Public Policy Commons^™

Parent Involvement In Urban Schools: The View From The Front Of The Classroom, Frances Gamer, Kathleen Mccarthy Mastaby

New England Journal of Public Policy

American educational reform movements focus on efforts to restructure our schools to include all interested parties, especially parents, in the decision-making process. Nowhere is involvement more crucial than in America's inner-city urban neighborhoods. As parents are given a greater voice in their child's school, educators must join them as collaborators. This article identifies elements that impeded parental involvement and recognizes positive and encouraging techniques leading toward successful family-school-community partnerships. An alliance between groups too long seen as opponents rather than proponents must be established.

Better High Schools: What Would Create Them?, Theodore R. Sizer

New England Journal of Public Policy

The American desire to improve education has set off a flurry of activity to reform schools. In such a climate of restructuring, Sizer explores what better secondary schools might "look like" if indeed they existed. His consideration of the improved high school is based on five particular conditions — all of which support teachers and students in their engagement with the serious stuff of learning and all of which must exist in one form or another for schools to be effective. The conditions are cast as questions. Sizer locates the responsibility for school reform broadly, from the heart of a …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this special issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, we explore some of the more perennial but nonetheless substantive issues involved in the ongoing debate about the shape educational reform should take from different points of view, and seek that most sought-after and elusive alchemist, common ground.

The Impact Of School Spending On Student Achievement: Results Of Meap Statewide Tests, Robert D. Gaudet

New England Journal of Public Policy

Examining school spending and student achievement as measured by the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program tests on a community-by-community basis indicates that high spending in and of itself does not ensure achievement. While every community must have adequate funding to deliver an acceptable level of education services, there is a wide variation in achievement in similar communities with similar spending. The data suggest that other factors influence outcomes at least as much as spending.

"Economic Development" Is Not "Community" Development: Lessons For A Mayor, Eugene "Gus" Newport

Trotter Review

Economic development is one of the most important elements of an effective community development plan. Economic development can mean jobs for the community, as well as the development of new businesses and the enhancement of a city's tax base, which provides the funds to operate the government. I had campaigned on the need for responsible alternative economic development. But, one of the first things I learned is that community development often gets misinterpreted as economic development. That is an unfortunate mistake, since the term community development has a much broader meaning, both conceptually and practically. Community development means development of …

Providing Quality Leadership In Roxbury: A Profile Of Leon T. Nelson, Harold Horton

Trotter Review

Poor leadership is often the cause for the inept functioning and eventual collapse of an organization or agency. This is because the leader sets the tone and to a great extent determines whether or not an organization will be viable. Leon T. Nelson, president of the Greater Roxbury Chamber of Commerce, has done his utmost to live up to the organization's motto, "Quod facis bene fac," which means doing whatever you do as well as you possibly can.

In a community that underwent drastic demographic changes during the 1970s and 1980s, when numerous businesses led the "white flight" to suburbia, …

Institute Brief: Employment Advisory Boards: The Ultimate Community Resource, David Hoff, Margaret Van Gelder, Martine Gold, Joe Marrone

The Institute Brief Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Strategies for establishing links to the business community and relationships with prospective employers through the development of employment advisory boards.

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

On April 23, 1993, the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs celebrated its tenth anniversary. To mark the occasion, the Institute established the John Joseph Moakley Award for Distinguished Public Service, which will be awarded annually to a man or woman whose contribution to the public good merits our most grateful acknowledgment. The first recipient of the award was Congressman John Joseph Moakley, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, one of the most powerful and influential positions in Congress.

Among those who paid tribute to Congressman Moakley were Michael E. Haynes, Minister, Twelfth Baptist Church, Boston; Raymond G. Torto, …

State Strategy For Developing Base Industries: A Massachusetts Case Study, Chris Tilly

New England Journal of Public Policy

In developing strategies for economic development, state governments must target base industries that bring income into the state and drive the rest of the economy. This article presents a case study of industry analysis and development strategy for Massachusetts, focusing on the state's base industries. Particular attention is paid to the role of industry clusters — groups of industries linked through customer, supplier, or other relationships, and typically concentrated geographically as well. After assessing strengths and weaknesses of the state's economy, the author concludes that despite the current severe recession, the state possesses the basis for renewed growth. Policy implications …

Fiscal Smell Tests: A Mid-Term Reality Check Of Massachusetts Finances, Joseph S. Slavet, Joseph R. Barresi

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

In his latest budget message the Governor points to achievement of a "real, but fragile fiscal balance. " On the credit side of the ledger, he cites four balanced budgets, reduced reliance on one-time revenues, no new taxes, five tax cuts, no deficit borrowing, and a triple upgrade in bond rating. On the debit side are continued spending pressures, slow tax revenue growth and burdensome levels of debt.

But is the fiscal condition of the Commonwealth stable, albeit fragile? Or would a careful reading of the numbers transmit another message?

The purpose of this report is to measure the Commonwealth's …

The Older Population In Massachusetts, 1980-1990, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

Massachusetts and the nation are aging! People 65 and older are growing in numbers more rapidly than other younger segments of the population, and the unprecedented growth of this group has created new demands on and new opportunities for every major sector of American life. But if we are to make constructive plans for an aging society, we must have sound information on the major changes in the make-up of the population.

This report shows how the older populations in Massachusetts and in the United States have changed in the decade between 1980 and 1990. It is designed to serve …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Growth And Geographical Distribution, Ralph Rivera

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts has undergone radical changes in its racial/ethnic composition in the last ten years. The Latino population, owing to its extraordinary growth rate during the last two decades, is the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the state. Yet relatively little is known about this population because of the "information gap." Based on 1990 census data, this article focuses on the growth and geographical distribution of Latinos in Massachusetts. It considers the undercount of Latinos, the growth of Latinos in the commonwealth from a national perspective, and assesses the increase of Latinos in the New England states. It explores the growth …

New York Revisited, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …

The Legacies Of Deindustrialization And The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Douglas M. Reynolds

New England Journal of Public Policy

Creation of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and release of a master plan for cultural and physical resource development is creating a new standard for private, local, state, and federal partnerships. Actions by the Corridor's partners are shaped by both past and contemporary economic development issues. Using tools of humanistic inquiry — history, economics, preservation, sociology, political science — for social and economic purposes signifies far-reaching shifts and possibilities for public planning and policy philosophies in both public and private agencies.

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Four years ago, in the 1988 Summer/Fall issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, we wrote,

"[The two] presidential candidates, Michael Dukakis and George Bush, [proved] themselves extraordinarily adept time and again at not addressing any of the excruciatingly difficult choices a new administration will have to make. But the realities the new president will face cannot be indefinitely obscured. The prosperity we enjoy, the unparalleled splurge in consumption during the 1980s, has been fueled by borrowing against the future. Although this observation is not especially new — and repetition has robbed it of urgency — what …

The Cost Of Home Ownership In Vermont, 1975-1990, Arthur G. Woolf

New England Journal of Public Policy

Housing prices in Vermont, like those in the other New England states, shot up dramatically during the economic boom of the 1980s. This article investigates the causes of that price increase and focuses on the cost of home ownership in Vermont in the years 1975 to 1990. Cost of home ownership is defined as the percentage of family income needed to finance an average-price home. Although prices skyrocketed during the 1980s, the actual cost of home ownership as a percentage of income was about 15 percent greater in 1990 than it was during the mid-1970s. Housing price increases are expected …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Today, much of public policy debate takes place in a social vacuum. This is partly because policy issues are often rather arbitrarily assigned to particular and seemingly unconnected disciplines that put a premium on maintaining their separate baronies of intellectual hegemony, and partly because of our own too-pervasive proclivity for compartmentalizing in order to simplify. One of the goals of the New England Journal of Public Policy is to invade, as it were, these baronies, to liberate the policy issues held hostage there and release them into a broader, more human context, one that accentuates the idea of connectedness as …

Homelessness: An Overview, Jim Tull

New England Journal of Public Policy

The homelessness crisis in the United States has reached epidemic proportions as the diversity of the homeless population expands to the point where it resembles the general population. The deepest and most long-standing cause of homelessness is poverty, but there are other forces as well, including the severe shortage of affordable housing (particularly due to urban renewal); deep funding cuts at the federal, state, and local level; the policy of deinstitutionalization; the Vietnam war; and unemployment. A new public policy approach to homelessness is needed, one which addresses these multiple forces and is grounded in the assumptions that housing and …

Homelessness Past And Present: The Case Of The United States, 1890-1925, Ellen Bassuk, Deborah Franklin

New England Journal of Public Policy

An examination of the professional, political, and popular literature on the nature and extent of homelessness from 1890 to 1925 affords a comparison of the economic and social characteristics of the homeless population at the turn of the century with that of today. The discussion covers the ensuing debates over the causes of homelessness, the various subgroups among the homeless during both periods, and the relative rates of homelessness, the context of extreme poverty and dislocation, and the prevalence of individual disabilities. Except for the growing numbers of homeless families over the past decade, the homeless populations during both eras …

On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Lars Eighner became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas. He lives in a small apartment in Austin and continues to scavenge. This article was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of The Threepenny Review. Reprinted with permission.

The Housing Crisis Enters The 1990s, Peter Dreier, Richard Appelbaum

New England Journal of Public Policy

Homelessness in the United States is a symptom of a much deeper economic and housing crisis — a widening gap between incomes and housing prices. With the end of the Cold War, the nation has the resources to solve these problems, but to do so it must mobilize the political will. This article examines the roots of crisis, the public policies and market forces that created it, and policy recommendations to solve the problem. Key to forging a solution is building the political coalition needed to create a broad public consensus.

Homelessness, A. E. S.

New England Journal of Public Policy

Personal story from A.E.S., a member of the Portland (Maine) Coalition for the Psychiatrically Disabled.

Housing The Homeless Through Expanding Access To Existing Housing Subsidies, Barbara Sard

New England Journal of Public Policy

The premise of this article is that homelessness in America today is essentially a product of the lack of affordable housing for very low-income people. The article outlines this central income/housing gap analysis as the factual predicate of the goal to alleviate homelessness through securing subsidized housing resources for the homeless and imminently homeless. It explains why, based on the nature and number of annually available housing subsidies, expanding access to existing housing subsidies is a valuable, workable, short-term, at least partial solution to the immediate crisis of lack of affordable housing, albeit one which does not negate the acknowledged …

The Housing Affordability Slide In Action: How Single Mothers Slip Into Homelessness, Elizabeth A. Mulroy

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article presents the concept of a housing affordability slide toward homelessness, then analyzes how single mothers living in the Northeast experienced the stark reality of the slide in the summer of 1991. Discussion on critical elements of the slide includes a resource squeeze between high housing costs and low incomes, frequent residential mobility, limited locational choice, and multiple stress burdens. Single mothers speak in their own voices to explain their experiences of the slide and what its impact has been on them and their families. Policy recommendations cover linkage between family well-being and national urban policy and a court-ordered …

Twin Peaks, Vince Putnam

New England Journal of Public Policy

Poetry by Vince Putnam, a resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. His work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square. He is pursuing an MSW degree at the University of Rhode Island.

Diary, Susan M. Fowler

New England Journal of Public Policy

A personal story by Susan Fowler, a former resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. She now lives in her own apartment in Newport with her two-year-old daughter and is "doing great." Her work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square.

Program Design And Clinical Operation Of Two National Va Initiatives For Homeless Mentally Ill Veterans, Robert Rosenheck, Catherine A. Leda, Peggy Gallup

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 1987, in response to reports of large numbers of veterans among America's homeless, the Department of Veterans Affairs established two new national health care initiatives, which have seen over 40,000 homeless veterans since their inception. We present here evaluation and treatment data on a sample of 14,000 of them. Because of differences in their design, the two programs vary in the degree to which they emphasize community outreach, homelessness prevention, and the provision of aftercare services to patients discharged from other VA programs. In spite of these differences, veterans treated in the two programs have similar health care problems …

Homeless Children Having Children, Yvonne M. Vissing

New England Journal of Public Policy

Homeless teenagers who have babies pose a significant population of concern for those in health and human services. This article explores demographic, structural, and economic changes for homeless young and single-parent families. It proposes that their homelessness is due to these barriers and the problems that result. Case studies illustrate the process of troubled teens becoming homeless women with babies. Policy recommendations for assisting these youngsters are offered.

Financing Mental Health Services For The Homeless Mentally Ill In New England, Margaret Stephens, Dominic Hodgkin

New England Journal of Public Policy

This paper examines how New England states pay for the mental health care of the homeless mentally ill. The focus is on how states choose providers, how they reimburse and monitor them, and how these arrangements may affect the incentives facing providers. Detailed case studies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont regulations are included. The studies reveal important differences in how states choose and reimburse providers, for both the homeless and nonhomeless mentally ill. The states also differ in the extent to which they have contracted with nontraditional providers, which many believe to be a necessary approach, given the frequent …

Policy Shifts In The Massachusetts Response To Family Homelessness, Margaret A. Leonard, Stacy Randell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts's response to the tragedy of family homelessness during a period of economic prosperity (1983-1987) is contrasted to a period of economic decline (1988-1992). The article describes the movement toward a structural response in the boom years and its dismantling with the emergence of a "blame the victim" response in the decline years. The roles of state government, advocacy groups, human service providers, private funding sources, academic institutions, and the media, as they influence these responses, are outlined. Interviews with key actors in these groups, group interviews with formerly homeless women, a review of the literature, and the authors' direct …