Urban Issues and Actions

As I was reading the Washington Post yesterday I found an interesting article titled Howard Health Initiative Ready to Enroll Uninsured. I was immediately drawn to the article because it is written about the county I grew up in, Howard County, Maryland. The article discusses the Howard Health Initiative which states that Howard County is planning on providing affordable insurance to 1,200 uninsured county residents that have an income too high to qualify for state and federal aid but make too little to afford health care. Currently there are 15,000 adults living in Howard County that do not have health care, and if this initiative is successful with these 1,200 residents then the affordable insurance coverage will be expanded to more Howard County residents. Howard County is paying $500,000 for the first year costs of this plan which equals about $1,500 a person. The funds necessary depend on how much care the 1,200 adults will need, but fortunately many doctors and health care professionals in Howard County are donating their time or drastically reducing their fees to aid in the success of this program.

I think this is a wonderful initiative and a step in the right direction for health care across the nation. Affordable health care is a crisis in America today. Many adults simply cannot afford $200 for a visit to the doctor for a check-up, but paying for insurance adds up every month! Obtaining affordable insurance will allow these adults to take part in preventative medicine instead of just visiting the doctor or emergency room when they are seriously ill. Therefore, Howard County officials believe that increasing the number of insured residents will reduce the congestion in the emergency rooms of hospitals. Advanced medical technological resources are useless unless the majority of the population are benefiting from the knowledge and health supplies that the US has. A person’s health is the most important thing in their life, and as such every person should be capable of receiving the health care they deserve. I may be biased because I am from Howard County, but I think that every county in the nation should follow Howard County’s initiative to improve the health care affordability of its residents in any way possible, big or small.

When I went to Chandler Middle School in Highland Park, Richmond, Virginia last Friday to volunteer I arrived to find the school in a tense moment.  On Thursday, September 26, 2008 an article came out in the Richmond Times Dispatch that foretold the failure of only two
Richmond city schools, out of 48, in the accreditation process.  Chandler Middle School was one of these schools explicitly.  The article provided three reasons for this failure including “a lack of stability in on-site leadership, continuing difficulty in recruiting teachers…and a dearth of parental involvement.”  As a follow up to this article the paper published another piece on the subsequent day that actually listed the results of each school in every subject on the state standardized tests and what their status was in terms of accreditation.  While this second article was designed to praise the city because of its success in having 42 out of 48 schools pass the statewide tests, it also highlighted discrepancies in many of the city’s schools and cast a very negative light on those schools that were failing.             

The response to these articles at Chandler, however, was remarkable.  The students were all very distressed that their school had been named as a failure and several of them had actually written letters to the newspaper’s editor presenting the positive features of their school and the constructive changes that have been made to the school in the past year.  Everyone was very optimistic and, at one point, the principal, Mr. Derek Mason, came into the classroom, looked over Chandler’s scores in the newspaper, and said, “If we can get this close [to passing the state standardized testing] with people who don’t want to be here, think how great we can do now that we have people who really do want to be here.”  He was saying that with all the recent changes to bring in teachers who truly wanted to help and to create a student body that actually wanted to learn, it was impossible not to improve.  His demonstration of faith and pride in his school was the common reaction for students, faculty members, and administrators alike.  And all of this from the supposed unstable “on-site leadership!” 

I was impressed with how determined everyone was to prove the newspaper wrong and bring their school up to its full potential.  Students actually seemed excited for the tests because they wanted to do their part in showing the city just what their school really can do.  Instead of letting the articles bring them down, it made the school stronger and more unified because it gave them a purpose and a sense of pride in their school.  This pride was then translated into a desire to show everyone else that they were wrong- Chandler Middle School was not, and is not, a failure, and it is a thriving and energizing communal environment.

However, aside from my surprise at the positivity generated in response to these potentially demoralizing articles, I was interested in the notion of accreditation and how this title can make or break a school.  Educational accreditation is actually not run by the federal government but, instead, is decided on by private accreditation organizations that can be either regional or national.  The intent of accreditation was to serve as a “peer review” system and was designed to see if standards were being met at schools.  While unaccredited schools can exist, enroll and teach students, and even grant degrees, these degrees may not be used when applying for financial aid, civil service, or other employment, and, thus, a student coming from an unaccredited school is at a severe disadvantage.  In addition, accreditation has come to signify that a school is of superior quality and provides a better education than one that is unaccredited. 

Thus, one can see why Chandler and Boushall Middle School (the other Richmond city school fated to fail its accreditation process) would be upset over the loss of their accreditation.  Currently, they are both accredited with warning which simply means that if they do not pass their state standardized tests this year they face losing their accreditation.  This could then result in major shifts in the administration of the school.  In the article “Richmond Officials Discuss Middle Schools” there is even a suggestion that Chandler adopt single-gender classes as a means to improve scores because “the concept has been used as nearby Henderson Middle School, which has met state standards for the past five years while serving a student population similar in economic and demographic makeup to Chandler’s.”  Is this the answer to Chandler’s problems?  Will only a complete and total renovation of the school and how it is run “turn it around”, so to speak?  I would have to say no- if only because of the determination and drive I have witnessed first hand in everyone who works at that school.  The students, teachers, and administrators at Chandler are working harder than every to prove to the city that they are not failures and that they can do this on their own.  It might be hard to grasp the determination and spirit of the school coming in as an employee of the state or as a private accreditation organization, however, as a volunteer I have seen all that Chandler is capable of and I believe that Chandler can succeed.    

I was browsing through the Richmond Times Dispatch and came across an article titled: Ballpark Out of Place at Site of Slave Trade. Those in my class will remember the Richmond City Bus Tour we took last Sunday and the first time we got off the bus to look at the site of one of the most infamous slave jails in our nation’s history. The site is also an ongoing archaeological dig that promises to hold hundreds of insights into the past.

Now people are talking about building a new baseball stadium on the site.

My outrage doesn’t even need to be expressed. I won’t even waste time describing the obvious wrongs in this endeavor. Instead, I’ll point to what happened in the 1940’s, when cities dropped the priority of public housing and promoted businesses and financial institutions in the downtown areas. Ok, that was one thing. Destroying public housing and building banks in their stead was pretty questionable, although perhaps necessitated by the city’s eroding tax base.

But building baseball parks over historical sites in the year 2008? Do we hope that, by building a baseball stadium over the site of atrocities, people will simply forget about what happened? Would the site be given more attention if it were a reminder of something positive in our history, such as General Robert E. Lee’s statue? Or can we put the baseball stadium over that? I find the notion that the developers would even be considering this site as offensive.

Lastly, click on the link to the article and read a few of the reader’s opinions. Are you amazed that a lot of readers express their support for the stadium?

I was glancing at the NY Times and I came across this article: Bipartisan Calls for New Federal Poverty Measure

The article talks about revising the current measure that is described as “hopelessly outdated”, so that the federal government may more accurately analyze and evaluate the impacts of current and future policies developed to combat poverty (NY Times).

What I find more interesting is that why, in 2008, are efforts only now being taken to evaluate the success of policies and programs? I don’t understand why Congress passes bills targeted at combating poverty, and yet does not bother to follow through and reflect on which of those policies worked and which failed to accomplish their goals. Isn’t an accurate measure of the effects of government action more important to solving urban problems, as opposed to simply throwing out legislation in an effort to appease constitutes? I know agencies have been created to asses the impact of specific factors of poverty and specific governmental programs, but most of these reviews fail to accurately include all factors that contribute to the definition of poverty. For example, a review might analyze the trends of unemployment for the lower class during a given point in time, but fail to include significant data such as welfare, government aid, and temporary and part-time jobs that affect the statistical measure of unemployment. Is the task to simply assess every factor included in the definition of poverty too daunting, or has no official, massive measure been taken to complete such a review?