Sunday, November 15, 2009
NATIONAL Heavy Lifting MEET the PRESS (Arne Duncan) Sunday, November 15, 2009
ON EDUCATION begins at 19:30 of Video (PATIENCE PLEASE)
LEGISLATIVE Heavy Lifting GOVERNOR GRANHOLM
COMMENTARY
Education cuts put recovery at risk
Disinvestment in schools will discourage employers
BY JENNIFER M. GRANHOLM
This past week, superintendents, teachers and parents journeyed to Lansing to demand that the Legislature raise money for the School Aid Fund to prevent the deep cuts that will begin impacting our schools within weeks. I strongly support their efforts to prevent these cuts from happening. You don't need to have kids or grandkids in public schools to know that funding for education is vital to Michigan's economy.
This past week, superintendents, teachers and parents journeyed to Lansing to demand that the Legislature raise money for the School Aid Fund to prevent the deep cuts that will begin impacting our schools within weeks. I strongly support their efforts to prevent these cuts from happening. You don't need to have kids or grandkids in public schools to know that funding for education is vital to Michigan's economy.
Michigan is undergoing an unprecedented, historic economic transformation. The global manufacturing economy has shifted, and Michigan must accept the change and adapt. There's no time for denial, blame or finger-pointing; we must face this new reality head-on. What is the fundamental strategy for success in overcoming this challenge? Education, education, education.
An educated work force is the single most important asset we can have if we want to attract new investment and new good-paying jobs to our state in this knowledge-driven economy. Without action by the Legislature now, schools will have to disinvest -- laying off teachers and increasing class sizes. It has been estimated that these cuts could eliminate three thousand to five thousand jobs in our schools. The Legislature would justifiably do back-flips to bring a major employer with that number of jobs to our state. But so far, with an equal number of jobs at stake in our schools, the Legislature appears to be sitting on its hands.
The cause of this financial crisis in our schools could not be more clear. When our largest employers go bankrupt and citizens lose their jobs, state budget revenues plummet. It's particularly true for the school budget, which is funded in large part by the sales tax. When people don't shop during a recession, money for schools disappears. That's why our School Aid Fund is in deep trouble. Both of the state's nonpartisan fiscal agencies have issued warnings: There is not enough money to fund schools at current levels. The law mandates that when the money is not in the bank, school funding must be cut. But the story doesn't have to end there.
I have asked the Legislature to do two things. First, pass an immediate solution now. Second, work with me on long-term solutions to stabilize funding and reform our education system. In the short term, the Legislature can pass three targeted revenues to soften the blow to schools: freeze the personal exemption on the income tax at this year's level ($55 million), reduce special interest loopholes as much as we have reduced state government departments ($150 million) and tax loose tobacco and flavored cigarillos as we tax cigarettes ($35 million). These three, narrow measures would be a small price to pay to prevent devastating mid-year cuts to our schools.
Schools understand that they will have to accept some cuts this year. They will have to share services and consolidate. Teachers and administrators all must have skin in the game to channel every available cent to the classroom. But the additional deep cuts the Legislature is forcing on these schools cannot stand.
In addition to closing the gap in our School Aid Fund, the Legislature must act now to restore the Michigan Promise scholarship. In order to move our economy forward, we set an audacious goal of doubling the number of college graduates. The Michigan Promise scholarship, promised to almost 100,000 college students this year alone, has been a key part of that strategy. The Legislature eliminated it in the budget, making it much harder for Michigan students and Michigan families to afford higher education. I am asking the Legislature to raise the funds to keep that Promise. It is not too late.
Whether it's in our K-12 schools or in our colleges and universities, we must commit Michigan to educational greatness, not mediocrity. Every economist agrees that if we want a vibrant, diverse economy, we must have a skilled, educated workforce.
That's why I am joining with students, parents, educators and citizens across our great state to fight for a stable stream of revenue to ensure that goal is met. There's no more important issue in our state today if we want to promote economic recovery and more good-paying jobs in Michigan.
Jennifer M. Granholm is governor of Michigan.
HEAVY LIFTING: New Information on "Success Factors!"
School Districts to Be Big Players in Race to the Top Contest
It's clear now in the final rules for the Race to the Top grants that states will have to guarantee some big time buy-in from local school districts if they want to snag a slice of the $4 billion prize.
A state's "success factors," which include securing commitments from local districts, is worth 125 points of out of a total of 500. That's second only to teacher and principal effectiveness, worth 138 points. And of those 125 points, 65 are connected to how well a state can guarantee that local districts will carry out whatever reform agenda it proposes.
As Michele McNeil writes in her story today, the support of local school districts is so key that if there's a tie between states, and not enough money to award both of them, then the strength of the districts' commitment is the tiebreaker.
So, just how will a state's school district commitments be judged? According to the rules, states will have to show that districts, through binding agreements, have committed to "implement all or significant portions of the work outlined in the State's plan." On those agreements, Race to the Top judges will be looking for signatures of superintendents, school board presidents, and local teachers' union leaders, as well as "tables that summarize which portions of the State plans [local districts] are committing to implement and how extensive the [local district's] leadership support is."
I scoured the rules to find more on this, and, on page 223, found language explaining that once a state wins an RttT grant, its local districts will have three months to detail how they will implement the state's chosen reforms by completing "specific goals, activities, timelines, budgets, key personnel, and annual targets for key performance measures."
And if you look on page 768 (yes, I said page 768) of the full lineup of rules, you will find a "model" Memorandum of Understanding that the department would consider to be a strong agreement between states and their local school districts.
Judges will also be looking at not just how many districts have bought in, but how broad an impact they will have on student outcomes, which is probably good news for a state like California where it would be next to impossible to corral agreement from more than 1,000 school districts.
If California can get a few of its massive districts such as Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Long Beach, Sacramento, and Fresno to commit, the potential statewide impact would be broad indeed. Those six districts alone educate roughly 1 million of the state's 6 million public school children.
But would that be looked on as favorably, say, as a state like Colorado, where more than half of the 178 school districts have already signed letters of intent to indicate that they are on board?
Heavy Lifting: Underpinnings and Tent-poles
Full Report PDF Findings Recommendations State Profiles Methodology & Data FAQs Help 2007 Report Card
Overview
Two years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute came together to grade the states on school performance. In that first Leaders and Laggards report, we found much to applaud but even more that requires urgent improvement.
In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. Thus, some states with positive academic results receive poor grades on our measures of innovation, while others with lackluster scholarly achievement nevertheless earn high marks for policies that are creating an entrepreneurial culture in their schools. We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.
In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. Thus, some states with positive academic results receive poor grades on our measures of innovation, while others with lackluster scholarly achievement nevertheless earn high marks for policies that are creating an entrepreneurial culture in their schools. We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.
And change is essential. Put bluntly, we believe our education system needs to be reinvented. After decades of political inaction and ineffective reforms, our schools consistently produce students unready for the rigors of the modern workplace. The lack of preparedness is staggering. Roughly one in three eighth graders is proficient in reading. Most high schools graduate little more than two-thirds of their students on time. And even the students who do receive a high school diploma lack adequate skills: More than 33% of first-year college students require remediation in either math or English.
We think of educational innovation not as a fad but as the prerequisite for deep, systematic change, the kind of change that is necessary--and long overdue.
But we also believe that reinvention will never be accomplished with silver bullets. Our school system needs far-reaching innovation. It is archaic and broken, a relic of a time when high school graduates could expect to live prosperous lives, when steel and auto factories formed the backbone of the American economy, and when laptop computers and the Internet were the preserve of science fiction writers. And while the challenges are many--inflexible regulations, excessive bureaucracy, a dearth of fresh thinking--the bottom line is that most education institutions simply lack the tools, incentives, and opportunities to reinvent themselves in profoundly more effective ways.
By "innovation" we do not mean blindly celebrating every nifty-sounding reform. If anything, we have had too much of such educational innovation over the years, as evidenced by the sequential embrace of fads and the hurried cycling from one new "best practice" to another that so often characterizes K-12 schooling. States and school systems, in other words, have too long confused the novel with the useful. Rather, we believe innovation to be the process of leveraging new tools, talent, and management strategies to craft solutions that were not possible or necessary in an earlier era.
Our aim is to encourage states to embrace policies that make it easier to design smart solutions that serve 21st century students and address 21st century challenges. The impulse to either dictate one-size-fits-all solutions from the top or simply to do something--anything--differently will not address our pressing needs. Instead, this report seeks to foster a flexible, performance-oriented culture that will help our schools meet educational challenges.
Today, various organizations are addressing stubborn challenges by pursuing familiar notions of good teaching and effective schooling in impressively coherent, disciplined, and strategic ways. Some are public school districts, such as Long Beach Unified School District in California and Aldine Independent School District in Texas. An array of charter school entrepreneurs are also working within the public school system and seeing encouraging results, such as the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academies, YES Prep, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and Achievement First. Other independent ventures have also devised promising approaches to important challenges, including Citizen Schools, EdisonLearning, The New Teacher Project, K12 Inc., Blackboard Inc., Wireless Generation, Teach for America, and New Leaders for New Schools.
Even these marquee reformers, however, struggle to sidestep entrenched practices, raise funds, find talent, and secure support. Moreover, these highly successful ventures often pale when viewed beside the larger K-12 enterprise. The 80-odd KIPP schools, approximately 130 school leaders trained annually by New Leaders for New Schools, and 2,200 teachers trained each year by The New Teacher Project are dwarfed by the nation's 14,000 school districts, 100,000 schools, and 3.2 million teachers. The challenge is to boost the chance that creative problem solvers will ultimately make a real, lasting difference for our nation and our children.
Fortunately, our report comes at a time when national attention to educational innovation is on the upswing. The new federal Race to the Top Fund has brought additional attention to the need to rethink our system, for instance, while numerous other efforts are under way at the state and local levels. It is far too early to endorse any particular plan or to say which ones will be effective. But now is the time for state leaders to show the political will to pursue reform.
Along the way, high standards, accountability, and sensible progress measures are essential. But care must be taken not to allow familiar modes of measurement to smother reform. Too often, reformers tend to embrace only those advances that we can conveniently measure with today's crude tools, such as grades three-to-eight reading and math scores. The principal virtue of the No Child Left Behind Act, for example--a much-needed focus on outcomes and transparency--has been coupled with a bureaucratic impulse and an inflexible, cookie-cutter approach to gauging teacher and school quality. We must not retreat from the promise of high standards and accountability. But we should also embrace what might be called smart quality control. That means measuring the value of various providers and solutions in terms of what they are intended to do--whether that is recruiting teachers or tutoring foreign languages--rather than merely on whether they affect the rate at which students improve their performance on middle school reading and math tests.
Improved accountability and flexibility, while vital, will not be enough to achieve the changes we seek: Capacity building is also crucial. We define this overused term to mean the need for a variety of new providers that deliver additional support to educators in answering classroom and schoolwide challenges. More broadly, however, this effort must be complemented by giving new providers the freedom and encouragement they need to promote high-quality research and development, and to develop innovative "green shoot" reform ventures that pioneer more effective tools and strategies.
Ultimately, though, the key to improving results will be to help schools not only to avoid mistakes, but to position themselves better to adopt imaginative solutions. In brief, for reform to take hold our states and schools must practice purposeful innovation.
To examine the degree to which states have developed such a culture, we focused on eight areas:
- School Management (including the strength of charter school laws and the percentage of teachers who like the way their schools are run)
- Finance (including the accessibility of state financial data)
- Staffing: Hiring & Evaluation (including alternative certification for teachers)
- Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers (including the percentage of principals who report barriers to the removal of poor-performing teachers)
- Data (including such measures as state-collected college student remediation data)
- Technology (including students per Internet-connected computer)
- Pipeline to Postsecondary (including the percentage of schools reporting dual-enrollment programs)
- State Reform Environment (an ungraded category that includes data on the presence of reform groups and participation in international assessments)
Our data come from a wide variety of sources, from federal education databases to our own 50-state surveys. We should note that the data limitations we encountered were a significant hindrance to our efforts, even more so than when we prepared our first Leaders and Laggards report.
We received invaluable assistance from an outside panel of academic experts. We shared our methodology with Jack Buckley, professor of applied statistics at New York University; Dan Goldhaber, research professor at the University of Washington; Paul Herdman, president of the Rodel Foundation of Delaware; Monica Higgins, professor of education at Harvard University; and Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. The panel reviewed our approach and results, and provided helpful feedback. However, our research team takes full responsibility for the methodology and resulting grades.
In many respects the recent troubles of the auto and newspaper industries provide a cautionary tale for today's education policymakers. Analysts predicted structural challenges in both industries for decades. Outside consultants urged major change. Yet altering entrenched practices at businesses from General Motors to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News proved enormously difficult. And the results of inaction for both organizations were disastrous. The same must not happen to our nation's education system. The stakes are just too high.
The findings and recommendations detailed in the following section cover everything from the need for more thoughtful use of technology to the overarching importance of giving educators flexibility in meeting shared student-achievement goals. In particular, we believe that reform requires a nondoctrinaire emphasis on overhauling the status quo and replacing it, not with some imagined one best system, but with a new performance-oriented culture that may take many forms. In the end, we think of educational innovation not as a fad but as the prerequisite for deep, systematic change, the kind of change that is necessary--and long overdue.
As we observed two years ago in our first Leaders and Laggards report, even as businesses have revolutionized their practices, "student achievement has remained stagnant and our K-12 schools have stayed remarkably unchanged--preserving, as if in amber, the routines, culture, and operations of a 1930s manufacturing plant." Now, as we look forward, our aim is nothing less than to crush the amber. That is the challenge before us.
HEAVY LIFTING "Leaders and Laggards!" (Educational Innovation-Oxymoron)
Published Online: November 9, 2009
Published in Print: November 18, 2009, as States are Lagging on Innovation Front, New Score Card Says
Updated: November 13, 2009
States Lag in Educational Innovation, Report Says
‘Faint Pulse’ Found in Push Toward K-12 Improvement
Washington
A new report card on state-level innovation in education by a trio of ideologically varied groups reports what they see as deeply disturbing results, with most states earning C’s, D’s, or even F’s in such key areas as technology, high school quality, and removal of ineffective teachers.The report, “Leaders and Laggards,” uses state data and existing and original research to assign letter grades to states, based on seven indicators of innovation: school management, finance, hiring and evaluation of teachers, removal of ineffective teachers, data, “pipeline to postsecondary” (or high school quality), and technology.
Though the report released last week does not give states overall grades, the worst marks are in the category of removing ineffective teachers. But most states got C’s and D’s in the other categories.
“We found only a faint pulse of innovation,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which co-sponsored the report and hosted a Nov. 9 event here surrounding the report’s release. “We must turn that into a strong heartbeat.”
Varied Interests
The report card is notable for its sponsorship by not only the Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests, and the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market-oriented think tank, but also the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress. All three groups are based in Washington.Among the sources for the report were data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan concludes remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for a Competitive Workforce's annual education and workforce report on Nov. 9 in Washington.
—Andrew Councill for Education Week
All the sponsors agreed that the results were “deeply disturbing,” in the words of John Podesta, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, who served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.
But there were bright spots.
Massachusetts, Colorado, and Rhode Island got gold stars for their policies to promote extended learning time in schools, while Arizona, Ohio, and Florida got that designation for their aggressive charter school accountability approaches. Hawaii was singled out as the only state with a school-based funding policy. All are signals of innovation, according to the report.
Still, the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers labeled the report as full of “old-hat, top-down measures that have failed to transform our schools,” according to a statement.
“The report’s recommendations are little more than a defense of the factory model of education, which has of late turned schools from havens for learning into test-taking factories,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in the statement.
Multiple Factors
The report card incorporates many factors into a state’s overall letter grade for each of the seven indicators.To weigh innovation in teacher hiring and evaluation, for example, the researchers measured a state’s percentage of alternatively certified teachers (the higher the better), whether the state uses national programs (such as Teach For America) to recruit educators, and other factors.
What researchers were not doing was measuring “nifty, faddish experiments,” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Instead, the analysis was meant to examine whether a state has created a “flexible, performance-oriented culture,” he said.
The report’s focus on innovation fits with the education agenda of the Obama administration, which last week released final rules for the Race to the Top Fund competition. The fund will award $4 billion in grants to states.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who gave opening remarks at the Nov. 9 event, said the quality of the country’s education system is as important an indicator of economic health as the “stock market, the unemployment rate, or the size of the GDP.”
The Chamber of Commerce, which is a powerful lobbying force at the federal, state, and local levels, has been at sharp odds with the Obama administration over health care and climate change.
But not on education.
“The administration is setting the right tone and putting its money where its mouth is,” Mr. Donohue said, specifically praising the Race to the Top initiative.
Secretary Duncan acknowledged the tension between the administration and the chamber, but said: “Education is the most bipartisan issue.”
The guiding principles behind Race to the Top—the so-called “four assurances” attached to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which includes money for the grants program among some $100 billion in education aid—appear to be here to stay. In exchange for receiving federal stimulus money, states have to agree to improve teacher effectiveness, data systems, academic standards, and their lowest-performing schools, according to the law.
Mr. Duncan used his remarks to emphasize that the administration wants to “embed” the four assurances into broader federal law, specifically the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the No Child Left Behind Act is the current version.
He also highlighted his four other priorities for ESEA reauthorization, which is expected to get going next year: setting a high bar for states and districts, but allowing them to innovate; building in more competition for federal dollars; reviewing federal education spending line by line and focusing federal education aid on the programs that are most effective; and moving accountability from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to something more flexible.
Friday, November 13, 2009
HEAVY LIFTING: Dead Ahead!
Oakland Press
State schools chief says laws needed to get grants
Thursday, November 12, 2009
By TIM MARTIN
Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Writer
LANSING (AP) — Michigan’s top schools official says the state Legislature will have to pass new laws for the state to have a shot at federal stimulus money set aside for innovative education programs.
States are competing for a slice of more than $4B the Obama administration will earmark for schools that make aggressive changes. Fewer than half the states are likely to win a portion of the cash when it’s doled out beginning in April.
Applications are due in January.
Michigan schools superintendent Mike Flanagan says Thursday the changes would have to include tying student data and achievement to teacher performance.
States are being urged to pursue tougher academic and student performance standards, better teacher recruitment methods and plans to turn around failing schools.
States are competing for a slice of more than $4B the Obama administration will earmark for schools that make aggressive changes. Fewer than half the states are likely to win a portion of the cash when it’s doled out beginning in April.
Applications are due in January.
Michigan schools superintendent Mike Flanagan says Thursday the changes would have to include tying student data and achievement to teacher performance.
States are being urged to pursue tougher academic and student performance standards, better teacher recruitment methods and plans to turn around failing schools.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
YOU are INVITED!
School District of the City of Pontiac
“A World Class School District - We Put STUDENTS First”
Excellence, Efficiency, & Equity
Dr. Thomas G. Maridada, II, Superintendent
Strategic Reform
Community Meeting
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Odell Nails Administration Building
47200 Woodward Ave. - Pontiac
We need your input to hit our target!
• Strategic Plan Review
• Input & Ideas
• Brainstorm
Dr.. Robert A. Martin
Chief Deputy Officer of Strategic Reform
For more information, call 248-451-6835
Georgette C. R. Johnson
Director of Communications
School District of the City of Pontiac
47200 Woodward Avenue
Pontiac, MI 48342
248.451.6897 [51897]
www.pontiac.k12.mi.us
Sunday, November 08, 2009
State of Michigan "Race to the Top" Heavy Lifting (Compliance Issues)
OUR EDITORIAL
School sabotage
Michigan Education Association works to keep reforms, federal money at bay while school districts struggle
With Michigan schools facing an enormous funding gap, the Mi chigan Education Association is attempting to sabotage an effort that could bring in more than $600 million in federal education money.
State policymakers are working to put together one of the essential pieces of legislation required to win federal “Race to the Top” grant money. President Barack Obama is using the money to give states an incentive to enact long overdue education reforms.
Next month state school Superintendent Mike Flana gan must turn in the applica tion for the competition, now being watched by U.S. foun dations for signals about which states are serious about education reform and merit even more funding.
But the prospects for Michigan aren’t good. The MEA, the state’s largest teacher union, is pressuring cowardly lawmakers to block the Race to the Top legisla tion, which includes provisions making it easier for nonteachers to secure classroom positions, if they have critical skills.
This seemingly innocuous change has stirred up intense political fighting, pitting teacher unions against Gov. Jennifer Granholm and others, such as the United Way of South eastern Michigan, who want the Race to the Top funds for Michigan.
Teach for America — the heralded non profit that prepares and places highly talented educators in struggling schools — says it must have an alternative certification pathway for its members to become full-time teachers in Mi chigan.
MEA leaders say they oppose alternative teacher certification because they believe teacher training is essential to properly instruct students. “This is not an union issue,” MEA spokesman Doug Pratt says. “This is a funda mental belief … that teachers who go through a traditional teacher prep process are going to be better for stu dents in the long run.”
But urban districts are having trouble finding highly qualified math and science teachers, in no small part because of the failure of traditional teacher training programs in the state.
That was one of the driv ing forces behind a Friday announcement by the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation that it is investing $16.7 million to establish a new statewide fellowship program to provide 240 teachers for hard-to staff schools.
If the MEA is allowed to sabotage Michi gan’s Race to the Top effort, it will mean the loss of about $600 million in federal money at a time when every classroom is facing an un precedented budget cut. Ultimately, that will mean fewer jobs for teachers, hurting the union’s own members.
It is absolutely essential that Michigan gets this money, and the education reforms that come with it .
School sabotage
Michigan Education Association works to keep reforms, federal money at bay while school districts struggle
With Michigan schools facing an enormous funding gap, the Mi chigan Education Association is attempting to sabotage an effort that could bring in more than $600 million in federal education money.
State policymakers are working to put together one of the essential pieces of legislation required to win federal “Race to the Top” grant money. President Barack Obama is using the money to give states an incentive to enact long overdue education reforms.
Next month state school Superintendent Mike Flana gan must turn in the applica tion for the competition, now being watched by U.S. foun dations for signals about which states are serious about education reform and merit even more funding.
But the prospects for Michigan aren’t good. The MEA, the state’s largest teacher union, is pressuring cowardly lawmakers to block the Race to the Top legisla tion, which includes provisions making it easier for nonteachers to secure classroom positions, if they have critical skills.
This seemingly innocuous change has stirred up intense political fighting, pitting teacher unions against Gov. Jennifer Granholm and others, such as the United Way of South eastern Michigan, who want the Race to the Top funds for Michigan.
Teach for America — the heralded non profit that prepares and places highly talented educators in struggling schools — says it must have an alternative certification pathway for its members to become full-time teachers in Mi chigan.
MEA leaders say they oppose alternative teacher certification because they believe teacher training is essential to properly instruct students. “This is not an union issue,” MEA spokesman Doug Pratt says. “This is a funda mental belief … that teachers who go through a traditional teacher prep process are going to be better for stu dents in the long run.”
But urban districts are having trouble finding highly qualified math and science teachers, in no small part because of the failure of traditional teacher training programs in the state.
That was one of the driv ing forces behind a Friday announcement by the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation that it is investing $16.7 million to establish a new statewide fellowship program to provide 240 teachers for hard-to staff schools.
If the MEA is allowed to sabotage Michi gan’s Race to the Top effort, it will mean the loss of about $600 million in federal money at a time when every classroom is facing an un precedented budget cut. Ultimately, that will mean fewer jobs for teachers, hurting the union’s own members.
It is absolutely essential that Michigan gets this money, and the education reforms that come with it .
Partnership Spared (How do WE at the YAPO CLC Leverage This Outcome?)
4-H spared in state budget cuts
Saturday, November 7, 2009
By JERRY WOLFFE
Of The Oakland Press
Of The Oakland Press
Gov. Jennifer Granholm has spared the $28 million funding for the Oakland County Michigan State University Extension program by not vetoing the appropriation.
Had the funding been cut, 3,000 jobs would have been eliminated and 14,000 Oakland County youths would be without the program’s many services, said Beverly Terry, the Oakland County MSU extension director.
It was feared Granholm would use her line-item veto power to halt funding for the program under pressure to cut spending since the state has a $1.8 billion deficit.
“Gov. Granholm has signed the higher education bill for fiscal year 2010, leaving the lineitem funding for the Michigan Agriculture Experiment Stations around the state and the MSU Extension programs intact,” said Tom Coon, director of MSU Extension.
“It is important to note that by signing this bill, (Michigan Agriculture Experiment Stations) and (MSU Extension) continue to be treated like the rest of Michigan’s higher education institutions,” he added.
Coon said it was “great news for all of us but more important news for those we serve — students, families, youths, business owners and entrepreneurs — all Michigan residents.”
Programs that were saved include:
• 68 community-based 4-H and 328 special program sites around Oakland County, serving 14,000 youths in the county and 230,000 statewide;
• 700 volunteer adults providing support and leadership worth more than $3.2 million annually;
• The Oakland County 4-H Proud Equestrian Program at the Bloomfield Open Hunt and Dennis Farm that for 37 years has provided youth with physical, mental and emotional disabilities with therapeutic horseback riding opportunities;
• The Pontiac Neighborhood Youth Initiative that provides positive youth development experiences daily in an after-school setting in three Pontiac neighborhoods;
• Youth Entrepreneurship 4-H Clubs, which help young people learn basic skills in business planning and operation;
• 4-H Clubs that focus on communication skills, performing arts, animal science, service and dozens of other projects that empower young people to find their strengths and express themselves while learning leadership, citizenship and responsibility;
• Service opportunities to give young people a sense that they are valued resources in the community;
• Programs that engage a diverse, multicultural audience from around the county and foster relationship building, understanding and acceptance of individual differences and an opportunity to work together for mutual goals;
• The 4-H Youth Leadership Institute, a comprehensive series of workshops that challenges high school students to apply their skills to community issues via meaningful youthdesigned service projects.
Had the funding been cut, 3,000 jobs would have been eliminated and 14,000 Oakland County youths would be without the program’s many services, said Beverly Terry, the Oakland County MSU extension director.
It was feared Granholm would use her line-item veto power to halt funding for the program under pressure to cut spending since the state has a $1.8 billion deficit.
“Gov. Granholm has signed the higher education bill for fiscal year 2010, leaving the lineitem funding for the Michigan Agriculture Experiment Stations around the state and the MSU Extension programs intact,” said Tom Coon, director of MSU Extension.
“It is important to note that by signing this bill, (Michigan Agriculture Experiment Stations) and (MSU Extension) continue to be treated like the rest of Michigan’s higher education institutions,” he added.
Coon said it was “great news for all of us but more important news for those we serve — students, families, youths, business owners and entrepreneurs — all Michigan residents.”
Programs that were saved include:
• 68 community-based 4-H and 328 special program sites around Oakland County, serving 14,000 youths in the county and 230,000 statewide;
• 700 volunteer adults providing support and leadership worth more than $3.2 million annually;
• The Oakland County 4-H Proud Equestrian Program at the Bloomfield Open Hunt and Dennis Farm that for 37 years has provided youth with physical, mental and emotional disabilities with therapeutic horseback riding opportunities;
• The Pontiac Neighborhood Youth Initiative that provides positive youth development experiences daily in an after-school setting in three Pontiac neighborhoods;
• Youth Entrepreneurship 4-H Clubs, which help young people learn basic skills in business planning and operation;
• 4-H Clubs that focus on communication skills, performing arts, animal science, service and dozens of other projects that empower young people to find their strengths and express themselves while learning leadership, citizenship and responsibility;
• Service opportunities to give young people a sense that they are valued resources in the community;
• Programs that engage a diverse, multicultural audience from around the county and foster relationship building, understanding and acceptance of individual differences and an opportunity to work together for mutual goals;
• The 4-H Youth Leadership Institute, a comprehensive series of workshops that challenges high school students to apply their skills to community issues via meaningful youthdesigned service projects.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
"Design Thinking" to Leverage the Heavy Lifting
What's Thwarting American Innovation? Too Much Science, Says Roger Martin
BY Linda TischlerWed Nov 4, 2009 at 3:18 PMBy pushing the principles of scientific management too far, corporations are short-circuiting their own futures, says the designiest dean of all the business schools. "The enemy of innovation is the phrase 'prove it,'" Roger Martin says.
The folks at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG should be happy that Roger Martin likes his job. Otherwise, he could cause them a heap of trouble.
As it is, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is traveling the country, throwing down the gauntlet to companies who hope to analyze and strategize their way out of a recession by bringing in armies of management consultants. You'll get what you pay for, he warns, and it won't be innovation.
"The business world is tired of having armies of analysts descend on their companies," he says. "You can't send a 28-year-old with a calculator to solve your problems."
The problem, says Martin, author of a new book, The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, is that corporations have pushed analytical thinking so far that it's unproductive. "No idea in the world has been proved in advance with inductive or deductive reasoning," he says.
The answer? Bring in the folks whose job it is to imagine the future, and who are experts in intuitive thinking.
That's where design thinking comes in, he says.
"If I didn't like my job, I'd go out and create a killer firm that would take on McKinsey head-to-head in their own market. A company would get better results, at a fraction of the price." McKinsey, a $5B company, bills out freshly minted MBAs at $1M a year, Martin says. Their billing structure is 10 times what a design firm typically gets.
We spoke to Martin about why MBAs and designers should learn to get along prior to his coming to New York for the Rotman School of Management Design Thinking Experts series with IDEO's Tim Brown and Target's Will Setliffe.
Fast Company: As we slowly climb out of the recession, everybody's looking for where the next innovation will come from. Why does our pace of innovation seem to be slowing?
Martin: Most companies try to be innovative, but the enemy of innovation is the mandate to "prove it." You cannot prove a new idea in advance by inductive or deductive reasoning.
Fast Company: Are you saying that the regression analysis jockeys and Six Sigma black belts have got it all wrong?
Martin: Well, yes. With every good thing in life, there's often a dark shadow. The march of science is good, and corporations are being run more scientifically. But what they analyze is the past. And if the future is not exactly like the past, or there are things happening that are hard to measure scientifically, they get ignored. Corporations are pushing analytical thinking so far that it's become unproductive. The future has no legitimacy for analytical thinkers.
Fast Company: What's the alternative?
Martin: New ideas must come from a new kind of thinking. The American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce called it abductive logic. It's a logical leap of the mind that you can't prove from past data.
Fast Company: I can't see many CEOs being comfortable with that!
Martin: Why not? The scientific method starts with a hypothesis. It's often what happens in the shower or when an apple hits you on the head. It's what we call 'intuitive thinking.' Its purpose is to know without explicit reasoning.
Fast Company: So, if you're not getting these Newtonian moments from your management consultants, where are they likely to come from?
Martin: In a knowledge-intensive world, design thinking is critical to overcoming the biggest block: overcoming analytical thinking and fear of intuitive thinking. The design thinker enables the organization to balance exploration and exploitation, invention of business and administration of business, originality and mastery.
Fast Company: Who's been brave enough to embrace that idea in this market?
Martin: When he first took over, A.G. Lafley at P&G was brilliant enough to realize they were missing a lot about the holistic consumer experience by sticking to things that were rigorously quantified. For example, when the company moved into beauty products, they were looking at face cream. And the scientists decided it must be about pore coverage. So they analyzed the hell out of pores and said 'We can cover pores better than anybody.' So when women in their research started talking about wanting to feel beautiful and desirable, they'd say, 'Don't talk about that. We don't know how to quantify that!' And they couldn't understand why stupid women would go off to department stores and pay ten times more when they could cover pores just as well. Ten years ago, P&G couldn't prove they could sell women billions of dollars of Oil of Olay face cream at $30-$60. They could imagine it, but not prove it. Lafley took it as a management challenge to see across the divide.
Fast Company: If you don't have A.G. Lafley or Steve Jobs at the helm, how can you sell your organization on the idea of an intuitive leap instead of a scientific leap?
Martin: You don't have to convert the whole organization to design thinking. Propose a little experiment--say, three months in length--where you test out a bite-sized chunk of a problem using this method. If you have a little success, be sure to then attach metrics to it. In that way, you turn the future into the past in a way they understand.
Fast Company: We're a little biased toward the designers here. Don't they bear some of the responsibility for the gap in understanding?
Martin: Absolutely. Like anybody who takes a job in another country, and needs to learn the local language in order to function, design thinkers need to learn the language of reliability, terms such as proof, regression analysis, and best practices.
Fast Company: Sounds like there's a promising future for somebody who's bilingual and can combine both approaches.
Martin: This is a fascinating time, and there's an interesting battle coming. One of these smallish design firms might combine the best of the analytical from the business world and the best intuitive thinking from the design world and become gigantic. There would be massive traction for it. It wouldn't be the first time that a little company in a garage saw things differently.
BRING on the GREEN!
Metro may get lottery games, turbines
By KATHERINE YUNG
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Detroit Metro Airport may soon gain two new features: lottery games and small wind turbines.
On Nov. 17, the Wayne County Airport Authority board is likely to approve a licensing agreement with the Michigan Bureau of State Lot tery that would enable travel ers at Metro to play a number of state lottery games, such as instant tickets, Mega Millions and Club Keno.
The games would be avail able at gates, baggage claim areas, sit-down bars and other locations throughout the Mc Namara and North Terminals, with staffed lottery redemption points of service provided by selected airport retailers.
Airport officials estimate the lottery agreement will gen erate $360,000 annually or $1.8 million over the initial 5 year contract term, as well as revenues for the state. Lottery games are already offered by a few other airports, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta In ternational Airport.
Metro could also soon start generating its own wind power.
Airport officials are seeking approval from the authority board to purchase five Windspire wind turbines.
Three of the 30-foot-tall turbines would be installed at the airport’s north entrance, near the intersection of Rogell Drive and Burton Drive.
Two others would be at the airport’s south entrance, near the south cell phone lot off of Eureka Road.
The small turbines, which are made in Manistee by Mas Tech Manufacturing, would not violate Metro’s airspace regulations.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Monday, November 02, 2009
Meeting: YAPO CLC Board Wednesday, November 4, 2009 5:30PM
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Expansion of Board to gain additional resources
Recruitment of additional YAPO Board members will expand on the needed resources to further fulfill the mission of the YAPO CLC
Select potential candidates who would add value to the YAPO Board.
Prepare informational packets to inform candidates about the goals and objectives of the center.
Determine best candidates for board
Send out welcome letters and establish a new member meeting
2. Committees to assist with operation of YAPO center
Board Committees will provide additional support to YAPO Executives to help effectively implement the plans of the organization.
Financial Committee: Oversee the finances of the organization as well as assist with developing fund raisers.
PR Committee: Assist with all media relations
Community Committee: Helps create partnerships with community stakeholders and organizations to achieve YAPO CLC goals and objectives.
3. Restructure of current board
Restructure of the board to get a better understanding of what is expected from each board member. This will allow for the current board to develop board cohesiveness prior to recruiting new members.
Establish term length for each officer position.
Layout officer roles and responsibilities for each position.
4. Grant writer on board
Having grant writers on board will allow the center seek additional grant opportunities simultaneously. This will also provide additional feedback when submitting grants to ensure continuous top quality on all grants submitted.
5. During the reconstruction plan establish bi-weekly meetings to aid in implementation of plan
During the reconstruction process it will be vital that bi-weekly meeting are put in place by the board to build a strong foundation prior to bringing in additional resources and board members.
Phase 2: Partner Reconstruction
1. Separation of YAPO, Walton Park and Huntington
Clarifying the extent of involvement with each partner will allow the center to implement its own goals and objectives without the confusing of partner’s goals and objectives.
Establish a Partnership/Collaboration Agreement between each partner
Walton Park
Establish spacing agreement for clarity of building use
Huntington
Separate control of funding to allow the center to better use the funds available to for the center.
2. Contracts in place with current and future partners
Develop a written agreement for future partnerships to avoid any confusion of tasks and to ensure that partnerships align with the vision and mission of the YAPO CLC.
3. Seek new supporting partners
Establishing more supporting partners will aid in the growth of the needed resources to implement the goals and objectives the YAPO CLC
4. Establish a meet and greet with the new Walton Park Manor Board of Directors
A meet and greet will aid in the transition of allowing the center to separate from allowing Walton Park to control the center while maintaining a good business relationship.
5. Consider removing fiduciaries and utilizing YAPO's 501 (c) 3
YAPO CLC has reached the necessary time needed before the center can operate without the use of a fiduciary. The center should utilize the opportunity to submit grants strictly through the center.
Phase 3: YAPO Staff
1. Organizational chart in place for YAPO workers
A clear org. chart will clarify the roles and responsibilities of current YAPO CLC staff as well as show new workers the chain of command for the center.
2. Roles and responsibilities clarified
This is to ensure that every YAPO CLC staff member is working to achieve the goals and objectives set out by the YAPO Executives.
http://www.msue.msu.edu/portal/default.cfm?pageset_id=28728
Shaping the Future
http://news.msu.edu/story/7031/
Boldness by Design
http://boldnessbydesign.msu.edu/
MSU Extension 4-H Oakland County
http://www.msue.msu.edu/portal/default.cfm?pageset_id=28354
National 4-H (SET Program)
http://4-h.org/programs_mission_mandates/set.html
- YAPO CLC Reconstruction Plan proposal (Marc Alexander)
1. Expansion of Board to gain additional resources
Recruitment of additional YAPO Board members will expand on the needed resources to further fulfill the mission of the YAPO CLC
Select potential candidates who would add value to the YAPO Board.
Prepare informational packets to inform candidates about the goals and objectives of the center.
Determine best candidates for board
Send out welcome letters and establish a new member meeting
2. Committees to assist with operation of YAPO center
Board Committees will provide additional support to YAPO Executives to help effectively implement the plans of the organization.
Financial Committee: Oversee the finances of the organization as well as assist with developing fund raisers.
PR Committee: Assist with all media relations
Community Committee: Helps create partnerships with community stakeholders and organizations to achieve YAPO CLC goals and objectives.
3. Restructure of current board
Restructure of the board to get a better understanding of what is expected from each board member. This will allow for the current board to develop board cohesiveness prior to recruiting new members.
Establish term length for each officer position.
Layout officer roles and responsibilities for each position.
4. Grant writer on board
Having grant writers on board will allow the center seek additional grant opportunities simultaneously. This will also provide additional feedback when submitting grants to ensure continuous top quality on all grants submitted.
5. During the reconstruction plan establish bi-weekly meetings to aid in implementation of plan
During the reconstruction process it will be vital that bi-weekly meeting are put in place by the board to build a strong foundation prior to bringing in additional resources and board members.
Phase 2: Partner Reconstruction
1. Separation of YAPO, Walton Park and Huntington
Clarifying the extent of involvement with each partner will allow the center to implement its own goals and objectives without the confusing of partner’s goals and objectives.
Establish a Partnership/Collaboration Agreement between each partner
Walton Park
Establish spacing agreement for clarity of building use
Huntington
Separate control of funding to allow the center to better use the funds available to for the center.
2. Contracts in place with current and future partners
Develop a written agreement for future partnerships to avoid any confusion of tasks and to ensure that partnerships align with the vision and mission of the YAPO CLC.
3. Seek new supporting partners
Establishing more supporting partners will aid in the growth of the needed resources to implement the goals and objectives the YAPO CLC
4. Establish a meet and greet with the new Walton Park Manor Board of Directors
A meet and greet will aid in the transition of allowing the center to separate from allowing Walton Park to control the center while maintaining a good business relationship.
5. Consider removing fiduciaries and utilizing YAPO's 501 (c) 3
YAPO CLC has reached the necessary time needed before the center can operate without the use of a fiduciary. The center should utilize the opportunity to submit grants strictly through the center.
Phase 3: YAPO Staff
1. Organizational chart in place for YAPO workers
A clear org. chart will clarify the roles and responsibilities of current YAPO CLC staff as well as show new workers the chain of command for the center.
2. Roles and responsibilities clarified
This is to ensure that every YAPO CLC staff member is working to achieve the goals and objectives set out by the YAPO Executives.
- YAPO CLC Governance (Jim Ross)
- YAPO CLC Articles of Incorporation
- Book: Governance as Leadership (Authors: Chait, Ryan, Taylor) http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sAPa_UaVXlgC&oi=fnd&pg=PR10&dq=Governance+as+Leadership&ots=TQFbjNEAe-&sig=HIV8W9YPQswLGHXP5C0xC6RiwNo#v=onepage&q=&f=false
- YAPO CLC Future Entrepreneurs Program http://theyapofe.blogspot.com/
- Timbuktu University
- Boy Scouts of America (D-BAR-A Ranch) http://dbaragreen.blogspot.com/
- MSU Extension 4-H / Update (Jim Ross)
http://www.msue.msu.edu/portal/default.cfm?pageset_id=28728
Shaping the Future
http://news.msu.edu/story/7031/
Boldness by Design
http://boldnessbydesign.msu.edu/
MSU Extension 4-H Oakland County
http://www.msue.msu.edu/portal/default.cfm?pageset_id=28354
National 4-H (SET Program)
http://4-h.org/programs_mission_mandates/set.html
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Cliff-Notes on the "One-Two Punch!" (Non-compliance Race to the Top)
'Funding Cliff' Looms Large for States
Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.
The hope of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress has been that the $787 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—including some $100 billion for education—would soften the pain of the recession and help drive a recovery.
But as helpful as many state and local officials have found the once-only stimulus aid in coping with current and anticipated revenue shortfalls, it creates some awfully big holes to fill when the money begins to run out late next year in what’s widely known as the “funding cliff.”
Experts also caution that the recovery of state and local coffers is likely to significantly lag behind any progress in the national economy generally. For one thing, state budgets are largely supported by individual income and sales taxes, which will likely be slower to catch up.
“States are bracing themselves for prolonged fiscal difficulties,” said Todd Haggerty, a research analyst at the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. “When you couple the absence of federal ARRA funds with still-declining revenues, it puts states in a difficult situation.”
An October report issued by the White House
in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education highlighted the extent to which ARRA money in the $48.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund has already “restored” significant shares of K-12 education funding in states. But a close look by Education Week at data submitted to the department by the states about how they planned to spend the money shows that 36 states will have to fill a collective gap of at least $16.5 billion to return to fiscal 2008 state spending levels for K-12 education.
And that figure does not reflect the more recent revenue shortfalls many states have since encountered.
The Education Department has urged states and districts to be careful to “minimize the funding cliff” when the stimulus aid ends by using the money for purposes “that do not result in unsustainable continuing commitments.”
But some analysts say that idea runs counter to the stimulus law’s emphasis on using the money to save and create jobs. Indeed, the White House announced Oct. 19 that states had already reported saving or creating at least 250,000 jobs in education with the federal aid.
“Saving and creating jobs implies expenditures on salaries, and salaries are inherently ongoing expenses,” said Jennifer S. Cohen, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “They create funding cliffs, because once the money runs out, you’ll have to continue funding them.”
Spending Pace Varies
The pace at which states are allocating money under the state-stabilization fund varies widely, Ms. Cohen noted.“States that are in worse fiscal trouble are front-loading the spending,” she said, citing Arizona, California, and Illinois among those that planned to use all of the money to shore up their budgets for the current fiscal year and for the prior year.
In Alaska, meanwhile, none of that aid is expected to go out until fiscal 2011.
Illinois used about $1 billion in state-stabilization aid to bolster its budget for the fiscal year that ended June 30, and plans to use the remainder, approximately $1 billion, for the current budget year, fiscal 2010, according to Matthew E. Vanover, a spokesman for the Illinois state board of education.
“Certainly, there is some major concern at this point in time because next fiscal year, beginning July 1, in order to just remain the same, we have to come up with an additional $1 billion for education,” he said. That’s out of a total of more than $7 billion in state aid for schools, he said.
Benjamin S. Schwarm, an associate executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards, said: “The question is, what happens after this, when you don’t have that [money] coming in. ... Everybody around here keeps referring to it as the ‘cliff,’ and I don’t think it’s good.”
By contrast, in South Carolina, the legislature opted not to release any of the state-stabilization money for last fiscal year. The state is allocating about half its expected total of $359 million in such funds this fiscal year, and the second half the following year, said Betsy Carpentier, a deputy superintendent in the South Carolina Department of Education.
At the same time, she said, virtually all of the additional dollars districts are getting in other parts of the stimulus package—such as from the Title I program for disadvantaged students and under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—are going out this fiscal year. In all, South Carolina districts are receiving $335 million in preK-12 stimulus support beyond the state-stabilization aid, Ms. Carpentier said.
Deborah L. Elmore, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina School Boards Association, said that while the stimulus aid has been a huge help, it has taken the state only so far, given that South Carolina has suffered through several recent rounds of midyear budget cuts.
“It helped to keep the hole in the bottom from being a lot wider,” she said. “Unless the economy turns around, we’re left with falling through the bottom again.”
Maryland state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said that, in her state, the stabilization money is being used both for this fiscal year and the following one.
“I think we’ve tried to structure something that would prevent us from really experiencing this cliff that we know will ultimately occur when the money runs out,” she said. Ms. Grasmick said she and Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, have told districts, “Please do not use this money to hire new positions, because when the money runs out, we don’t want to be in a position of having to terminate people.”
Instead, they have urged districts to think of the funds as onetime expenses, she said, such as to investments in technology or new instructional materials “that will yield some long-term benefit.”
‘A Lagging Indicator’
Meanwhile, a new report from the American Association of School Administrators, based in Arlington, Va., suggests that in many school districts around the country, federal stimulus aid has not been able to avert cuts to programs and staffing levels.The AASA surveyed 875 school administrators from 49 states and the District of Columbia. More than one-third of the respondents said they were unable to save any core teaching jobs as a result of the stimulus money.
In addition, the percentage of districts increasing class sizes grew almost sixfold between the 2008-09 academic year and the current school year, to 34 percent from 6 percent, the survey data showed. The percentage of districts reporting cuts to their school bus transportation routes and availability doubled to 20 percent this school year, from 10 percent last academic year.
The AASA report
suggests the worst may still lie ahead for many districts.“Unfortunately, school districts’ economic welfare appears to be a lagging indicator, even further behind the still less-than-stable remainder of the economy,” the report says. “There is an unmistakable ‘one-two punch’ school districts are bracing themselves for as they budget for the 2010-11 school year. Not only is that when the [stimulus] funds are expected to end, it is also the likely low point for state and local budgets.”
A new report from the NCSL offers some grim budget news, too. It says the “steep revenue falloff in FY 2009 will not be the bottom for many states.” More than half the states expect a further decline in fiscal 2010, the report says.
On top of that, Mr. Haggerty of the state legislatures’ group said, at least 21 states have already reported midyear budget gaps.
“So you’re looking at a good number of states [with] some pretty large and significant budget gaps just a few months into the new fiscal year,” he said.
Concerns about the looming end to the stimulus program have raised questions about whether there might be a second round of federal legislation to extend the aid. The White House has been careful to avoid any suggestions that it’s planning to seek additional assistance.
But Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent in California, suggested that more aid should be on the table.
“While we have been told, count on this as one-time money, ... I don’t think it’s inappropriate [to have a second round],” he said, “absent economic recovery.”
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