NDN Blog

The news that the growth of America's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) slowed in the second quarter to an anemic 2.7 percent, from its barely adequate first quarter performance of 3.7 percent, helps make the case for building what President Obama  terms a "New Foundation" for the country's economy. The president should use NDN's analysis of the root causes of our current economic difficulties to explain to the American people why this restructuring  is needed and how all of his legislative accomplishments-not just the auto company interventions he rightly touted in Detroit last Friday-- are putting in place a New Foundation for a 21st century economy, built on much more solid ground than the flawed and failed economics of the era America has just left.

The continuing high unemployment rate this far into the Great Recession should  demonstrate to all but the most stubborn partisans that expecting the contours of our economy to suddenly snap back into the shape that they were  in before the financial meltdown of September,  2008 is wishful thinking of the worst kind. It ignores the fundamental weaknesses of the consumer-driven economy of the last decade and leads to policy prescriptions that fail to deal with the root causes of our economic malaise. Besides, that economy, built on the sands of using the value of one's home as a personal ATM, led to a lost decade in real income growth for middle class Americans, so no one should be hoping it comes back anytime soon. 

The last time the country experienced the prolonged economic pain it is experiencing now was during the Great Depression. Thanks to the decisive interventions of President Obama's economic team and the Federal Reserve the country is fortunately not experiencing anything quite that painful this time around. But the economic downturns of the 1930s and of this decade have more than just the ironic adjective "Great" in common.

Both occurred as a new, civic-oriented generation was coming of age. In the 1930s it was the GI Generation, what many now call America's Greatest Generation.  Today it is the Millennial Generation, a cohort many expect to be our next great generation.  The unity and size of both generations gave first President Franklin Roosevelt and then President Obama the margin of electoral victory and mandate for change that underpinned political support for long-term, structural changes in the economy. In both cases, the dire circumstances in which ordinary Americans found themselves provided  the impetus for the creation of major new social programs-Social Security in Roosevelt's  first term and health care reform in Obama's. 

But many current observers fail to realize how similar the controversies surrounding these changes also are.  Just as Republicans today, and some moderate Democrats, seek to impose a new round of austerity on the nation's economy by attempting to stop the funding for such basic programs as extended unemployment insurance,   FDR, during his first term, dodged and ducked an onslaught of advice to scale back the New Deal from both the opposition and from many within his own party. The debate continued right through the 1936 election, when his Republican opponent, Alf Landon, campaigned on a platform of repealing Social Security, arguing, as those seeking to repeal health care reform do today, that it represented an unwarranted "socialist" intrusion into individual paychecks by an out-of-control federal government. 

But during the entire debate, Roosevelt stuck to his guns and insisted on the need to fundamentally overturn the laissez faire economic policies of the Roaring Twenties. As Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David M. Kennedy wrote in his book Freedom from Fear:

The New Deal's premier objective, at least until 1938, and in Roosevelt's mind probably for a long time thereafter, was not the economic recovery tout court but structural reform for the long run. In the last analysis, reform, not simply recovery, was the New Deal's highest ambition and lasting legacy.

And just as President Obama's health care and financial regulatory reform efforts are not the second coming of socialism that opponents tried to make them out to be, Roosevelt's  structural solutions avoided the heavy-handed notion of government control that so many in his party favored and so many Republicans accused them of being.  The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) created a feeling of security among depositors, not a government bank.  The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) gave stockholders new information upon which to base their investment decisions, but didn't restrict their investment opportunities.  The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) provided more safety to lenders and new mortgage terms for home buyers, but didn't attempt to have government build the houses people needed.  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Fair Labor Standards Act set new, fairer rules for both employers and workers to follow, but didn't impose the kind of price controls and work rules that were part of the earlier, ill-fated National Industrial Recovery Act. As Kennedy correctly observes:

To be sure, Roosevelt sought to enlarge the national state as the instrument of the security and stability that he hoped to impart to American life. But legend to the contrary, much of the security that the New Deal threaded into the fabric of American society was often stitched with a remarkably delicate hand, not simply imposed by the fist of the imperious state.

It's also important to remember that, with the exception of the FDIC, none of these long-lasting, deep changes in the rules and structures by which the American economy operated were enacted in the initial year of Roosevelt's first term. Social Security, for example, didn't pass until 1935, after the 1934 midterm elections. By that chronological measurement,  President Obama's New Foundation is actually being built ahead of schedule.

Nor did any of Roosevelt's structural reforms restore the country to full employment immediately.  When FDR uttered his famous line "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished" in his 1937 inaugural speech, he was speaking about the progress the country had made in his first term and warning his audience not to become complacent with what had been accomplished to that point.   Just as President Obama must walk a fine line between noting the positive impact his initial efforts to stop the economic bleeding have had without suggesting there is nothing more that can or should be done, so too did FDR want the country to understand that, as he put it in the same address, "Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster!"

To avoid that result this time, President Obama needs to make it clear that much more needs to be done to restructure the economy, and that a stock market recovery without a recovery in middle class incomes is not the goal of his administration. Among other things, the president must emphasize that until all American schools have won the "Race to the Top," until our economy is built on a lower carbon infrastructure, until every American worker has the skills they need to compete in the global economy for jobs with good wages and good benefits, and until America's tax structure rewards work and innovation and not financial manipulation, the New Foundation for the nation's economy will not be complete.  

The restructuring of our economy is and will be painful. America's tolerance for change will be as sorely tested as it was during the Great Depression.  President Obama's leadership skills will be put to the same stern test that FDR had to pass. 

But Democrats should welcome the opportunity that the 2010 midterm elections present to argue for the need to undertake a fundamental restructuring of the nation's economy and to brag about the steps they have already taken to produce that transformation. Rather than ducking or attempting to explain away the economic difficulties the nation faces, it's time to build a strong foundation of political support for the economic New Foundation the President seeks to put in place. As NDN's recent survey research shows, a majority coalition already exists for just such an economic and political program. It's time to make sure the voices of America's 21st century constituencies are heard in November.

In NDN's most recent survey, 37 percent of Millennials rated the cost of a college education as a critical issue facing  America.  It ranked behind only the economy and education, in a virtual tie with the national debt and federal spending, on the list of issues about which Millennials are concerned.  While the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" initiative has ignited a firestorm of K-12 educational reforms in states across the country, no comparable program exists to deal with the increasing costs and stagnant graduation rates of the nation's colleges and universities. To his credit, President Barack Obama led this year's successful efforts by Democrats to federalize the student loan program and expand the size and availability of Pell Grants in order to lower the burden of paying for college. But, that is only a short-term fix to the challenge of doubling the number of students who graduate from college by 2020--a pledge leaders of community colleges made at the administration's urging. To achieve that goal, America needs to develop a new, Millennial Era consensus that every young American should complete his or her postsecondary education and graduate debt free. One community, Kalamazoo, Michigan has already made that promise a reality.

Kalamazoo recognized that, along with inadequate preparation in high school for the academic requirements of college, the burden of paying for college through the current patchwork system of student loans, grants and scholarships, and state and federal government subsidies is a major reason why U.S. college graduation rates have been stagnant for the last thirty years. Currently, more than a quarter of the freshmen in America's four year colleges fail to return for their second year and the percentage is twice that for those enrolled in two-year colleges. For every ten students who start high school, only five enroll in a postsecondary educational institution, and fewer than three earn a bachelor's degree, even after ten years.  Less than one-quarter of Hispanics who start college leave with a bachelor's degree and almost two-thirds receive no credential at all. Even though a record 70 percent of all Millennials who graduated from high school enrolled in college in 2009, the need for postsecondary education reforms to ensure that more of them graduate is clear.

College tuition rates have grown at 3.3 times the consumer price index since 1980.The increased cost is having a direct impact on which colleges students are able to attend.  Forty-three percent of incoming freshmen in the first year of the Great Recession cited the ability to get financial aid as very important or essential in their choice of a college, the highest level ever recorded. In 2009, 70 percent of high schools reported an increase in the number of students who abandoned their "dream school" in favor of a college they could afford.  Eighty-five percent of those who applied for aid said they wouldn't be able to pay for college without receiving it. As a result, for the 2008-09 school year, the federal government guaranteed or made $65.2 billion in student loans, an increase of 18.6 percent from the year before.

The unwillingness of today's older generations to subsidize the higher education of younger generations has had a particularly pernicious impact on young Americans who see college education as a way of improving their future economic circumstances. In 2007-08, just about every student from a low income family attending a community college was in debt, with an average of $7,147 in unmet expenses, even after taking into account any grants or scholarships they received.  As a result, three-fourths of those seeking an associate degree or certificate were forced to work, leaving less time for study.  In 2009, only 38 percent of community college students earned a degree within six years of enrolling. The country and its economy cannot afford to let this situation continue.One experiment in how to address the problem started in 2005, in Kalamazoo.  There, a small group of donors (who remain anonymous to this day) created the Kalamazoo Promise, which offered any graduate of the city's public schools a four year scholarship covering 100 percent of tuition and mandatory fees at any of Michigan's public colleges or universities, provided those students maintained a 2.0 grade point average in their college courses and made regular progress toward a degree. Scholarship levels varied based only on the number of grades or years in Kalamazoo schools the student had attended, not on a determination of need or merit. 

The idea began as an economic development strategy.  The city manager  suggested the imposition of an income tax on those who worked within the city to balance Kalamazoo's  books.  In an attempt to increase the city's tax base without raising its taxes, community leaders, asked residents of the area surrounding the city what would persuade them to move back inside the city's boundaries. Not surprisingly, the parents of Millennials expressed the greatest interest in living in a place that would provide a good public education for their children--all the way through college. Local philanthropists translated that desire into a simple program that offered full, four-year college scholarships to the city's high school graduates, with no requirement to repay the money or reside in Kalamazoo  after graduating from college. They bet the bargain would be enough to attract families back to the city and halt the annual ten-percent decline in the schools' population.  Five years and $12 million later, the bet has paid off handsomely.

Since the program was announced in November 2005, Kalamazoo has experienced a 17.6 percent increase in student enrollment and the construction of three new schools for the first time in 37 years. Dropout rates have been cut in half. Ninety percent of female African-American high school graduates have gone onto college. The school district's success was noticed by President Obama, who chose to deliver the first high school commencement speech of his presidency at Kalamazoo Central High. Calling the school a model for success in the 21st century, Obama told the senior class he was there "because I think America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes a successful school in this new century." He's right.

Money to pay for four years of college is available to each recipient for up to ten years after graduation, so it will take more time before the full effect of the Kalamazoo Promise on college graduation rates can be determined, but the program's initial success has led communities across the country to search for sources of philanthropic revenue in order to make their own educational bargain with their residents. The Kalamazoo Promise created an expectation that every public school student in the city would have an opportunity to receive a postsecondary education. More than 80 percent of those who chose to enroll in a university are still attending college. The cultural shift created by the community's commitment to the Kalamazoo Promise has also created a mini-Race to the Top with surrounding school districts, which are passing bond issues and improving their schools to compete more effectively with Kalamazoo's schools.

Now it is time for the nation as a whole to make the same promise that Kalamazoo did to all young Americans. The country should completely reform the current system of federal and state subsidies of higher education with one goal in mind. In the 21st century, every Millennial-and their children--should complete their postsecondary education and graduate debt free.  Kalamazoo's promise needs to become America's promise.

On the POLITICO Arena, we responded to the question:

Can climate change legislation pass this year?

What elements, if any, would you like to see included? And what climate change legislative proposals do you find so distasteful to constitute a deal-killer?

For more on this, join NDN Fellows Michael Moynihan, Dan Carol, and Robert Shapiro on Tuesday for a discussion entitled Accelerating the Clean Energy Economy: Key Pathways, Policies, and Pitfalls. In the meantime, here's what we had to say:

This may be one of the few times in recent memory that a significant energy bill will pass Congress in an election year, but that doesn't mean that politics won't exact a price on the major outcomes voters say they want -- freedom from oil addiction, clean energy alternatives and measurable progress on climate that doesn't disadvantage the U.S. against key economic competitors. 

Any fee or tax on liquid fuels that the GOP attack machine can call a "gas tax" is dead unless the president chooses to stake his presidency on it. This seems unlikely, and a carbon tax or cap on fuels will be a far harder political sell than the president's courageous stance in 2008 against a federal gas tax holiday.

An oil price floor below the current trading price for oil could pass -- as it would not cost consumers a dime at the pump and it would serve as effective "national security insurance" against oil prices dropping in a double-dip recession and killing off alternative fuel markets as happened in the early 1980s. The last long-shot is a utility-only cap which might slip through because enough utilities like purple-state utilities like Duke Power and Energy are demanding a long-term set of rules. Doing so could start the ball rolling on pricing carbon. On that, the big question is whether the GOP wants to risk being seen as blocking progress on building petroleum-free, "Made in USA" electric vehicles which will be stalled without a utility cap. 

The political bottom line for this long-shot outcome: A utility cap is inside Beltway baseball and isn't scary to voters like a gas tax. People won't see increases in their electric bill for a utility-only cap by November anyway. "This seems like a battle line to which enough Democrats and Republicans might chose to retreat, rather than face the worse wrath of being "do nothing" energy incumbents at the polls this fall. 

Next week, a number of these ideas will be discussed here. 

Even as the nation conducts its critically important decennial census, a demographic picture of the rapidly changing population of the United States is emerging.  It underlines how suburban living has become the dominant experience for all key groups in America's 21st century electorate.

While suburban living was once seen as the almost exclusive preserve of the white upper-middle class, a majority of all major American racial and ethnic groups now live in suburbia, according to the newest report on the state of metropolitan America from the Brookings Institute.  Slightly more than half of African-Americans now live in large metropolitan suburbs, as do 59% of Hispanics, almost 62% of Asian-Americans, and 78% of whites. As a result the country is closer than ever to achieving a goal that many thought would never be achieved-city/suburban racial/ethnic integration. This is particularly so in the faster growing metropolitan areas of the South and West.

The trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. A majority of Millennials live in the suburbs and 43% of them, a portion higher than for any other generation, describe suburbs as their "ideal place to live."

The nation's one hundred largest metropolitan areas have grown twice as fast as the rest of the country in the last decade. That growth was heavily concentrated in lower density suburbs, which grew at three times the rate of cities or inner ring suburbs. At the same time, one third of the nation's overall population growth was due to immigration. As a result about one-quarter of all children in the United States have at least one immigrant parent.  In 2008, non-whites became a majority of Americans under 18, a demographic milestone that underlines just how fast and how dramatically the country is changing. Any political party that wants to build a lasting electoral majority must align its policy prescriptions with these new demographic realities to attract the votes of  a younger, more ethnically diverse population, most of which now lives in the suburbs.   

Economic opportunity continues to be the major driver in determining where people want to live and work. Five of the six fastest growing metropolitan areas in the last decade were also among the top six in job growth according to data from the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the Praxis Strategy Group. (pdf) The same five metropolitan areas--Phoenix, Riverside (CA), Dallas, Houston and Washington, D.C-- also ranked high in the diversity of their population, differing only in the degree of educational attainment their residents have achieved. With America experiencing the first decade since the 1930s in which inflation adjusted median income declined and job creation slowed to levels not seen in decades, this movement to where the jobs are is hardly surprising. Yet this crucial factor is often  overlooked by urban planners who argue  that cultural amenities and sport complexes are the key to attracting new residents. In fact, metropolitan areas that focus on job creation for Millennials (young Americans born 1982-2003) and minorities have the best chance of gaining population in the next decade.

Clearly providing higher-quality public education experiences is a key part of any such economic strategy. The arrival of stealth fighter parents at local school district meetings across the country only underlines how passionate young families are about the quality of education their children receive and their unwillingness to let Boomer ideological debates delay the changes needed to properly prepare their children for a higher educational experience that increases the odds of  economic success. The traditional separation between municipal partisan politics and non-partisan school policy making is increasingly outdated when so much of a city's economic success depends on the quality of the education its residents receive. In this environment, the educational policies of the Obama administration that focus on results and outcomes and not on  process or previous practices should serve as a template for elected officials at every level to follow.

Safe neighborhoods of single family dwellings with a surrounding patch of land continue to attract families of every background to the nation's suburbs. Metropolitan areas that provide such an environment to all of their residents are the furthest along in achieving a more integrated society. Los Angeles, for instance, which is often decried by non-residents as simply an aggregation of suburbs with no central core, has a suburban population whose demographic profile almost exactly matches the city's population. The fact that most of its housing reflects the tract developments of the 50s and 60s, and that former Los Angeles police chief William Bratton used his COMPSTAT crime fighting techniques to bring the city's crime rates down to levels not seen in five decades, are two key reasons for this polyglot profile.

Rather than fighting this desire on the part of America's 21st century electorate to live comfortably in the suburbs, politicians of all stripes should find ways to embrace it and advocate policies that reflect our new economic realities. For instance, rather than insisting on higher density housing and light rail systems as the only  answer to the nation's appetite for foreign oil, the federal government should adopt tax incentives that encourage telecommuting. If all Americans worked from home, as many Millennials prefer to do, just two days a week, it would cut that portion of our nation's gas consumption by more than a third. The FCC's recently announced broadband policy will help put in place the infrastructure required to make such a lifestyle possible and even more productive.

Three out of four commuting trips involve a single individual driving their car to work and this isn't likely to change with the increased growth in suburban living.  But putting as much emphasis on making our nation's highways "smart" as in creating a smart electrical grid would make it possible for the existing highway system to shorten commuting time and reduce the quantity of fuel used in such trips.  Recent developments in mobile technology makes this a practical, near term solution if state and local governments are prepared to invest in upgrading an infrastructure that is already designed and deployed to connect people's homes to their workplace.

Aligning the message at the heart of a party's programs with the values and behaviors of America's 21st century electorate is the best way to guarantee victory this year and for years to come. As Simon Rosenberg has stated, Democrats need to "embrace the coalition" based on the country's new demographic realities that Barack Obama used so effectively in 2008.  That embrace requires not only focusing the party's efforts on the growing demographic groups that now make up a majority of Americans, but also rethinking many of the policies it advocates to make them more friendly to the suburban lifestyle that so many members of the coalition desire. As he points out, "crossing the chasm" from the old coalition to the new will "be hard, but it is in the best interests of the country and the best interests of the Democratic Party."

One year ago today President Obama signed  the Kennedy Serve America Act fulfilling one of his most important campaign promises to the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003). The legislation represented the biggest expansion of national service since FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

Among other provisions, the bill

• Established programs to involve middle and high school students in community service, including its innovative Summer of Service programs;
• Expanded AmeriCorps openings over 8 years, allowing for up to 250,000 AmeriCorps volunteers by fiscal year 2017;
• Expanded the National Civilian Community Corps' mission to include projects on energy conservation, environmental stewardship or conservation, infrastructure improvement, urban and rural development, or disaster preparedness needs; and
• Established new volunteer Corps to engage Millennial's enthusiasm for such efforts including the Education Corps to improve schools, the Healthy Futures Corps to serve unmet health needs within communities, the Clean Energy Corps to work on energy projects, the Opportunity Corps to work with the economically disadvantaged, and the Veterans Corps to work with veterans and their families.

In return for participating in these service initiatives, the legislation raised the value of the full-time national service educational award that goes to participants in  the Corporation for National Community Service's programs to the maximum amount of a Federal Pell Grant. This will enable those who volunteer, to return to school after serving their country, just as members of the GI generation did after WWII.

In just one year, the spirit of the legislation has inspired countless new initiatives among Millennials, America's most civic-minded generation. Now Millennial led initiatives, such as myImpact.org and jumo.com  are building social network sites to link their generational cohort's desire to improve the world with opportunities for doing so.

One effort that deserves special mention is the recently concluded "Beyond the Welcome Home" Veteran's Summit hosted by one of  the leading Millennial service organizations, Mobilize.org,  in Carson, California. More than five dozen veterans of the Iraqi or Afghanistan wars, representing Millennial veterans from all branches of the armed services gathered for three days to identify the major problems facing returning veterans and develop service solutions to address their issues.  Joined by civilian Millennials and interested non-profits, the group used the latest in interactive technologies to prioritize the issues they wanted to address.

The four most important issues facing returning veterans that the group identified did not sound very different than those facing veterans returning from  earlier wars:

1.  Reintegrating veterans into civilian life so they can productively interact with civilians and society again.

2.  A lack of knowledge about programs and benefits post-separation for the armed forces that could help veterans with their return to civilian life.

3.  Suicide prevention to deal with feelings of lack of self-worth post-deployment and post-military that many veterans experience.

4.  Delays in receiving the health care and other benefits that they are entitled to due to poor communication between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

But the solutions that received the most support  from the participants had a distinctly Millennial flavor. Many emphasized the group solidarity that Millennials feel so intensely. As one participant put it, "The way to deal with these issues is with veterans taking care of each other, just as we did in Iraq." Or as another participant said, "We need to do things ourselves, not have DoD do it. We always do better ourselves."

Millennial's determination to overhaul the institutions their elders built or, failing that, to start new ones was also evident in the suggestions offered at the conference. "We should use the established Veteran Service Organizations, but if they don't work, we should create new ones." One popular way to start new institutions was to create a "Facebook for Vets" site that could link all the sites Millennial vets are using into a single place to get all the information they need. 

Nor were the participants daunted by the challenge of taking on two of the federal government's biggest bureaucracies-DoD and the VA-through their generation's penchant for political engagement. Two comments capture the larger sentiment of the group. "We need to become active and aware of political issues that involve veterans and encourage our fellow Millennials to vote for legislators who support veterans' issues." "By sharing information and becoming advocates we can get DoD and VA to respond." 

Of the approximately 2 million service men and women who have served  our country so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 60%, almost 1.26 million,  are members of  the Millennial Generation, so these sentiments are certain to find their way into this year's political campaigns. Unlike the shunned and often reviled veterans of the Vietnam War, Millennials are returning to a society that respects their service. According to NDN's latest survey on America's 21st Century electorate, 64% of Millennials, as well as 78% of older generations, have a positive view of the nation's military. But more than  one in five veterans between the ages of 18 and 24 can't find work when they return home.

The country's appreciation needs to be translated into programs for veterans that are worthy of the honor this generation has brought to our country.  Three years ago, Mobilize.org established its Democracy 2.0 declaration which states that it is time "to act. . . to upgrade America's unfinished project of democracy." The organization has taken an important step along that path by hosting the summit and providing $25,000 to support the best ideas that flowed from the conference.  But as the nation observes National Volunteer Week, each of us should take a moment to commit to doing whatever is needed to honor the most important volunteers this country has-the members of the United States Armed Forces.

One way to do so would be to connect to any of the groups that earned support from Mobilize.org  for the work they were doing with Millennial veterans at the Summit, or to some of the other groups dedicated to helping America's next great generation contribute as much in their civilian life as they have already done in the military. This list is a great place to start honoring our Millennial veteran's service:

Athena Bridge

The Mission Continues

Veteran's Green Jobs

Team Rubicon

MTV

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Millennials (young Americans born 1982-2003) rate the quality of education and the cost of college near the top of the list of issues about which they are most concerned, just behind jobs and the economy. This week, President Barack Obama responded to those concerns with the release of his plan to fix the No Child Left Behind Law and focus the federal government's efforts even more on ensuring school's deliver the results and outcomes that Millennials and their parents expect from America's institutions.  The announcement capped a remarkable series of events that saw  Democrats joining  parents and educators across  the country in taking important steps to address  those educational needs,  providing Millennials new hope that their investments in politics and civic engagement will finally pay off.

NDN's newest survey research indicates that Millennials, unlike all other generations, rate education generally, and the cost of a college education specifically, as two of the top four critical problems  they believe government must address and fix.   Clearly, Millennials, like older generations, see a need to improve public education in America. And, in fact, Millennials perceive this need from a very personal perspective. While the Millennial Generation is  slightly more positive about the overall quality of education in the United States (41% positive/50% negative) than older generations (32%/62%), they give significantly lower grades to the education they have personally received than older generations.  Seventy percent of Millennials believe that the poor quality of public education stems from a  lack of money and the way schools  are managed and organized. Unlike the majority of older generations, Millennials are about evenly split on whether or not unions and work rules are a major problem in our system of public education. In response to attitudes like these, an  increasing number of urban school districts are beginning to abandon the strategy  of incremental reform and adopting more radical and dramatic changes to address the concerns of Millennials  and their  parents.

In Rhode Island, the Central Falls school board fired all the teachers, the principle and the administrators in an underperforming high school where half the 800 students were failing every subject and only seven percent were proficient in math. Unable to reach agreement with the teachers on how to pay for the changes needed to break this cycle of mediocrity, the board invoked the "turnaround option" sanctioned by the Obama administration's school reform initiative, which allows school boards to start over at failing schools with a brand new set of teachers and administrators. Given the President's unwavering support for systemic reform of schools that fail to educate children embodied in his Race to the Top initiative, the White House's support of the school board's actions should not have come as a surprise to those still trying to protect the status quo.

In Kansas City, Missouri the school board, that  previously had stood in the vanguard of those believing primarily in racial integration and increased per pupil spending as the solution to the problems of education in urban environments, decided to try a completely different approach. Less than third of Kansas City  elementary school students are now reading at or above grade level and no more than a quarter of most of their schools' students  have achieved the levels of proficiency required for   the skills they will need in life. Faced with these results, and the prospect of running out of money by next year, the board voted to close about half of the district's  schools in order to "dramatically enhance education for each of our students by combining our very best teachers and very best resources in fewer schools," as Kansas City's School Superintendent put it.

But perhaps the most dramatic news of the week came from Detroit where a coalition of nonprofit organizations, Excellent Schools Detroit, announced its plan to replace Detroit's failing public schools with 70 new ones and make a $200-million  investment over the next ten years in order to achieve its  goal of graduating 90% of Detroit kids from high school by 2020 and having 90% of graduates go on to college.  Currently, about 58% of students in Detroit's school system and 78% of those enrolled in charter schools in the city graduate from high school, while fewer than 25% enroll in college.

The plan includes a push for mayoral control of Detroit Public Schools, but more importantly the establishment of an independent commission to grade every school in the city, including charters, every year against a uniform set of standards and outcomes focused on achieving educational excellence. The new Standards and Accountability Commission will establish a competitive public education marketplace complete with report cards grading each school's progress against an agreed upon set of standards that will enable parents to become smart shoppers for their child's education. The commission will also  suggest closures in order to weed out failing schools, half of which, under the plan, would be closed or replaced with schools under new management by 2015. Like the Kansas City solution, the plan does not rely on increased funding from the state but rather the commitment of Detroiters to the future of their children. The idea was greeted with cheers from everyone except the members of the current school board.  

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Senate, a flurry of phone calls and emails from Millennials across the nation, convinced a majority of Democratic Senators to join in an effort to rescue Pell grants for students attending college from dramatic cuts that would have reduced payments by 60% for eight million students and eliminated the money altogether for another half a million. The House had already passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which would reform the student loan program by eliminating the current subsidies to private lenders who make student loans guaranteed by the federal government and invest the money saved in increasing the size and availability of Pell Grants. But six Democratic Senators, who should know better, had argued that the nation couldn't afford to continue to make these investments in its future and should instead continue to underwrite the bank's profits, even as students on campuses across the nation demonstrated to protest increases in tuition at cash strapped state universities.

 Since Republicans were united in defending the interests of banks over Millennials, the only way to enact President Obama's student aid reform proposal was to include the concept in the budget reconciliation package, central to efforts to finally pass health care reform, which  only requires a simple majority in the Senate for passage. After hearing from their House colleagues on the political benefits and policy importance of the concept, even budget hawks like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad,  chairman of the Budget Committee, agreed to find a way to bundle the two items by adjusting the education portion  to account for a revised Congressional Budget Office cost analysis. The principle driver of the increased costs of the program is the popularity of this type of college financial aid among Millennials struggling to stay out of debt and still get the education they need to get a good paying job. By combining ways to reduce the cost of college with a major expansion of health care in the reconciliation package,   Democrats  have taken a major step forward in solidifying the support of all elements of the Democratic Party's  21st Century majority coalition-from young voters to minorities.

This new coalition presents the best opportunity for Democrats to solidify a dominant majority coalition since FDR and the New Deal. But key members of the coalition, especially Millennials, are currently not convinced that voting in 2010 will make much of a difference, given the results they have seen from Congress in the first year of the Obama administration in the election of which they played such a significant role.  But these recent events   suggest the country is finally beginning to listen to the voice of this new generation and address its concerns. As educators and parents at the grass roots of this revolution begin to have an  impact in cities across the nation, the best thing that Democrats in Congress could do before this week  is out is pass both health care and student aid reform as part of their budget reconciliation process. Doing so would finally begin to align the nation's budgetary priorities with its future and bring hope for Millennials that changes they can  believe in will continue to flow from their investment in the country's political process. 

More than twice as many 18-29 year olds voted for President Barack Obama as for John McCain in 2008, and one year later the party preferences of college students remain similarly lopsided in favor of the Democratic Party and its political point of view.

The most recent data from communication research company Frank N. Magid Associates' show an equal percentage of students, 18 and older, call themselves liberals or progressives (31%) as describe their political philosophy as moderate (30%). By contrast, only 20% describe themselves as conservative, while another 20% haven't learned enough in college yet to say just what their ideological orientation is. Survey research data from 2008 and 2009 actually showed self-described moderates as the most common philosophical designation by Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, with liberalism in second place. But those studies included Millennials who were not on campus, which suggests either that college students are a more liberal bunch than non-students by nature or there has been further movement toward liberalism among Millennials during the first year of Obama's presidency.

Almost all students on campus today are members of the Millennial Generation and bring that generation's commitment to civic engagement and consensus decision making to the political process. Unlike many members of Generation X or Baby Boomers who preceded them, a majority of Millennials believes in using government to help address societal problems and economic inequality. These philosophic touchstones form the basis of their political identification and belief system.

Millennials were inclined to be Democrats before Obama ran for presidency and both his campaign and his presidency have solidified that tendency. Beginning in 2006 as Millennials made their presence known among 18-29 year old voters, partisan identification among this age group moved from a roughly 50/50 split to a clear preference for the Democratic Party. In 2008, Millennials voted more than 2:1 for Obama over McCain (66% vs. 32%) and by roughly the same percentage (63% vs. 34%) for Democratic congressional candidates. Magid's 2010 data shows this same level of Democratic identification persisting among Millennials who are attending college. Twice as many college students call themselves Democrats as Republicans (47% vs. 24%). Only 15% are independents, with a similar percentage unwilling to identify with any of those three choices.

These numbers suggest the Young Republicans have a lot of work to do just to break even, while Young Democrats should have a rockin' good time of it on college campuses across America.

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

America has always recognized the link between education and economic success--from the mandate for free public education in the Northwest Ordinance through Lincoln's support for the Morrill Land Grant College Act to the GI Bill of Rights legislation after World War II. In each of these previous civic eras, governments at all levels have invested heavily in education based on the belief that these expenditures would return much more in the future earnings capacity of its citizenry than the short term costs incurred. Now new research indicates the best way to bring good jobs and rising wages  to our newest civic generation, Millennials, is by breaking down the barriers to post-secondary educational success.

According to a recent study by Louis Jacobson and Christine Mokher, "Pathways to Boosting the Earnings of Low Income Students by Increasing their Educational Attainment,"  the key to future earnings potential is COMPLETION of whatever course of study is undertaken. "Course for course the returns to community colleges and four year college attendance  are comparable. However students who complete a community college credential tend to have higher earnings than four-year college students who do not graduate." Those who earned an associate degree at a community college earned 27% more than those who failed to get a degree of any kind and those with a certificate, even if for only one year of post high school education, still earned on average 8% more a year than those who failed to complete their higher education studies.  

The two major obstacles to postsecondary success identified in the study were the need to finance education and living expenses  by working while attending school and the lack of adequate preparation in academic subjects such as math and science while in high school.  Given the documented importance of completing a post-secondary field of study, the report's identification of these two principal  barriers to students finishing what they start gives policy makers a clear path to improve both educational attainment and the acquisition of good jobs with decent salaries and benefits for Millennials.

Financing Post-secondary Education

The Jacobson and Mokher study found that in 2007-2008  just about every one of the lowest income students attending community colleges was in debt, with an average of $7,147 in unmet expenses after taking into account all the grants or scholarships they received.  Student per class tuition rates are even higher at private one or  two year "career colleges," which enroll only about 10% of the number of students that attend government subsidized community colleges.  As a result, three-fourths of associate degree or certificate seekers end up working to help cover their educational and living expenses. The burden of needing to work is a major reason why only 26% of community college students get a degree or certificate within three years of starting their studies and only 38% get their  degree within  six years.   

Meanwhile federal support for higher education has failed to keep up with rising costs so that more and more students find themselves financing their education with student loans of one type or another. In Indiana, for instance, 62 percent of those who do manage to graduate carry student loan debt averaging  $23,264 per student. The loan burden in that state is even higher for graduates of for-profit colleges who leave school with  an average  debt burden of $32,650.

In addition to the steps Democrats  have already taken to increase the maximum amount available from Pell Grants and  the value of tax deductions for parents able to afford to pay their child's  tuition,  Congress should  follow the President's lead in addressing this debilitating burden on students who are required  to finance their education while attending school. One important step would be to increase support for community colleges along the lines advocated by NDN. Congress should also  eliminate the current subsidy to banks that  provide risk free  private student loans guaranteed by the government and redirect the money saved to expanding the federal loan program that allows students to borrow directly, at lower costs, from the government. This Obama Administration initiative was part of the student loan reform bill the House passed last year, but it  appears to be stymied in the Senate with sponsors hard to come by. Finally, whatever entity is eventually charged with protecting consumers from deceptive marketing of loans and other credit instruments as part of reforming our nation's financial regulatory structure, should also be given oversight of the student loan market  and the power to  set strong rules for fairer private student loan marketing and terms.

Fixing our nation's high schools

Among the brightest success stories of the Obama Administration are its educational reform policies under the leadership of Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan. Its Race to the Top grant program designed to reward performance is already having transformative impact on educational policy in many states even as the program's first grants are awarded.  Focused on providing more money  to schools that are turning out students able and willing to learn, this program should be expanded in line with the administration's budget requests and supported by Democrats at all levels of government, from school districts to state legislatures. Now its time to bring the Gen X parents of Millennial students into the game as well and get them engaged in making sure their kids get the education they will need to succeed when they graduate from high school.

Already successful charter schools, such as UPrep in Detroit,  have demonstrated that any child of any background can graduate from high school and get accepted into a post-secondary educational experience if provided with the right learning environment, one that sets expectations of success right from the start. Bringing parents into the process of establishing such learning environments,  as California's recent "parent trigger" legislation does, represents the cutting edge of educational reform in this Millennial Era.

As Neil Howe, co-author of Generations, wrote in the most recent edition of School Administrator magazine, "when these Gen-X "security moms" and "committed dads" are fully roused, they can be even more attached, protective and interventionist than Boomer [parents]  ever were. . .They will juggle schedules to monitor their kids' activities in person. . . [and] will quickly switch their kids into - or take them out of - any situation according to their assessment of their youngsters' interests."  Congress could take a big step toward improving   America's high schools by empowering these Gen-X "stealth-fighter parents"  to take over failing schools as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.  Howe writes that  "Gen Xers believe their children's education should be a fair and open transaction with complete and accurate information and unconstrained consumer choice" and Congress should use its funding leverage to give them just what they are looking for. 

Winning  the hearts and minds of both Millennials and their parents is an achievable political goal for Democrats. Furthermore, as the latest research reveals, knocking down the barriers to obtaining a certificate or degree after high school is the key to economic success for both students and the country, making  the idea good public policy as well as good politics. Making higher education more affordable and fixing our nation's high schools should be at the top of Democrats economic policy priorities now and throughout the decade ahead. 

We appreciate Pete Peterson’s attention to our work, but in responding to his complaint that we are denigrating Generation X and underrating its civic participation, we should begin at the beginning, define our terms, and give credit where credit is due. In writing our book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, we borrowed heavily from the thinking of and acknowledged our intellectual debt to Neil Howe and the late William Strauss, the founders of generational theory. In their seminal books, Generations (1992) and The Fourth Turning (1997), Strauss and Howe described the four generational archetypes – Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive – that have cycled throughout Anglo-American history. Stemming from the way each generation was reared by its parents, each generational type develops a characteristic set of attitudes and behaviors that is broadly similar regardless of where in American history it appears.

It is the attitudes and behaviors of these archetypes, not our biases or disdain for Generation X, that underpin our comments. Those same archetypical attitudes and behaviors also shape the statistics that Peterson cites both selectively and somewhat out of context in his New Geography posting.

One of Peterson’s contentions is that members of Generation X currently participate in voluntary or non-profit activities to at least the same extent as Millennials do. He cites a survey conducted by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) to prove his point. It is clear, however, that the NCOC itself places great hope in the Millennial Generation, entitling a section in its reports, “The Emerging Generation: Opportunities with the Millennials” and stating that “In the 2009 Civic Health Index, Millennials emerge as the ‘top’ group for volunteers.”

While the NCOC statistics do indicate that Millennials lead the way in civic engagement, to be fair the overall differences between the X and Millennial Generations are not large. What most distinguishes Millennials from other generations is the type of community activities in which they are involved. Not surprisingly, given the lower incomes normally associated with entry level jobs and the fact that the Great Recession has hit them to a far greater extent than other generations, Millennials are more likely than older generations to volunteer rather than make financial donations. While a plurality of those in all generations say they both volunteer and donate financially, Millennials are substantially more likely to engage solely as volunteers. Among those who only volunteer, Millennials do so at 3.25 times the rate of Baby Boomers, 2.6 times that of seniors, and 1.3 times more than members of Generation X. In effect, at least in the current economy, Millennials have more time than money.

As Peterson points out, when respondents were asked whether they had increased their civic participation in the past year, Gen-Xers led the way with 39% answering “yes” surpassing Millennials (29%), Boomers (26%), and seniors (25%). He dismisses the possibility that this might reflect improvements in previously low engagement levels among Gen-Xers, but actually it does. According to the U.S. Department of Education in 1984, when all of them were Gen-Xers, only a quarter (27%) of high school students participated in community service. Twenty years later, when all high school students were Millennials about three times as many (80%) did so. It could be argued that this increase occurred simply because by 2004 students were required to be active in their communities while they weren’t previously. But, for whatever reason, Millennials better seemed to internalize the lessons about community service to which they were exposed in high school. In 1989, 13% of those participating in the National Service organizations like the Peace Corps and Teachers Corps were from Generation X, about the percentage contribution of the generation to the U.S. population at that time. In 2006, 26% of National Service participants were Millennials, twice their percentage in the population.

Peterson also maintains the voting turnout of Generation X equals that of Millennials when the two generations were of similar age. To demonstrate this he compares youth turnout in the 1992 and 2008 presidential elections. According to CIRCLE, a non-partisan organization that studies and attempts to increase the political participation of young people, 18-29 years did indeed vote at similar rates in 1992 when those of that age were Gen-Xers (50%) and in 2008 when that age group consisted primarily of Millennials (52% overall and 59% in the competitive battleground states in which the Obama and McCain campaigns concentrated their efforts).

What Peterson did not do is to report on what occurred in all of the elections between 1992 and 2008. This provides more nuanced data that is generally more favorable to Millennials. For example, in 1996, when again all young voters were members of Generation X, youth electoral participation fell to 37%, the lowest of any year for which CIRCLE reports data. Youth voting began to steadily increase starting in 2000 as the first Millennials attained voting age until, in 2008, it reached the highest level since 1972.

But, Peterson’s biggest unhappiness with those of us who “gush” about the Millennials really seems to be his belief that we extol them for partisan reasons. It is true that Millennials lean heavily to the Democratic Party. They supported Barack Obama against John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%) and, according to Pew, last October identified as Democrats over Republicans by 52% vs. 34%. They are also the first generation in at least four to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

We certainly don’t hide the fact that we are life-long Democrats, something we clearly pointed out in the introduction to our book even as we made every effort to be evenhanded in our examination of American politics. That evenhanded examination suggests that as a civic generation, at this point in American history, it is hard to imagine most Millennials being anything other than Democrats. Civic generations, like the Millennials, favor societal and governmental solutions to the problems facing America. At least since the New Deal, the Democratic Party has had more affinity for such approaches than the GOP. It is for this reason that the GI Generation (Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation) became lifelong Democrats in the 1930s and why we believe most Millennials now see themselves as Democrats and vote that way. For Peterson to wish that were different won’t make it so.

But, in the end, all generational archetypes play key roles in the mosaic of American life. In truth, no generation is somehow “better” or “worse” than another. When the civic GI Generation served America so nobly and effectively in World War II, members of the idealist Missionary Generation like Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired it and it was commanded in battle by great generals from the reactive Lost Generation such as Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton. America now faces a new set of grave issues. It will take the concerted efforts of all generations to confront and resolve them.

This essay is cross-posted at New Geography.

Cross-posted on Politico's The Arena

The Democrats’ loss in Tuesday’s special election for U.S. senator in the dark blue state of Massachusetts, after losses in Virginia and New Jersey last year, should finally make it clear to all but the party’s most out-of-touch campaign strategists that the only route to victory is to follow the path President Barack Obama took to win in 2008 and quit trying to recreate the politics of the Clinton era. All four Ms — messenger, message, media and money — of the party’s campaign plans must change if it is to win in 2010.

Martha Coakley was the kind of messenger that Democrats used to look for in the 1990s — tough on crime, connected to the party establishment, and with elective experience to command respect. But that formula didn’t work for Hillary Clinton in 2008 and it didn’t work so well this time either. Her background prevented her from running as an anti-establishment candidate and her disconnect from the average voter in Massachusetts can be summed up in one name — Curt Schilling. Future Democratic messengers, like Obama in 2008, will have to have demonstrated their ability to lead change in their community and not take any vote for granted.

That is the only way they will be able to deliver Obama’s message of change and transformation with any credibility. Instead of defending programs or arguing policy, Democrats will need a message that captures the anger and frustration of the electorate and channels that passion into job creation and reform of the existing economic power structure.

Coakley, just like the Democratic gubernatorial candidates who lost last year, also let the technological superiority of Obama’s 2008 campaign flip over to the Republican side. Unlike Democratic campaign strategists still wrapped up in old media tactics and television, the Republicans studied what Obama did to bring the power of online campaigning into the center of a campaign’s strategy, and won the “Internet/Twitter” wars hands down. The TV ads that Coakley did run were off-target, featuring older white voters rather than the young Millennials, African-Americans, and Latinos who were so crucial to Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2008. Meanwhile Brown put his Millennial daughters front and center in his media.

All of these advantages led to Brown’s ability to raise money at a million dollars a day pace in the final days of the campaign. Obama, indeed Howard Dean before him, showed how to use the Net to raise lots of money from lots of people but only Republicans seem to have learned the lesson.

Perhaps the Democrats should bring David Plouffe back and have him conduct some “re-education camps” for Democratic strategists where they can learn the new four Ms of politics and erase their old ways of doing business from their minds for good.