Call for Syria to Open the Door

/ Uzma Gulamali / 1 Comment

Last week the United Nations broke its two-and-half-year deadlock over Syria when it passed two binding demands on the country. First, Syria is to abandon its weapons stockpile; second, Syria is to give chemical weapons experts unfettered access.

This week there is a push to send humanitarian aid to Syria. The 15-member Security Council agreed to a non-binding statement in order to increase aid access. This is a call for Syrian authorities to grant humanitarian organizations entry into the country, to expedite visas for necessary personnel and to “demilitarize” medical facilities, schools and water stations.

There is no doubt the civil war has taken its toll on the country. There are over two million refugees, about five million Syrians displaced within the country and one-third of Syria’s housing is destroyed. Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said the Syrian government would study the council statement before responding. Hopefully, Syria will listen to the United Nations — or at least it’s best friend Russia, who is supporting the United Nations’ request to “lift bureaucratic impediments and other obstacles” in order to allow more humanitarian relief across the country.

As happy as I am at the prospect of Syria being disarmed and hopefully getting help Syrians desperately need, the deal sounds too good to be true to me. How about to you?

To read more check out a couple of my sources: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303722604579111691747164868.html

abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/diplomats-back-syria-humanitarian-access-20444294

Should the Federal Government Hop on the College Rankings Bandwagon?

/ Steven Kassirer / Leave a comment

Let me start off by saying that for the most part, I agree with much of President Obama’s domestic policy since taking office. My bias out of the way, I want to take a moment and reflect on the President’s recent visit to New York State, during which he visited two of the State University of New York’s premier, research oriented universities, and Henninger High School, here in Syracuse. During his visit to UB (alas, one of my numerous alma maters), the President outlined his plan to make college more affordable for the middle class. While this is certainly a noble undertaking, part of the President’s “plan” includes a mandate to the U.S. Department of Education to develop a “a new ratings system to help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve.” The rating system, to be implemented by 2015, would assess factors including access to low income students, based on Pell Grants awarded, affordability, based on average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt, and outcome, based on graduation and transfer rates, ‘graduate earnings,’ and advanced degrees of college graduates.
Now, keeping higher education affordable should be a top priority of this country. After all, without accessible, affordable higher education, where would we really be? The post-World War 2 GI Bill was a major force driving the economic success enjoyed by the middle class during the last half of the 20th century. Likewise, university investment in so called “high tech” fueled the brief period of middle class prosperity at the end of the 20th century and continues to impact our economic stability today.
My issue with the President’s so called “plan” for the Education Department to rate (or rank, if you prefer) U.S. colleges and universities to compete with private rankings such as U.S. News and The Princeton Review is that to effectively rank colleges based on the above standards would require the Department of Education to conduct a long-term longitudinal study to determine which colleges and universities are, in fact, the “best” as deemed by the President’s standards. It would be impossible to determine the “outcome factor” of graduate earnings without conducting such a study. In short, how is the Department of Education going to be able to determine the “value” of a college’s or a university’s degree without tracking graduates over a long period of time? Case in point: A Syracuse College of Law graduate may decide to take a public interest law job, which pays $40,000 per year, while a graduate of Onondaga Community College graduate may get a job at a family company that pays $100,000 per year. Twenty years from now, the same SU law graduate may be the senior counsel at Apple, making millions of dollars per year, while the OCC graduate, through promotion, may be making $200,000 pe year. While this is a very simplistic example, under the President’s mandate to look at “outcomes,” OCC outranks SU as a university.
Keeping higher education affordable to the middle class is a noble undertaking, and I applaud the president for even considering it; however, there are so many possible strategies to achieving this goal, the notion of a Federal Government ranking of colleges and universities is a poorly veiled attempt at making national education policy.

Administration Sets Stricter Carbon Emissions Standards: The End of Coal?

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from new coal and natural gas plants. A current state-of-the-art coal plant emits about 1,800 pounds of CO2 for each megawatt-hour of electricity it produces, but new plants will be required to emit less than 1,100 pounds per megawatt-hour (1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour for new natural gas plants)(1). The president and the EPA expect new plants to achieve this drastic reduction in emissions using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. CCS technology involves “scrubbing” carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and then injecting that CO2 into reservoirs underground or beneath the ocean. The technology is relatively young, with few industry-scale projects (75 in the world, according to the Global CCS Institute(2)) and slow growth. This latest announcement is a part of the administration’s climate action plan to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are the likely cause of global climate change. Power plants account for around 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States(1). But what are the actual consequences of these restrictions going to be? There are many potential answers to that question.
The coal industry claims that these restrictions will essentially destroy demand for coal (3). Although currently operating plants do not have to abide by these restrictions, the administration has made it clear that they will not be safe for long. With CCS technology still in a young stage of development, it is expected to be very expensive. Coal and natural gas are currently inexpensive fuels for electricity production, but if CCS needs to be installed in plants the cost of electricity associated with the new plants will increase. If the cost of CCS remains prohibitive, new coal plants may not be built at all. In the future, when currently existing plants are also required to limit emissions, the price increases will affect all coal (and likely, gas) electricity prices.
In fact, some are arguing that the new restrictions are so prohibitively expensive and the technology is so unproven (it is still hotly debated whether sequestration will be adequate in keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere), that the requirements violate the Clean Air Act(3). The Act stipulates that new technology requirements cannot be unreasonably costly to industry and need to be demonstrated adequately at a large-scale. The EPA stands by its announcement, claiming that CCS is viable as a technology.
Increased prices of electricity from coal and natural gas might make production of electricity from renewable sources (i.e., wind, solar, tidal, biomass) cost-competitive with the fuels that are currently significantly cheaper. While this is bad news for the coal industry, environmentalists and the renewable energy industry are very excited about this prospect. Cheap coal and natural gas are difficult to compete with but the costs do not account for the environmental externalities (i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and ecosystem destruction associated with mining). Increased costs from the installation of CCS will at least provide a fairer playing field for other technologies.
Another possible outcome of the new restrictions could be a minimal reduction in carbon emissions due to a legal technicality. Brian Potts writes that the Clean Air Act allows the EPA to create standards for either entire industries (e.g., the coal electricity industry) or on a case-by-case basis for single power plants (4). The Act requires that the case-by-case standards be more stringent than those for all sources. However, the EPA has recently imposed case-by-case standards on existing and proposed coal plants which required very low reductions in emissions (around 5%) and generally just required improvements in efficiency and fuel type (higher quality coal) rather than the installation of expensive technologies like CCS. This could mean that the new restrictions will not go into effect. On the other hand, Potts writes that carbon emissions have been and will continued to be reduced naturally through the regulation of other pollutants, such as mercury, and due to low natural gas prices leading to the shutdown of older coal plants that cannot compete.
It is yet unclear how these new restrictions on carbon emissions will affect the electric industry, but with the power of the coal industry and the continued attractiveness of this cheap and abundant fuel (as long as externalities are disregarded) it seems as though coal will remain king for quite some time (5). However, these new policies from the administration may be the first step to reining in our dangerous emissions levels and helping renewable sources of electricity become cost competitive with the currently cheap fossil fuel sources. Additionally, if the new restrictions lead to the implementation of CCS, economies of scale will hopefully work to lower the cost of the technology and allow the use of abundant coal resources to produce electricity somewhat more sustainably. We will see what direction this story takes over the next several years.

 

(1) http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/2013-proposed-carbon-pollution-standard-new-power-plants
(2) http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/publications/global-status-ccs-2012/online/47976
(3) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-usa-energy-coal-idUSBRE98H0ZD20130918
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/us/politics/obama-administration-announces-limits-on-emissions-from-power-plants.html?pagewanted=all
(5) http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/315527-obamas-climate-plan-for-power-plants-wont-significantly-lower-emissions
(6) http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-usa-energy-coal-idUSBRE98H0ZD20130918

Current Educational Policies: A Dad’s Reflection

/ Douglas Wieczorek / Leave a comment

I have many professional and personal connections to the world of education. I am a former social studies teacher, Assistant Principal, an emerging scholar in Teaching and Curriculum, and serve as an administrator in the teacher education unit at a regional university. I am also married to a high school math teacher, and a father of three daughters who are in 2nd grade (the twins) and 7th grade. My perspectives on education, education policy, and the profession at large are interpreted by my multiple identities. Today I write through the lens of a Dad, reflecting on the state of affairs in education as they impact my family on a micro-level, as I am sure they are affecting many children and families across New York.
Our oldest daughter recently took the new Common Core-aligned, New York State standardized tests in Spring 2013. The state education department issued a statement regarding the exam scores, and how they anticipated a significant drop in achievement results. At the end of the statement, the commissioner assured the public that these exams are critical to determining our students’ readiness for college work and subsequent careers. It is from this point at which I engaged in some serious reflection this past weekend, confronted by the over-compartmentalized vision of preparation defined by academic success.
My daughter started running cross-country for her school team this year and participated in an open meet on Saturday afternoon. At the race my family assembled at various points along the course to cheer on the runners. These young athletes left it all on the course, sprinting to the finish- some of them physically sick after the race. Some cried, some laughed, and some gave fist bumps to teammates or opposing runners for a job well-done. There was such a spirit of camaraderie that permeated through all the participants, regardless of what school they represented. What an accomplishment, a celebration!
We arrived home after the race, and I went to check the mailbox. And there it was- an envelope from the school district (which as a parent always generates immediate curiosity). I opened it right there at the end of the driveway. The envelope contained my daughter’s 6th grade New York State standardized test score results in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics.
So, do we open this now and review the results and talk about this today? What does this mean? How will my daughter feel about these results? Do we call the school on Monday? Do we care? The school district said not to worry, so should we believe them? It was not until that moment, after that race, that I truly resented the changes which have consumed our school communities.
The arrival of that envelope created such mixed feelings at our house on Saturday. For the better part of the day, we saw an example of one of the best opportunities our public education system has to offer. We witnessed hard-work, determination, teamwork, school spirit, community, growth, success, and failure. After watching and cheering on these young women, there is no doubt in my mind they will be successful, contributing citizens and the leaders of tomorrow. These athletes have something inside them that cannot be found in a curriculum, or measured, and is essential for success in life.

There is so much more to the sport than the completion of the event, the athletes’ times, or what place they came in. At the end of the race, there is a certain, quantitatively measured outcome, but what are the intangibles that are not measured? The significance of the race is not based on the outcomes of the race itself, but the lessons learned along the way. These hard-working, talented, tough, resilient young women are more than a test score- more than a snapshot exam. My daughter came in 68th place in that race, and I assure you that her test scores will not determine her level of college and career readiness — or her success as a person.

Where is SLACE?

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

The SLACE Archive is currently on hiatus while the SLACE Forum Blog is being created.  The SLACE Forum launched this past Monday.  Eventually, the SLACE Archive will resume as a subsidiary to the SLACE Forum.  For those of you who follow this blog, stay tuned. The SLACE Archive will resume in the next few weeks. 

Thank you to those of you who have followed the SLACE Archive.