Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Leaving Children Behind - 1/31/07

Journalists are supposed to try and avoid any conflict of interest. I can’t do that when it comes to education. My wife has been a Michigan public high school teacher all her professional life.

I teach at Wayne State University. That means a major portion of our income comes from taxpayer dollars set aside for education.  To the best of my knowledge, that has had no impact whatsoever on what I think about No Child Left Behind.

No impact, that is, except for this: I know more about education  than the average bear. And my main problem with No Child Left Behind is this: I don’t really understand it.

I am in the business of analyzing and explaining things for a living. I have managed in the past to gain a reasonable grasp of both arms control issues and the complexities of the Michigan budget.

But I have read a lot about No Child Left Behind, and I still have problems understanding it. I do understand that it was designed to increase accountability, and to give parents more options in choosing which schools little Jane or Johnny attends.

No Child Left Behind provides an elaborate system of measuring whether schools and students are making what it calls “adequate yearly progress” – and provides sanctions for not doing so.

The act also requires schools to supply military recruiters with the names, address and phone numbers of every student they have.

That’s something that seems a curiously bizarre and politicized addition to a law that supposedly is all about improving education.

But the main part I don’t understand is How No Child Left Behind gets us to the point where, literally no children are left behind.

The plan calls for an increased focus on reading. It orders schools to make sure students’ test scores improve. It strictly requires schools to base classroom strategies and even staff training methods on what it calls “scientifically based research.”

But No Child Left Behind is very vague in one area – where the school districts are going to find the money to get this all done. The act provides some money – but less than it seemed to originally promise. Those who don’t like No Child Left Behind cry that all it does is provide a system of “unfunded mandates.”

Underfunded mandates might be closer to the truth, but the government has been much quicker to demand things be done than to make sure there is adequate money to do them.

That’s something that No Child Left Behind needs to remedy if it is ever to be fully respected by the education community.

When it comes to education, we’ve had a lot of slogans. Now its time to steal the one Nike uses. Just do it. Forget ideology, and find a way to teach children, and make them want to learn.

By any means necessary.

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Interview: Iris Salters - 1/31/07

No Child Left Behind…. Few federal education programs have drawn as much attention or been as controversial.  Iris Salters is head of the Michigan Education Association.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with her.

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Essay: What Prison Costs - 1/30/07

Here’s an arresting fact -- pardon the pun -- about Michigan’s prison system.  Phil Power of the Center for Michigan tells me that our state spends about $1.9 billion a year on corrections.

That includes what it costs to lock up or otherwise service the current total of 125,000 people behind bars, on parole or out on probation. That’s also just about the same amount the state spends on our system of community colleges and universities.

All told, those schools have about 300,000 students. That means we are spending roughly three times as much on each person who has been convicted of a crime as we are on each of the students who are, hopefully, Michigan’s future.

Does that indicate screwed-up priorities or what?

Michigan has far more inmates behind bars -- something like 40 percent more -- than surrounding states.  Why?  No mystery at all.  Back in the 1970s, we decided to tackle the drug problem by locking up small-time dealers and throwing the key away.

Gov. William Milliken, one of the best public servants I have ever known, was caught up in all this. He signed a bill that created some of the nation’s harshest mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes. The bill was called the 650-lifer law, after the weight in grams of heroin or cocaine it takes to put you away forever.

Since then, Milliken has told me several times that he deeply regrets signing that, and considers the law and the policy a terrible mistake. Such anti-drug laws didn’t do much to stem the flow of drugs, but they did succeed in overflowing Michigan prison populations. Today, there are four times the number of people behind bars in our state than there were twenty-five years ago.

Milliken has repeatedly urged lawmakers to repeal these mandatory sentencing bills. While they indeed have been modified a bit in recent years, harsh sentencing in drug cases is still common.

What is happening now is that the prisons and county and city lockups are filling up, and because of overcrowding at all levels, inmates are getting released earlier and earlier.

This has now led to the ultimate irony. An Ann Arbor district judge reports that two prisoners convicted of drunk driving have asked to be sent to jail rather than probation. The drunks calculated that jail now involves less time and less hassle.

Something is clearly radically wrong, and that, together with the state’s budget crisis, ought to be a good wake-up call.

Michigan needs to figure out a way to stop crime. Michigan also needs to decide if we can afford the luxury of continuing to senselessly warehouse tens of thousands of criminals.

All the evidence indicates we are spending a vast amount of money to neither deter nor reform the vast majority of these inmates.

There has to be a better way, and as a matter of fact, there is.

Now, we just have to agree to do something about it.

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Interview: Kevin Early - 1/30/07

Most of us do anything we can to stay out of jail. Yet recently, some people convicted of drunk driving have been asking district judges to sentence them to jail rather than strict probation. What’s going on here? Kevin Early directs criminal justice studies at the University of Michigan Dearborn. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Conyers and the Committee - 1/29/07

John Conyers is an interesting and sometimes baffling man, whom I have known for many years. There are times when he is completely focused and insightful. He is more responsible than anyone for making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. And there is no one in Congress more dedicated to jazz.

But John Conyers is also the only congressman in history to have served on two presidential impeachment committees.

He performed ably in both cases, arguing in favor of impeaching Richard Nixon and arguing against impeaching Bill Clinton.

Yet at other times, he has seemed what one might charitably call eccentric.  He is the only person I’ve ever met who couldn’t remember what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001.

He ran a disastrous race for mayor of Detroit in 1989 and a worse one in 1993. At one point, he stood in the median strip of Livernois Boulevard without any shoes or socks and waved to passing cars.

More than ninety percent of the people who send Conyers to Congress voted against Conyers for mayor. A lifelong bachelor, he was in his sixties when he suddenly got married for the first time.

Six months later, he was a daddy. He and his wife Monica – who is now a Detroit city council member -- have two sons, and by all accounts, he is an extremely doting father.

But what kind of a judiciary chairman will he be? And will he pursue impeachment hearings. Two years ago, I called him on his cell phone. He answered playfully, “impeachment committee.”

He certainly holds President Bush in low regard. I went to see Conyers in his Detroit office one afternoon in early 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War. When I asked what the president was thinking he walked over to the window and pointed to a homeless man. “You might as well ask him. He knows just as much about it as Bush does.”  He made noises about impeachment.

But last year, the Democrats, hoping to win control of Congress, asked him to tone it down – and he did.

“Rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight,” Conyers said. He wants a select bipartisan committee to look into alleged abuses and report back to the Judiciary Committee. But he didn’t say what he would do if that didn’t happen.

And someone close to him told me “you know once John becomes chairman, he’s going to do what he wants to do.”    

However, Conyers recently has had to face some ethical questions of his own. He was charged with using staff members as babysitters and personal servants.

The matter was settled hastily last week when he “accepted responsibility” for “a lack of clarity” in staff assignments. In other words, he said he wasn’t doing that, and would stop doing it at once.

Some think this may indicate some prudence on the part of the Judiciary Chairman will follow. Or maybe not. I do know this: We’ll see.                                                                                                                                                                                                            

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Interview: John Conyers - 1/29/07

John Conyers is a Democratic congressman from Detroit and he has been on the House Judiciary Committee longer than most people have been alive.  This month, he became its chairman. He is also the only congressman in history to have been on the committee for two presidential impeachment investigations. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Fuel-Efficient Cars - 1/26/07

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Detroit‘s automakers. Those are fighting words considering where I am from and where I live.

But I don’t. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler let firms in other nations get ahead of them in making better, smarter, safer and more fuel-efficient vehicles. For years, Washington has, from time to time, tried to get the car companies to be better citizens of the planet and produce more fuel-efficient cars.

Every time they have yelled and screamed and said it was impossible, even though other companies made cars that got much better mileage. Now, you can expect the whining to start again.

Except this time, it is a whole new playing field.

Here’s the situation. Ford and General Motors are monumental failures as businesses, and as designers of automobiles. Ford managed to lose more than a billion dollars a month last year. The Blue Oval boys have virtually admitted they have almost no exciting products people want to buy.

General Motors lost billions last year too. Their fuel-efficient competitors are rolling in dough, and make better cars.

That, by the way, is why people buy them. They are better.

I don’t think Ford and General Motors have figured that out, so I thought I would be kind and share this great trade secret with them.

The Japanese are eating our lunch not because of unfair trade practices, and not because liberals like me secretly hate America. They are beating us because they are making cars that are more reliable, more exciting, and more fuel-efficient.

When you are dealing with companies that, left to their own devices, produce things like the Pontiac Aztec and the Hummer, you are dealing with people who badly need tough love.

Under my government, the people who have run the domestic car industry into the ground, including the leaders of the United Auto Workers union, would be in jail. They have cost Americans jobs.

This is exactly the time the government needs to impose tough new CAFÉ standards on the auto industry. Why? If they are smart and want to survive, they will barely notice. The automakers -- especially Ford -- need to be reinventing themselves.

If they keep making Hummers, these companies will end up in a museum. They need a makeover that will enable them to compete in the future. You know that three dollar gas is coming back.

You know that someday we will have trouble getting Middle Eastern oil again. President Bush is right this time. How serious he is about pushing his goal isn’t clear. Normally, when politicians announce some goal twenty years away, that means they aren’t serious. This time, we need to be. Frankly, I want Ford and General Motors to survive and to be able to beat the pants off the competition.

But they have to get healthy and competitive first. And it would be a good idea to help preserve the planet for as long as we can.

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Interview: Brett Smith - 1/26/07

President Bush wants to cut U.S. gasoline consumption 20 percent over the next 10 years. That would mean more alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient cars. Not surprisingly, the domestic automakers don’t like that. They say it would further hurt their ability to compete with foreign cars. So who is right? Brett Smith is with the Center for Automotive Research.Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Jobs and Progress - 1/25/07

There is always a risk to planning for the future – especially when it comes to predicting jobs and trends. I knew a Midwestern newspaper publisher who, after World War II, wanted his middle-sized city to seize the moment and be on the cutting edge of the future.

Through a carefully crafted editorial campaign, he successfully caused a massive investment in a gleaming new train station, which opened in 1950. Right when people were, for the first time, switching over to air travel in a massive way. Yes, the best-laid plans can go astray. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for the future. Michigan is now paying the price for decades in which we assumed a high school education would always be enough for a middle-class lifestyle.

What we have to do is what our agricultural forefathers might have done: Test the soil to see what kind of crops might grow best here, and prepare the ground. But also keep an eye on the futures market to see what people are likely to want.

Don’t, in other words, throw state resources behind a proposal to build the world’s best eight-track tape factory. How do you tell what will be the next big thing? Usually, you can’t, or we’d all be rich.

We don’t know yet how many of the laid-off Pfizer workers are skilled experts with easily transferable skills.

Nor do we know how many of those will end up relocating with the company, or quickly fit into other firms here.

What we don’t want to do, however, is lose the kind of workers who would be attractive to a new life sciences industry employer.

You can’t say to a biochemist, ‘just sit tight, and the economy will improve in another couple years.  Meanwhile, live off your life savings.”

During the Great Depression, the government put knowledge workers to work on a number of projects for the public good.

There are still plenty of excellent WPA post offices around. There were federal writers’ projects which produced a series of highly collectible guides to the rivers and states of America.

So – if a particular kind of displaced worker could be vital to our state’s future, there ought to be a way to hang on to them.

The University of Michigan could temporarily employ some life sciences experts in ways that could benefit all of us. Yes, that would cost the state money. But it would likely be money well spent. Any major life sciences venture that comes to Ann Arbor is certain to be doing so at least partly in the hope of partnering in some way with the U of M.

You can say, of course, that to put highly skilled workers like that on the government payroll would be a form of socialism. Technically, you’d be right. But we are already running two major such socialist programs in Michigan now: the legislature, and the state police.

Given the stakes, one more might just be the merrier.      

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Interview: Steven Rapundalo - 1/25/07

Michigan was sent reeling Monday with the news that Pfizer was eliminating more than two thousand health sciences jobs in Michigan.  But where does that leave MichBio, the non-profit organization – partially sponsored by Pfizer -- that is supposed to drive the growth of the life sciences community? Dr. Steven Rapundalo is executive director of MichBio and an Ann Arbor City Councilman.  Michigan. Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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