of Helsinki, was first developed by the World Medical Association in 1964 and has been growing longer ever since. However, it can’t officially enforce its stipulations. It is framed as a set of philosophical principles, not as a legally binding document. A stronger, more enforceable doctrine, or perhaps even an amendment to the Declaration of Helsinki, is needed to ensure that no country skirts its responsibility to conduct ethical CRISPR research. This new standard would ideally enforce broad publication of all CRISPR research, limit the accessibility of CRISPR to labs committed to ethical practices, and require it to be used for purely medical purposes. This technology is too great a tool to ban scientists from using it, though its immense power necessitates careful regulation. Fears of CRISPR are neither unfounded nor insurmountable. Though it causes more anxiety than other methods of artificial selection that have been around for millennia, CRISPR differs only in power and scope—not in kind. The question facing the world today is not whether we should radically alter the world around us, but how we choose to do so. The international community must answer this question together, wary of CRISPR’s risks, while never losing sight of the lives that this new technology could improve.

Marianna Scott ‘21 is an intended Physics concentrator. Illustration by Julie Benbassat.

What is NewSchools and what makes it unique? NewSchools is a venture philanthropy, which means we raise philanthropic dollars from other donors and invest them, much like a venture capital fund, into education entrepreneurs and into teams of educators who are looking to reimagine education. The difference between NewSchools and a traditional VC is that we measure our return on investment in terms of social good, rather than taking an equity stake in the organization we invest in. Most schools today operate in much the way schools did a hundred or more years ago, while the world around them has changed, so we really think there’s an important role for innovation in public education. Can you tell us about the types of projects that NewSchools invests in?

Interview with

DEBBIE VENEY Debbie Veney is the Director of Communications for NewSchools, a nonproﬁt venture philanthropy that invests in innovative education models with the goal of “reimagining learning,” particularly for underserved communities. Prior to her work at NewSchools, Veney held senior positions at The Education Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and Communities in Schools.

We have three principal investment areas. The first is our innovative schools portfolio. With that portfolio, we invest in people who want to build, or create, or redesign a school. There’s a school in Nashville called Valor Collegiate Academy we invested in, and it was developed with the idea of wrapping a rigorous academic curriculum around a strong emotional grounding for students. They have this thing called circle time, where students affirm themselves, talk about their issues, and just share in this really open environment that brings the whole child into this academic setting. Our second area of investment focus is on education technology, or EdTech. Some examples of areas we’ve invested in are middle and high school math. There’s lots of math tools on the market, but not a lot that are targeted specifically at middle and high schoolers. Our third area of focus is with the pipeline of diverse leaders. We know that more than 50 percent of students in US schools are students of color, but the number of educators of color is not matching well to that, and the numbers are even worse at a leadership level. People in leadership who are people of color are able to bring their particular perspective on the world into educational settings, and those perspectives more closely mirror those of the students they serve. What does NewSchools identify as some of the main problems with America’s education system? We probably wouldn’t use the word “problem.” We would say there’s opportunities to rethink the way that the learning experience happens so that students today are better prepared for the world that awaits them. We know that, for example, in the 1960s and 70s, it was not uncommon for a person to finish an undergraduate degree, enter a corporate setting, and finish their entire career at that one company. That does not happen anymore. Young people today are… navigating for themselves, creating their own career paths, and they may work for multiple companies at the same time, may change their job every year or every other year. That’s a different set of soft skills than what kids have needed in the past. Does NewSchools have a position on charter schools?

Interviewed by Charlie Saperstein Illustration by Klara Auerbach

Charter schools are deﬁnitely a part of the innovation. We would kind of ﬂip that whole question around, and say that the real question is: What does a high-performing school look like? How can we have more of those? There are high-performing schools that exist in every structure. There are some that are within traditional school districts, some within public charter schools, and there are some low-performing schools in all those models too. There are good and bad models in each governance structure, and what we’re into is doing more of what is serving students well.

FRANCO’S PHANTOMS Why Spain can’t bury its authoritarian past Tucked away in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains northwest of Madrid lies a monumental reminder of Europe’s authoritarian past: el Valle de los Caídos, or the Valley of the Fallen. The site consists of a Benedictine monastery at the crest of a mountain and a subterranean Catholic basilica, larger than St. Peter’s in Rome, carved into the peak. An enormous stone cross, the tallest in the world, crowns the complex. It can be seen from over 20 miles away. A granite esplanade extending from the foyer of the church offers spectacular views of the mountains and the outskirts of the capital in the distance. The scale of the monument is practically indescribable, dwarﬁng visitors, but the most arresting feature of this colossal memorial has little to do with its architecture. The Valle de los Caídos is a public and prominent mausoleum for a dictator.

In its current form, the site amounts to a shrine venerating Francisco Franco, the rightwing autocrat who ruled the country from 1939 until his death in 1975. Franco’s regime built the monument to commemorate the victory of his Nationalist forces over left-leaning Republicans in the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War. The monument has inspired protests and raucous parliamentary debates, which show no sign of being resolved soon. Defenders of the Valle de los Caídos argue that it honors the dead from both sides of the civil war, but the annual pilgrimage to the site by Franco’s disciples suggests the monument serves a far more sinister purpose. Indisputably, the heated controversy demonstrates that Spain’s young democracy has made little progress in interring the ghosts of its authoritarian past. Planning for the monument began before most of the war’s bodies were even cold; Franco devoted considerable personal time and attention to seeing his vision realized. Despite what present-day defenders claim, the Valle was explicitly conceived as a monument honoring only those who fought on Franco’s side of the conflict; the decree that authorized the project called for a monumental homage to the heroes and martyrs of the crusade. This Catholic symbolism reflects Franco’s narrative of the civil war: a triumph over the alien forces of communism and modernity, rather than a fratricidal conflict that pitted Spaniard against Spaniard.

into the 1980s and the cadavers now number 33,833, making the Valle de los Caídos one of the largest mass graves in the world. One of the first graves to be transferred to the site was that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a founding father of Spanish fascism who had been executed by Republicans during the first months of the civil war. The regime’s rhetoric around the site shifted significantly in the 1960s during a period of liberalization, moving away from the glorification of its victory and toward the ideal of national unity. During that time, it became common to hear the Valle discussed as a symbol of peace and unification. New policies allowed the burial of Republican dead at the site as well, signaling a cautious step toward reconciliation. The attempts to recast the symbolism of the monument, however, set off a new wave of criticism. Very few families of fallen Republican soldiers wanted them buried in the crypt, but the government still relocated gravesites to the Valle. These capricious exhumations and reinterments affected families from both sides of the war, but mostly Republicans, adding a new dimension to the site’s troubled

Without critical reﬂection, the legacy of Francoism threatens to unravel the unity of the nation. Because a weak postbellum economy slowed down construction of the monument, Franco used the forced labor of political prisoners to speed up work on the site. Detainees could opt to work on the monument in exchange for a miserly salary and a reduction in their sentences, a policy the regime touted as an example of rehabilitation. The exact number of forced laborers is unknown— sympathizers of the regime generally contend it was fairly low, while the testimony of former prisoners sharply contradicts that view—but it is clear that it was punishing work. Many prisoners died in the harsh conditions. Construction of the Valle lasted two decades. The monument was ﬁnally dedicated in 1959, on the 20th anniversary of the end of the war. By that time, 20,000 fallen civil war soldiers had been reburied in a massive crypt behind the basilica. These interments continued

history. Families have been ﬁghting ever since to reclaim the remains of their loved ones, enlisting the support of many leftist politicians. But so far their efforts have been largely fruitless, with little hope on the horizon. Just one court ruling has ordered the removal of a body from the Valle, and even that decision has been appealed and is now under review by Spain’s highest court.

Defenders of the Valle de los Caídos argue that it honors the dead from both sides of the civil war, but the annual pilgrimage to the site by Franco’s disciples suggests the monument serves a far more sinister purpose. Adding insult to injury, Franco’s body was interred at the Valle upon his death in 1975— even against his family’s and his own wishes. Critics rightfully pointed out that even if one viewed the site as commemorating all the war dead, the dictator himself was decidedly not one of them. Yet the transition to democracy in the 1970s delayed any public reckoning with the confused legacy of the Valle de los Caídos. While the country’s democratic transition was heralded as an example for other nations, the negotiated rupture, as it was called, buried many of the outstanding issues of Francoism. Unlike its neighbor Portugal, Spain did not experience a cathartic break with authoritarianism, but instead stuck by a collective agreement to leave behind the wounds of the past, known as the pacto del olvido. As a result, many ﬁgures of the dictatorship reinvented themselves as leaders of the ﬂedgling democracy. Supporters of the fallen regime continued rallying at the Valle de los Caídos, and the monument remained unaltered from its original state. Managed by Patrimonio Nacional, the same cultural organ that administers the country’s many royal palaces, the site continued to attract tourists in staggering numbers, even as it stood—in the minds of many—as a constant reminder of the over 400,000 people exterminated for their political views. The tide of historical memory began to turn in 2004, when the center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) returned to power under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In an attempt to deal with the unresolved legacies of the Francoist dictatorship, Zapatero’s government passed the Ley de Memoría Histórica in 2007. Among other things, the law removed symbols of the Franco regime from public spaces and prohibited political demonstrations at the Valle de

los Caídos. In 2010, the government ordered the monument closed to visitors, ostensibly due to restoration work, and in 2011 it formed an expert commission to determine the future of the site. Before Zapatero could act on the commission’s recommendations, however, the PSOE was defeated in that year’s parliamentary elections by Mariano Rajoy’s center-right Partido Popular (PP). Rajoy has refused to take any further action, and all proposals have since been paralyzed. The PP is decidedly not fascist in its outlook, but many of its earliest members were holdovers from Franco’s authoritarian regime. Rajoy has not altered or undone his predecessor’s efforts to deal with the Francoist legacy, yet he has also done little to support that project. Today, the Valle de los Caídos remains fundamentally unchanged. In fact, one of Rajoy’s first actions as Prime Minister was to reopen the monument to visitors. Meanwhile, the PSOE’s repeated attempts to force the issue in parliament have all failed. A PSOE resolution calling for the removal of Franco’s remains passed 198-1 (with many delegates abstaining, including those of the PP), but it did not have the force of law. Rajoy has ruled out any modifications to the Valle without a wide political consensus, and his government has no plans to act on the resolution. Yet the status quo cannot remain. Without critical reflection, the legacy of Francoism threatens to unravel the unity of the nation: A secessionist movement in Catalonia has fed partly on Catalan resentment against the lasting impact of Franco, who ruthlessly suppressed the country’s regional identities. Spain needs to engage with its troubled past, and the Valle de los Caídos is a good symbolic place to begin. The bodies of both Franco and Primo de Rivera should be removed, since their presence has converted the basilica into a place of pilgrimage for contemporary supporters of the extreme right. Likewise, families should be allowed to reclaim the remains of their relatives, a move that would resolve a longstanding grievance. Finally, the monument should be recast as a shrine to the suffering on both sides of the conflict and converted into a museum that contextualizes the traumatic history of the Spanish Civil War. Such a transformation of the Valle will not come easily, but a reckoning is long overdue. Otherwise, the ghosts of Francoism threaten to overturn a hard-earned peace. Pieter Brower ‘18 is a Hispanic Studies and Public Policy concentrator and a Managing Editor at BPR. Illustration by Ellen He.

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Describe your journey to Brown. What was your education like before your incarceration? I was always a really good student, but I grew up in distressed areas where people were generally low-income. I went from Central Falls High School to a scholarship to the Moses Brown School. It showed me the wide disparities in education delivery. I ended up dropping out and retreating back to my area school. It engendered an anger inside me. I began skipping school, my grades dropped, and I began dabbling in selling drugs. I still made National Honor Society, but I didn’t even apply to college. I just began to sell drugs, was arrested, and ended up going to prison for six and a half years.

Interview with

ANDRES IDARRAGA Andres Idarraga is the president of the Transcending Through Education Foundation. In prison, Mr. Idarraga tutored other inmates who were pursing their GEDs. After his incarceration, he pursued his education at the University of Rhode Island, Brown University, and Yale Law School. During law school, he was selected as a Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow.

Interviewed by Alexis Viera Illustration by Klara Auerbach

Gradually, I began to gather the tools to think about my future on my own terms. It made me angry as a young man to see the disparities, but as a person in prison in my early 20s, that experience really helped me believe that I could transcend the circumstances I was in through my education. I applied to Brown University from a prison cell and was denied, but was fortunate enough to be accepted to the University of Rhode Island. When I was released, I lived under pretty tough circumstances, but it didn’t make me angry, because for the first time in my life, I had a sense of purpose—a vision that was formulated during my time in prison. During my first and second semesters, I received top grades, and I applied to Brown again. I was fortunate enough to be accepted. I felt that with that letter in my hand, I was going to be introduced to a stream of opportunities that would be completely transformational. And it was. What do you think of the Brown Prison Initiative? I think providing education in a prison system is something that college institutions would be well-served to do for a number of reasons. But particularly in Brown’s case, I think it plays into the mission of Brown trying to be a community player in the Rhode Island area. It should play a role in providing education to certain segments of the community that have traditionally not had access to it. Second, I think for motivated individuals in prison to know that Brown would go in there and help them develop their skillset would be tremendously empowering and motivational. If a person comes home from prison and could say they began their educational journey taking Brown courses in prison, I think it gives them credibility when they’re applying to other educational institutions. How do you respond to people who say that convicted criminals are the last people that we should be investing in? Supporting the educational endeavors of people in prison is shown to have economic benefits, where I think every dollar invested education produces about $15 in economic benefits. Some of the arguments that folks may make is questioning why they should have to pay for their children’s education when somebody could go to prison and get an education at little to no cost. I think the argument is misplaced. For the most part, in the United States, if you cannot afford a college education, there are programs for you to be able to get financial aid for a college education. I think if you’re in a position where you don’t qualify for financial aid and you could just write a check for your children’s education, I think you’re in a fortunate enough place where you should be responsible for paying for your children’s education.

China’s meteoric economic rise has been fueled by hundreds of millions of rural migrants. These migrants make incredible sacrifices for the economic opportunity of moving to a city, often leaving behind their children and their homes. In fact, these workers’ struggles stem from a seemingly benign migration control policy called “hukou”—a household registration system that controls the movements of Chinese residents and defines people by birthplace as either urban or rural. Hukou status cannot change, so even when rural migrant workers find employment in large cities such as Shanghai, they retain rural hukou status. Holding a non-local hukou in an urban area drastically hinders access to basic social services, such as public schooling, subsidized medical care, and unemployment insurance. In a country with widespread negative stereotypes about the rural poor, the hukou system only exacerbates the rural-urban divide. To improve the hukou system, the government must implement reforms that benefit those moving from the countryside to cities. Urbanites and government leaders have rendered past hukou reform attempts ineffective. Urban residents have an economic interest in pushing for the status quo and many possess prejudiced attitudes toward migrants. One-third of Shanghai urbanites claimed they would not want a rural neighbor; only one-tenth felt the same way about having a poor one. Unfortunately, the reforms that have managed to pass have only created new obstacles for rural migrants. For example, a 1996 law gave migrant children the right to attend elementary and middle school in the cities where their parents worked. Schools responded with temporary resident fees and additional verification requirements for the children of rural migrants, deterring migrants from bringing their children to urban areas. And since the law did not extend to high schools, the few children who did benefit had to return to the countryside to finish their education. In 2013, the government tried to introduce more drastic changes. New policies gave rural residents the ability to gain urban hukou in third-tier cities (those with smaller populations and fewer economic opportunities than first-tier cities). However, though rural status is associated with inconveniences and discrimination, it also confers its share of benefits: A rural hukou guarantees its holder a small plot of land in the countryside and allows them to be subject to a more relaxed birth-control policy. Most migrants thought the perks of rural hukou outweighed the meager benefits of third-tier urban hukou, so the 2013 reforms failed to produce any substantial changes. China’s most recent attempt to liberalize hukou has allowed rural hukou holders to apply for first-tier urban hukou based on a points system which takes into account adherence to the local birth-control policy, educational attainment, and employment seniority. These reforms

help well-educated elites, but do little for China’s migrant underclass. The burdensome process of applying for urban hukou and the low likelihood of finding affordable housing in a first-tier city has discouraged many migrants from taking advantage of these reforms. It’s important to acknowledge that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is unlikely to eradicate hukou, which plays an important role in social control. To produce any substantial impacts, future reforms should focus on equalizing treatment toward holders of different types of hukou, rather than providing more opportunities for migrants to apply for higher-tier hukou. First, migrant workers should be treated as a protected class, similar to an ethnic minority. Migrant children, like rural children in the United States, should benefit from affirmative action in university admissions and have better access to scholarships. There should also be specialized social workers who offer assistance to migrants completing hukou applications and transitioning to an urban lifestyle along with mental health resources that help migrants cope with loneliness and depression in their new cities. Rural migrants bolster the economies of megacities; the government owes support and protection to those who make the living conditions of China’s elite possible.

In a country with widespread negative stereotypes about the rural poor, the hukou system only exacerbates the rural-urban divide. Chinese policymakers should also eliminate the artificial factors that make megacities more desirable than rural areas. Though rural areas can’t match the economic opportunities or social services present in cities, the CCP should stop reinforcing policies that specifically favor urban residents. For instance, the CCP could mandate hukou-blind high school and college admissions and end programs that give firsttier city residents priority in visa application processes. Concurrently, China should make third-tier cities more attractive by subsidizing the creation of low-skill jobs. Chinese policymakers’ attempts to improve the unequal and discriminatory hukou system have failed to meaningfully address migrant workers’ struggles. The CCP must further protect the people who make tremendous contributions to the Chinese economy, particularly in megacities. As China continues to establish itself as a major world power, it must address the issues and tensions within its borders. Reforming the hukou system is a good place to start. Ashley Chen ‘20 is a Computational Biology concentrator, the Associate Chief of Staff, and a US Staff Writer at BPR. Illustration by Shirley Lau.

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The Lament over

JERUSALEM The consequences of the Greek Orthodox Church’s land sale policy in Israel/Palestine

One hundred years ago, Sir Edmund Allenby and the soldiers of Britain’s 10th Light Horse Regiment passed through Jaffa Gate, an imposing entrance into the Old City of Jerusalem, symbolizing their recent victory against the Ottoman Empire. This marked the end of four centuries of Ottoman rule in the region and hammered the final golden spike in the British Mandate for Palestine. The Jerusalem that Britain inherited was a small, remote backwater scarcely visited by the non-religious and mostly controlled by various Church bodies, including the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, an ethnically Greek ecclesiastical body that frequently feuded with its majority-Arab congregation. “The attempt to preserve [the Patriarchate] less as the Church of the Palestine Orthodox than as an outpost of Hellenism…was a source…of increasing discouragement and bitterness to the Orthodox Arabs of the country,” wrote British Military Governor Ronald Storrs. For many, the situation in Jerusalem today is all too similar. Greek Orthodox Palestinians are still subject to a Patriarchate composed entirely of Greeks, even as the other denominations in the city have undergone processes of “Arabization” over the last few decades. The Greek Church has remained a bastion of foreign rule and an island of cozy Christian relations with the State of Israel.

Its increasingly dire financial straits have prompted leases and sales of Church land both inside and outside Jerusalem, with resultant tensions and calls for reform. Greek Orthodox Palestinians generally side with the national Palestinian resistance movement against the entrenched, foreign power structure of their church. Should the Patriarchate capitulate to those constituents, Israel would lose one of its most important institutional allies in Jerusalem and could be forced to reconsider its policy in the city altogether. Dissatisfaction with the Patriarchate among the Palestinian Greek Orthodox community predates British rule: The Church began purchasing land from the Ottomans in the late 1800s, and Patriarchate elites made the decisions about how the land would be used. The community called for reforms in 1872, demanding the creation of a mixed council of Arabs and Greeks to run Church affairs. These demands went ignored, and those that followed were similarly rejected. During the 1980s, Palestinian nationalism in many Christian communities and subsequent pressures on European ecclesiastical elites led to the appointments of Arabs as senior clergy members in the Anglican, Melkite Greek Catholic, and Roman Catholic churches. Christians began to assert their presence and raise their voices in the Palestinian struggle. But the Greek Orthodox Church—the largest and most influential in Palestine— was conspicuously silent. No Arab members were elected to the Patriarchate, and the church maintained a close relationship with Israel. The Patriarchate finalized huge long-term leases of extensive Church lands in Jerusalem during the 1950s, signing away development rights to the Jewish National Fund, which carries out projects on behalf of Israelis. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate showed no signs of sacrificing this bond in favor of solidarity with its Palestinian congregation. Tensions reached a boiling point in 2004, when further sales of Church lands in Jerusalem, this time to the right-wing Israeli settler organization Ateret Cohanim, led to the dismissal of Patriarch Irenaios. The Israeli government under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wary of a potentially more hostile leader, intended to withhold recognition of his replacement, Theophilos III, if he did not fulfill the terms of the Ateret Cohanim

deals. Theophilos yielded, and the status quo remained unchanged. Last fall, the specter of Patriarchate duplicity reared its ugly head again. Reports surfaced that the Church was selling off valuable assets in Jerusalem and elsewhere at a fraction of their worth. One

Greek Orthodox Palestinians are still subject to a Patriarchate composed entirely of Greeks, even as the other denominations in the city have undergone under unde der processes of “Arabization” over the last few decades. de s.

area in Jerusalem’s center was sold to a shell corporation registered in a tax haven ven for the strikingly low sum of $3.3 million. n. Israel’s attempt to pass a bill enabling state expropriation of recently sold land angered the Patriarchate, which wants to assure clients that the land they inherit won’t be seized. The Church threatened to close the Holy Sepulchre in the face of this threat to its business interests, and the Israeli government eventually backed down. Scores of Christian pilgrims were turned away, all so that the Patriarchate could attract ct future clients. The State of Israel has not even provided as much as an empty pledge to the Palestinian churchgoing community, y, often openly siding with the Patriarchate te and actively undermining the congregaation’s efforts to hold on to its land. But the community seems hopeful that things will change. During October and Novemberr of last year, Orthodox Palestinians held rallies, llies, petitioned for support on social media, filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the land nd sales, and even accosted the Patriarch himself. Residents of Beit Jala, a majori-ty-Christian town adjacent to Bethlehem, m, sent a letter to Theophilos III requesting g that he not attend the town’s Christmass festivities. The Patriarchate has at leastt acknowledged the message. “There are e individuals who have their own agenda to attack us and slander us,” Theophilos IIII responded. “We are a religious institution on with a spiritual mission here for more than han 2,000 years.” As long as the Church does what Israel wants, that mandate might extend d

for another 2,000. In times of leadership transition, such as when Irenaios I resigned in 2005, the state ensured the successor would continue his policies. Recently, the Church has resolved to profit off of its land, and the beneficiaries of the sales have been Israeli investors and companies. The state is happy to let this happen while cultivating a close relationship with the Patriarch. In December 2016, Theophilos III met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, praising Israel for its guarantee of full religious freedom for all inhabitants. This goodwill is not extended, however, to Christian denominations and figures that resist Patriarchate and state policies. The Israeli Ministry of the Interior frequently takes steps to curb entry for Christian priests who are more outspoken against Israel. Evidently, Israel is only comfortable with a Christian presence if it aids and abets the state’s interests and, most importantly, helps consolidate its control over territory in Jerusalem. The latest fervor over the Patriarchate’s policies showcases the fragility of this strategy. The other churches of Palestine have set a precedent of Arabization. With the Patriarchate as unpopular as it is, the time is ripe for change. The election of a Patriarch more sympathetic to Palestinian issues, or even one that is ethnically Arab, would throw the entire city of Jerusalem into great uncertainty, given the strategic and symbolic importance of the land it owns. Church land could revert back to full Church ownership when the leases expire in 30 years and could then be sold to Palestinians. The cozy relationship with the religious leadership would be nullified as well. The Israeli government’s expropriation bill failed miserably, and the Holy Sepulchre’s closure angered many Christian communities. Israel needs a less shortsighted strategy, one that will curtail the process by which Orthodox activists are driven straight into the heart of the Palestinian resistance. Israel’s policies and its cooperation with a foreign, hostile, and greedy Patriarchate are the contemporary sources of the “discouragement and bitterness” that Storrs noticed in 1917. Surely Israel should hope to avoid another hundred years of the same conflict.

Matthew Jarrell ‘18 is a History concentrator. Illustration by Sel Lee.

EDUC 22 26 28 30

Software Schooling Mary Dong The value of computer science in early education

Teach the Rainbow Mia Pattillo The necessity of LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education Policing Priorities Michael Mills The disparity between Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s education and police funding

Education Behind Bars Lucy Walke How the education system is failing incarcerated youth

AT I O N

SOFTWARE SCHOOLING The value of computer science in early education Squeaky chalkboards and overhead projectors have been classroom staples for decades, but the landscape of public education is quickly changing. Today, teachers seamlessly incorporate computers, smartboards, and tablets into their instruction. Yet despite the rapid rise of the digital lifestyle in the wealthiest socioeconomic bracket, less-privileged households lag behind. Almost half of the poorest Americans donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have access to a computer or the Internet at home. Unfortunately, with a lack of technological access often comes a lack of technological skills, which is foreboding as the importance of computers increases in modern life and industry. More than 50 percent of all American jobs require some degree of technical skill, a proportion expected to rise to 77 percent over the next 10 years. Basic digital literacy is becoming increasingly essential. Policymakers around the world should thus adopt more rigorous and accessible IT and computer science curricula in primary and secondary schools. Algorithms aside, knowledge of how to use basic digital tools, such as Microsoft Office and Google Search, is essential to any

white-collar job. Nonetheless, even in the US, 1 in 10 Americans does not have access to the Internet, with women, people of color, and people from rural or low-income communities disproportionately disconnected. A recent survey published by the OECD showed that almost a quarter of respondents did not know how to use a computer at all, and only 5 percent were able to perform tasks more complex than searching for information in a spreadsheet and emailing data. Digital literacy has not fully transitioned from a privilege to a norm. This shocking inequity has pushed lawmakers across the globe to legislate for technological change, particularly from within public school systems. For instance, in Estonia, every student enrolled in public school begins to learn the basics of logic and coding at age 7 as part of a private-public partnership program called ProgeTiiger. When the Estonian government introduced this program in 2012, its goal was not to create a country of software engineers. Rather, it was to give students the skills they need to develop a smarter, more meaningful relationship with technology.

In 2014, England also updated its national curriculum to include mandatory computer-based programs of study, which teach pupils to become “responsible, competent, conﬁdent, and creative users of information and communication technology.” In Finland, where mandatory computer science education takes an integrated rather than an

A recent survey published by the OECD showed that almost a quarter of respondents did not know how to use a computer at all isolated approach, programming is taught as a tool to be applied in a variety of subjects. Other nations including Italy and Singapore are also racing ahead to incorporate computer science education into all classrooms. After all, in a time when Google knows everything from your favorite cookie recipe to your mother’s birthday, it’s important that people understand how to control, rather than be controlled by, these increasingly powerful digital tools. Teaching tech in schools may seem overly ambitious. After all, ﬁrst graders scanning indecipherable lines of code doesn’t necessarily scream “well-rounded education.” However, while computer science education does involve coding, programming is only a small portion of the curricula recently implemented in Estonia, England, and

Finland. Jasmine Ma, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at NYU’s Steinhardt school, reminds people that “other aspects— engineering, production, problem solving, creative uses, and an understanding of hardware” are just as crucial in a holistic computer science education and have close ties with a variety of other subjects. Introducing a structured, mandatory computer science curriculum would bridge the computer literacy gap and may help students succeed in other areas as well. As the idea of computer science education spreads across the globe, the major challenge for expansion is investment. The high cost of tablets and computers makes computing classes seem unfeasible in schools with tight budgets. However, affordable options exist. The Raspberry Pi, for instance, is a fully functional computer marketed to help teach kids about programming. Each unit costs less than $30, and several schools in the UK have already begun to use these microcomputers in the classroom. Even better, conceptual lessons on topics such as logic and algorithms can all be done on a chalkboard. In fact, Finland doesn’t even need computers to teach children computer science: To learn the concept of a loop—a repeated sequence of logical steps—students in physical education can act out a series of dance moves, and those in art can gain the same understanding through knitting. For schools that lack the physical or human

resources to teach isolated computer science classes, this type of integrated approach is a viable option. Funding computer science curricula is a smart investment for governments. The global IT sector is booming, but there is a lack of qualified personnel. The Obama White House predicted there will be over 1.4 million unfilled computer science-related jobs by 2020. In 2015, there were almost 10 times more open computing jobs in the US than there were computer science graduates. The situation is similar in the UK, where corporate representatives published a report titled “Next Gen” to address the dearth of employable computer science graduates and urge the government to put computer science on the mandatory curriculum. If businesses can fill their positions with qualified, trained professionals, countries have a major opportunity to attract worldwide investment and grow their economies. Better computer science education is key to creating a larger, more diverse workforce. For one, women are grossly underrepresented in tech, and though the percentage of women has risen steadily in other physical sciences majors, the corresponding number has actually fallen in computer science over the past few decades to less than 20 percent in recent years. Parents and teachers are less likely to encourage young girls to pursue tech careers; with a lack of early exposure, girls in college computer science classes often feel inferior to their male counterparts and end up dropping computer science for other fields. And the road doesn’t get any easier for the few women who are persistent enough to break into the male-dominated field. Denise Wilson, a professor of engineering at the University of Washington, notes that “there are many forms of disrespect, devaluing, demeaning, and isolating behavior” that women in tech have to endure. A mandatory computer science curriculum, however, would be a step in the right

direction. By providing an equal playing ﬁeld for all children, educators would provide a safe space for girls to discover their interests in tech without feeling like they’ve already fallen behind. Girls who are exposed to computer games at an early age are four times more likely to go into computer science, and those who have a female computer science teacher are 26 percent more inclined to pursue the ﬁeld. Hopefully, if everyone can understand basic code, computer science will be seen less as an exclusive discipline for men and more as a subject shared by all. Challenging discrimination in tech will be difficult. Giving every child, regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic background, the opportunity to develop their interests would be a good start.

Even better, conceptual lessons on topics such as logic and algorithms can all be done on a chalkboard. Technology is shaping the world in profound ways. As Silicon Valley tycoons compete to create smarter, more powerful devices, educators must ensure that future generations are ready to engage safely and proactively with these digital tools. A few European countries have recognized the importance of computer science education in primary and secondary schools, but more policymakers need to recognize that digital literacy is essential for individuals and hugely beneﬁcial to industries and even entire nations. The digital world is racing ahead, and schools need to catch up.

Mary Dong ‘21 is an intended Applied Mathematics–Economics concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR. Illustration by Olivia Pecini.

How can changing the federal housing vouchers system improve educational outcomes? Section 8 housing vouchers allow families to receive a subsidy on rent for an apartment they choose, but the program makes no effort to encourage families to live in neighborhoods that provide longterm beneﬁts to their children. In fact, in some places it appears that vouchers are disproportionately used in low-opportunity neighborhoods. Programs that instead encourage families to use vouchers in high opportunity neighborhoods—and which support them to make that choice by creating willing landlords—could have a big effect on upward mobility in the US. Your work focuses on neighborhoods as they relate to property taxes and differences in school funding. How would you change the way we fund schools?

Interview with

JOHN N. FRIEDMAN John N. Friedman is an associate professor of economics at Brown University. He served on President Obama’s National Economic Council as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Friedman is a project director of the Equality of Opportunity Project, which uses big data to develop “scalable policy solutions that will empower families to rise out of poverty.” His current research focuses on neighborhoods and their impacts on economic outcomes. In his 2012 State of the Union, President Obama cited Friedman’s research on the impact of great teachers. Friedman received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Schools in the US receive about 45 percent of funds from state and local government, with the remaining 10 percent or so coming from the federal government. The result is that poorer cities within states, and poorer states within the country, spend less than richer ones do. Now, money is not the sole driver of education quality, but research suggests that it does have an important effect. For instance, cities with higher test scores for poor children have higher rates of upward mobility. Of course, this is only a correlation, but many states have implemented school ﬁnance equalization systems to help address local differences in funding, and these reforms tend to raise the achievement of students in poorer districts. More of this would be great, but of course one needs to implement these reforms in a way that preserves broad support for education funding. But broadly, education is a great example of how improving opportunity for children from poor backgrounds can be a rising tide that lifts all boats. Are schools and outcomes better in areas where people know more about the Earned Income Tax Credit? Is there a relationship between the EITC, educational outcomes, and children’s future earnings? Interestingly, EITC knowledge is actually lower in areas with higher levels of education. The reason is that knowledge about the EITC (and other programs) is driven by a dense concentration of eligible households—people talk with each other about what the rules are. Other programs affecting different populations have concentrated knowledge in different places. Separately, the EITC does seem to have important positive impacts on outcomes, just by giving eligible families more resources. Some families do work more in response, but overall, the EITC is 90 percent just transferring money to poorer families with kids, which is a great thing.

Interviewed by Josh Waldman Illustration by Klara Auerbach

TEACH THE RAINBOW The necessity of LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education

exual education in the United States is taught almost entirely within a heterosexual framework, leaving LGBTQ+ students unable to see their identities and experiences reflected in the curriculum. Some public schools even promote blatant prejudice. In Alabama, public school teachers are mandated by law to teach that “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” Similar laws, dubbed “no promo homo,” currently operate in six other states, outlawing teachers from portraying LGBTQ+ people or topics in a positive light. Some of these states even require that such individuals be portrayed negatively. Other parts of the country that don’t conspicuously prevent inclusive dialogue still use sexual education curricula filled with heteronormative and cisnormative language and devoid of an emphasis on inclusive safe sex practices. Such a lack of inclusion harms a population that already faces disproportionate health risks. Sexual education plays an essential role in teaching students about harm and risk reduction through birth control methods, protection, consent, decision making, and healthy relationships, particularly for those who do not have the luxury of communicating comfortably with their parents on these topics. Yet fewer than 6 percent of LGBTQ+ students report exposure to positive representations of these topics in their sexual education classes. The failure of policymakers and schools to promote inclusive dialogue in sexual education courses is an attempt to delegitimize the existence of LGBTQ+ youth. This places these students’ physical and emotional health in danger by denying them both the right to basic information about STI prevention and a classroom environment free from stigma. Over the past few months, state legislators have attempted to further restrict dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. This January, the Indiana Legislature proposed Senate Bill 65, which would prevent teachers from discussing gender identity during sex education without explicitly receiving written parental consent, essentially barring students from learning about LGBTQ+ issues unless their parents agree

to opt in. Similarly, in February, South Dakota state Senator Phil Jensen proposed Senate Bill 160, which attempted to ban teaching gender identity or gender expression to students in elementary and middle schools. Although SB 65 was amended to remove its discriminatory language and SB 160 was blocked, the two bills reveal politicians’ ignorance of—or indifference to—the damage their actions would inflict on many youth.

As more students identify as LGBTQ+, far too many schools still neglect the consequences of poor sexual education policy.

Making sexual education policy more inclusive would have far-reaching benefits. According to a 2016 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, nearly 9 percent of American adults have had at least one same-sex experience. A recent survey of sexually-active high school girls in New York City suggests the number may be on the rise, finding that almost 1 in 4 respondents reported some same-sex experience. Given the significant adolescent population with these experiences, exclusionary sex education policies possibly put hundreds of thousands of students at risk. “No promo homo” laws also gloss over critical health and safety information, such as forms of protection and lessons in consent for non-heterosexual and non-cisgender students. Some curricula overtly demonize LGBTQ+ adolescents, equating homosexuality with child sexual abuse, insinuating gay men caused the AIDS epidemic, or only discussing same-sex sexual activity in the context of promiscuous or risky behavior. Unsurprisingly, schools that teach such beliefs also report higher rates of LGBTQ+ youth skipping school, a lack of inclusive health services, and few comprehensive anti-bullying policies. By attempting to erase and even vilify the presence of LGBTQ+ youth, these practices reinforce a hostile environment for these children and adolescents, leaving them more susceptible to bullying, stigma, and homophobic remarks.

Addressing these issues through an affirmative and comprehensive sex eduation curriculum becomes imperative when considering the vulnerable position of LGBTQ+ youth. Compared to their heterosexual peers, they experience higher rates of STIs, unintended teen pregnancies, depression, partner violence, and substance use. The US healthcare system also has a history of discrimination against LGBTQ+ populations, evidenced by cases of hospital staff declining to provide HIV medication to men who have sex with men and refusing point-blank to serve transgender patients. Research confirms that affirming and validating conversations about sexual and gender fluidity are the first step in reducing the societal pressures that lead to depression, suicide, and substance abuse in this group. This entails lessons on gender and sexuality that explain various

LGBTQ+ identities, consent and protection in the context of non-heterosexual and non-cis relationships, and on sexual experiences beyond strictly binary terms such as “man and woman,” “penis and vagina.” As more students identify as LGBTQ+, far too many schools still neglect the consequences of poor sexual education policy. Topics of gender identity and sexual orientation are still taboo in many American classrooms, a reality that reinforces how the US at large needs to heighten its dialogue on the ways it continually fails to acknowledge the LGBTQ+ community.

Mia Pattillo ‘20 is an English and Gender and Sexuality Studies concentrator. Illustration by Eliza von Zerneck.

POLICING PRIORITIES The disparity between Chicago’s education and police funding

rotests in Chicago often center around police misconduct or cuts to education funding. Over the past year, a political battle has unfolded over a project emblematic of both: a proposed $95 million police academy on the city’s West Side. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has claimed that the academy will support the city’s police force and spur economic growth in the neighborhood. Critics have objected to locating the project in an over-policed neighborhood and have questioned how the city can fund a police academy but not the dozens of schools it has recently closed. The #NoCopAcademy movement arising from this controversy has become a proxy war for the mayor’s critics

who are unsatisﬁed with his efforts to address police misconduct and his abandonment of struggling schools. In November 2015, the release of a video showing the gruesome slaying of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke ignited activists. Cries of “16 shots and a cover-up” rang out across the city. The killing and subsequent cover-up ultimately led to Van Dyke’s ﬁring and a federal Justice Department investigation, which found a pattern of civil rights violations across the Chicago Police Department (CPD). In 2013, Mayor Emanuel announced that more than 40 schools across Chicago would close. Spurred by declining

enrollment and a perceived need for consolidation, these closures overwhelmingly affected majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods—the same areas that the Justice Department found to be most heavily burdened by police misconduct. Worse, these newly vacant school buildings have been primarily sold off, rather than converted into community centers, as was promised.

Mayor Emanuel has again shown his resolve to appease the police rather than support Chicago’s marginalized communities. The #NoCopAcademy movement has united organizations across the city in opposition. Yet despite this resistance and objections from prominent critics such as Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot, who called the plan “ill-conceived,” the Chicago City Council approved the purchase of the land, setting the project in motion. But activists aren’t giving up. In early April, protesters took to City Hall to stage a sit-in, teach-in, and die-in. The scene was grim, with bodies strewn across the lobby of City Hall, ﬁnding their places between mock gravestones bearing the names of victims of police brutality in Chicago. In response, the mayor’s office released a statement saying, “Investments in our youth and community development are a down payment for the future of Chicago and strong, successful youth and communities will make a safer Chicago for everyone.” The mayor’s office added that the police academy isn’t an either-or proposition, claiming that the academy is essential to implementing the Justice Department’s recommendations to improve policing and to revitalize West Garﬁeld Park. But questions remain as to whether Emanuel’s administration can secure necessary community investment and ensure the police academy achieves its stated purpose. Further, it’s doubtful that building the proposed academy would improve the Chicago Police Department. In its 164-page report, the Justice Department reserves only a small section to address CPD training. The bulk of that section recommends changes to how officers are trained and at what frequency. It calls for a greater focus on use-of-force training, and the report as a whole spends far more time

on issues of oversight, accountability, and advocating for community-focused, trust-building policing. Spending money on these priorities, rather than a new academy, would do more to improve the police department. The mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force, created in the wake of the Justice Department report, has focused on accountability, greater transparency, and a restructured training curriculum in its findings. It hasn’t prioritized addressing the police department’s training facilities. And yet the plan lives on. The mayor’s police academy could support training reforms, but the plan has made no mention of how training might differ in this new facility. It is also unclear how the academy will be a community catalyst in West Garfield Park. The project will supposedly bring only 100 jobs—most of them are temporary—to the area. Moreover, since the neighborhood is predominantly Black, critics have argued that the last thing the neighborhood needs is a heavier police presence. West Garfield Park bore witness to one of the country’s most destructive race riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, which contributed to the segregation that still plagues the city. As the 50th anniversary of these riots approaches, Mayor Emanuel has again shown his resolve to appease the police rather than support Chicago’s marginalized communities. In the wake of the Laquan McDonald scandal, Chicago saw a plummeting rate of police stops despite a spike in gun violence. Many saw this as retaliation on the part of a police force being criticized left and right. If the new academy is Emanuel’s concession for the CPD, it’s a costly one that neglects more pressing recommendations from the Justice Department. One of those recommendations was to increase communication and listen to the city’s afflicted communities. Mayor Emanuel should do just that by refusing to make any investment that increases policing at the cost of supporting marginalized communities.

Michael Mills ‘20 is a Public Policy concentrator. Illustration by Sam Berenﬁeld.

EDUCATION BEHIND BARS How the education system is failing incarcerated youth

owhere are the failures of public education and the American criminal justice system more apparent than in the daily lives of incarcerated minors in the United States. Every day, about 60,000 youth wake up behind bars. The majority have been suspended or expelled from their community’s schools and have fallen behind several grade levels. 1 and 3 will need specialized education services while they are incarcerated. Young people of color suffer most in this system: Black youth are five times as likely to be incarcerated as their white peers, and Latino and Native American youth are two to three times as likely. Unfortunately, the United States has failed to provide incarcerated youth with the bare minimum needed to meet state standards for public education, let alone with the resources required to meet any specialized needs. In fact, only 13 states provide the same educational services in juvenile detention centers as they do outside them. Classes are typically much larger in these facilities than they are in public schools, are likely to be organized by age rather than ability, and have curricula that are far less rigorous than those of community schools. When placed in solitary confinement, youth often receive little to no schoolwork at all. In a striking example from Los Angeles County, a student was found to have graduated with a high school diploma from the Challenger Memorial Youth Center without ever being taught to read. To address the inequalities experienced by incarcerated learners, a formal method of transparency must be developed and rigorously implemented to ensure that public and private facilities are complying with states’ public school standards. Measures should be taken to address the specialized needs of incarcerated youth, and states should make it

easier for incarcerated youth to re-enter community schools. At first, it seemed that the Obama administration would effectively address the problems with education behind bars in the United States. In 2014, it published “Guiding Principles for Providing High Quality Education in Juvenile Justice Care Settings,” which was jointly supported by the Departments of Justice and Education. These principles affirmed the government’s responsibility to ensure that incarcerated youth are given all the resources needed to re-enter the community prepared for “productive citizenship.” Still, in 2015, The Council of State Governments Justice Center found that 15 states did not hold their juvenile justice centers to the same standards as they did their public schools.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a ﬁerce advocate of punitive measures over rehabilitation for young offenders, supporting both the treatment of repeat juvenile offenders as adults and the implementation of youth work camps. In November 2016, the Obama administration hired Amy Lopez as the first superintendent of the Bureau of Prisons’ school district. This decision accompanied a series of reforms aimed at reducing recidivism and easing transition back into the community by offering a range of educational opportunities for incarcerated youth, including more opportunities for those with learning disabilities. Unfortunately, this last-ditch attempt at reform came at the end of Obama’s term, and the Trump administration has since rolled back this marginal progress. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a fierce advocate of punitive

measures over rehabilitation for young offenders, supporting both the treatment of repeat juvenile offenders as adults and the implementation of youth work camps. In May 2017, Trump fired Amy Lopez, who seemed to be the last hope for progress in the new administration. Although taxpayers save five dollars on incarceration costs for every dollar invested in education, Trump shows little interest in overhauling educational programs for incarcerated youth. Critics of Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s harsh approach toward incarcerated youth point to evidence that education heavily reduces the risk of recidivism. Recidivism rates for the three years after an arrest are often as high as 75 percent. This number is staggering, but improved education for incarcerated youth may be a tool to lower it. Research has consistently shown that comprehensive reform of juvenile justice centers to include enhanced educational opportunities can considerably reduce the recidivism rates of juveniles. A 2013 RAND study found that inmates who participated in a correctional educational program had a 43 percent lower chance of returning to prison than those who did not. This just reaffirms that the costs of re-incarceration far outweigh the costs of education. If reform cannot come from the federal government, it must come from states. Many juvenile justice facilities are not held accountable by their states and face no pressure to improve their quality of education. One of the first steps that should be taken at the state level is to require correctional education programs to obtain independent accreditation of curricula behind bars from a nationally recognized education accrediting commission. Accreditation determines whether an institution meets the minimum standards for quality, involves staff in evaluation, and creates a plan for improvement. But increased transparency will have little impact without the support of qualified educators. Teachers are the foundation of every school. As a result, it is just as crucial that the juvenile justice system recruit qualified candidates and invest in teacher training programs that provide

these educators with effective strategies for teaching in juvenile detention es facilities. Teachers in detention facilities must be equipped to teach students who come from different educational nt backgrounds and who learn at different speeds. The Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings (CEEAS), based in Washington DC, is working with juvenile detention centers around the country to rethink how teachers are trained and how ls curricula are implemented. CEEAS calls h for “short, thematic units aligned with nstate standards” and a “technology-enhanced instruction and learning plath form.” Importantly, CEEAS works with g facilities to develop tailored recruiting practices to ensure quality educators d are hired and retained. Institutions and teachers are then trained specifically to work with children with special needs.. The US Department of Education rhas found that in a class of 15 incarcery ated youth, between 5 and 13 are likely to have a learning disability. Among those, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders and emotional or behaviorall disorders are the most common. The rates of post-traumatic stress disorderr are also much higher among incarcerated youth than their peers. The Northwestern Juvenile Project found that of the incarcerated youth surveyed ed in Chicago, 92.5 percent had experienced at least one trauma. Unfortunately, fewer than half of incarcerated youth with a disability— learning or otherwise—report receiving g special education services, even though the Individuals with Disabilitiess Education Act (IDEA) entitles them to public education that meets their needs. Currently, the bulk of the law iss targeted toward traditional classroom settings, and the recommended practices are often unable to be applied in n juvenile detention centers. This meanss that a concerted effort must be taken to implement IDEA in a way that effecctively meets the needs of incarcerated d youth. Screening for a disability should d take place upon entry into juvenile

detention centers. Once they identify a disability, the facility—along with the student’s parents and a representative of the school agency—must work to develop an Individualized Educational Program for that student, as required by the Department of Education. Finally, there is a dire need for an easier transition back into community schools. Upon release, many young people face credit transfer difficulties and delays in the transfer of records necessary to re-enroll in community schools. Two-thirds of formerly incarcerated youth never re-enroll in school, and the ones that do have an especially high drop-out rate. In 2008, the youth unemployment rate for high school dropouts was 54 percent. The rate for dropouts who were formerly incarcerated is even lower.

opportunities of incarcerated youth. Education is critical to the development of children and teens, particularly those in the juvenile detention system. Incarcerated youth deserve quality education, and there are clear pathways to achieve this goal. Policymakers must work with state education agencies to establish actionable plans to address the glaring failures of education for incarcerated youth. Neglecting to provide necessary services in juvenile detention facilities blatantly disrespects the rights of this vulnerable population and does a great disservice to the entire country.

Lucy Walke ‘19 is a Political Science concentrator and an Associate Editor at BPR Infographics by Malavika Krishnan

Only 13 states provide the same educational services in juvenile detention centers as they do outside of them.

Fortunately, there are methods to ease the transition that have been shown to work on a smaller scale and could be implemented nationwide. Better technology may be the first place to look: The database Infinite Campus includes a student’s personal information, class schedule, and assessment history and was successfully used in Kentucky to ease the re-entry of incarcerated youth into community schools in different districts. Maine has a comprehensive model for a student’s transition to a community school, which includes assembling a “reintegration team” 10 days before their release, cross-agency collaboration, and a deadline-driven transfer of their records. Reintegration into community schools post-release is the final piece of the puzzle that must be improved in order to enhance the educational

How do you allow community members, speciﬁcally in communities of color, to be actively involved in the creation of education reform? First of all, any problem that is local requires a local solution. With local communities, our worlds are so separate that you have people next door who are completely foreign to the communities they are trying to help. You also have to trust that people will have solutions or have the ability to implement solutions. A lot of what we see in education reform is a lack of trust of Black people, and it’s because Black people have been devalued due to racism. For me, yes, we need education reform, but the goal has always been involving local communities in their own recovery. It starts ﬁrst by investing in local organizations and knowing that you’re building capacity for change by doing so. How can Black reform groups better represent the public?

Interview with

DR. ANDRE PERRY Andre Perry is an activist, professor, and awardwinning journalist in the ﬁeld of education. He is currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution, conducting resarch on race and structural inequality, economic inclusion, and education. He was the co-chair for education in New Orleans in 2010 and served on Louisiana Governor elect John Bel Edwards’ K-12 Education Transition Committee in 2015. Perry also founded the College of Urban Education at Davenport University.

Interviewed by Josh Waldman Illustration by Klara Auerbach

When folks are given large sums of money to inﬂuence change, they often say that these Black-led organizations don’t have the capacity to handle money well. However, if you never trust someone with dollars, you never build capacity. And we’re quick to give young, white folks money to start businesses and schools, but when it comes to Black folks that type of enthusiasm doesn’t follow through. Racism taints our ability to see who we invest in and Black institutions, Black school boards, Black schools are treated like Black people. Until Black people matter, it’s going to be hard for these organizations to invest in the institutions and people that can implement change in those communities. What are the best kind of relationships between reform organizations and the communities they serve? When you’re working with communities, the sign is that you are empowering them. People don’t typically complain when leadership on the ground is empowering. You don’t want to do reform to people; the sign that you’re doing it with them is that organizations on the ground are being empowered, growing, getting stronger, getting resources, and mobilizing people. A lot of people want community engagement, but let’s think through those words. When you’re a member of a community, you don’t need community engagement because you’re part of the community. A lot of white organizations want to engage the community; they don’t want to be a part of the community. They want to leave, and that’s not the kind of membership building and capacity building communities need. You’ve argued that we should pay tuition for formerly incarcerated people to attend a four-year state college. Why? We’ve robbed millions of children from the best college education they can get because of a criminal justice system that is tilted against Black and brown people. We [should] move merit-based scholarships away from upper-income people and give them to low-income students as a form of [redistribution]. We should be adding points to test scores of people who have been victimized by the criminal justice system and adding dollars to the scholarship amounts to the children of the incarcerated and the incarcerated. White folks beneﬁted from the over-incarceration of Black people because it reduced the competitive environment to get a college degree. The least we can do now is to pay that privilege forward and give the incarcerated and the children of the incarcerated college scholarships.

MODEL LEARNING Closing the teacher diversity gap In 2014, students of color accounted for more than half of the pupils in public schools—for the first time ever. This demographic shift, however, is notably absent in the teacher workforce. In the 2015–16 school year, 80.1 percent of public school teachers identified as white, significanctly higher than the 49.2 percent of students identifying as white. These demographics corespond to about 8 white students for every white teacher, compared to roughly 34 students of color for every teacher of color. Such a discrepancy between educators and students has deleterious effects for students of color. Diversifying classroom leaders would help decrease—or even eliminate—the achievement gap between white students and students of color. Studies indicate that having a teacher of the same race improves standardized test scores by up to six percentage points. Black teachers have 30 to 40 percent higher expectations for Black students than white teachers do, and minority children are placed in gifted programs at higher rates in schools with greater teacher diversity. These trends extend into socioemotional grounds. Teachers tend to view Black and Hispanic students as more disruptive and less attentive than white students, and minority students have lower rates of disciplinary action under minority teachers. A more diverse teacher workforce would also present students of color with role models, cultural translators, and advocates, while challenging stereotypes and exposing all students to diverse figures of authority. Closing the diversity gap is a crucial part of reducing the achievement gap between white and minority students. However, given that Black and Hispanic teachers comprise only 6.7 and 8.8 percent of the 2015 teacher workforce, respectively, Black and Hispanic students can expect to have a teacher they racially identify with only once throughout their 13 years of public school education. Although some areas have recognized the importance of a more diverse teaching force, the diversity gap persists. Both Boston and Florida have implemented programs that specifically recruit and train minority teachers, but the actions of individual states alone cannot fix the structural issues that caused this widespread problem.

The current teacher training pipeline perpetuates the lack of minority teachers. Aspiring minority teachers themselves lack role models and a community within the teacher workforce, and they may also lack the resources needed to pursue costly certiﬁcation processes. Hence, minority involvement decreases at every step in the traditional path to becoming a teacher. In the 2011–12 school year, minority students comprised 43 percent of high school graduates, 38 percent of students enrolling in higher education, 27 percent of students majoring in education, and 18 percent of those completing an education program with a teacher certiﬁcation. Even worse, the teacher retention rate is lower among minorities; teachers of color are 24 percent more likely to leave teaching than their white counterparts. Once in the workforce, teachers of color often work in high-poverty, low-performing schools with high turnover rates. Despite these concerning statistics, there are reasons for optimism. Federal efforts such as Race to the Top have

increased recognition and funding for alternative teacher preparation programs. The flexibility of these programs attracts minority recruits, offering accelerated schedules and online courses to accommodate candidates with other jobs. Thirty-six percent of enrollees in alternative certification programs were Black or Hispanic in 2012, indicating that the alternative programs are seeing early successes. As alternative programs become more prevalent, the teacher workforce likely will diversify. In turn, this will expose students of color to authority figures who have confidence in them and who they can relate to, improving student academic experiences and creating an environment conducive for them to pursue teaching positions themselves. Moreover, once the proportion of teachers of color in schools increases, so should their retention rates. The vicious cycle that has prolonged the diversity gap doesn’t need to perpetuate itself any further—what’s needed, and what’s possible, is to replace it with a positive feedback loop. Sarah Conlisk ‘20 is an Applied Mathematics– Economics concentrator and a Data Associate at BPR.

Dwindling Diversity Among Potential Teachers

Enrolled in Bachelor Program (38% Minority)

High School Students

High School Graduates

(48% Minority)

(43% Minority)

Education Major (27% Minority)

Graduate with Teacher Certiﬁcation (18% Minority)

LET THEM EAT

CHEESE How vulnerable populations pay for the US cheese surplus

One hundred feet underground, temperatures normally hover around 58 degrees Fahrenheit. In this man-made cave, however, it’s a cool 36. An elaborate system of pumps runs a steady stream of coolants from aboveground to protect the buried inventory. Thousands of red, orange, and yellow barrels line the floor like an industrial sunset, each oversized trashcan weighing 680 pounds and filled to the brim with dairy. These limestone caves in Springfield, Missouri are home to the United States’ largest stockpile of its 1.2 billion-pound surplus of cheese, built up through subsidies by the US government. Purging this excess cheese has been an issue for officials since the Great Depression, and the primary solution to this long-standing problem has been fairly consistent: feed the cheese to the poor. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a farm bill that released 30 million pounds of processed cheese for states to give to low-income residents. The cheese was distributed to people on welfare, food stamps, and Social Security through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program until the 1990s. This program gave rise to the term “government cheese,” and despite the 1981 farm bill’s attempt to bite into the 2-billion-pound cheese surplus, the 30 million pounds of cheese it released barely made a dent in the stockpile. To address this, the government established Dairy Management. Still operating today, Dairy Management is a federally-funded nonprofit corporation whose mission is to promote American-made dairy products, a mission recognizable in its “Got Milk?” advertisement campaign, the Fuel Up to Play 60 campaign, and even the Dominos bailout following the 2010 recession. Dairy Management’s main strategy has been to increase consumer confidence in milk and dairy products by expounding their nutritional value. These efforts aimed at increasing consumer consumption have been successful: Today, the average American consumes 14 more pounds of cheese a year than they did in 1990. However, government cheese

still disproportionately ends up in the hands of low-income individuals. Dairy Management’s strategy is more surreptitious than advertisements about milk moustaches; it has successfully convinced the public of dairy’s health benefits, despite most scientific evidence pointing to the contrary. This agenda is also pushed through public institutions. Prisons have contracts with national and state dairy producers, schools opt into government programs that subsidize and push dairy products, and charitable organizations still receive cheese donations from the US government. The seemingly benevolent solution of funneling excess cheese to lower-income people and the incarcerated is actually a huge problem. The idea that cheese and milk are essential parts of a well-balanced diet is largely a white-centric notion fueled by Dairy Management’s successful campaigns. In fact, the majority of people of color are lactose intolerant, and the language of “lactose intolerance” itself contributes tothe sentiment that the white Anglo digestive system is the medical norm, portraying those who cannot process dairy as different and deficient. What makes the government’s dumping of cheese to low-income individuals particularly egregious is the correlation between race and income. This cheese is not just going into the hands of people without the economic privilege to opt out. It’s disproportionately being forced into the bellies of people of color who cannot digest it. Consuming dairy products while lactose intolerant can plague individuals with a host of symptoms, ranging from diarrhea to joint pain, and even to difficulty with short-term memory. Because these symptoms occur spasmodically and with varying severity, they are often underreported and misattributed. For those who are lactose intolerant, consuming a large

The idea that cheese and milk are essential parts of a well-balanced diet is largely a white-centric notion fueled by Dairy Management’s successful campaigns.

dose of dairy with most meals could mean living with chronic pain or fatigue. As a direct result of government policy, it takes a certain amount of privilege to choose not to eat dairy and incur the associated health risks. People receiving meals from prisons, schools, and charities have little control over the ingredients they eat, and low-income individuals are the most likely to be recipients of these meals. In effect, the government treats the poor and the incarcerated populations as wastebaskets for its excess cheese. This is most striking in prisons. Most state prisons have contracts with food and dairy suppliers, and when these contracts expire,

suppliers can bid on the prisons. Prisons are an attractive and stable purchaser of dairy, serving slices of processed cheese on plates or simple cheese sandwiches, often to fulfill USDA food requirements for federal facilities. Schools play a large part in propping up the milk industry as well. School milk accounts for about 7 percent of all fluid milk sales in the United States. This 7 percent comes in part from the National School Lunch Program, which requires that fluid milk be offered daily alongside free meals. The dairy industry’s investment in these meals is concerning, given that 87 percent of Black students, 74 percent of Hispanic students, and 68 percent of Native American students are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals—the students who are most likely to be unable to digest them. The Special Milk Program further promotes dairy-heavy school meals, reimbursing all participating schools for their fluid

Prisons have contracts with national and state dairy producers, schools opt into government programs that subsidize and push dairy products, and charitable organizations still receive cheese donations from the US government. milk purchases in full in an effort to lower milk prices. The government specifically targets lower-income individuals and people of color, turning them into milk drinkers and ignoring known correlations about race and lactose intolerance. Even without government endorsement, dairy has no problem finding its way onto schoolchildren’s trays. Due to the popular fallacy that milk is essential to building strong bones and promoting overall health, food service staff at educational facilities often require students to drink milk, without offering a replacement available for students who refuse. Students who are behind on lunch payments are sometimes offered cheese sandwiches as a replacement for a conventional lunch. Poor people and people of color should not have to atone for the sins of America’s dairy problem, and Big Dairy is just one of many ways that the government uses low-income individuals and minority populations as

an outlet for its excesses. While the obvious first step to solving this problem is to stop producing so much cheese, to do so would be tricky for the US government, since it would also constitute the loss of farming jobs, the slaughter of dairy cows, and a PR nightmare. And if the cheese isn’t going to people in the United States, it would have to go abroad, potentially replicating the US’s dairy problem in other countries, many of which have even higher rates of lactose intolerance. While slowing milk production may reduce the dairy industry’s toxic effects on low-income individuals, it does not completely reconcile dairy’s problems with people of color. Even though dairy consumption results in adverse health outcomes for the lactose intolerant, dismantling the cultural ethos that milk is healthy is no small task. Legal remedies have mostly failed so far. Litigation against the USDA’s pro-milk campaigns, petitions to remove milk from school lunches, and lawsuits concerning milk carton labelling that accuse the USDA of discrimination by forcing people of color to conform to white-centric health norms have been unsuccessful. However, the US government’s decision to prioritize the dairy industry over low-income people and people of color isn’t just harmful, callous, and racist; it’s also extremely expensive. Over the last decade, the US government has spent billions maintaining its unhealthy relationship with cheese. Instead of spending $4 billion per year to cool the cheese caves, the US could use this money to make healthy food more accessible for low-income people.

Allison Arnold ‘20 is an English concentrator. Illustration by Adrienne Hugh

Does Matific see as antiquated about traditional education? Children, particularly in the United States, are underperforming in mathematics relative to their peers around the world. The idea that individuals feel that they are not a math person, not able to access math curricula, is problematic. We want kids to understand that math is the art of problem solving, using prior knowledge to explore and to discover. Real learning occurs when students are faced with a problem they don’t know how to solve, yet they eventually resolve it after a lengthy process of exploration, experimentation, and multiple attempts. For us, failure is okay. We want to give teachers the opportunity to facilitate instruction and students the opportunity to explore and ultimately discover mathematics, to refine their approach to math, to expand their love of math and problem solving. What is Matific’s role in addressing the challenges?

Interview with

LAWRENCE KORCHNAK Lawrence Korchnak is the Vice President of Matiﬁc, an educational technology company that works to integrate technology into the classroom. Matiﬁc provides interactive exercises, lesson plans, and feedback to facilitate learning and to aid, rather than replace, the teacher in the classroom. He received his bachelor’s degree from Dicksinson College and his masters degree in Education from Duquesne University.

We want to provide resources for teachers to integrate technology into the curriculum. I think if you look historically at technology and education for the last 30 years, technology has not really delivered on the promise of changing the way teachers teach and the way students learn. We are trying to provide teachers with quality resources that tie to their curriculum–that allow them to make technology part of instruction, not something that sits outside of instruction. Teachers are not given tremendous amounts of time to find resources that align with their curriculum, to their instruction, and with their assessments that all meet the same high standards. Teachers just don’t have the time to become an expert on a complex educational system—that is the challenge of resource providers like ourselves. Is technology finally on its way to delivering the promises of a new and exciting classroom? If you look at how technology has fundamentally transformed everything we do, from the early days of flying a plane or medical advancements, nothing looks the same as it did 100 years ago. We have a problem because the classroom of today doesn’t look that different from that of 100 years ago. Yet technology has fundamentally transformed everything we do. In my opinion, the education technology world is still ripe for that transformation to occur. There are new and exciting times to come for technology to become a part of education-to start to drive its reform. Those same technological revolutions of finance, healthcare, and industry have not yet occurred in education. How does Matific address worries about how much kids use screens and technology today? That is an interesting question that comes up often, and one I frankly wrestle with my two kids who are on screens whenever they can be. I think this is an instance of things in moderation. Our kids are growing up in a different world and different time. There is a time and a place, with ample opportunity for children to experience technology and be involved with technology, that maybe most importantly technology should play a role in preparing them for what comes after their formal education. The number of jobs and amount of meaningful employment that don’t involve technology is shrinking. So, there must be an appropriate use of technology, but also one that allows them to be prepared for the future. The goal of education is to create quality citizens who are prepared for life after their formal education.

Interviewed by Jack Makari. Illustration by Klara Auerbach.

ZONED OUT How a bipartisan investment bill is ripe for abuse

idden within the 2018 tax reform bill is a provision that could reinvent development financing across the country. The Investment in Opportunity Act, a bipartisan amendment to the bill, encourages investment of realized capital gains in Low-Income Communities (LICs). The policy seeks to use a portion of the $6 trillion in returns from investments that has yet to be removed from the market to revitalize neighborhoods

state to be the actual Opportunity Zones. To get the tax incentives, investors must reinvest their realized capital gains into Opportunity Funds (O-Funds). Due to the broad nature of O-Fund investment, governors’ choice of zones will greatly influence how the Investment in Opportunity Act is used in practice. March 21, 2018 was the governors’ first deadline to nominate their states’ respective Opportunity Zones. The nomination processes differed drastically by state: Some states had a formal application process, others allowed individual nominations, and

Due to the broad nature of O-Fund investment, governors’ choice of zones will greatly inﬂuence how the Investment in Opportunity Act is used in practice.

and local economies still struggling from the Great Recession. With proper regulation, this program could reinvigorate depressed areas and increase returns for investors. However, with poor implementation, the act could create a capital gains loophole and fail to direct resources to those who need them most. The Investment in Opportunity Act is designed to funnel capital to economically disadvantaged areas. Using census data, the Treasury Department has designated over 41,000 geographic tracts as eligible for classification as Qualified Opportunity Zones (QOZs)—tracts comprising LICs and LIC-adjacent neighborhoods of 2,500 to 8,000 people. Of the 41,000 QOZs, governors select 25 percent within their

still others released zone suggestions and opened a period of public comment. Many states have requested an extension for determining the zones, but a few have locked in their selections for the next 10 years. In doing so, each state faced the same challenge: balancing between areas with the most potential for lucrative investment and areas most in need of an economic boost. Many states took a holistic approach to determining Opportunity Zones. However, California, which used a data-centric method for Opportunity Zone selection, serves as an example of how this program can be manipulated. Since designations are based on 2010 census data, many of the QOZs in California are “anomaly zones”— areas that were LICs eight years ago,

Holes in the “O-Zones:” Adair Park as a case study of Opportunity Zones gone wrong

Opportunity Zones in Georgia Legend: = Low-Income Communities (LICs)* = Contiguous Tracts**

Opportunity Zones in Atlanta Proper

*LICs are census tracts where the poverty rate is at least 20% and in the case of tracts located within a metropolitan area, median household income cannot exceed 80 percent of the wider metro area income. LICs are eligible for Opportunity Zone designation. **Contiguous tracts are eligible for Qualiﬁed Opportunity Zone (QOZ) designation if governors have chosen to designate a neighboring LIC as a QOZ and the resident household income does not exceed 125 percent of its neighboring LIC.

Adair Park Map

Census Tract 58 in Georgia encompasses most of Adair Park, a neighborhood in the southwest of the city that experienced dramatic white flight during the 1950s. Recently, the demographics have been changing again. In the last five years, Adair Park’s African American population has begun to shrink, while its white population has doubled from 7 percent to 14 percent. Meanwhile, median housing prices have skyrocketed, swelling 28 percent in the last year alone. These are the hallmarks of gentrification, and much of it is driven by the BeltLine, a walking path of gardens along Atlanta’s southern edge that has raised the prices of housing in its path. Yet Census Tract 58 is still classified at Opportunity Zone eligible.

but have since seen economic growth. These zones are attractive to investors, who see it as safer to invest in alreadythriving areas. Though this possibility might elicit more investment, the practice undermines the purpose of the bill. California should prioritize its 250 zip codes considered to be either “at-risk” or “distressed” economically, not those that have already recovered from the Great Recession. To ensure that only truly low-income communities receive Opportunity Zone status, an equitable selection process must combine qualitative and quantitative evaluations. But the investments themselves can also be exploitative. O-Funds can invest in virtually anything, as long as the investment is within the boundaries of an Opportunity Zone. This means, for example, that an O-Fund could invest in an oil rig in one of the northern Alaskan QOZs that span hundreds of miles. This type of project would likely have occurred without the Act, but now investors can use a loophole to increase their returns. Similar instances of subsidies for questionable projects could abound without the promulgation of new standards.

These zones are attractive to investors who see it as safer to invest in already-thriving areas. Though this possibility might elicit more investment, the practice undermines the purpose of the bill.

Fortunately, the bill gives the Treasury Department broad authority to regulate abuses of the Opportunity Zone system. Though this doesn’t guarantee effective enforcement, it allows an aggressive administration to regulate investments that do not align with the intent of the bill. This would allow the Treasury Department to prohibit O-Fund investment from

flowing to environmentally and socially exploitative development, instead prioritizing investments in projects that serve Low-Income Communities. If properly regulated, the Act could create an invaluable source of capital for mixed-income housing, renewable energy development, and other responsible investments. By passing the Act, the federal government has forced governors into a high-stakes guessing game of economic impact. With little time and information to decide on Opportunity Zones, states have struggled to make informed selections. Soon, states and cities will have to adapt to a flood of capital pouring into their most vulnerable communities. This could serve as a huge boon to places that need a spark, as responsible investment in LICs can energize struggling economies nationwide. Without proper oversight and regulation, however, the Investment in Opportunity Act will direct capital into investments that do more harm than good.

AJ Braverman ‘21 is an intended Political Science concentrator. Infographics by Mike Danello.

BARS TO LITIGATION The case for repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act Today, over two million people are encarcerated in US prisons. The War on Drugs—which increased mandatory minimum sentences, stiffened penalties for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes, and encouraged police involvement in urban areas, predominately home to minorities—led the US prison population to skyrocket to what is now the largest in the world, in total number and per capita. This upsurge in incarceration is the result of more arrests and lengthier sentences, not an increase in crime. Mistreatment of prisoners has grown along with the prison population. Over 21 percent of inmates have reported being physically assaulted by guards, and such abuse on mentally ill inmates is commonplace. In the past ﬁve years, sexual assault reports have also increased. Prisoners nationwide too often experience frequent physical and emotional abuse while behind bars. Despite the many harms incarcerated people face, their options for redress are virtually nonexistent. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), intended to curb unnecessary prison litigation, save taxpayer dollars from overburdened courts, and reduce federal involvement in state penal policy, passed in 1996 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Though the intentions behind its passage may have been pure, its primary effect has been to make it incredibly difficult for prisoners to sue prisons on the state or federal level. The PLRA is a barrier to justice for an already vulnerable population. It must be repealed. The extensive rules that govern prisoners’ litigation abilities disproportionately harm less-educated and low-income prisoners. The process

prisoners must go through to file a claim is rife with technicalities and red tape. Justified claims can arbitrarily be thrown out before they make it to court. To make matters worse, once an inmate has filed three claims, the $400 fee to file another can no longer be waived, creating a financial hurdle for inmates wishing to hold prisons accountable for any continued wrongdoing. When André Lee Coleman-Bey was working to appeal a past decision, his fourth attempt at litigation, he was not given access to legal counsel. As a kitchen worker, he receives 17.5 cents per hour. At this wage, he would need to work 30 hours per week for two years in order to afford an appeal. And even for those who manage to save up the money, justice doesn’t come easily. District courts can screen the complaints that emerge from prisons and dismiss them without giving any notice to the claimant or allowing the claimant to respond to the dismissal.

The extensive rules that govern prisoners’ litigation abilities disproportionately harm less-educated and low-income prisoners. Most troubling is the lack of redress that survivors of sexual harassment and abuse in prison have due to the PLRA. Prisoners are not eligible for compensation without physical injury, meaning that those with psychological trauma due to abuse by guards or other prisoners cannot receive compensation for their mistreatment. Even after the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003, many inmates who were raped by guards lost their claims because they “did not make any claim of physical injury beyond the bare allegation of sexual assault.”

Although the PREA was amended in 2013, it still deﬁnes the scope of sexual assault narrowly and excludes sexual harassment. The passage of the PLRA was supposed to reduce litigation and prevent federal meddling in state law, but it has instead prevented judicial oversight of prisons. Although the law has reduced the number of lawsuits, there is no evidence that it has only eliminated those that may have been considered frivolous. If that were true, there would have been an increase in the number of prisoners winning lawsuits, but prisoners are losing more and more cases. The PLRA sets such high standards that even cases with reasonable claims can be summarily rejected by courts. Since the US federal government has little agency to oversee prisons—unlike the case in most industrialized countries—the PLRA eliminates the few legal pathways that could hold prisons accountable. The current system desperately needs to be overhauled. A repeal of the PLRA may increase litigation in the short term, which critics worry will cost taxpayers. But if costs are a real concern, the target should be the criminal justice system as a whole, which costs the government $80 billion annually. More fundamentally, removing restrictions on prison litigation will help protect some of the most vulnerable US citizens. Prisoners today pay a price that goes far beyond their sentence. The PLRA strips them of their rights and only makes prisons more dangerous.

Annie Gersh ‘20 is a Political Science and Urban Studies concentrator and a US Staff Writer at BPR. Illustration by Mackay Hare

THE UNIONS STRIKE BACK Janus, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and the future of organized labor The echoes of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the nation’s largest armed labor uprising, still reverberate throughout West Virginia’s rolling hills—and its classrooms. Starting on February 25, all of the state’s public schools closed for nearly two weeks as teachers statewide joined picket lines. The protest was the culmination of years-long objections to low pay: the state’s average teacher salary ranks 48th in the nation. Three days before the teachers began their strike, Governor Jim Justice signed legislation that provided a gradual pay raise for teachers, but one so modest that it would not cover the increase in the cost of living over the next ﬁve years. With the legislation failing to address concerns relating to public employee insurance programs, health care costs, and payroll tax deduction options, the teachers decided that they’d had enough. Joining together, the teachers and their unions demonstrated that the labor movement is alive and well in the Mountain State. Ironically, four days into the strike, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case from Illinois that is expected to critically hobble, if not permanently cripple, American unions. In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, the Court revisits its 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The Supreme Court is now being asked to hold that, because collective bargaining is a form of political speech, the First Amendment forbids requiring workers to subsidize it—even through agency fees—which the case’s plaintiff claims is inseparable from the political activities of the union. If Janus is decided this way— an outcome nearly all legal commentators expect—public-sector unions such as AFSCME anticipate losing as much as 65 percent of their membership. Indeed, that’s what happened in Wisconsin after Scott Walker and the Republican legislature enacted public-sector right-to-work through the infamous Act 10 in 2010. Although Janus threatens to deal a mighty blow to unions in the US, the West

Virginia teacher strike suggests a way forward for organized labor in the country. The strike effectively used social media as a tool for mass organization, centered the needs of the community, and linked its cause to greater issues of social justice. Organized justice could keep its flame burning by broadly applying these proven tactics from West Virginia. The West Virginia strike was officially initiated by the leadership of the state’s three major education unions: the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, the West Virginia Education Association, and the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association. In practice, it was sustained and managed by rank-and-file union members. When it appeared that union leadership and Governor Justice had reached a deal to reopen schools, union members rejected it, unsatisfied with the proposed pay increase. Those on the front lines vowed to continue the strike.

Although Janus threatens to deal a mighty blow to American unions, the West Virginia teacher strike suggests a way forward for organized labor in the United States.

Crucial to the strike’s unexpected success was social media-centered organizing. In the months leading up to the strike, teachers, advocates, and community supporters grew the movement’s Facebook page “West Virginia Public Employees United” to a membership 24,000 strong. Members described the page as a highly active space, giving teachers and their supporters an invaluable forum for sharing ideas and planning actions. Additionally, features such as Facebook Live were used to create an involved and informed base, as members used the livestreaming tool to broadcast Fed-Up Fridays, the weekly prelude to the statewide strike. “West Virginia does have a long history of wildcat

strikes,” explained teacher Erica Newsome. “But in terms of all 55 counties going out, that has never happened, and it would not have happened if it wasn’t for social media.” West Virginia teachers demonstrated the efficacy of a tool like Facebook in organizing a mass movement. Teachers also made remarkable efforts to ensure that schools closing did not mean that students went hungry. This protected the many students who rely on their school for daily nutrition, and blunted criticism that the teachers’ action was harming the students they are supposed to serve. Teachers used Facebook to coordinate with the state’s food pantries, churches, and community centers to send backpacks of food to children. The grim irony of the situation was not lost on Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the acclaimed Nickle and Dimed, a chronicle of poverty in America: “This is our dystopian welfare state: severely underpaid teachers trying to keep poverty-stricken kids alive.”

Remaining cognizant of their community’s needs, West Virginia teachers helped ensure the longevity of their communities’ support for the strike, breaking with the history of public-sector unions. Historically, the organizing efforts of public-sector unions have tended to be far more insular than those of their private-sector counterparts. The working population represented by public-sector unions has become increasingly white-collar and educated over time, contrasting with the blue-collar workforce represented by private-sector unions. In State of the Union, a seminal account of the history of American organized labor, historian Nelson Lichtenstein notes that the victories of private-sector unions have generally beneﬁtted the compensation of both their card-carrying members and other blue-collar laborers, whose non-unionized employers were compelled to go along with levels of compensation and working conditions set by union negotiation. Conversely, as

political scientist Daniel DiSalvo argues, public-sector unions have preferred what longtime American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers called “pure and simple unionism”—direct efforts focused exclusively on improving their own union members’ welfare. This is opposed to the more leftist “social activism”—attempts to downwardly redistribute wealth. Consequently, public-sector unions have been more likely to concentrate bargaining efforts on what benefits the union at the expense of advancing worker solidarity through their social policies. The West Virginia strike is significant because it wasn’t “pure and simple unionism.” The West Virginia teachers, recognizing that improving their situation required far more than a pay raise and better health insurance, called for structural change and a rejection of the status quo. As Wendy Peters, the president of the Raleigh affiliate of the West Virginia Education Association, noted, “Wages and health benefits were almost a distraction. They are important, but there were five major stances we took, and we won all five.” In their bargaining, the teachers focused on the needs of the entire state. For instance, the teachers sought to ensure that their raises would not be funded by cuts to Medicaid. Rather, the teachers and their biggest ally in the state legislature, Senator Richard Ojeda, called for an increase in the state’s natural gas severance tax to expand funding for the state’s public employee pension plan. They argued that the only fix to the issues they were experiencing was a more just and equitable distribution of the state’s resources, rather than just the usual pay raise. The West Virginia teacher strike has sparked a reawakening among teachers, offering a glimpse into what could become the norm in a post-Janus labor environment. Across the nation, rank-and-file teachers are taking matters into their own hands; the efficacy of the West Virginia wildcat strike appears to have inspired teachers to act on their own, without waiting for union leadership. Just days after the resolution of the West Virginia strike, the Oklahoma Education Association—representing the nation’s lowest paid teacher workforce—announced that it would shut down schools statewide unless the legislature increased school

funding. Insiders note that the union was compelled to action because of a threat from rank-and-ﬁle membership to strike regardless of whether the union’s leadership would stand with them. Though the state’s legislature passed a bill that would increase teacher pay by $6,100, the teachers kept their promise to strike, with 30,000 teachers converging on the state capitol in Oklahoma City on April 2. Like the West Virginia educators before them, the Oklahoma teachers maintain that true change can only come from structural reform. Thus, they demand the restoration of the millions of dollars in education funding that had been cut from the budget alongside a pay hike for school support professionals. These Oklahoma educators demonstrate that organized labor is at its most resilient when its goals align with those of the community at large.

Remaining cognizant of their community’s needs, West Virginia teachers helped ensure the longevity of their communities’ support for the strike, breaking with the history of public-sector unions.

At the labor movement’s peak, advocates envisioned themselves as champions of the people’s welfare state, crucial players in the determination of citizens’ social entitlement, and a formidable force for upward mobility. With shifting patterns in American employment, that aspiration has faded. But every so often, the actions of workers grab the attention of national headlines and reinvigorate labor’s fading ﬂame. In its adept and meaningful use of social media and rejection of “pure and simple unionism,” the West Virginia teacher strike is undoubtedly one of those instances. From the front of the classroom to the front of the American labor movement, these teachers demonstrate that whatever the courts say, organized labor still has a promising future in the United States.

Nathaniel Pettit ‘20 is a Public Policy concentrator and a US Staff writer at BPR. Infographic by Amy Huang and Charlotte Perez.

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A note from your As the ﬁnal issue of the school year comes to a close, I can’t help but look back at my ﬁrst year as your creative director with a sense of bewilderment, excitement, and pride—and only a twinge of exhaustion. Attempting to elevate the visual language of politics through journalism–as realized through the pages of this magazine–is a personal passion and lifelong goal of mine. Having the opportunity to lead the creative team of this magazine and simultaneously explore the integration of creativity and politics has been the best gift I could ask for. However, this magazine wouldn’t be where it is today without the dedicated illustrators and designers who contributed their precious time and energy to this endeavor, I can’t thank you enough for all the hard work you’ve done. I’d additionally like to thank my advisor and mentor, Susan Doyle, whose generous support and poignant advice has been indispensible in guiding me through this process. –Klara Auerbach

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