Brookings: Experts - Darrell M. West

Special Education: The Forgotten Issue in No Child Left Behind Reform

Joshua Bleiberg and Darrell M. West — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:00:00 -0400

In 2002, when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), few would have predicted the law would last. Yet persist it did, and the controversial legislation remains on the books more than a decade later. Now that Democrats and Republicans have recently started its reauthorization process, it is time to examine one particular aspect, special education, that raises several different challenges.

Assessment of students with disabilities is perhaps the thorniest issue in education policy. For decades students with disabilities were not assessed or educated along with their peers. Schools, like all organizations, value what they can measure. The education system did not value students with disabilities because their success or failure was not counted.

That changed with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It mandated that students with disabilities participate in state assessments. States argued it was unfair for students with severe cognitive disabilities to take a general test because they were unable to achieve proficiency. Disability advocates were right to include all students in assessments and states were correct that some students would struggle to succeed in the new system.

To address this issue the Education Department issued regulations allowing states to alter assessments for some students with disabilities. Students who received support services but were unlikely to achieve proficiency on the general test could take a modified assessment covering the same content with easier questions. Students with the most severe cognitive disabilities could take an alternate assessment that covered less content and included less challenging questions. The Department also placed caps on the number of students whose scores could count as proficient on modified (2%) and alternate (1%) assessments. The intent was to ensure all students were counted and also to recognize that students with severe disabilities may not reach grade level proficiency.

Despite these changes, the core policy conflict remains. Some schools inappropriately administer modified assessments to students who could achieve proficiency on the general test to artificially raise scores. However, many of those students rightly take an alternate assessment. The assessment of students with disabilities will remain difficult until researchers gain a better understanding of all cognitive disorders. Until then policymakers will have to balance setting high expectations without overburdening schools and students.

Congress should deauthorize modified assessments and reauthorize alternate assessments but without a cap. Research indicates that very few students have the most severe cognitive disabilities. Due to natural variation, there are undoubtedly some schools where the percentage of students with severe disabilities is greater than 1%. In some areas, for example, industrial accidents or high concentrations of toxins can lead to spikes in disability rates. In those cases, a 1% cap places a harsh burden on teachers and students. Until cognitive science and assessment technology has improved substantially students with severe cognitive disabilities should not take the general assessment.

Lawmakers should adopt an assessment system that uses computerized adaptive tests (CAT). Adaptive assessments create a custom test for each student based on their answers to test questions. Using an adaptive test vitiates the need for an alternate assessment because it administers test items at the student’s real grade level. This removes the need to administer a fixed form test with simpler questions. Adaptive testing also has built in presentation and response accommodations. This flexibility allows all students to take the same exam.

Congress should also empower parents to make choices about the assessment of their child. Currently parents have few options after a school decides whether the general or alternate assessment is appropriate. Ideally the school would make the initial judgment about administering an alternate assessment. Parents could then choose if they wanted their student to participate in the general assessment. Empowering parents and students has served as a successful strategy in the past. IDEA gave parents the right to sue if students didn’t receive the services they needed. Parents often have greater knowledge of their child’s capacity than educators or researchers.

The politics of No Child Left Behind will probably not allow for a full reauthorization. However, the politics of special education are unique. Disability impacts all Americans regardless of class, race, or party registration. Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to look past partisan blinders on this issue in the past. Congress should honor that legacy by demonstrating we value the learning of all students.

2013 No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Proposals on Assessment Special Education Assessment

Authors

Joshua Bleiberg
Darrell M. West

How to Control Health Care Costs: Lessons from Abroad

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

June 13, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

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At a Brookings event on June 13, 2013, Dr. William A. Haseltine, author of Affordable Excellence: The Singapore Health Care System (Brookings Press, 2013) argued that there are alternative models to the current health care system in the United States.

Haseltine began his remarks by noting that Americans often see worse results in terms of the quality and coverage of their health care, even though they pay more than people in many other high-income countries. Singapore, on the other hand, ranks sixth in the world health care outcomes—well ahead of the United States—while spending less than one fourth of what the United States spends.

Haseltine said in the U.S., health care costs are eating into every facet of human life. He noted that the country should look around the world at other health care systems in order to make sense of the best practices and efficient allocation of finances to adopt for the U.S. system. Singapore was one nation that particularly stood out in Haseltine’s research. He said Singapore is unique in that their health care system “really works.”

Haseltine noted that while the United States should not strive to adopt a health care system identical to Singapore’s, Americans can learn from its model. In Singapore, health care consists of both public and private systems. Multispecialty care is often delivered in public hospitals, while primary care is delivered by private sector physicians. He added that the system is based upon “the suspicion of the economic man,” where people may “cheat and chisel” the Singaporean health care system. Therefore, the Singaporeans have built a system where most people have to pay for their health care. In addition, Singaporeans believe in “social harmony,” or the notion that the system should not get too out of balance. He said their solution is something along the lines of a mandatory 401k, where citizens are obliged to save money for health care amongst other issues such as retirement and housing. In Singapore, health care companies are also mandated to publish their prices. Haseltine said this creates an atmosphere where customers essentially “shop” for the best health care policy to cover their specific needs.

Several years ago, Singapore had a system that created a strong sense of competition among health care providers. This drove prices up, however, as companies purchased increasingly more expensive equipment to provide the best services. Now, while competition still exists, the government has decided to regulate it—a system that Haseltine called “regulated capitalism,” a strange notion to many Americans.

Haseltine said Singaporeans’ response to their health care system is approximately 75% positive, with “rough edges” falling under elder care and chronic disease.

He concluded by discussing several lessons that the United States can take away from the health care model in Singapore. Haseltine recommended that Americans think of their country in terms of cities and regional networks, rather than as one entity. This outlook should help the U.S. adopt lessons from Singapore, a much smaller country. He cited co-payment—a concept not foreign to Americans—transparency, managed competition, and “doctors on salaries” as the primary lessons for a revised system in the United States.

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How to Control Health Care Costs: Lessons from Abroad

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How to Control Health Care Costs: Lessons from Abroad

Accelerating the Mobile Technology Revolution

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

June 12, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM EDT

Falk Auditorum
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

A conversation with AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson and Senator Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)

In 2013, the number of active smartphones worldwide leapt to more than 1 billion. Given mobile’s immense growth and popularity as a modern-day necessity, how should policymakers respond to the accelerating speed of the mobile revolution, particularly increasing demand for broadband spectrum? How can the public and private sectors stimulate further innovations and investment in mobile technology? What policy steps must be taken to further public and private investment and advances in mobile technology in the United States?

On June 12, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a discussion focused on the mobile revolution and the policy issues that must be addressed to ensure that mobile innovation continues to thrive. Moderated by Director Darrell West, Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, and Senator Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) shared their thoughts on the future of mobile technology and how government and private enterprise can best work together.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #TechCTI

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Accelerating the Mobile Technology Revolution

A Century Later: The Adoption of the 17th Amendment on Direct Election of Senators

Darrell M. West and Beth Stone — Fri, 31 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Today (May 31, 2013) marks the 100thanniversary of the adoption of the 17th Amendment. With such an important milestone, it is worth pausing to ask the question of what our country has gained from a century of directly electing its senators. In a recent posting by Governance Studies at Brookings in our Issues in Governance Studies, we published a paper by Wendy Schiller (Brown University) and Charles Stewart III (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) entitled “The 100^th Anniversary of the 17^th Amendment: A Promise Unfulfilled?”

Using an original data set of roll call votes for U.S. senator taken in all state legislatures from 1871-1913, Schiller and Stewart investigate the dynamics of Senate elections in the indirect system. They argue that the 17th Amendment has failed to deliver and has produced a Senate even less responsive to voters than under the indirect election system. Characteristics of Senate elections in the indirect age parallel today’s Senate in terms of the types of candidates that run, the role of money in elections, the influence of partisanship, and the nature of Senate ideological and legislative behavior.

Some of the main takeaways are the following:

Corruption and inefficiency in indirect elections (by state legislature) were the driving forces behind the emendation, one part of the Progressive movement for more open, accessible, and responsive government.
Under indirect elections, the pool of candidates was deep with experienced politicians who wanted to remain in office, similar to today.
Despite the blatant use of money to win indirect Senate elections, 100 years after the 17th Amendment was enacted, the modern Senate elections process is swamped with campaign money in ways that far outpace elections under the indirect elections system.
In the Senate, polarization was high under indirect elections and then decreased after the adoption of the 17th Amendment. Yet it began to increase in the late 1970’s and is now as large as significant as it was under the indirect elections system.
Today’s senators are no more responsive to constituent needs than their counterparts elected indirectly by their state’s legislature.

The dysfunction associated with the modern Senate extends well beyond the election of its members. Inherent flaws in the Senate’s construction should be recognized and voters should be wary of false promises. It’s worth reflecting, now, on the effects of this constitutional change on democracy in America.

Read the full paper on the 100th anniversary of the 17th Amendment here »

Authors

Darrell M. West
Beth Stone

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

Politics, Higher Education and Health Care in the Austerity Era

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event
The A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy

Since the onset of the Great Recession, public discussion has centered on whether spending or austerity is the best path to economic recovery. As evidenced by the sequestration, recurring debt ceiling fights and the ongoing euro crisis, clear policy prescriptions to kickstart anemic economies remain elusive. Often lost in the public discussion surrounding government budgets, though, is consideration of austerity’s implications for national politics and how policy is enacted and implemented. How has the debate surrounding spending versus budget-cutting shaped the political conversation in the United States? What has been austerity’s impact on the policymaking process?

On May 22, the Governance Studies program at Brookings will host a half-day forum centered on the changed political and policy conversations in the austerity age. The fourth annual A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy will convene leaders from academia, the media, government, and business to explore the far-reaching implications of austerity reform and philosophy on the American political landscape and today’s most pressing policy challenges, specifically in the areas of higher education and health care.

After each panel, participants will take audience questions.

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Politics, Higher Education and Health Care in the Austerity Era

Mobile Technology’s Role in Combating Global Poverty and Enabling Entrepreneurship

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 16, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

According to the World Bank, nearly one-quarter of the global population lives at or below the poverty line of $1.25 per day. The world’s poor experience barriers to lifting themselves out of poverty because of the lack of access to capital to start small businesses and build personal savings. Yet with the growth of mobile technology, there are now new avenues for individuals to improve their economic circumstances, make monetary transfers, arrange for microfinance loans or establish small enterprises.

On May 16, as part of the Mobile Economy Project, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum to investigate the barriers to using mobile devices to conduct business in the developing world, explored how mobile devices enable individual entrepreneurship and small business development and examined mobile technology’s role in alleviating global poverty.

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Mobile Technology’s Role in Combating Global Poverty and Enabling Entrepreneurship

Alleviating Poverty: Mobile Communications, Microfinance and Small Business Development Around the World

Darrell M. West — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: The Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings releases this paper in conjunction with the May 16 forum at Brookings, “Mobile Technology’s Role in Combating Global Poverty and Enabling Entrepreneurship.” Both are part of the wider Mobile Economy Project which examines how the rapid expansion of mobile technology around the world is transforming economic opportunity for millions.

Poverty is one of the most pressing problems around the world. According to statistics from the World Bank, nearly one-quarter of the global population lives at or below the poverty line of $1.25 per day.[i] With so many people struggling for basic subsistence, it is hard for those affected to get out of poverty, gain access to capital, or develop small firms or businesses that help them build a better life.

Yet with the growth of mobile technology, there are new opportunities for individuals and small businesses to lift themselves up. People can use handheld devices to make monetary transfers, arrange for microfinance loans, establish small enterprises, and improve their economic circumstances. This helps them alleviate poverty and create a better situation for themselves and their families.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, said that wireless communication is a breakthrough technology that helps to solve the worst problems associated with health care, poverty, and educational access. "Now in every village where I go, someone's got a cell phone, somebody can make an emergency call, someone can find out the price on the market, someone can start a business empowered by the fact that they can reach a customer or a supplier, someone can drive a taxi or a truck for that reason as well. Everything is changing," said Sachs.[ii]

In this Mobile Economy Project report, Darrell West looks at the growth of handheld devices and investigates the barriers to doing business in the developing world. In particular, West explores how mobile devices enable individual entrepreneurship and small business development. Despite the presence of barriers such as corruption, lack of transparency and capital, and poor infrastructure in many parts of the developing world, there are successful ventures enabled by mobile technology.

The report details some of the cases which illustrate emerging possibilities for alleviating poverty in different countries including:

The growth of mobile devices
Mobile money transfer services
Mobile tools for small businesses
Microfinance applications

[i] World Bank data is found at http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home/.

[ii] Kyla Yeoman, “Can Mobile Phones End Extreme Poverty?”, Global Envision, March 16, 2012.

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Authors

Darrell M. West

Image Source: © Mike Hutchings / Reuters

Five Ways Teachers Can Use Technology to Help Students

Darrell M. West and Joshua Bleiberg — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:59:00 -0400

Thomas Edison once said, "Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools...our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years." Amazingly enough, however, one of our nation's most important inventors was proven quite wrong. The American education system has a remarkable resistance to innovation and the classroom experience has changed very little in the 100 years since Edison's prediction.

Advances in information technology have revolutionized how people communicate and learn in nearly every aspect of modern life except for education. The education system operates under the antiquated needs of an agrarian and industrial America. The short school day and the break in the summer were meant to allow children to work on family farms. Schools have an enduring industrial mentality placing students in arbitrary groups based on their age regardless of their competencies.

Technology has failed to transform our schools because the education governance system insulates them from the disruptions that technology creates in other organizations. The government regulates schools perhaps more than any other organization. Rules govern where students study, how they will learn, and who will teach them. Education regulation governs the relationships of actors in the system and stymies the impact of innovative technologies. Furthermore the diffuse system of governance creates numerous veto points to limit innovation.

To overcome these obstacles, we must persuade teachers that technology will empower them and help their students learn. We argue that there are five strategies for successful teacher adoption of education technology and that these principles will help fulfill the potential that Edison saw a century ago:

Schools must use technology that empowers teachers. Teachers rightly reject education technologies that divert their attention from instruction. The best education technologies enable teachers to do more with fewer resources. Communication platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr enable dynamic communication with students. Teacher-empowering technologies include mobile apps that grade written student work and provide lesson plan databases. School systems need to aggressively track what works for their teachers and put all other unworkable technologies aside.

Teachers should treat the adoption of technology as part of lesson planning. One of the major drivers of bad policy is policy churn. New district leaders want to make their mark adopting new policies and jettisoning the old. This constant changing of priorities makes beneficial reforms difficult to implement. Teachers can incorporate technology directly into their practice and insulate their students from the deleterious effects of policy churn. For example teachers can use Khan Academy or other online resources to improve remediation. Systematic adoption of technology at the classroom levels limits the damage of shifting policy maker priorities.

Teachers should not fear open-source technologies. Many mistakenly believe that education technologies are expensive and complicated to use. Open-source technologies are stable, secure, and compatible with other platforms. Organizations both small and large use open source devices every day. Many businesses use open-source servers for their efficiency and costs savings. They often have large communities that provide high quality customer support. Best of all, open-source technologies often cost less than proprietary products.

Use online education portfolios to evaluate students. Educators have known about the benefits of paper based portfolios for generations. Portfolios allow students to express creativity for difficult to assess subjects. Teachers can choose from a variety of online portfolio providers tailored to the needs of their classroom. They also serve as a platform for students to demonstrate growth. Online portfolios have many advantages over paper based options because they cost less and allow for more robust outreach. Online portfolios are also amenable to a wider variety of formats including video, music or other interactive features.

Teachers should embrace the Common Core State Standards. Common standards make teaching simpler. Teachers have to write lessons that comply with district, state, and national standards (e.g. NCTM or NCTE). Having a single set of standards eliminates redundancy and conflicting guidelines. Furthermore universal adoption of common standards will support future technological innovations that aid teachers. From a technical perspective, standards facilitate the development of new technologies. Innovators can focus on developing tools that better serve students rather than solving technical challenges of interoperability created by multiple sets of standards.

Undoubtedly weak financial support inhibits the adoption of education technology. Despite this obstacle, teachers working together have tremendous potential to reform education. Every day teachers face choices about how to implement the curriculum and instruct students. Those moments are opportunities for teachers to engage in education reform that has a real impact on students. Teachers should use education technologies that are inexpensive, easy to use, and improve student learning.

Authors

Darrell M. West
Joshua Bleiberg

Publication: The Huffington Post

Image Source: © Thomas Peter / Reuters

Twelve Ways to Build Trust in the ICT Global Supply Chain

Darrell M. West — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:30:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This paper was released in conjunction with the Building Trust in the Global Supply Chain event at Brookings on April 18, 2013. It is a part of the Center for Technology Innovation's Issues in Technology Innovation paper series.

The globalization of commerce and trade has created many benefits. Supply costs have been reduced for many products. Computers and other items can be made of parts from a number of different locales. Countries can specialize in particular goods and companies can focus on the things they do best. Raw materials may come from one area, while manufacturing and production lie elsewhere, and sales and marketing take place in still another place. In this as well as other examples, contemporary commerce involves a complex interchange of hundreds or thousands of individuals, organizations, technologies, and processes across a variety of different continents.

But long supply chains and inadequate or nonexistent product evaluation before deployment, create a situation where widespread vulnerabilities exist in products and networks that can be exploited by others during design, production, delivery, and post-installation servicing. There are industry-wide risks associated with procurement, transportation, and management. Everything from raw materials and natural disasters to market forces, national laws, and political conflict can be problematic. Problems in one area can cascade elsewhere and magnify risks dramatically for the system as a whole.

In this paper, West discusses twelve ways to build trust in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) global supply chain. With the assistance of a group of leading experts brought together at the Brookings Institution in February, 2013 plus follow-up interviews, he explores the operational threats and technological vulnerabilities that we face, and makes recommendations to identify best practices, standards, and third-party assessment for supply chain assurance.

West argues that vulnerabilities in the supply chain and product development, generally, facilitate a myriad of attack and exploitation techniques, such as unauthorized remote access after product deployment for many malicious activities, degradation of ICT networks, and damage to critical infrastructures. West suggests that developing agreed-upon standards, using independent evaluators, setting up systems for certification and accreditation, and having trusted delivery systems will build confidence in the global supply chain as well as the public and private sector networks that sustain them. These and other types of evaluations make information available to purchasers and therefore give them a firmer basis for product selection.

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Authors

Darrell M. West

Building Trust in the Global Supply Chain

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 18, 2013
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Long supply chains and inadequate product evaluation before deployment create a situation of widespread vulnerability in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supply chains. As trade grows more globalized, the supply chain has become more complex and challenging. Contemporary commerce involves hundreds of individuals, organizations, technologies, and processes across continents. In this situation, what are the vulnerabilities and what are the possible remedies for addressing those threats? What steps should be taken to ensure that supply chains are protected?

On April 18, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum to explore operational and technological threats to the ICT global supply chain and ways to identify best practices, standards, and third-party assessment for supply chain assurance. A panel of experts discussed the problems involved in cross-border supply chains and ways to address industry-wide risks.

Inside the Immigration Process

Darrell M. West — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:09:00 -0400

At a time when national leaders are debating ways to reform immigration laws, most Americans would be shocked to know what actually happens inside the current process. As a native-born resident, I had no idea until I married a German woman and sought to get her citizenship. I assumed marrying an American automatically made her a citizen and that administrative approval would be simple and straight-forward.

So it was a surprise when the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected her citizenship application on grounds we weren't actually married. We had been married for five years and assumed that sending the agency a copy of the marriage license along with other bits of evidence would document our union. With this highly bureaucratic organization, though, the marriage certificate only proved we were married on the date of the ceremony, not the several years thereafter.

I had met my wife, Karin Rosnizeck, in Munich, Germany where she worked as a public affairs specialist for the U.S. consulate. She was smart and highly educated. She had a master's degree in American and French Literature and spoke impeccable English, better than mine, we joked. On the surface, she seemed exactly the type of person America should welcome with open arms.

But a warm and welcoming attitude was not what we encountered with our country's immigration authorities. All of our friends knew we were legally married because they had attended the ceremony and partied with us at the wedding reception. But as we would learn in going through the green card and naturalization applications, there is nothing routine about the process.

I knew something about the topic. I was vice-president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. I had moved there in 2008 after teaching political science and public policy for 26 years at Brown University. I had published a book through Brookings Institution Press entitled Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy. But none of these credentials prepared me for the rigors of the immigration office.

For starters, getting a green card and becoming a citizen is very expensive. Something I didn't realize when I started the process is that Citizenship and Immigration Services is funded by applicant fees, not federal tax dollars. That means it is perpetually understaffed and underfunded. There were charges for taking your finger-prints. File the wrong form and have to send in a new one? You paid twice. Since the agency has no independent money, it charges its customers thousands of dollars. Despite the Statue of Liberty rhetoric of "give us your huddled masses," the high cost demonstrated that the United States no longer wants poor immigrants.

As part of the green card application, my wife signed away her right to basic government services. She would not be eligible for public assistance as long as I had assets to support her. I had to list my salary, savings deposits, personal property, stocks, bonds, and life insurance policy demonstrating that I had income at least 125 percent of federal poverty guidelines so that she would not become a "public charge" of the United States.

In Providence, Rhode Island where we initiated the green card process and in Washington, D.C. where my wife applied for citizenship, the offices for collecting biometrics were located in distant suburban communities with no bus lines or mass transit. This was not a problem for us since we owned a car, but if you didn't have access to wheels, the constant trips to these offices would have been a nightmare.

For many immigrants, it is virtually impossible for them to afford the fees, handle the paperwork, and navigate a complex bureaucratic process. Even with a Ph.D. in political science, I was overwhelmed with the complexity of the multiple applications, fees, documentation, interviews, and trips to the immigration office.

But transportation and money aside, that was only the tip of the iceberg looming ahead for our application. There were many obstacles along the path to citizenship. For a country that has fully embraced the digital revolution, the immigration office has an open distaste for technologies that are a staple of American businesses. All the government immigration forms are paper-based and require hours of photocopying important documents (sometimes more than once when they get lost). Materials could not be electronically transmitted to immigration authorities despite the opportunity to save money, avoid lost documents, and speed up the process. Virtually every communications involved physically going to the post office and mailing documents back and forth. American immigration is a 19th century process in a 21st century world.

But the most shocking incompetency came with our citizenship application. We filed forms showing that we were married, but the application was rejected on grounds we hadn't proved our marriage was genuine and that we still were living together. Friends suggested we send pictures of our honeymoon, but they didn't realize such images would prove little in the eyes of immigration authorities.

For more definitive evidence, I put together documents including tax returns, bank statements, insurance forms, employment status, and even Facebook pages showing we had gotten married in 2007 and been living together on a continuing basis since that time. Trips out of the country had to be documented to show that our periodic absences from one another were not evidence of a sham marriage.

In April, 2012, we went to the D.C. immigration office located an hour outside of town in Fairfax, Virginia. We were ushered into a small office with a hearing officer. She had our thick stack of documents in front of her. Fearing the worst, she instead gave us good news. She said our file looked good and we would get a letter confirming Karin's citizenship application.

We were ecstatic that our appeal seemingly had worked. We had fought city hall and won. But you should never spike the ball until you are in the end zone and have won the game. We waited for months to get the official letter, but nothing arrived. I wrote a letter noting the positive hearing and requesting clarification of her case, but got no response.

I emailed the agency using a new electronic communication address the agency had set up, but there was no response. I called the agency's 800 number and the person informed me his computer was down and could provide no help. When I called back, I got another person who said the last thing in our online file was the citizenship denial. There was no record that our April appeal even had taken place. On another occasion, an immigration officer asked Karin to retake the citizenship knowledge test of American history and law even thought she already had passed it months earlier with a perfect score.

Eventually, one immigration phone operator gave us a very helpful hint. "Go to the immigration website," he advised, "and request an in-person meeting." The volume of letters and emails the office receives is so heavy that there often is no response. Throughout November and December, I went to the agency's InfoPass website to request an appointment only to get a message every time saying no appointments were available. Over Christmas, I got lucky. We received a January 11, 2013 appointment for a meeting at the local office.

The day arrived, and we made the early-morning drive from D.C. to Fairfax. We met a pleasant young man in his 20s and explained that Karin's citizenship request had been denied in December, 2011 and we had an April, 2012 hearing, but had gotten no communication over the last half-year. He looked at his computer and said he would go to a back room to check our file. Ten minutes went by and I worried about worst-case scenarios. Would we have to go through another hearing? Would the agency simply deny Karin's appeal?

After a long wait, the young man reappeared with a supervisor. "Good news," he said. "Your citizenship application actually was approved last April following your hearing." Among the various scenarios I had role-played in my head, this was not one I had expected. "Our application was approved six months ago?" I asked incredulously. "Yes," he said. "Did you send us a letter informing us of this?" I inquired. "No, we didn't," he replied sheepishly.

The news slowly dawned on us. My wife's application had been approved nine months earlier, but no one had called, written, or emailed the approval. Instead of delivering the good news in the months following our hearing, they had demanded new fingerprints, a new citizenship test, and a new hearing. Each part of the agency has no idea what other sections are doing. Even with multiple phone calls concerning our case disposition, no one had informed us our documents were in order and she had been approved for U.S. citizenship. It was a mind-boggling conclusion to a five-year process.

A few weeks later, Karin was sworn in with over 100 other immigrants at the federal courthouse in downtown D.C. It was a joyous occasion filled with great emotion for everyone in the room. More than 50 countries were represented, and I felt proud to be an American. Not only were people celebrating their new status as American citizens, they had overcome the most forbidding and intransigent bureaucracy in the United States. Those new Americans had demonstrated extraordinary patience, ingenuity, and perseverance.

In reflecting on the entire experience, there are several administrative reforms needed as our country embarks on a new round of immigration reform. The immigration agency should update its processes for the 21st century. The current paper-based approach is costly, inefficient, unresponsive, and prone to major breakdowns. No company in American operates its business this way.

The agency needs appropriations help from the federal government. Immigration officials already are swamped with millions of new applications and backlogged cases. Beyond individual inefficiency and screw-ups in our particular cases, there is a structural problem that makes the agency highly inefficient and unpleasant for all involved, applicants and employees. It should not fund its operations solely on user fees. Immigration is a legitimate part of government and should be funded as such.

Americans should realize that even during a time of high national unemployment, we have unmet economic needs in low and high skill industries. Information technology companies have more job openings than the current supply of American workers with appropriate math and computer skills. Farmers need help harvesting fruits and vegetables. Hotels and restaurants have difficulty filling current employment needs. We need immigrants to do the jobs Americans don't want or aren't trained for.

We should resurrect the view from long ago that immigrants help America. At the ceremony, I recalled why I had put a picture of famed physicist Albert Einstein on my immigration book cover. I wanted to remind readers that immigrants have made valuable contributions to U.S. commerce, entertainment, cuisine, and innovation. Half of the Silicon Valley companies founded in the last decade had an immigrant founder or co-founder. What if Google were based in Russia, eBay were in France, Yahoo were in Taiwan, and Intel were in Hungary? The American economy would look a whole lot weaker if Sergey Brin, Pierre Omidyar, Jerry Wang, and Andrew Grove had developed their transformative ideas in their home countries and not come to America.

Authors

Darrell M. West

Publication: The Huffington Post

Image Source: © Robert Galbraith / Reuters

The Paradox of Worker Shortages at a Time of High National Unemployment

Darrell M. West — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:56:00 -0400

At a time of high national unemployment, it has become a truism that there are few worker shortages and employers have numerous applicants for every available slot. After all, that is the very definition of joblessness. High unemployment results when there are many more workers seeking positions than available jobs.

Yet the paradox of the contemporary situation is that in this time of stubbornly high unemployment, a number of fields report a shortage of American workers and problems filling key positions. For example, even as the country as a whole experiences high unemployment, the Bureau of Labor has found that there are over 3.5 million open jobs – openings across the country and across sectors. In some specialized sectors, such as high-tech, advanced manufacturing, and medical specialties, unemployment rates are as low as three, four, or five percent. And on the labor-intensive side of the economy, agricultural companies report difficulty finding workers to pick vegetables and fruits, and hotels and restaurants indicate they have problems filling key positions.

The ripple effects of job vacancies spread throughout the economy. Companies that have been unable to fill key positions have closed down, moved entire operations abroad or delayed expansion plans. Conversely, filling worker shortages allows companies to better compete, grow, and create more jobs for American workers.

This report aims to provide a roadmap for where worker vacancies exist, and how they can most effectively be filled to help companies grow and expand. Labor shortages are identified through analysis of job outlook surveys, government reports, and interviews with business and labor leaders. To estimate the impact of filling these shortages in specific industries across the economy, interviews were conducted with business and labor leaders in the accommodation, agriculture, food service, health care, manufacturing, technology, and life sciences sectors.

The data and interviews confirm that worker shortages exist in each of the sectors, and that these shortages cannot be filled by available American workers, even with high unemployment across the nation, due to retirements, demographic gaps, geographic differentials, and the failure of educational institutions to deliver employees in key sectors. Examples of the costs of shortages in various industries include:

Agriculture: Lack of access to workers has led to (1) food processing operations for frozen broccoli and cauliflower moving to Mexico, (2) some of the nation’s most productive farms closing down, and farmers from states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maryland, Louisiana, and Washington delaying expansion plans.
Health Care: At a time where increased retirements and new mandatory health insurance promise to dramatically increase the demand for medical care, 30 percent of hospitals are already reporting shortages in specialty services. The shortages of nurses alone are estimated to top 115,000. 80 percent of hospital CEOs are currently making efforts to increase the number of primary care physicians.
Manufacturing: Employers in the manufacturing sector report difficulty filling available high-skilled positions. Even at the height of the Great Recession in 2010, companies reported 227,000 open jobs. Factory owners note that is difficult to bring manufacturing jobs back when they cannot find the talent they need to expand.
Technology: Microsoft has 200 employees in its software center in Vancouver because it couldn’t get engineers into the US. Google developed its news aggregator outside the US for similar reasons, and companies like ON Semiconductor in Phoenix are revving up their overseas hiring because they cannot find workers in the US. The problem is especially acute at the governmental level, where more than half of state governments (54.8 percent) report difficulty filling vacant IT positions.

There are two potential ways to fill these gaps, and both should play an important part in the country’s economic recovery. The first is to retrain American workers to ensure that their skill sets match the needed requirements. The second is to take advantage of foreign workers with the skill set and mobility to fill the existing gaps.

These two solutions to worker shortages—training American workers and bringing in foreign-born workers—need not be in opposition. There are two competing theories on the role of immigrant labor in America – do they compete with or complement American workers? In the framework of compete, the American economy and labor force are seen as a zero-sum game and every job taken by an immigrant workers is one less job for an American worker. But economies are more complex than that, growing and generating new jobs as companies innovate and expand, creating new jobs, or in some cases, new industries and sectors of the economy. In this context, immigrant workers can be seen as complementing American workers. Immigrants tend to have different skill sets and different education levels than American workers.

They are more likely to have a PhD and less likely to have finished high-school. As a result, immigrant workers can complement American workers by filling in specialized roles at both ends of the economy.

The findings presented in this paper are consistent with prior research in this area. For example, research by the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group projects that within the decade there could be as many as “20 million vacant U.S. jobs unless the current education-to-employment system undergoes significant changes.” The takeaways from these findings are clear. Addressing worker shortages — whether through job retraining or immigration—is a necessary part of our economic recovery that will create more American jobs.

When skill and labor shortages aren’t met, the economy suffers. A smart immigration system can help prevent this by filling needs so companies can expand operations in the U.S. and don’t have to move them overseas. But America’s immigration system is not designed for today’s economy, and remains largely unchanged since 1965. In fact, of the approximately one million green cards given out by the U.S. in 2011, around 139,000 (or 13 percent) were given out for economic reasons, a number far too small to meet the needs of the world’s largest economy. By comparison, Canada provides a much higher percentage of employment-based visas than the U.S. even though it has a much smaller population. America’s immigration system must always help families reunite and provide a safe harbor for refugees and asylum-seekers. But as America rethinks its immigration system, there is a unique opportunity to secure growth and prosperity by ensuring that it meets the needs of a 21st century economy.

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Education Technology Success Stories

Darrell M. West and Joshua Bleiberg — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: Governance Studies at Brookings released this paper in tandem with the Center for Technology Innovation public forum entitled Education Technology: The Next Generation.

In 2011, a student logged onto the online classroom Udacity to take the final exam for her introductory Physics class. Khadijah Niazi had overcome several barriers to finish that exam. She lived in Pakistan, which recently blocked access to YouTube, the site Udacity used to host its video lessons. Undeterred, she posted a plea for help on an Udacity message board saying “I am very angry, but I will not quit.” Hours later several classmates from Malaysia, Portugal, and England attempted to find a workaround that would allow her to finish the class. Soon a Portuguese professor found a way to download the videos from YouTube and then upload them to a photo-sharing website that Kadijah could access. The next day she took the final exam. Even more amazing than the technology know-how is the fact that Kadijah was 11 years old and aced the college level physics class with the highest distinction.

Advances in technology are enabling dramatic changes in education content, delivery, and accessibility. Throughout history, new technologies have facilitated the exponential growth of human knowledge. In the early twentieth century, the focus was on the use of radios in education. But since then, innovators have seen technology as a way to improve communication, learning, and the mastery of instructional material.

The next generation of education technologies is facilitating substantial change. Education technologies are evolving beyond lecture and group work to games, simulations, and augmented reality. Software is creating environments where students can direct the creation of their own knowledge with nearly invisible prompts from teachers.

One possible virtue of digital technology is the cost savings. During the Great Recession, the education service industry lost over one million jobs. State and local governments cut education spending, and this had ripple effects throughout the sector. Today educators from universities to elementary schools face an even more difficult task than before with fewer available resources. Given the political climate of budget cutting, the likelihood of a restoration of funding to pre-recession levels in the near future is low. In this situation, educational technologies take on increased importance as they seek to help over-burdened teachers deploy the next generation of assistive technologies.

Education faces unique resource problems beyond financial issues. The school day has a finite length and instructional time is a precious commodity. American students spend less time in the classroom than many other countries elsewhere in the world. Teaching is a complex job that includes a number of rote but time consuming tasks. Tools that facilitate the memorization of basic facts free up teachers to help students who need personalized interventions. Every extra minute spent teaching makes a difference over the course of the school year.

Recent advances in assessment technology have the potential to help teachers and students. Without feedback on performance, teachers can’t know if students have grasped the lesson and policymakers won’t know whether their reforms work. Assessment technology has advanced very little if at all since the invention of the optical scan answer sheet a half-century ago. New assessment technologies can help cut the costs of testing while others allow for reliable assessment in real time. Advances in testing can assess students in a low stakes environment.

While there are many innovations in education technology, this paper highlights five education technology success stories. Each has demonstrated the ability to improve efficiency and effectiveness in education systems. From language teaching robots to educational games, each has the potential to help students and teachers. The authors review these education success stories in order to offer lessons on how education stakeholders can better serve students and add value to their learning.

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Joshua Bleiberg

Education Technology: The Next Generation

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:00:00 -0400

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March 20, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Education technology is an accepted and integral component of reforming and improving the American educational system. The educational possibilities made possible by today's technology and mobile devices are expansive, with mobile phones apps, interactive games, distance learning programs, and environment software readily available to most students and teachers in the United States. Now that these tools are a common feature in the classroom, how can technology’s integration in education be expanded to best benefit students? How can educators incorporate the latest technologies to improve education and assess what proves effective? What future innovations can be expected in educational technology?

On March 20, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a public forum to discuss the next generation of education technologies. A panel of experts discussed recent advances in educational technology and what new innovations are on the horizon. Participants can join the conversation on Twitter at hashtag #TechCTI.

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Invention and the Mobile Economy

Darrell M. West — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:00:00 -0500

In this paper released in conjunction with a Mobile Economy Project panel discussion, Darrell West argues the importance of invention to mobile communications and demonstrates that the mobile industry is one of our most vibrant drivers of economic development.

Highlights include:

• Examples of key inventors: West seeks to understand how to sustain invention and draws lessons for encouraging the critical innovation needed for future development.

• How different countries handle invention: In comparing and contrasting other countries as well as the United States, West adds perspective and paints a global invention landscape.

• Ways to facilitate invention: A number of factors affect the quantity and quality of invention (including but not limited to research and development, the quality of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, the nature of immigration, and the patent system. West emphasizes how we should maintain a culture of invention to encourage future prosperity.

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Invention and the Mobile Economy

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:00:00 -0500

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March 5, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

In the 40 years since the creation of the cell phone, creative engineers have developed a range of new products that enable mobile activity. From cellular networks and microchips to batteries and antennas, invention has been a big part of mobile technology, resulting in an industry that has become a vibrant driver of economic development. The mobile industry contributes significantly to GDP growth and job creation around the globe. In many countries, mobile is among the fastest-growing business areas. With mobile devices spreading at a rapid pace, it is important to understand how progress has been made and how government and business can facilitate continued development.

On March 5, as part of the Mobile Economy Project, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted an event focusing on key inventors, how different countries encourage and protect invention, and barriers that need to be overcome in order to promote mobile invention. A panel of experts discussed the culture of invention that has propelled the mobile industry to the economic forefront.

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Fairness: How President Obama Found His Voice

Darrell M. West — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:18:00 -0500

It was his first term and President Obama was struggling. Unemployment remained high and many voters didn't like his health care program, auto bailout, or economic stimulus package. Seventeen percent thought he was a Muslim and many others were unsure of his vision. Congressional Republicans were voting against his proposals en masse. A year before the general election, his political prospects did not look very strong.

Yet Obama cruised to re-election and now has a job approval rating in the mid-50s. The crucial turning point came in December, 2011 when the president realized he needed a clearer message and had to identify a way to distinguish his vision from that of the GOP. In a speech to voters in Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama spoke of the importance of fairness and fighting for the middle class. The problem with the economy, he said, was that voters felt the system was rigged against them and too many of the fiscal benefits were going to those at the very top.

Since that time, Obama has found his voice by emphasizing economic and political fairness. In this year’s State of the Union address, he continued this narrative. He spoke of billionaires with “high-powered accountants” and the need to invest in education and research. He complained about long voting lines and called for a commission to improve the voting process. He argued that a growing economy represented a better way to reduce the deficit than austerity politics based on slashing government programs. He called for Congress to raise the minimum wage, invest in advanced manufacturing, and reform the tax code.

On issues such as immigration, gun violence, and renewable energy, he threw down the gauntlet and dared Republicans to vote no. If they block popular proposals, he made it clear he would seek to turn the 2014 midterms into a referendum on middle class fairness. If people were wondering which Obama we would see in the second term, we now know the answer. In both his Inaugural Address and the State of the Union, he is presenting a clear choice. He is asking Republicans to work with him and if they don’t, he will go to the public and ask for a Democratic Congress.

The question facing the GOP is how they respond to this plan. On issues such as immigration reform, a number of leading Republicans have come forward with pragmatic solutions and bipartisan proposals. On problems such as gun violence, most Republicans are holding their ground and not pushing for substantial changes. If the economy continues to recover over the next year and national unemployment drops below seven percent, Obama may be on strong ground to force an electoral confrontation.

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Darrell M. West

How the Politics of Immigration Reform Have Changed

Darrell M. West — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Last Fall, it would have been hard to imagine Republicans and Democrats working together to fix our broken immigration system. The country was locked in highly polarized discussions about a number of major issues and political dysfunction in Washington created little hope of action on this contentious subject.

But now we have leading Democrats and Republicans who have announced their support of a bipartisan reform package. With the Senate moving towards action, House Republicans indicating we should be open to immigrants, and President Barack Obama making immigration reform a top priority, the country appears close to taking meaningful action on this important issue. While there are many hurdles yet to overcome, it is important to note the dramatic changes in the politics of immigration reform that have unfolded in the past few months.

Romney Got Only 27 Percent of Hispanic Vote, Down From Bush's 44 Percent in 2004

The poor performance of Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 election is the major driving force behind the changing dynamics of immigration reform. With Hispanics a growing percentage of the overall electorate (10 percent nationally) and its voters concentrated in key swing states, it is hard for the GOP to remain competitive in national races without a better showing among Latino voters. According to election exit polls, Latinos comprised 19 percent of the 2012 vote in Nevada, 17 percent in Florida, and 14 percent in Colorado.

Immigrants Have Moved into the Heartland and out to the Suburbs

The politics of immigration reform have been altered by where immigrants locate. As Brookings Institution demographer Audrey Singer has pointed out, new immigrants used to cluster more in coastal urban areas. However, in recent years, they have moved into the heartland of the United States and into suburban areas. This means that many Republicans and Democrats who previously had few immigrants in their districts and therefore faced no local pressure to address immigrant problems no longer are shielded from their districts. They are encountered the same complaints as elsewhere about a broken immigration system, difficulty navigating local services, and the need to help new arrivals get integrated into social and economic life.

White Percentage of the Vote Is Dropping

Republicans have done well nationally through an electoral coalition centering on white, male voters, but that is a shrinking part of the overall electorate. Whites comprise about 72 percent of GOP candidates are doing well with a declining part of the electorate and therefore need to think seriously about their long-term prospects. The Republican party clearly can continue to win Congressional races, but will have difficulty at the presidential level due to changing demographics. Latino voters care deeply about the importance of immigration reform, and must see changes not just in rhetoric but on policy from Republicans.

Progress on Border Security

After a decade of investments in border security, the U.S. Border Patrol reports sharp reductions in the number of people attempting illegally to cross the Southern border with Mexico. The agency has charted "intercept" data for several decades and the good news is that the number of illegal arrivals has dropped significantly over the past 30 years. Whereas the annual number of illegal immigrants arrested was 1.7 million in the mid-1980s, that figure dropped to 1 million in the late 1980s, 705,000 in 2008, 540,865 in 2009, 447,731 in 2010, and 327,577 in 2011. This shows how the country has made progress on securing its border with Mexico.

Businesses Are Stepping Up To Fight for Immigration Reform

We also are seeing renewed calls for action on immigration from leading companies being hurt by difficulty recruiting workers. This is true in the high-tech area where executives from Microsoft, Google, Alcoa, Intel, Facebook, Apple, eBay, and Amazon have complained about the need for more engineers and scientists and the challenges in growing their businesses under current immigration rules. But the problem is not unique to high-tech industries. Companies in agriculture, hotels, restaurants, and health care complain about the problem of finding workers and the problems it creates in their sectors. There are insufficient numbers of Americans willing to work in these areas and companies need people interested in doing those kinds of jobs. Meaningful immigration reform is vital to the long-term economy and national competitiveness.

Authors

Darrell M. West

Publication: The Huffington Post