New York City’s system of high school choice is the largest in the nation, with students bidding for placement among hundreds of schools. The goal was to let students escape low-performing neighborhood schools, allowing them to compete for a spot in up to 12 schools anywhere in the city. Today, 80 percent of participating students get one of their top five picks. But placement of the city’s most vulnerable students remains controversial.
Read MoreThe fast-rising cost of Medicaid is one the most pressing issues facing the governments of New York City and State. One in four New Yorkers are served by the system of insurance, which now costs an average of $1 billion a week. Health care for the poor and long term care for the disabled and older people are more expensive than ever—and their recent growth exceeds the size the state budget gap. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new Medicaid Redesign Team made recommendations that would create nearly $3 billion in savings.
Read MoreAccording to the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, 70 percent of the 50,383 arrests for possession of marijuana in New York City in 2010 were of young people under 30, and 86 percent of those arrested were black and Latino. The debate on the classification of marijuana possession as a crime is heating up nationwide even as the number of arrests in New York has risen.
Read MoreParent advocates are trained to support birth parents as they navigate the city’s complicated child welfare system. Research suggests they can help parents successfully move their child welfare cases forward. In June 2009, the Parent Advocate Initiative (PAI) was created to administer citywide support programs for supervisors of Parent Advocates in foster care agencies.
Read MoreFor years, rates of homelessness among the city’s former foster youth have remained stubbornly high. The city is connecting more teens to families, keeping more of them out of foster care in the first place, and developing new programs for pregnant and parenting foster teens. But for those remaining in foster and group homes, resources are being cut.
Read MoreMayors and city governments want to promote economic growth to fill coffers, pay for services and raise incomes. But what about growth that corrects social injustices like persistent inequality, racial and ethnic segregation? Can growth instead be harnessed to support equality, diversity and a higher quality of life for everyone? Harvard Professor Susan Fainstein speaks about her new book, The Just City.
Read MoreA conversation with Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, on turning around struggling public schools and boosting community collaboration. How will educators, parents and the city respond to the state fiscal crisis? And what is the future of school accountability in New York City?
Read MoreNearly 400,000 people use Penn Station every day, twice as many as used it when it was built. In 1993, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan proposed the conversion of the Farley Post Office building into a new Penn Station. Despite longstanding support from nearly every stakeholder, the project is only now ready to break ground 20 years later. What was behind the delays?
Read MoreNew York City today has four Asian American elected officials, a far cry from only a decade ago. Although the city has numerous Latino legislators, it has yet to elect a Latino citywide or statewide official. As new generations of immigrants emerge and their children grow up, is New York's political character changing? Can new communities gain influence in government and society and help reshape our political leadership?
Read MoreThere will be a new governor next year, but is Albany likely to change? New York State’s turbulent politics and bleak fiscal situation have made this year’s budget among the more difficult in recent history. Lieutenant Governor Ravitch attempted to mobilize long-term fiscal accountability, but the Paterson administration chose a different path to attempt fiscal control.
Read MoreTwo years after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the US economy slid into its Great Recession, can New York and the nation depend on a stable financial sector and more effective government oversight?
Read MoreThe Bloomberg administration has introduced a radical new system of school management, giving principals more freedom in exchange for the promise of better test scores and graduation rates. Crucial to this are new test-based accountability systems, which focus attention on struggling learners. But the traditional oversight by superintendents is gone. Does this strategy build better schools?
Read MoreFor the first time in history, women account for half of America's workforce, according to the recent Shriver Report. As the recession reshapes America’s workforce, women are less likely to lose their jobs than men. Is this progress? Women earn only 77¢ for every dollar earned by men, up a mere 13¢ from 1963. In New York City, important workforce strategies focus on single mothers, yet many working women are struggling with poverty.
Read MoreAbout 1.3 million working people in New York City have no paid sick leave, and pressure is mounting on employers to provide it. Local chambers of commerce predict the cost would be in the billions; labor advocates argue it is simply a matter of fairness, and the City Council has begun to move on legislation. In the national context of often inflexible work options and limited public spending on child care, are there plausible ways to improve family policies in the workplace?
Read MoreAs North American cities cope with the impacts of global warming and the economic crisis, leadership for meaningful long-term change remains elusive. Can government take charge of the climate change response despite intensifying political and economic constraints? Is the desire for profit enough to drive businesses to provide a substantial and concrete response?
Read MoreAccording to advocates, families of at least 1 in 5 New York City children still rely on soup kitchens and food pantries, despite free school breakfast and subsidized school lunches. President Obama pledged to end child hunger in the US by 2015, and the reauthorization of the federal Child Nutrition Act is expected by September.
Read MoreA new FDIC study finds that seven of every 20 New York households is “underbanked.” In most cases, these are low-income, minority and single-parent households that either have no bank accounts or rely heavily on alternative financial services such as payday lenders and pawn shops. Such families can pay exorbitant fees and interest, are at greater risk of robbery, and often can’t borrow because they have no credit history.
Read MoreMajor changes are afoot in juvenile justice. Governor Paterson recently proposed long-awaited reforms for upstate facilities where young teens are incarcerated. But he also proposed large cuts to alternative-to-detention and diversion programs. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg administration has merged the city’s juvenile justice agency with children’s services, potentially accelerating expansion of community- and family-centered services for juvenile delinquents and other young people.
Read MoreAs New York City struggles with the great recession, infrastructure development and renewal promise new jobs and long-term growth. Transportation, energy, high technology and communication infrastructure projects are all planned and funded. How quickly will they provide new jobs? Are they already?
Read MoreThe libertarian model asserts that heavy state intervention in the economy is a threat to human liberty. But the recent history of market-based democracies has shown almost the reverse. The supposedly “small-state” model of the US has instead opened the door to massive inequalities of income, wealth and power.
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