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 July 14, 2008 | Vol 7, No. 14 |
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In This Issue: – Big Hurdles for Small Schools – Calendar So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out that one of the critical ingredients is a precious commodity that these schools have accumulated. Like metal being pulled toward a powerful magnet, this resource is drawn to the most inspiring schools. Some call it dedication, energy or personal attention. It is all of those things, but if you have to measure it, it comes down to time. It’s teachers and principals working 60-hour weeks. It’s parents stealing time from their jobs and their family to go to parent-teacher conferences, work on school committees and volunteer in the classroom. It’s Department of Education administrators devoting work hours to these new schools because they’ve invested so much in their success. Without a doubt, skilled and creative education professionals can do a lot more with the time they have than others, and without training and experience, dedication will only get you so far. But it’s this often neglected element of work hours – how many education professionals are capable of and willing to put in – that you seldom see in job descriptions but that clearly makes an enormous difference. From the perspective of education outcomes, the “dedication” model works incredibly well for those schools that are able to attract the staff and families that are able and willing to put in these hours. Small schools have an advantage because they provide a payoff, not only in terms of better test scores and graduation rates, but also in the satisfaction of seeing that you can make a difference and of developing the personal relationships that are possible in smaller communities. And like any other endeavor, the small schools that have the most financial support and the most effective leadership are the ones that are going to attract the parents, teachers and students who are most willing to give of their time. As successful as this can be for individual schools, there is a big question as to how sustainable and replicable this model is. Will everyone involved—teachers, administrators, parents and students—be able to keep up a herculean effort over time? Are there enough qualified professionals with the motivation and drive to expand this model throughout the system? The School for Law and Justice, for all its success, also highlights these challenges. The energetic principal who guided it through its initial years, is leaving to become an assistant superintendant for a group of charter schools. The school has also lost many teachers, most of whom are in their 20s, to higher paying or less stressful jobs—just as they are gaining the classroom experience to go along with high energy. Few have time to put in these kinds of hours and have children of their own. When asked about this dilemma, Chancellor Joel Klein responded: “When people are part of the world of changing things for children, they don’t view it as work.” Right. I’d like to give the Chancellor the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows better. No matter how dedicated these professionals are to the cause, it’s hard work, and they still have lives to live and bills to pay. But really, what else could he say? Right now there’s not enough money in the education system to have enough teachers and support staff to give every student all the attention they need, or to compensate those who go well above and beyond their job requirements. That brings us back to the perennial issue of funding. If we know what works, do we have the political will to give it the resources it needs to succeed on a large scale? Higher salaries, smaller classes and more support would attract more high quality professionals and reduce the level of turnover and burnout. More dollars are certainly needed, but that’s not the only issue. We also have a fundamental problem with the way that our education system meshes (or doesn’t mesh) with the changing demands of work and family life. We’re not only asking more of teachers and students, we’re also asking more of parents, whether it’s reading more with their children at home or getting involved with their children’s school. This is a good thing, since parental involvement is one of the best predictors of academic success. However, these rising expectations are also coming at a time when there are fewer families with a stay-at-home parent, when work loads and time pressures are increasing in many occupations, and when sleep deprivation seems to be reaching epidemic proportions. As any working parent knows, it’s difficult to juggle these competing demands. For single parents, it can often be overwhelming. Some of these parents are also the very teachers and principals that we are expecting to come early and work late to make our schools work better. There are no easy answers to these larger conflicts, although better child care options and more flexible work schedules would help a lot. But relying on high expectations and exceptional motivation alone won’t resolve them. In fact, the more we succeed with these tools, the more we will confront their limitations. Dedication, energy and attention are not a zero-sum game, and we can increase the supply with settings that allow them to flourish. But neither are they inexhaustible resources. It is exciting and encouraging that we are finding more ways to inspire students and educators, but that only makes it more urgent that we find the methods and means to sustain and expand our successes. New Jersey Hedges The Act, as originally proposed, would have extended the expiration of all permits issued before 2006, to the end of 2012—or even possibly to 2014, depending on when the economy recovers. This would have applied to permits issued by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), such as waterfront development permits, permits issued pursuant to the “Wetlands Act of 1970;” permits issued by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission pursuant to the “Hackensack Meadowlands Reclamation and Development Act;” and permits issued by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and other State Agencies. Further, the Act proposed to extend all State Planning Commission and Costal Area Facilities Review Act (CAFRA) Centers and Plan Endorsements. Not unexpectedly, the proposal provoked a flurry of controversy. Environmentalists questioned whether it was fair for projects approved before 2006 to automatically get a pass on the regulations that NJDEP had passed since then. Builders cited the time and expense involved in obtaining permits for much-needed projects. Both sides worked hard to find anecdotal evidence to bolster their arguments—but couldn’t because New Jersey doesn’t have a centralized permit tracking system. Unfortunately, that fact went unnoticed, and the discussion remained theoretical since there is no way to determine the real impact of extending the permits or not. Ultimately, and after much heated debate, the Permit Extension Act of 2008 passed with several modifications. Permits issued before 2007 were extended to mid-2010, with a possible extension to the end of 2010. Permits issued in Environmentally Sensitive Areas such as State Planning Areas 4B and 5 will not be extended. Coastal Center designations will not be extended where (1) an application for Plan Endorsement was not submitted to the State Planning Commission as of March 15, 2007, and (2) designations were not in compliance with the Coastal Zone Management rules. While the scope of the adopted Permit Extension Act is not as far reaching as some would hope, there at least now is recognition that New Jersey’s ability to attract economic growth is hampered by an overwhelming multitude of permits requirements and regulations and, further, that there exists no adequate governmental organization responsible for economic growth in the State. The hope is that this will inspire the Governor and Legislature to provide the necessary infrastructure investments, incentives and policy changes that will keep New Jersey’s economic engine turning for the future.
Keeping up with the Pearl River Delta I recently had a chance to visit China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD) Megaregion, encompassing much of Guangdong Province and the cities of Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Macau. The PRD has a population of 50 million, about the same as the Northeast Megaregion between Boston and Washington, with its 48 million residents. The PRD is China’s economic and manufacturing powerhouse, providing many of the consumer products found on the shelves of America’s big box retail, discount and hardware stores. The region has industrialized at a breakneck pace over the past 30 years, while its cities have urbanized at an even more dramatic pace. Since 1980, for example, Shenzhen has evolved from a small fishing community with 30,000 residents to a world-class city of 13 million, nearly twice the size of New York City. And, despite its rapid growth, the city is remarkably well serviced by modern road and rail infrastructure and parks, and appears to be quite livable. Several aspects of the growth of this dynamic place caught my attention: • Despite its rapid pace of growth, the city has done an extraordinary job of building modern urban infrastructure. The Chinese government is now investing $50 billion in new high-speed passenger rail and goods movement networks for the PRD over a five-year period. By contrast, our federal government has disinvested in the Northeast corridor rail system for years, as Congress and the White House dither over whether we ought to have any national rail system at all. • The PRD is making major investments in expanded universities and research centers and urban quality of life. Their goal is to move up the value chain to higher value products and services produced by higher skilled labor. At the same time the government is consciously pushing lower value, heavily polluting industries to other regions of China and overseas. They are well aware that to attract and retain skilled workers they will need to improve the region’s quality of life and environment, including the current dismal air and water quality. They are beginning to invest heavily in these improvements. • Hong Kong has already replaced nearly all of its manufacturing base with finance and service sector employment. Its expressed goal is to become the financial and commercial hub not only for the PRD, but for all of China and East Asia. It is competing with Shanghai for this role, betting that the rule of law, a highly skilled, English-speaking labor force, advanced infrastructure, and quality of life will give them an edge. The stakes in this competition are high, given that China is expected to have a larger economy than either the U.S. or Europe within a couple of decades. As a nation and as a region we should take heed of the aggressive economic development, infrastructure, education and quality-of- life investments being made in the Pearl River Delta and China as a whole. Our ability to compete globally will hinge on our willingness to make similar investments here. Nee How Three weeks in China this past May visiting the usual tourist spots didn’t stop me from the proverbial bus-man’s holiday to Beijing, Wuhan, the Yangtze River and Three Gorges Dam, Chongqing, Xian, Kunming, Lijiang, Guilin and Shanghai. As expected, traffic in the major cities—all cities are major cities in China—is congealing. In our only trip in a taxi we were stopped dead for 20 minutes on the streets of Shanghai. Expressways in urban areas are elevated (can you imagine building one of those in America in the 21st century?). Registering a vehicle in Shanghai costs $6,000 but that has not stopped the booming economy from adding new cars to the road at a rapid pace. Bikes are still everywhere, and many boulevards have bike lanes, but rising affluence appears to be threatening the two-wheel transport. And walking is getting harder too, as urban space has been given to cars at the expense of pedestrians. Vehicles are given more space at major intersections, relegating pedestrians to elevated walkways, accessible by steep stairs or (often broken) escalators. In short, China is copying America’s fealty to cars and taking it one step further by actually removing pedestrians, who are seen as barriers. In Beijing, the land use-transit connection has not been made: high rises that are at least forty stories for offices and hotels and thirty for apartments, are going up everywhere, even where there are no subways to carry the added density of trips. Subway construction lags leading to high bus use, yet there is little sign of bus rapid transit. Beijing’s steroidal growth is quickly obliterating the Hutongs, the 19th Century residential areas. If you want to see China as it was, go soon and go to the smaller cities in the west as we did, and visit the villages in the countryside. But stay away from the earthquake fault lines. We were 400 miles away from the epicenter in the Three Gorges Dam locks when it hit and yet saw one ship rock wildly.
Shanghai is growing, big time. For the last ten years, it has experienced double-digit economic growth and, as one of the great port cities of the world, today captures one-fourth of China’s trade—about $140 billion dollars per year. The railway network is significantly expanding as eight light rail lines are in full operation, with another four expected to begin in the next two years. Urban development has been ramped up: numerous hubs and networks to expand and integrate the larger metro region have been completed or are under construction, the Huangpu River waterfront area is being developed and green space coverage has nearly doubled. But problems loom, the primary of which is that the city is plagued with regional division amongst its nineteen districts. The lack of coordinated development plans and investments is resulting in inequitable expansion and creating social hierarchies not previously seen. Leaders in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) recognize that this disconnectedness is paralyzing movement and production that only integrated development plans can overcome. Perhaps as a sign that Shanghai is taking to heart its responsibility to manage its growth and understand its challenges, the city’s Mayor hosted a symposium last fall on the development of the Yangtze River Delta, at the mouth of which sits Shanghai, its economic center. The more than 1,000-person event brought scholars and planners from across the globe to discuss how growth can be better managed and integrated. It was here that I presented a paper (2010 Expo Shanghai: A Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Megaregion Framework) proposing a Megaregion framework for the YRD—similar to that of RPA’s America 2050 framework (www.America2050.org)—that urges a unified growth strategy that cuts across political boundaries. The paper also outlined how the 2010 World Exposition, entitled “Better City—Better Life,” could be a catalyst for economic development. The Expo, designed to showcase the recent growth and development Shanghai has experienced, is expected to attract record-breaking numbers of visitors, will be an opportunity to attract international investments and secure Shanghai as a leader in the world’s economy. Growing pains for Shanghai are inevitable while it undergoes rapid expansion, development, as well as economic and social progress. But the city is well positioned to harness its growth and become a prime example of how forward-thinking and sustainable development can help communities become more efficient and generate opportunities as Shanghai, and the rest of China, sprints to the top of the global economic ladder.
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July 15 July 16 July 17 July 24 July 30 September 27 November 15 |
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Spotlight on the Region: A publication of Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, President / Alex Marshall, Senior Editor 212-253-2727 x360 alex@rpa.org www.rpa.org |
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