Newsletter Draft

I was asked to write an article for our newsletter. Here is the draft, which is currently way too long, but I thought you all might be interested in it:

In August of 2008, financial history was made. Although it wasn’t predicted to happen until 2017, Social Security lost money for the very first time. This turning point was certainly expected to occur at some point, but the combination of the aging Baby Boomer generation and the Great Recession brought on this event much sooner than imagined. As Social Security is running out and we continue to live in an economy that is very slowly recovering, what solutions can we provide?

Regardless of your personal philosophy surrounding federal spending and the size or influence of the national government, something must be done quickly in order to ameliorate this growing problem. The current chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has advocated some combination of raising taxes, reforming entitlement programs, and reducing spending in everything from education to defense. But this ignores the many innovative solutions that are being ignored. Curiously enough, one of the solutions being proposed is to encourage immigration to our nation.

Immigrant-owned businesses generate roughly 11.6% of all business income in the

United States, and Immigrants are 30% more likely to start a business than non-immigrants. In an economy desperate for entrepreneurship and growth in small business, immigrants are often more likely to provide just this. And some of the more modern and sustainable corporations we are able to proudly call American, were cofounded by naturalized citizens, such as Yahoo and Intel.

But even this kind of economic impact from naturalized citizens doesn’t come close to equaling the kind of positive impact that could occur when it comes to solving the Social Security problem. Florida Governor Charlie Crist is currently advocating expanding the path to citizenship so that we can increase the number of citizens paying into Social Security. In order to increase the amount of money coming into Social Security, we must find a way of increasing the workforce, and immigration presents an appealing opportunity.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and current economics and policy professor at UC Berkeley, claims that the main issue with Social Security is our aging population. Not only are more Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, but they are living longer as well. And this aging population, in conjunction with American families having less children, results in a system that pays more benefits and receives less revenue.

For many reasons the age distribution in the rest of the world tends to be the reverse of what America is experiencing, and these young workers present an economic opportunity that we are not currently taking advantage of.  Entrepreneurship coupled with driving down the age of our workforce could provide an economic booster that would help alleviate the tensions we are currently experiencing with Social Security and even potentially help us to recover from the recession.

 

"Waiting for Superman"- review

Last Friday, instead of going straight to the office, Alysa and I went to see the new movie "Waiting for Superman". The documentary addresses major issues in student retention, teacher evaluation, and quality of instruction here in America and takes a very critical look at the structure of our education system as a whole. Although it is very insightful and is able to offer a clearer picture into some of the more modern educational movements, the movie fails to reflect a completely accurate picture of what is going on.

The movie, although epic in scale, gets its emotional impact from a specific focusing on a select few children who are yearning to leave their public school and enroll in a nearby charter school or similar accelerated learning program. All of these schools have more applicants than open spots, and so as mandated by policy, the spots must be filled using a public lottery. This is the big dramatic moment in the end, as the children, one by one have their educational future determined by numbers drawn out of a hat. This lottery seems to echo real life, as some students simply are luckier than others and are able to attend schools that will offer a more competitive education, while other students, to no fault of their own, are left struggling in public schools which the director calls "drop-out factories". The focus on charter schools and alternate forms of education as an improvement to the public school system, is a consistent element of the movie.

Although the director acknowledges that not all charter schools outperform their public school equivalents, the movie frames them as the only hope for many children who are statistically more likely to end up in prison than college, based on their socio-economic status. What they fail to acknowledge is the kind of socio-economic status and lack of funding for many of these schools. And time and time again, the movie advocates for education to be run more and more like a business. Whether this perspective is correct or not, doesn't matter, because the issues that should be addressed are often ignored.

Although there has already been much criticism surrounding the movie in regards to the attacks on teachers' unions, I feel i should at least say something about it myself. The point made in the movie is that tenure has become one of the biggest failures in education, where teachers are able to do nothing and keep their jobs, letting their students go without an education. However the solution, to evaluate teachers more thoroughly, reward and punish accordingly, may be misguided as well. Evaluating a teacher running a classroom like a manager running a company (which many people advocate for) is not only ineffective, but ignorant of the way a classroom is run. Teachers' performances may not necessarily be directly linked to student test scores. If a manager in a company sees an employee continually under-performing, they are allowed to fire that employee and replace them with someone who is willing to work hard to earn their job. A teacher cannot fire one of their students. And when a handful of students are simply not going to do their homework, or are coming from troubled homes, or simply refuse to put forth effort, teachers may be the ones who end up being punished for their bad performance, regardless of how motivational and informative they may be.

The movie did however serve as a call to arms to save education.  It brought to light the fact that we are nowhere near our foreign friends when it comes to education, in either retention or quality. And many of the questions the movie asked, are important to consider while discussing education reform. Whether the answers provided are correct or not, only time will tell.

Who's Who in Phoenix Public Relations

This morning Alysa and I had a meeting with the Martz Agency in Scottsdale to discuss the Citizenship Counts public image and brand. We are lucky enough to have Carrie Martz, the "hands-on owner/CEO" of the Martz Agency as a member of our Board of Directors. Carrie not only uses her experience in marketing to help Citizenship Counts, but she also has been instrumental in a number of Phoenix non-profits and charitable groups. The meeting was overall incredibly professional and fast-paced.

When you first walk into their office, you are surrounded by twenty foot walls, covered in awards and honors from ceiling to floor. These trophies are not just a credit to the kind of marketing work done in this office, but also to the kind of people who work in the office. From being the force behind Zhu Zhu Pets, one of the hottest toys of 2009, to being the Marketing Co-Chair for Super Bowl XXX, to being named "Business Woman of the Year" by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerc, Carrie Martz has quite a bit of experience under her belt. So when you can imagine my surprise when it was Carrie herself, coffee mug in hand, who met us at the door at 9:30 am.


The meeting was fast-paced, covering topics of overall branding to specific promotional tools. She showed us a professional media kit that made our photocopies of newspaper clippings and Staples-purchased folders look almost silly. She assigned our project to Nicole Cusimano, one of their Account Executives, and she was off and running. By the time we had left, not only had we discussed all aspects of Citizenship Counts' PR strategy, but we had constructed a rough idea of specific promotional materials to create, with short and long-term goals already set. And I have a feeling that even with everything we talked about, the Martz Agency could have kept us busy all day, learning new techniques and developing new ways of reaching out to teachers, donors and partner organizations.

All I know is I now have myself a new understanding of efficient organization, professionalism, and a much longer to do list.

Recruitment- Part 1

Recently we have been focusing on finding schools and groups who want to run our program this school year. The reason I say both schools and "groups" is because we have decided to being branching out from the traditional perspective of education being limited to a classroom in a public institution. Not only do we now try to reach out to charter and private schools, but to after-school clubs and to students who are home-schooled. By looking at the ways that we can adapt our curriculum and our program to fit a greater number of organizations, we hope to continue to expand our impact and hopefully provide a more diverse understanding of citizenship.

I recently have been in contact with numerous home schooling groups in Arizona. When I used to work as an usher at the Tempe Center for the Arts, I would often work with large groups of home-schoolers coming to see performances from Child's Play. I think it is more often than not the case that home-schooled children get together on a regular basis for activities and field trips. Not only does this help create a broader educational experience, but develops social skills as well. Hopefully we can learn to market our program in a way that will incentivize groups of home-schoolers to become interested and work with us in the coming year.

I have also been in contact with administrators at the charter school run by ASU here in Phoenix, and with numerous teachers' associations in the valley. We hope to first get teachers invested so that they really enjoy working with us which will make the program more enjoyable for the students as well. Instead of using a top-down approach through too many administrators and curriculum mandates, we believe that teachers are ultimately are best bet in developing a successful program, and that getting their investment first is crucial to the success of our curriculum.