Public organizations typically promote internally. However, New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty defied precedent by recruiting candidates through unconventional channels. In 1994 Mayor Giuliani recruited William Bratton to serve as police commissioner. Bratton had experience heading police departments in the region but had never served in the New York Police Department (NYPD). Mayor Fenty’s promotion of Michelle Rhee to chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) in 2007 was also unconventional. While Rhee had fifteen years of education experience, she never worked in DCPS and lacked administrative experience.

Bratton and Rhee both supported innovative practices in their respective fields. Bratton focused on modernizing police practice. He increased the number of arrests for minor crimes and implemented CompStat, a program that provides real-time crime reports. He also encouraged disagreement within discussion to eliminate attitudes of superiority. Similarly, Rhee made massive organizational changes in DCPS. She fired over seven hundred underperforming instructional staff and replaced half of the District’s principals and administrative staff.

According to the authors, policy reformers are successful only under a supportive administration, and Rhee and Bratton both enjoyed strong support from their mayors. Mayor Giuliani gave Bratton the resources and authority needed to make drastic changes to NYPD, and Mayor Fenty reduced the power of the school board and granted Rhee unilateral authority to replace principals.

The authors document how the withdrawal of this support eventually led to Bratton’s and Rhee’s downfalls. Bratton’s methods led to a steep and rapid decrease in the city’s homicide rate. However, Bratton’s growing popularity made him a political threat to Mayor Giuliani and concerns over the propriety of a book deal eventually led to his resignation. Rhee’s success relied on the support of Mayor Fenty. However, her reforms were politically unpopular, and she was dismissed after Mayor Fenty was defeated in the 2010 election.

Maranto and Wolf offer four reasons for why Rhee’s and Bratton’s aggressive approaches were not quickly duplicated in other cities. First, Rhee and Bratton incorporated data-based management before it became a norm, and they were thus deemed radicals. Second, aggressive reform angers the public; therefore, a reformer’s ability to affect change depends on securing a strong leadership position. Third, most public organizations continue to promote internally. However, external recruiting promotes the circulation of modern techniques and is necessary to implement permanent policy change. Finally, policy reformers must be given unquestionable control over their agencies. Without this discretion, subordinates can undermine the leader’s goals. If these conditions are not met, drastic reform cannot be sustained.

The authors conclude by offering insight as to when these conditions for successful reform will be met. Success requires public awareness of required changes before reform is implemented; the public must understand the actions and potential outcomes. Furthermore, academics must study similar cases and teach future reformers to copy the methods of successful policy entrepreneurs. These practices will allow policy reformers to avoid political resistance and produce significant changes.

The authors reexamine “Race, Drugs, and Policing: Understanding Disparities in Drug Delivery Arrests,” a 2006 study of the racial makeup of Seattle drug arrests by Katherine Beckett, Kris Nyrop, and Lori Pfingst. This initial study, based on Seattle crime data collected between 1999 and 2001, found that race-neutral factors––community reports of crime and neighborhood crime rates––were not sufficient enough to explain why a disproportionate number of drug-related arrests involved minorities. By revisiting the initial study’s results using different data, Engel et al. compare data on the reporting of crimes to actual arrest reports, similar to the original study. They both reason that if there were police bias against minorities, the proportion of minorities who were actually arrested should be higher than the proportion of minority suspects in crime reports. However, Engel et al. argue that many of the data sources used in the 2006 study are not accurate or specific enough for effective analysis.

In the case of community reporting of crime, the original study used narcotics activity reports, which are non-emergency, written reports, often made by citizens at police precincts. Engel et al. believe that drug-related calls for service, which are made to the police over phone at the time of an incident, rather than in writing at a precinct, are a more accurate benchmark of community reports of crime. The authors also consider the original study to be lacking in geographic specificity. While the 2006 study uses large census tracts, the new study uses statistical reporting areas, which are maintained by the Seattle Police Department and give crime rate data in smaller geographic areas, in some cases at the block level.

Unlike in the original study, Engel et al. find that whites were more likely to be arrested than calls for service would suggest, while both African Americans and Hispanics were arrested at rates below expected levels. These results refute the original study’s conclusion that race-neutral factors could not support minority bias in drug arrests. Although this new research suggests that policing may be less racially-biased than some believe, the authors are quick to note several additional considerations. They concede that the design of the study is unable to account for any racial bias amongst those making calls for service. They also note that because policing techniques tend to focus the greatest enforcement efforts on the areas with higher calls for service––low income and minority neighborhoods––a higher level of police-minority interaction is unavoidable.

Racial bias in the criminal justice system will continue to be a controversial and highly studied issue. Evidence of this can be seen in the same issue of Criminology & Public Policy where Katherine Beckett, an author of the 2006 study, offers a strong rebuttal to this article. Continued academic discourse on this issue should help illuminate how racial issues affect the justice system and vice versa.

Feature Photo: cc/Chris J. Daniel

Calls for the US to begin exporting domestically produced LNG stem from the fact that natural gas prices in the European and Asian markets have remained significantly higher than the Henry Hub price – the primary price point for North American natural gas. The massive disparity in prices has motivated many in the US as well as abroad to urge the federal government to begin permitting natural gas exports. But opposition to exporting the gas has also risen, as Jonathan Chanis highlights in a recent article in American Foreign Policy Interests. The administration must ensure, he says, that for welfare reasons rather than legal, exporting natural gas would not be detrimental to US residential and industrial consumers. The debate has given rise to questions regarding whether the price of natural gas would rise for US consumers in response to the US exporting the product, and whether the resulting higher domestic natural gas prices would be offset with substantial gains from international trade.

These contingencies were addressed in a recent report solicited by the US Department of Energy and completed by NERA Economic Consulting. The NERA report concluded that in every scenario, which permitted exports of natural gas, the US could be expected to experience net economic gains. That is, the report concluded that the US economic benefit from exporting would be greater than the decrease in capital and wage income for US consumers. Moreover, NERA’s analysis reveals that US net economic gains would increase with the quantity of natural gas exported.

The study focused on six scenarios estimating the effect on US welfare given various export levels and the resulting domestic natural gas prices, aside from additional supply and demand shock scenarios. The Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) export quantity scenarios ranged from a low-volume/low-growth to a high-volume/high-growth scenario, and each was compared to the results of a baseline estimate of no additional exports. Welfare outcomes were calculated by comparing the increase in income levels from wealth transfers associated with LNG exports, to the increase in the price of goods and services purchased by the US consumer. Prices were calibrated to give the same results for natural gas prices at the same levels of LNG exports, as those forecasted by the US Energy Information Administration in its Annual Energy Outlook of 2011.

The low-volume/low-growth scenario set export capacity at six billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d), phased in at a rate of 0.5 bcf/d per year. On the other end, the high-volume/high-growth plan fixed export capacity at 12 bcf/d, implemented at a rate of three bcf/d per year. For reference, the US produces a little more than 80 bcf/d and consumes roughly 70 bcf/d.

NERA’s report estimates that domestic natural gas prices will rise in response to exports, on top of forecasted increases present even in a non-exporting scenario. At the onset of exporting, the authors predict that prices would increase in a range from zero to $0.33 per thousand cubic feet (2010$/Mcf) relative to the baseline forecasted increases in a non-exporting scenario. And after five years of growing exports, the authors predict that prices would increase in a range of $0.22 to $1.11 (2010$/Mcf) more than they would in a non-exporting scenario.

A major assumption of the analysis presumed that the upward range of US natural gas prices would be constrained by arbitrage opportunities. That is, price competition among global gas suppliers would drive importing nations away from US LNG whenever the cost of importing from the US, generally wellhead prices plus transportation, increased above the price from other supplier nations. As such, the model showed that while US consumers would experience modest price increases, domestic natural gas prices will not converge to the price of natural gas in other markets.

While the report asserts net economic gains, the study concedes that the consequences of exporting natural gas will not be positive for all socioeconomic groups, specifically those whose income depends exclusively on wages or government transfers. These conclusions were based on NERA’s global natural gas partial-equilibrium model and a separate macroeconomic model, employed to estimate the effect of exporting natural gas on all economic interactions in the domestic market.

Importantly, the potential for a rising natural gas price is not the only concern surrounding the export debate. While the NERA report has a thorough discussion on the net economic impacts, it bypasses one of the key issues highlighted by Chanis: the financing and construction of the export terminals and natural gas liquefaction plants necessary for exporting the energy source. Preparing natural gas for export requires converting the gas into liquid form. While the US has the advantage of an established natural gas infrastructure, there is a scarcity of liquefaction plants for natural gas, which are essential for ensuring economical storage and transport. In order for the US to export LNG, the natural gas industry would have to build these facilities for about $4-7 billion each, according to Chanis’ estimation.

There are also significant objections to the export of LNG for environmental reasons. Environmental groups and advocates have voiced concern that permitting the export of US natural gas will escalate the use of hydraulic fracturing domestically and sustain the use of fossil fuels abroad. These concerns, especially in the wake of President Obama’s inaugural address, will be major roadblocks to exporting natural gas.

The debate over natural gas exports is heating up and promises to only get hotter. The recent US Department of Energy report detailing the economic benefits of increased trade will provide more fodder for the pro-export faction. However, opposition from those advocating for the groups forecasted to be injured from higher prices, and those advocating for environmental protection, will be strong. Amid the debate, there is one certainty: this decision will have powerful effects on the world energy market for years to come.

Feature Photo: cc/Ari Moore

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House

Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and former Representative of Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District. He helped draft the “Contract with America,” which led the Republican Party to gain control of the House after four decades, and earned him the honor of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. He was recently a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

You were a major contender in the Republican primaries last year. What would you say was the biggest lesson you learned from that experience?

I think there were three really big lessons. One is that money matters on a scale I had underestimated. The second is that it was much, much harder to take new ideas and move them into the political process than I thought it would be. And the third is that it is a much bigger organizational problem than I realized.

I had helped in the Contract with America, and we had candidates in 430-some congressional districts, and I had run ’94, ’96 and ’98 national campaigns. These were totally different experiences – congressional races are like franchises. Presidential campaigns are single hierarchical systems. We screwed up in Virginia, for example, and didn’t get on the ballot. Totally stupid. And it just turned out it was a much bigger challenge organizationally than we expected. I also found out why most successful candidates run twice. The first time around you go, “Wow, this is a really big system,” and you learn a lot of lessons.

As Speaker of the House you were a major political force responsible for bringing the Republican Party together to accomplish many things. Today’s Republican party seems fractured. Is this ideological divide bridgeable and if so, what should the party do to come together to accomplish its policy goals?

I actually believe that you bring people together by momentum not by mediation. If they’re going somewhere they’ll all fall into a general direction, if they’re sitting and doing nothing they’ll start fighting each other.

I think one of the great challenges – and I failed at this in the presidential primary last year – I think we’re on the edge of an extraordinary breakthrough in new public policies and in things that are so exciting it is almost impossible to discuss them in the news media, because nobody knows how to write about it. I think you could have a very dynamic Republican Party in another few years, offering an extraordinary range of innovations that will change things.

If you look at Udacity for example, which Sebastian Thrun has created, it’s stated public goal is to reduce tuition by 90%. Now when you’re trying to talk about student loan problems, if you could reduce tuition – let’s assume he’s off by half and he only reduces it by 50% – a 50% reduction in tuition would lead to an extraordinarily different student loan environment. And there are all sorts of things being developed right now that are comparable to that, that will, I think, lead to a new generation of ideas and a new generation of policies. But, it is extraordinarily hard to get them into the political process and into the news media process because they don’t fit what people think they should be covering.

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding stringent immigration policies favored by Republicans. What direction do you see the party moving on the issue of immigration, and do you think this is actually one of the primary issues concerning the Latino voter?

I think Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus had it right when he said that immigration is never the number one issue unless the issue’s immigration. So if you say to the average Latino American, “What do you care about?” they’re going to say, “Jobs, education, and healthcare.” On the other hand, if you say, “We’re going to deport your grandmother,” then it’s the number one issue.

I felt very strongly last year that we had to have a rational policy and a humane policy towards the people who are already here. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore the fact that they broke the law to get here. But to pretend that we’re going to wave a magic wand and 11 million people or more are going to disappear is dishonest, and it’s both bad public policy and bad politics.

I’m encouraged by Jeb Bush, and I’m encouraged by people that are moving in the right direction – Marco Rubio, for example. I know that the house Republicans have reached out and have a bipartisan working group on immigration that is working with a number of Democrats. The interesting question will be whether the president will accept a bill or whether he wants the issue for 2014.

I think the real break points are going to be: can we find a path to legality that is distinct from a path to citizenship? Do we draw a difference between people who came here as minors? If you were brought here at three years of age, you probably ought to be eligible for citizenship faster than if you came knowingly as an adult and deliberately broke the law. Do we find a technique for having a guest worker program, which the unions deeply oppose? Should we have, as the Canadians do, a bias in favor of high-tech and entrepreneurial personalities? I do think you have a growing part of the Republican Party willing to find a solution, and I think the odds are that in the next two years we’ll actually get to something.

You wrote an Op-Ed for the Chicago Tribune about gun versus gang violence. What work have you done in violence prevention and why should the city take your advice?

The great case study is Bill Bratton’s “Turnaround.” Bratton was the police chief in New York City with Giuliani, and then he went on to Los Angeles. Giuliani’s book “Leadership” captures a good bit of this and there’s a guy named Dennis Smith, at NYU who has studied the application of metrics to public policy.

It’s an objective fact that New York City is radically safer today than New York City was 25 years ago. It’s a pretty clear fact that there’s a pattern that works. It’s essentially policing to preempt rather than policing to follow up. Why hasn’t Chicago simply brought in someone like Bratton as an advisor? He took the same model and applied it in Los Angeles. I think you would reduce the number of murders dramatically. I think murder is down over 75 percent in New York from the pre-Giuliani era. Bloomberg told me one time that Staten Island is so safe, that it is statistically off the charts for communities its size. There are almost no murders.

Your previous views on climate change were once at odds with those of the Republican majority. Climate change has become such a politically charged issue, what path, if any, should be taken going forward?

My view is that we actually don’t know. The so-called scientific consensus is comparable to the consensus that the sun goes around the Earth, which disappeared with Copernicus. I am a student of paleontology, and what we do know is that the Earth’s temperature has changed very dramatically over time – even in the last 11,000 years.

My instinct is to say two things to people who are fanatics over climate change. The first is: tell me what the right climate is. What should the correct temperature be? Because, the fact is they don’t have a correct temperature, they just know that now is the correct temperature. For example, there are people who talk about the “great storm in the northeast” this year; well, the greatest blizzard in Northeastern history is 1888. Now it was almost certainly not caused by carbon. It was just an enormous blizzard. So you start with, how certain are you that you know a pattern? The very same scientists told you in the ’70s that we’re on the edge of a real ice age. Second, the odds are pretty good that we are on the edge of a real ice age, but it’s probably 1,000 years off. But we’re clearly at the late phase of the interglacial if you just look at the numbers. Somebody once pointed out, global warming may slow down the ice age by about a century, but it won’t slow it down more than that if there’s an ice age coming. And ice ages come really fast and are much more terrifying than warming, because this all ends up covered by a glacier.

The other point I’d make to people is, if you thought it was a serious problem, why is no one willing to talk about adaptation rather than prevention? Prevention is extraordinarily expensive and requires enormous government-centered decisions. Adaptation is dramatically cheaper. The example I’ll give is, to the best of my knowledge, when the Dutch began building breaks there was no Al Gore available to say, “What you need to do is lower the ocean.” But prevention of Dutch flooding by lowering the ocean would be the equivalent of the current talk.

I find this is a topic about which it is almost impossible to have a rational conversation. The deniers won’t be rational, and the people who believe it won’t be rational, they both just stand there chanting their slogans.

Is there a Cap and Trade policy that could get a political foothold?

I’d be very surprised. Part of the reason is – it’s truly ironic – nobody in the wealthy liberal wing is willing to look at the cost to the very poor and policies that inherently make energy more expensive. Which is why I think adaptation is probably a dramatically easier, more humane strategy. And to say okay, let’s assume a worst case: what would you actually have to do? What would it cost to build better sea walls in New York?

Can you talk a little bit about how academia – how the literature – should fit into those discussions, and into the formation of public policy?

It requires people who are ready to break with the norm. Einstein said quite explicitly, that if he had gotten a job, he would’ve never developed the theory of relativity because the social pressure of being normal would have cut off that avenue of thinking. Because he was so isolated as a patent clerk, he really couldn’t get hired, he had the luxury of thinking, with no one to correct him. One of our challenges is going to be, how do you knit together deviant personalities who are prepared to stand up and say, “I have a new idea and I’m willing to approach this in a new way”?

If you were in the Speaker’s chair today, how would you manage the dynamics between the two parties? How would you approach policy in the chambers right now?

I would do four things. I would reach out to House Democrats. Something I’ve actually helped launch was with the black caucus agreeing to swap districts with the Republicans and spend time with each other in their districts, which I think could be very helpful.

Second, I would look for Democratic bills that shared our values and I’d pass them. So we’d have a deliberate passing of bipartisan bills.

Third, I would go through, for example – and we’re doing this for one of my newsletters – I’d go through the State of the Union and I would pick all the things Obama said that we could agree on enough to start down that road. There are a lot of things ­– at least seven or eight things out of the State of the Union – that begin to be a conversation.

And fourth, I would slow the dialogue with the administration down and make it quietly very painful for them. And say look, if you want to deal with us as a serious part of the constitutional process, fine. We’ll sit and talk. I went 35 days negotiating with Clinton. But we did that after we closed the government twice, because then we had his attention. No Speaker of the House can match a President in a one-on-one fight in the media. But what you do have is the enormous power of the purse, to not give him money. And you can say, “Look, you’re not going to have any money. If you want some money, let’s talk. Call when you need money.” That’s what the Magna Carta was all about.

Predictions for 2016?

No idea.

Feature Photo & Headshot: Harris School of Public Policy Communications Office

In “Association Between Availability and Quality of Health Services in Schools and Reproductive Health Outcomes Among Students: A Multilevel Observational Study,” Denny et al. are able to confront the sample-size and methodological issues seen in many American studies and assess the impact of New Zealand’s SBHCs on student health outcomes using a large nationally representative sample and multilevel analytical techniques.

Denny et al. used a two-stage cluster design to collect necessary data. The researchers first randomly selected 115 schools to participate in the study and then randomly selected 12,355 students from those 115 schools to participate in their study. Ninety-six of the 115 schools, and 9,107 of the 12,355 students, agreed to participate in the study. School and student demographics reflected those of New Zealand’s general population.

Administrators were asked to complete questionnaires regarding the availability and quality of their SBHCs. These questionnaires asked school administrators about a variety of access and quality indicators, including number of health practitioners, weekly hours worked by health practitioners, if health practitioners met as a team weekly, etc.

Students self-reported personal health outcomes in an anonymous survey.  Questions on this survey encompassed the following sexual health behaviors: if students were sexually active, condom use for sexually transmitted infections prevention, contraceptive use for pregnancy prevention, and history of or current pregnancy. If students stated they “always” or “most of the time” used condoms or contraception (the options being “always,” “most of the time,” “sometimes,” and “never”), this was defined as consistent contraception use. If students stated they had never been involved in a pregnancy or were not sure if they had not been involved in a pregnancy (the options being “yes,” “no,” and “not sure”), this was defined as no history of or current pregnancy.

Researchers used general linear models to assess if the accessibility and quality of school-based health services impacted sexual health outcomes as reported by students. There was a statistical association between increased weekly practitioner hours and consistent contraceptive use. Sexually active students in schools with greater than 10 weekly health practitioner hours per 100 students reported greater consistent contraception use than their sexually active peers in schools without SBHCs. However, researchers found no relationship between team-based meetings, non-health personnel-based meetings, and administration of the grade-9 health screening and consistent contraception use.

Although these findings are significant, the nuanced impacts of SBHCs are still unknown. Services vary within schools—for example, some schools give students contraception, while others do not. Second, there is variance among staff’s SBHC experience. Lastly, the particular health service that impacts reproductive health outcomes is unknown—perhaps access to mental health or substance abuse services in SBHCs is the true driver behind improvements in students’ sexual health outcomes. Understanding the impact of the nuances in school-based health service provision may be the key to improving student health outcomes. Although this research leaves some questions unanswered, it bolsters American researchers’ findings of the correlation between SBHCs and improved sexual health outcomes.

Photo credit: cc/Allen.Hillsborough

In a 2012 paper, “Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible? An Analytical Framework for the Iran Nuclear Negotiations,” researchers James K. Sebenius and Michael K. Singh introduce a graphical framework to illustrate the potential “zone of possible agreement” between Iran and the United States. Rather than concentrating on tactics and strategy, the negotiation analysis centers on the design of the potential deals and the “setup” under which the negotiation takes place. Their analytical model “relates input assumptions about the parties’ interests, their no-deal options, and possible deals” to graphically illustrate a range of potential outcomes.

One of the most revealing aspects of the authors’ analytical framework is its suggestion that, under the current state of affairs, no zone of possible agreement exists. At present, the most the United States is willing to concede is at odds with the minimum amount of nuclear capacity that Iran is willing to accept. The United States insists that Iran must, at a minimum, stop its uranium enrichment program. Recognizing this gulf, the authors argue, “The failure by multiple parties via a variety of negotiation processes to make serious progress suggests…the absence of an underlying zone of possible agreement.”

Given that no zone of possible agreement currently exists, the authors suggest that the US place less emphasis on offering a wide range of potential deals to Iran and prioritize influencing “the setup” under which these deals would occur. In other words, the authors recommend the adoption of a multi-faceted strategy that imposes costs, designs incentives, and redraws red lines on the Iranian regime to create a zone of possible agreement.

Sebenisu and Singh argue that previous diplomatic strategies toward Iran have failed for a variety of reasons: the United States downplayed the threat of military force, imposed economic sanctions on non-critical Iranian markets, and applied sanctions only sporadically. Using their analytical framework, the authors argue that a successful costs-incentives strategy should meet the following three criteria: the strategy must be credible, it must have a meaningful impact on important Iranian markets, and “it must be of sufficient magnitude relative to the value Iran places on its nuclear program.”

Sebenius and Singh’s analysis reminds readers that diplomatic strategies should not only concentrate on crafting deals, but also on changing the status quo. Despite the reemerging possibility of nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran, it may nonetheless be time for the United States to refocus its strategy.

Feature Photo: cc/Taniwha

is the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics and Law at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the author of several books, most recently

What has led to the transition of college athletics into big-time, revenue building sports entities?

It has actually been this way for 80 or 90 years. You look at some of the crowds for football games—even at your institution, the University of Chicago—you can probably go back to 1905 or 1912. There is more money today. That’s really the big change. College sports were really big back when Michigan was playing the University of Chicago. There is a national report about college athletics published in 1929 by the Carnegie Foundation. It documents everything going on today, except the money. They didn’t have TV. That is probably the single biggest contributor.

Give us a sense of the abuses committed by universities in the realm of big-time sports.

They range from quiet compromises in academics to outright cheating. They go across the board. Most universities don’t appear to cheat. All universities that have commercial sports under their umbrella compromise their academic standards.

What else happens?

Some of these cheating scandals have come up at our neighboring institution, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Football and basketball players were not only taking easy courses, which is something that you see often, but they were also getting more help than the rules permit. Some of these courses were sham courses. You don’t really want to see that anywhere.

Reform groups defend big-time sports by saying that these universities are too weak to resist commercialism. Why might this be true?

I don’t think they are so weak. I believe universities are fine with what is going on now. It is more important that they claim to do well in sports. That’s the reason they don’t stop doing it. These are smart institutions. They have plenty of muscle.

The University of Chicago is what I call the exception that proves the rule. It is very rare for an American university with big-time sports to step back and not do it in an all-out way. Really, only two universities that were big in 1920 and stayed national universities other than the Ivy League schools were Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago. Seven of the current Ivy League schools were also in the top 100 football powers in 1920. They joined the Ivy League, and they then took a step back.

You have said that reforming college athletics would need to begin in the trustees’ boardrooms. What might be accomplished here to address abuses?

In the boardroom, anything is possible. One thing that a board might decide is that we don’t want to have athletic scholarships and we want to only have scholarships that are based on merit—something like the University of Chicago these days. That could be done. It could be done at the next trustee meeting. Pretty much all things are possible, except the trustees can’t decide to have a national championship. That takes a lot of work and money. Trustees usually meet four times per year, so they have four chances to decide to get out of this business. But they don’t do it.

In 1939, the President of the University of Chicago, Robert Hutchins, succeeded in getting the board of trustees to drop out of what was then the equivalent of the Big Ten Conference and stop playing big-time sports. Even though he was making this point in national publications, he was not able to garner support from trustees until the football team had some bad seasons. During the 1939 season, I believe they were shut out by one team 85 to nothing; another outing was 50 to nothing. They were beaten by Michigan. They were beaten by Virginia. Just look at Chicago’s 1939 season record. That will make your eyes water.

So the conditions were ripe for the board to honor Hutchins’ suggestion.  

Right, there need to be two conditions for change. The first is a college president who makes it clear that he does not like sports, but that does not happen these days. That kind of thing will get you fired. The second is a team that is doing horribly. Those are the perfect conditions for getting rid of abuses.

NCAA by-laws stipulate that student athletes may not receive compensation, even though schools benefit enormously from what these student athletes do on the basketball court or football field. Why is this an issue?

Researchers have estimated the marginal revenue product of an additional player on your football team who is going to eventually be drafted by the NFL. For each of those, it is a half-million dollars. In basketball, the number is $1.6 million. That is what the university gets by having just one more of these star recruits. Now look at what the student athletes get. There is going to be an inequality in the middle of those two numbers.

Some folks would say that not paying student athletes preserves the amateur status of college sports.

One of the points that Taylor Branch has made in The Atlantic on “The Shame of College Sports” is that amateur status is not something you foist onto people. I think that is a nice way of putting it. You are not giving these student athletes a choice. In tennis or golf, you can choose to be an amateur or a professional. But making them have no choice but to be an amateur is not the same thing.

Photo credit: Archival Photographic Files, apf4-00661, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

The analysis hinges on the hypothesis that over-parenting is the extension of normally appropriate parenting strategies to an unhealthy degree. An online survey asked participants if they had observed parents “overusing valued parenting practices like monitoring, protection, or caring for their children,” or if they were involved with parents who did not change their attitudes or expectations as their child developed. Nearly two-thirds reported some experience with these types of behavior.

The authors utilized the research on parental approaches and children’s wellbeing advanced by Diana Baumrind—parental responsiveness and parental demandingness—as key measures for understanding the authoritative parenting style, and they categorized participant observations based on their deviation from this method. If, as one respondent notes, a parent continues to prepare “massive meals for adult children in their twenties,” the researchers assigned a classification of “low-demandingness,” indicating that the parent placed low demands on the child to develop maturity.

Extending this analysis to the field of examples provided by eighty-six professionals, the authors narrow in on a definition of over-parenting, reducing the practices associated with the term in professional circles to six central themes: reduced expectations of performance, over-attentiveness, over-attentiveness paired with low-accountability, high demands, high demands with limited trust in their child’s problem-solving capabilities, and specific qualities of the parent or child. Locke et al characterize a range of actions symptomatic of excessive parenting and delimit a space for further analysis of what levels of parental protection could be counterproductive.

While they do not venture an exact definition of over-parenting, the study clarifies the connection between misapplication of the authoritative approach, high levels of responsiveness to high demands for child success, and an underlying tendency to deny children self-sufficiency and determination. As an example of this kind of relationship, a parent may expect their child to place into the best classes and monitor performance accordingly. However, if their child does not earn a spot, they quickly extend blame to teachers and the school administration without examining the role of their child in the decision.

Limitations to the study do exist and, in relative terms, some difficulty arises in criticizing parents for caring too much for their kids. At the same time, the projected outcomes for children who face highly attentive parents with limited expectations probably do not conform to the intent of parents who act in this way. A more precise definition of over-parenting may benefit these guardians who, in their eagerness to provide security and ensure success, may hinder a child’s maturity. The authors conclude that additional research should identify optimal level of parental involvement and critically evaluate the idea that increased parental effort always lead to improvements in child well-being.

Photo credit: cc/Susan NYC

Steven C. LaTourette, McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies

Steven C. LaTourette served as the 19th and then 14th district of Ohio’s US Representative from 1994-2013, where he served on the House Appropriations Committee, among others. Currently, Mr. LaTourette is a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and is the President of the recently created McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies, a lobbying and government relations firm in Washington DC. Prior to his time in office, Mr. LaTourette served as Lake County Prosecutor for seven years. He studied at the University of Michigan and the Cleveland Marshall School of Law.

This week, David Levine speaks with former US Representative Steve LaTourette on what he accomplished during his two decades in Congress, his new opportunities outside of the Capitol, and how polarization in Washington and the growing debt go hand in hand.

This podcast was produced by Claire O’Hanlon and David Levine.

Feature photo: cc/Kay Gaensler

While public education systems in the developing world often suffer from numerous structural and financial challenges, the low level of education among parents may also be a significant impediment to children’s educational success. In a new paper, “The Impact of Mother Literacy and Participation Programs on Child Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India,” Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, and Marc Shotland examine whether interventions targeting mothers’ literacy improve their children’s education outcomes. They find that mothers’ literacy programs boost children’s math scores, increase mothers’ participation in their children’s learning, and bolster women’s sense of empowerment.

The authors partnered with Pratham, a non-governmental organization in India, to conduct a randomized control trial evaluating the impact of mothers’ literacy programs on their children’s education in Bihar and Rajasthan, two Indian states with low levels of literacy among women. The organization randomly selected over 8,500 mothers from 480 villages to participate in the trial. Based on their random assignment into one of four groups, Pratham offered participating women either: (1) adult literacy classes, (2) training materials on how to enhance their children’s learning, or (3) a combination of both interventions. Women in a fourth group did not receive any intervention and served as a control group.

To measure the impact of Pratham’s programs, the authors first collected baseline data from the selected mothers and their children through household surveys and standardized tests. After one year, they collected post-intervention data using the same instruments, as well as additional metrics to evaluate women’s empowerment.

Banerji, Berry, and Shotland find that all three treatments improved children’s math scores in comparison to the control group. However, only the combined intervention increased children’s reading scores. Mothers in each of the treatment groups also reported increased involvement in their children’s education, including talking to their child about their studies and reviewing their homework assignments. Additionally, women in each treatment groups had higher math and reading scores after a year of program participation. Notably, all three treatments also had a positive effect on women’s sense of empowerment, which the authors measured through metrics such as their involvement in household decision-making and their beliefs about the value of their own education.

The authors note, however, that the treatments had no effect on children’s educational behaviors, such as regular attendance and enrollment rates. They also admit that since it is likely that young children accompanied their mothers to literacy classes, they cannot rule out the possibility that the treatment effect is, in fact, due to their exposure to the program itself, rather than result of their mothers’ education. Moreover, since the authors collected post-intervention data one year after the program’s inception, their findings do not indicate whether the positive effects are sustainable over time.

Given the need for mechanisms that improve the quality of education in the developing world, Banerji, Berry, and Shotland’s evaluation is both relevant and timely. Mothers’ literacy and education programs could supplement ongoing education initiatives for children—Pratham’s Mothers’ Literacy program, for example, relies almost entirely on materials designed to increase children’s literacy. The authors state that their analysis “shows that literacy and participation programs can impact both mother and child learning.” They conclude, “This is encouraging evidence for policymakers looking to improve adult and child learning, as well as the education environment in the home.”

As policymakers and development actors move closer to achieving their goal of universal primary education, they should begin to look toward improving the quality of this education. Investing in mothers’ human capital could be a valuable tool to meet this new challenge.

Feature Photo: cc/Pratham Books