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Nov. 28th, 2013 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyNSA spied on porn, online sexual habits to discredit “radicalizers”
http://bit.ly/1jKB0nm
New Rules Would Rein In Nonprofits’ Political Role
http://nyti.ms/1c7ex3n
The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to curb political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, with potentially major ramifications for some of the biggest and most secretive spenders in American politics.
New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.
Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.
The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
But the proposal also thrusts the I.R.S. into what is sure to be a polarizing regulatory battle, with some Republicans immediately criticizing the proposal on Tuesday as an attack on free speech and a ploy to undermine congressional investigations into the agency’s handling of applications from Tea Party groups.
“Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first,” said Representative David Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Political spending by tax-exempt groups — from Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, to the League of Conservation Voters — skyrocketed to more than $300 million in 2012 from less than $5.2 million in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Much of the money has been funneled through chains of interlinked nonprofit groups, making it even harder to determine the original source.
And unlike political parties and “super PACs,” political nonprofits are permitted to keep the names of donors confidential, making them the vehicle of choice for deep-pocketed donors seeking to influence campaigns in secret.
The new rules would not prohibit political activity by nonprofits.
But by seeking to establish clearer limits for campaign-related spending by groups claiming tax exemption, the I.R.S. proposal could have an enormous impact on some of the biggest groups, forcing them to either limit their election spending or register as openly political organizations, such as super PACs.
A spokesman for Crossroads declined to comment, as did officials at other political nonprofits.
Nick Ryan, the founder of the American Future Fund, which spent at least $25 million on political advertising last year, said, “Unfortunately, it appears that the same bureaucrats that attempted to suppress the speech of conservative groups in recent years has now put together new rules that apply to (c)4 groups but do not apply to liberal groups like labor unions.”
“I wish I could say I am surprised,” Mr. Ryan added, “but I am not.” The final rules are unlikely to be issued until after the 2014 election, after a public comment period.
The administration’s proposal would apply to nonprofits organized under Section 501(c)4 of the tax code, which are granted tax exemption in exchange for devoting themselves to the promotion of “social welfare.”
Under current rules, promoting social welfare can include some political activity, along with unlimited amounts of lobbying. Some of the largest political nonprofits — like Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch — have used that provision to justify significant expenditures on political ads.
But under the new proposal, a broad swath of political work would be classified as “candidate-related political activity” and explicitly excluded from the agency’s definition of social welfare. Those activities include advertisements that mention a candidate within 60 days of an election as well as grants to other organizations making candidate-related expenditures.
“Depending on the details, this could be dramatic,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former chief of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division.
The rules could also affect more traditional conservative and liberal advocacy organizations, including Tea Party groups whose complaints of harassment by I.R.S. employees prompted the resignation of several high-ranking I.R.S. officials last spring. Distributing voter guides, for example, would automatically count as political activity.
Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group, praised the proposal as “an important step forward.” He added, “Enormous abuses have taken place under the current rules, which have allowed groups largely devoted to campaign activities to operate as nonprofit groups in order to keep secret the donors funding their campaign activities.”
Administration officials described the new proposal as a response to complaints — including objections from the Treasury’s own inspector general after the Tea Party controversy — that the existing regulations were too vague, leading to inconsistent or arbitrary enforcement. The I.R.S. would be better equipped to enforce the rules, the officials said, if they were clearer, while nonprofit groups would be better able to comply.
“This proposed guidance is a first critical step toward creating clear-cut definitions of political activity by tax-exempt social welfare organizations," said Mark J. Mazur, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy.
The final guidance could also include a more precise definition of how much political activity a 501(c)4 group is permitted to engage in while still maintaining its tax exemption.
Many election lawyers and their clients use an unofficial rule of thumb: If a tax-exempt group spends less than 50 percent of its budget on political activity, then its primary purpose is not winning campaigns.
Some activists have argued that a rule requiring 501(c)4s to spend no more than 15 percent of their budgets on political activities would be closer to the letter and spirit of existing law.
Some lawyers said they worried that the new rules, particularly those that could apply to grass-roots organizing, could unfairly burden bona fide social welfare groups. Others suggested that tighter restrictions on social welfare groups would only hasten the migration of political money into other kinds of entities whose campaign spending is not subject to I.R.S. jurisdiction.
Mr. Owens, now a tax lawyer in Washington, said the I.R.S. proposal would have one certain consequence: more business.
“I’m looking forward to a very profitable new year,” he said.
Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them
http://nyti.ms/1bNyvML
They have been burned, blown into piles, raked into bags and generally scorned by homeowners everywhere. Fall leaves — so pretty on the trees, such a nuisance when they hit the ground — have long been a thing to be discarded. But now some suburban towns are asking residents to do something radical: Leave the leaves alone.
In the past few years, lawn signs have sprouted in this Hudson River village and across Westchester County, proclaiming the benefits of mulching the leaves in place, rather than raking them up and taking them away. The technique involves mowing the leaves with special mulching blades, which shred them into tiny bits. That allows them to quickly decompose and naturally feed lawns and shrubs.
Officials are encouraging the practice for its cost savings: Westchester spends $3.5 million a year on private contractors who haul away leaves in tractor-trailers and bring them to commercial composting sites in places like Orange County, N.Y., and Connecticut. At the same time, environmental groups and horticulturalists are praising the practice’s sustainability, devising slogans like “Leave Leaves Alone” and “Love ’Em and Leave ’Em.”
Karen Engelmann, a novelist in Dobbs Ferry, used to rake up the leaves on her half-acre property, which is laced with old oak trees. She once had 120 bags of leaves lined up at her curb to be taken away by the village. “I wondered, ‘Where do these go?’ ” she recalled. “I thought it was odd that there wasn’t an alternative, that there wasn’t someone saying you might want to think about how the planet functions.”
It turned out that her landscaper, Tim Downey, had started experimenting with the new technique. On an unseasonably warm afternoon last week, he navigated his mulching mower over a thick pile of leaves, producing a fine layer of confetti. Mr. Downey said the mulched leaves improve the soil’s water retention and provide critical nutrients, reducing the need for fertilizer in the spring.
“It’s utterly insane to be driving tractor-trailers 90 miles away,” said Mr. Downey, owner of Aesthetic Landscape Care in Hastings-on-Hudson. “My feeling is that if I’m taking away your leaves, I’m stealing from your property.”
Indeed, commercial firms use fall leaves as a raw material to produce mulch and compost for sale to nurseries. But towns and counties pay to get rid of them. In Westchester, for instance, the county pays a private hauler about $40 for every ton of leaves that it takes away. Municipalities that provide leaf pickup service pay the county $15 a ton. So some county residents ultimately foot the bill through both municipal and county taxes.
County officials say mulching leaves in place not only improves soil quality, but also has other environmental and safety benefits for communities. Piles of leaves left at the curb can clog storm drains; the nitrogen and phosphorous leaching from decomposing leaves heaped by the street can also more easily enter the drains and harm local rivers. Additionally, leaf piles constrict already narrow streets and can conceal children.
Westchester County appears to be in the vanguard on leaf mulching, but there are nascent steps in New Jersey and Connecticut to reduce leaf collections. For the first time this fall, the city of Englewood, N.J., which estimates that between overtime, equipment maintenance and fees, it spends $200,000 a year on leaf removal, is pushing the idea in emails and a newsletter. “Leaves clog storm drains, they’re slippery and they can catch on fire when cars park on top of them,” said Kevin Lake, a member of the city’s Environmental Commission.
Public service announcements and mulching workshops in Westchester have nudged homeowners to buy mulching attachments for their mowers and impelled landscapers to offer the service. But it is not always an easy sell.
For those who do it themselves, the mulching attachments can be cumbersome. And then there is the aesthetic factor. “People want everything removed from their lawn, and landscapers just want to keep their customers happy,” said Marianne Petronella, director of resource management for Westchester County’s Environmental Facilities Department. “I know some residents would never do mulching in place. They want to keep up with the Joneses.”
Stephen J. Edwards, the director of public works in Westport, Conn., agreed. “Unfortunately, people are just very conscious of the appearance of the lawn, and they want to see it spotless all the time,” he said, adding that the town spent $85,000 to take residents’ leaves away. Still, he said, Westport encourages leaf composting, especially for some of the one- to two-acre properties in the northern part of town. “Residents can blow the leaves into big piles and Mother Nature does the work,” he said.
Two years ago, Ms. Petronella enlisted a landscaper who mulches leaves and tried it on her own property in Scarsdale, which she described as a “postage stamp.” There was leafy residue for a few days after the mowers came through, but it quickly disappeared. “My land is just as attractive as any of my neighbors’ and I didn’t turn on my sprinklers once the past two summers, not once,” Ms. Petronella said.
The holdouts are not convinced. In Hastings-on-Hudson, Chloe Sikirica, a 50-year-old artist, was blowing leaves off her yard. With twin boys, she worries about the leaf confetti. “If you shred them and leave them, then the kids will track the mulch into the house,” she said.
Her one nod to sustainable yard care: leaving leaves around her trees and hedges to provide a natural mulch.
In northern Westchester, Fiona Mitchell of Bedford is a mulching convert. A member of the board of her local library, Ms. Mitchell got the idea a few years ago when the library was facing budget cuts. “I said, ‘Hang on, we’re spending all this money on leaves,’ ” she remembered.
Bedford estimates that 10 workers and 10 vehicles are needed over six weeks to pick up leaf bags and suck up piles of leaves from curbs; unlike other towns, it composts them on site, so it does not pay for hauling.
Now Ms. Mitchell does her own leaves, switching the blades on her mower come fall. She said the leaves provide so much benefit to her soil that this fall she “borrowed” some from her neighbor to mulch. And she has become something of a proselytizer for the practice among her neighbors and those in other towns.
“I’m afraid I’m becoming a bit of a mulching police,” she said. “My friends call out, ‘I’m mulching, I’m mulching,’ when I walk by their houses.”
Pulling a More Diverse Group of Achievers Into the Advanced Placement Pool
http://nyti.ms/1ggB4LY
ORLANDO, Fla. — Every year, more than 600,000 academically promising high school students — most of them poor, Latino or black — fail to enroll in Advanced Placement courses, often viewed as head starts for the college-bound.
Some of them do not know about these courses, which offer an accelerated curriculum and can lead to college credit. Others assume they will be too difficult. But many are held back by entrenched perceptions among administrators and teachers, whose referrals are often required for enrollment, about who belongs in what has long served as an elite preserve within public schools.
“Many teachers don’t truly believe that these programs are for all kids or that students of color or low-income kids can succeed in these classes,” said Christina Theokas, director of research at the Education Trust, a nonprofit group. Ms. Theokas said that if those underrepresented students had taken A.P. courses at the same rate as their white and more affluent peers in 2010, there would have been about 614,500 more students in those classes.
In an effort to overcome those obstacles, an increasing number of school districts, including Boston, Cincinnati and Washington, have recently begun initiatives to expand Advanced Placement course offerings and enroll more black and Hispanic students, children from low-income families and those who aspire to be the first in their generation to go to college. In the spring, lawmakers in Washington State passed legislation encouraging all districts to enroll in advanced courses any student who meets a minimum threshold on state standardized tests or the Preliminary SAT exam.
While some critics say A.P. classes are little more than another round of test prep, supporters say they can foster a culture of learning. Humberto Fuentes, a senior here at Freedom High School taking his first A.P. classes, in English literature and economics, said they were the first time he had been around peers who enjoyed school.
“In regular classes, people are trying to distract you with music videos or saying, ‘Hey, look at this cat playing a piano’ on their phones,” said Humberto, 17, who emigrated with his parents from Ecuador when he was an infant and hopes to be the first in his family to attend college. “Whereas in an A.P. class, they will show you something from the text and say, ‘Hey, this is fun.’ ”
Expanding access to the advanced classes can require far more of teachers. “If A.P. courses are going to be a successful experience for a variety of students,” said Trevor Packer, the head of the Advanced Placement program at the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the exams, “A.P. teaching can’t rely on the ‘sage on the stage’ model that characterized and continues to characterize some of A.P. teaching today.”
At Freedom High School, teachers offer tutoring at lunchtime, after school and on Saturdays. Starting this year, their district, Orange County Public Schools, allocated $12,000 to $14,000 to each high school to pay for extra instructional time for A.P. students. Many students are also enrolled in study review classes sponsored by Advancement Via Individual Determination, a nonprofit group that works to help prepare disadvantaged students for college.
Cashira Chery, a lanky 14-year-old whose mother works as a hotel housekeeper, is one of the new A.P. students. In middle school, she was a straight-A student who scored well on standardized tests, and her guidance counselor at Freedom High registered her for two Advanced Placement courses, biology and geography.
Sometimes, Cashira said, she asks classmates to “dumb down” material. But she is determined to stick with the courses, which she sees as prerequisites to her plans to pursue a career as a pediatrician or an engineer.
“It’s very important to finish college,” said Cashira, who is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. “Not finishing college has gotten my mom into her job.”
As A.P. classes across the country have opened to a more diverse group of students, some teachers and parents worry that instructors will be forced to water down the curriculum, while some educational experts say there is little conclusive evidence that students who take such courses perform better in college.
In Orlando, however, school officials are convinced that the courses will improve their students’ chances in college. Three years ago, the district dropped its requirement of teacher recommendations for A.P. classes, and schools began mining data from Preliminary SAT exams more intensively to find students with the aptitude for more difficult courses.
“We wanted to find the students who might be flying under the radar,” said Barbara Jenkins, superintendent of Orange County Public Schools, the country’s 10th-largest school district, where about half the black and Latino students with qualifying test scores take A.P. classes.
At Freedom High, a campus of 3,240 students, the administration began a push to increase A.P. enrollment five years ago, taking advantage of state bonuses for teachers whose students pass A.P. courses. Since 2009, the number of students taking the advanced courses at Freedom has nearly tripled, with the school offering 150 sections in 30 subjects, including macroeconomics, computer science and Mandarin.
This year, close to half the students in A.P. classes are Latino, 12 percent are black, and nearly half are eligible for free or reduced lunches. Schoolwide, 70 percent of students are Hispanic, 6 percent are black, and more than two-thirds qualify for lunch aid.
At the same time, passing rates on A.P. exams have edged up. In 2009, 49 percent of the Freedom students who took one received a passing score of 3 or higher. whereas last year, the rate was 51 percent.
Nationwide, the class of 2012 took 3.15 million A.P. exams, more than double the number a decade earlier, and 57 percent were passing scores. That rate was four percentage points lower than in 2002. When those additional 1.85 million tests were taken, the number of passing scores rose by more than one million from a decade earlier.
Some parents around the country have resisted the expansion of A.P., saying classes are filling with students who cannot manage the work. And pass rates remain low: Last spring, 25 percent of African-Americans and 32 percent of Hispanics who took an A.P. English exam received a passing score; the rates in the social sciences were 30 percent and 35 percent. About two-thirds of white students who took an exam in English or a social science received a passing score.
Some educational experts are skeptical that pushing more children into A.P. classes will help them. In research that has shown positive links between students who score a 3 or higher and their college performance, it is difficult to disentangle the factors, said Kristin Klopfenstein, the executive director of the Education Innovation Institute at the University of Northern Colorado.
“The things that cause kids to enroll in A.P. classes and do well in them are the same things that cause them to go to college and succeed in college,” Dr. Klopfenstein said. “Supportive families, a college-going culture at home, a high school with a college-going culture.”
Some teachers say students who come from more educated backgrounds can help the new A.P. students. During an advanced calculus class at Freedom High one morning, the teacher, Amanda Kraemer, circulated among student groups of four working together to solve quadratic equations. Most of them, she said, did not have college-educated parents. But peer grouping, she said, “gets kids who come in with a lot of skills to solidify them by helping other students.”
Ms. Kraemer’s approach seems to work: Last spring, more than 90 percent of her students received a passing score on the most rigorous A.P. calculus exam.
Pope Sets Down Goals for an Inclusive Church, Reaching Out ‘on the Streets’
http://nyti.ms/IkYcgQ
In his first nine months as leader of one billion Roman Catholics, Pope Francis has parceled out glimpses of his vision for remaking the church — in homilies and news conferences, interviews and offhand remarks to visitors.
On Tuesday, he announced his agenda in his own unfiltered words, reaffirming the impression that he intends to jolt the church out of complacency and enlist all Catholics in his ambitious project of renewing the church by confronting the real needs of people in need.
In a challenge to the Vatican hierarchy, Francis called for decentralizing power in the church, saying the Vatican and even the pope must collaborate with bishops, laypeople and in particular women.
“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,” Francis said in the first teaching document of his papacy that he alone composed.
“I do not want a church concerned with being at the center and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures,” he wrote.
The document, called “Evangelii Gaudium” (the Joy of the Gospel), is an apostolic exhortation — less authoritative than an encyclical, but an important pronouncement. He drafted it in August in Spanish, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, as a reflection on a synod of bishops last year that took up the “new evangelization.”
Francis’ prescription for the church is inextricably tied up with his analysis of what is wrong with the world. He devotes many pages to denouncing the “dictatorship” of a global economic system and a free market that perpetuates inequality and “devours” what is fragile, including human beings and the environment.
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” he wrote, in the folksy language that has already marked his as a memorable papacy.
Vincent J. Miller, a theologian who writes on economic globalization at the University of Dayton, a Catholic university, said that while other popes have critiqued the economy, Francis has perspective on economic injustice as the first pope from Latin America, and is putting forward the church as the counterpoint.
“He talks about an economy of exclusion, while he’s been modeling and practicing inclusion publicly through his whole papacy,” Mr. Miller said.
After months in which many have parsed his comments for hints of change, the pope used the document to reiterate church teachings on abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women. On abortion, he said, “It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations,” who may seek abortions because of rape or extreme poverty.
Nowhere in the document did Francis speak explicitly of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. However, he said the church should not give in to “moral relativism,” and cited with approval a document written by the bishops of the United States on ministering to people with “homosexual inclination.” The pope said the American bishops are right that the church must insist on “objective moral norms which are valid for everyone” — even when the church is perceived by supporters of gay rights as promoting prejudice and interfering with individual freedom.
Echoing his predecessors, Francis said that ordaining women to the priesthood “is not a question open to discussion.” He acknowledged that “many women share pastoral responsibilities with priests,” and said, “We need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the church.” But he offered no specifics on doing so.
But the document dwells at length on how priests can preach better homilies, which he said are the “touchstone” for judging how close a pastor is with his people. Francis said that both clergy and laypeople suffer from homilies: “The laity from having to listen to them, and the clergy from having to preach them! It is sad that this is the case.”
Francis criticized those within the church who foster division to the point of “veritable witch hunts.” In recent years, some bishops in the United States and Europe have advocated denying the eucharist, or holy communion, to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights or same-sex marriage. Francis did not take up this issue directly, but he advocated open doors.
“Everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason,” Francis said. “The eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
Francis proposed a vision of a decentralized church. Bishops and priests have a better sense of the needs of the faithful, he said. Parishes should be the point of “contact with the homes and the lives of its people,” not a “useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed cluster made up of a chosen few.”
“Laypeople are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God. The minority — ordained ministers — are at their service,” Francis wrote.
John Thavis, a former Vatican bureau chief for Catholic News Service, who wrote “The Vatican Diaries,” said, “He’s laying down some real markers about the kinds of reforms he expects to preside over, including greater decentralization, openness to diversity in the church, and a greater emphasis on the gospel message of salvation as opposed to church doctrines and rules.”
The pope wrote that national bishops’ conferences can be fruitful sounding boards.
Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, noted Tuesday that the document made repeated references to documents drafted by various bishops’ conferences — a first. It signals the will “to allow the bishops of the world to participate in the leadership of the church,” he said.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, editor of the leading Jesuit journal in Rome, who interviewed the pope last summer just as Francis was writing the exhortation, said, “It is an ample and profound document,” which finds its roots in the pope’s personal history.
“But it isn’t complete,” he said. “I think we’ll see more.”
Gynecologists May Treat Men, Board Says in Switch
http://nyti.ms/ImyDvW
A professional group that certifies obstetrician-gynecologists reversed an earlier directive and said on Tuesday that its members were permitted to treat male patients for sexually transmitted infections and to screen men for anal cancer.
The statement from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology eased restrictions announced in September, which said that gynecologists could lose their board certification if they treated men. Exceptions were made to allow certain procedures, but screening men who were at high risk for anal cancer was not permitted, so the September decision left some gynecologists struggling to find colleagues in other specialties to treat their male patients and to track those who were enrolled in studies.
Like cervical cancer, anal cancer is usually caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which is sexually transmitted. This type of cancer is rare, but its incidence is increasing, especially among men and women infected with H.I.V.
Experts in anal cancer asked the board to reconsider its position, and some started letter-writing campaigns. Patient advocacy groups expressed worry that the prohibition would interfere with research and make it harder for male patients to find screening and treatment.
The board had said it wanted to protect the profession as a female specialty and limit the nongynecological work performed by its members. But Dr. Kenneth L. Noller, the board’s director of evaluation, said board members had reconsidered and realized that gynecologists had a long tradition of treating sexually transmitted infections in both men and women, and that HPV and problems related to the virus fell into that category.
In addition, he said, the board recognized the importance of an coming study on anal cancer, funded by the federal government, and did not want to interfere with it. Finally, board members said that they did not want to “disturb the doctor-patient relationship.” Dr. Elizabeth Stier, a gynecologist at Boston Medical Center who had been forced to drop male patients who had been in her care for years, said she was happy and relieved to hear that the board had changed its mind.
“Having canceled all the men out of my clinic, I now have to un-cancel them,” Dr. Stier said. “They’ll be very happy.”
Dr. Mark H. Einstein, a gynecologic oncologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who had also been compelled to stop treating male patients, said: “Cool heads have prevailed. This is the best decision for our patients.”
Though most of Dr. Stier’s patients are women, she also took care of about 110 men last year who were at high risk for anal cancer. Screening tests for anal cancer involve techniques adapted from those used to screen women for cervical cancer. Dr. Stier had undergone extensive training to detect cancers and precancerous lesions in the anus, and she will be involved in the federally funded study of men and women, aimed at finding out whether screening and treating precancerous growths can prevent the cancer. The statement issued in September would have barred her from screening or treating men in that study.
Art Makes You Smart
http://nyti.ms/17Q4EYq
FOR many education advocates, the arts are a panacea: They supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility and turn around failing schools. Most of the supporting evidence, though, does little more than establish correlations between exposure to the arts and certain outcomes. Research that demonstrates a causal relationship has been virtually nonexistent.
A few years ago, however, we had a rare opportunity to explore such relationships when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Ark. Through a large-scale, random-assignment study of school tours to the museum, we were able to determine that strong causal relationships do in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes.
Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions.
Crystal Bridges, which opened in November 2011, was founded by Alice Walton, the daughter of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. It is impressive, with 50,000 square feet of gallery space and an endowment of more than $800 million.
Thanks to a generous private gift, the museum has a program that allows school groups to visit at no cost to students or schools.
Before the opening, we were contacted by the museum’s education department. They recognized that the opening of a major museum in an area that had never had one before was an unusual event that ought to be studied. But they also had a problem. Because the school tours were being offered free, in an area where most children had very little prior exposure to cultural institutions, demand for visits far exceeded available slots. In the first year alone, the museum received applications from 525 school groups requesting tours for more than 38,000 students.
As social scientists, we knew exactly how to solve this problem. We partnered with the museum and conducted a lottery to fill the available slots. By randomly assigning school tours, we were able to allocate spots fairly. Doing so also created a natural experiment to study the effects of museum visits on students, the results of which we published in the journals Education Next and Educational Researcher.
Over the course of the following year, nearly 11,000 students and almost 500 teachers participated in our study, roughly half of whom had been selected by lottery to visit the museum. Applicant groups who won the lottery constituted our treatment group, while those who did not win an immediate tour served as our control group.
Several weeks after the students in the treatment group visited the museum, we administered surveys to all of the students. The surveys included multiple items that assessed knowledge about art, as well as measures of tolerance, historical empathy and sustained interest in visiting art museums and other cultural institutions. We also asked them to write an essay in response to a work of art that was unfamiliar to them.
These essays were then coded using a critical-thinking-skills assessment program developed by researchers working with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Further, we directly measured whether students are more likely to return to Crystal Bridges as a result of going on a school tour. Students who participated in the study were given a coupon that gave them and their families free entry to a special exhibit at the museum. The coupons were coded so that we could determine the group to which students belonged. Students in the treatment group were 18 percent more likely to attend the exhibit than students in the control group.
Moreover, most of the benefits we observed are significantly larger for minority students, low-income students and students from rural schools — typically two to three times larger than for white, middle-class, suburban students — owing perhaps to the fact that the tour was the first time they had visited an art museum.
Further research is needed to determine what exactly about the museum-going experience determines the strength of the outcomes. How important is the structure of the tour? The size of the group? The type of art presented?
Clearly, however, we can conclude that visiting an art museum exposes students to a diversity of ideas that challenge them with different perspectives on the human condition. Expanding access to art, whether through programs in schools or through visits to area museums and galleries, should be a central part of any school’s curriculum.
Vanities, and Hungry New Yorkers
http://nyti.ms/1baWF93
This past week the New York Public Library acquired the papers of Tom Wolfe for the sum of $2.15 million. The material, which fills about 190 boxes and includes correspondence between Mr. Wolfe and his tailor, was paid for largely with a private donation, and while the figure is hardly exorbitant in the realm of cultural philanthropy, which vastly outpaces social-service philanthropy, it represents more than twice the amount of the biggest gift ever made by an individual to the Food Bank for New York City. The all too obvious irony is that it is just this sort of fracture in the city’s psychology that might find trenchant expression in a piece of writing by Tom Wolfe.
While it arguably strains fairness to impugn the generosity of New Yorkers, who demonstrate exceeding largess, charity here is more closely tied to self-promotion than to the anonymous doing of good works. Although it is one of the largest food banks in the country, supplying food to more than 1,000 pantries and soup kitchens, and although it has been in existence for three decades, the Food Bank received its first $1 million donation from a private citizen only two years ago, and it came from a foreigner who had moved here and become appalled at how little the affluent classes seemed to understand problems of native poverty and hunger.
There is virtually no more immediate way to affect the lives of the poor than to give to the agencies that help feed them, especially now when need has so greatly escalated. As a result of cuts to SNAP, the federal food stamp program, which went into effect on Nov. 1 (and precede further potential reductions of $4 billion to $40 billion), food pantries are already experiencing mounting burdens. One of the city’s largest, the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger in Brooklyn, has seen more than a one-third increase this month in the number of people coming in, compared with November of last year. Another, the New York Common Pantry in East Harlem, was seeing a 25 percent rise during the five months before the cuts.
Even before the cuts went into effect, matching supply with demand presented wounding challenges. According to a study of emergency food program participation released by the Food Bank last month, there are 100,000 more New Yorkers relying on these services today than six years ago, while there are fewer pantries to serve them. In another sign of distress, the term “emergency” now seems misapplied.
When the Food Bank was created in 1983, its founders foresaw a life span of merely a decade or so, in which the organization would primarily serve homeless men. Instead it functions today largely to assist working families, Margarette Purvis, its president, said, and 60 percent of those surveyed for the Food Bank’s study reported that they had been coming to a particular soup kitchen or pantry for more than a year. This notion that hunger has come to exist as the status quo is reflected in a 2010 analysis conducted by the national organization Feeding America, which supplies food to local food banks. The study revealed that the majority of clients in the group’s network were visiting food pantries not for temporary assistance but for continuing sustenance.
And sustenance is broadly defined. If you visit the New York Common Pantry on a Wednesday morning, you are quite likely to find men lined up for haircuts, as pantries find themselves forced to evolve into purveyors of more than groceries and sandwiches. The poor have come to depend on pantries for diapers, shampoo, paper towels, toothpaste — the sorts of products that are costly, necessary and typically not covered by food stamps.
What further complicates matters in the world of food relief is the increased complexity of sourcing. In the early days of food pantries, much of what came in arrived in the form of canned goods, but the country’s growing investment in nutrition has meant that relief groups strive to supply more fresh fruits and vegetables now, which requires them to incur greater costs of refrigeration. At the same time, the buying patterns of grocers have become ever more sophisticated, meaning that they can more closely predict the number of pears, for instance, that they can sell, leaving less overstock available for donation. (At the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, “the produce coming in is at compost level,” Melanie Samuels, its executive director, said, which isn’t entirely useless because the organization runs an urban farm.)
Another trend that has developed over the past decade is the diversion of food to secondary markets. Food close to its expiration date, which otherwise might have found its way to a food bank or pantry, is now sold to dollar stores or countries where regulation may be less stringent.
In this country at this time of year, many of us are called to the food drive, the ritual of delivering canned cranberries, or turkeys or breads to a designated location from which they must be transported to a warehouse and then sorted, edited and so on. This, too, isn’t quite as simple as it may seem, presenting the problem of what Ms. Purvis calls “high touch,” the involvement of too many hands driving up costs and reducing efficiency.
As it happens, there is little to surpass the efficiency of money. While it may feel more intimately virtuous, more morally instructive, to tell a small child that you’ll be packing up food for the needy and taking it to school, it may ultimately be more effective just to have that child sit and watch you write a check.
http://bit.ly/1jKB0nm
New Rules Would Rein In Nonprofits’ Political Role
http://nyti.ms/1c7ex3n
The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to curb political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, with potentially major ramifications for some of the biggest and most secretive spenders in American politics.
New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.
Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.
The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.
But the proposal also thrusts the I.R.S. into what is sure to be a polarizing regulatory battle, with some Republicans immediately criticizing the proposal on Tuesday as an attack on free speech and a ploy to undermine congressional investigations into the agency’s handling of applications from Tea Party groups.
“Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first,” said Representative David Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Political spending by tax-exempt groups — from Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, to the League of Conservation Voters — skyrocketed to more than $300 million in 2012 from less than $5.2 million in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Much of the money has been funneled through chains of interlinked nonprofit groups, making it even harder to determine the original source.
And unlike political parties and “super PACs,” political nonprofits are permitted to keep the names of donors confidential, making them the vehicle of choice for deep-pocketed donors seeking to influence campaigns in secret.
The new rules would not prohibit political activity by nonprofits.
But by seeking to establish clearer limits for campaign-related spending by groups claiming tax exemption, the I.R.S. proposal could have an enormous impact on some of the biggest groups, forcing them to either limit their election spending or register as openly political organizations, such as super PACs.
A spokesman for Crossroads declined to comment, as did officials at other political nonprofits.
Nick Ryan, the founder of the American Future Fund, which spent at least $25 million on political advertising last year, said, “Unfortunately, it appears that the same bureaucrats that attempted to suppress the speech of conservative groups in recent years has now put together new rules that apply to (c)4 groups but do not apply to liberal groups like labor unions.”
“I wish I could say I am surprised,” Mr. Ryan added, “but I am not.” The final rules are unlikely to be issued until after the 2014 election, after a public comment period.
The administration’s proposal would apply to nonprofits organized under Section 501(c)4 of the tax code, which are granted tax exemption in exchange for devoting themselves to the promotion of “social welfare.”
Under current rules, promoting social welfare can include some political activity, along with unlimited amounts of lobbying. Some of the largest political nonprofits — like Americans for Prosperity, backed by the conservative philanthropists Charles and David Koch — have used that provision to justify significant expenditures on political ads.
But under the new proposal, a broad swath of political work would be classified as “candidate-related political activity” and explicitly excluded from the agency’s definition of social welfare. Those activities include advertisements that mention a candidate within 60 days of an election as well as grants to other organizations making candidate-related expenditures.
“Depending on the details, this could be dramatic,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former chief of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division.
The rules could also affect more traditional conservative and liberal advocacy organizations, including Tea Party groups whose complaints of harassment by I.R.S. employees prompted the resignation of several high-ranking I.R.S. officials last spring. Distributing voter guides, for example, would automatically count as political activity.
Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group, praised the proposal as “an important step forward.” He added, “Enormous abuses have taken place under the current rules, which have allowed groups largely devoted to campaign activities to operate as nonprofit groups in order to keep secret the donors funding their campaign activities.”
Administration officials described the new proposal as a response to complaints — including objections from the Treasury’s own inspector general after the Tea Party controversy — that the existing regulations were too vague, leading to inconsistent or arbitrary enforcement. The I.R.S. would be better equipped to enforce the rules, the officials said, if they were clearer, while nonprofit groups would be better able to comply.
“This proposed guidance is a first critical step toward creating clear-cut definitions of political activity by tax-exempt social welfare organizations," said Mark J. Mazur, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy.
The final guidance could also include a more precise definition of how much political activity a 501(c)4 group is permitted to engage in while still maintaining its tax exemption.
Many election lawyers and their clients use an unofficial rule of thumb: If a tax-exempt group spends less than 50 percent of its budget on political activity, then its primary purpose is not winning campaigns.
Some activists have argued that a rule requiring 501(c)4s to spend no more than 15 percent of their budgets on political activities would be closer to the letter and spirit of existing law.
Some lawyers said they worried that the new rules, particularly those that could apply to grass-roots organizing, could unfairly burden bona fide social welfare groups. Others suggested that tighter restrictions on social welfare groups would only hasten the migration of political money into other kinds of entities whose campaign spending is not subject to I.R.S. jurisdiction.
Mr. Owens, now a tax lawyer in Washington, said the I.R.S. proposal would have one certain consequence: more business.
“I’m looking forward to a very profitable new year,” he said.
Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them
http://nyti.ms/1bNyvML
They have been burned, blown into piles, raked into bags and generally scorned by homeowners everywhere. Fall leaves — so pretty on the trees, such a nuisance when they hit the ground — have long been a thing to be discarded. But now some suburban towns are asking residents to do something radical: Leave the leaves alone.
In the past few years, lawn signs have sprouted in this Hudson River village and across Westchester County, proclaiming the benefits of mulching the leaves in place, rather than raking them up and taking them away. The technique involves mowing the leaves with special mulching blades, which shred them into tiny bits. That allows them to quickly decompose and naturally feed lawns and shrubs.
Officials are encouraging the practice for its cost savings: Westchester spends $3.5 million a year on private contractors who haul away leaves in tractor-trailers and bring them to commercial composting sites in places like Orange County, N.Y., and Connecticut. At the same time, environmental groups and horticulturalists are praising the practice’s sustainability, devising slogans like “Leave Leaves Alone” and “Love ’Em and Leave ’Em.”
Karen Engelmann, a novelist in Dobbs Ferry, used to rake up the leaves on her half-acre property, which is laced with old oak trees. She once had 120 bags of leaves lined up at her curb to be taken away by the village. “I wondered, ‘Where do these go?’ ” she recalled. “I thought it was odd that there wasn’t an alternative, that there wasn’t someone saying you might want to think about how the planet functions.”
It turned out that her landscaper, Tim Downey, had started experimenting with the new technique. On an unseasonably warm afternoon last week, he navigated his mulching mower over a thick pile of leaves, producing a fine layer of confetti. Mr. Downey said the mulched leaves improve the soil’s water retention and provide critical nutrients, reducing the need for fertilizer in the spring.
“It’s utterly insane to be driving tractor-trailers 90 miles away,” said Mr. Downey, owner of Aesthetic Landscape Care in Hastings-on-Hudson. “My feeling is that if I’m taking away your leaves, I’m stealing from your property.”
Indeed, commercial firms use fall leaves as a raw material to produce mulch and compost for sale to nurseries. But towns and counties pay to get rid of them. In Westchester, for instance, the county pays a private hauler about $40 for every ton of leaves that it takes away. Municipalities that provide leaf pickup service pay the county $15 a ton. So some county residents ultimately foot the bill through both municipal and county taxes.
County officials say mulching leaves in place not only improves soil quality, but also has other environmental and safety benefits for communities. Piles of leaves left at the curb can clog storm drains; the nitrogen and phosphorous leaching from decomposing leaves heaped by the street can also more easily enter the drains and harm local rivers. Additionally, leaf piles constrict already narrow streets and can conceal children.
Westchester County appears to be in the vanguard on leaf mulching, but there are nascent steps in New Jersey and Connecticut to reduce leaf collections. For the first time this fall, the city of Englewood, N.J., which estimates that between overtime, equipment maintenance and fees, it spends $200,000 a year on leaf removal, is pushing the idea in emails and a newsletter. “Leaves clog storm drains, they’re slippery and they can catch on fire when cars park on top of them,” said Kevin Lake, a member of the city’s Environmental Commission.
Public service announcements and mulching workshops in Westchester have nudged homeowners to buy mulching attachments for their mowers and impelled landscapers to offer the service. But it is not always an easy sell.
For those who do it themselves, the mulching attachments can be cumbersome. And then there is the aesthetic factor. “People want everything removed from their lawn, and landscapers just want to keep their customers happy,” said Marianne Petronella, director of resource management for Westchester County’s Environmental Facilities Department. “I know some residents would never do mulching in place. They want to keep up with the Joneses.”
Stephen J. Edwards, the director of public works in Westport, Conn., agreed. “Unfortunately, people are just very conscious of the appearance of the lawn, and they want to see it spotless all the time,” he said, adding that the town spent $85,000 to take residents’ leaves away. Still, he said, Westport encourages leaf composting, especially for some of the one- to two-acre properties in the northern part of town. “Residents can blow the leaves into big piles and Mother Nature does the work,” he said.
Two years ago, Ms. Petronella enlisted a landscaper who mulches leaves and tried it on her own property in Scarsdale, which she described as a “postage stamp.” There was leafy residue for a few days after the mowers came through, but it quickly disappeared. “My land is just as attractive as any of my neighbors’ and I didn’t turn on my sprinklers once the past two summers, not once,” Ms. Petronella said.
The holdouts are not convinced. In Hastings-on-Hudson, Chloe Sikirica, a 50-year-old artist, was blowing leaves off her yard. With twin boys, she worries about the leaf confetti. “If you shred them and leave them, then the kids will track the mulch into the house,” she said.
Her one nod to sustainable yard care: leaving leaves around her trees and hedges to provide a natural mulch.
In northern Westchester, Fiona Mitchell of Bedford is a mulching convert. A member of the board of her local library, Ms. Mitchell got the idea a few years ago when the library was facing budget cuts. “I said, ‘Hang on, we’re spending all this money on leaves,’ ” she remembered.
Bedford estimates that 10 workers and 10 vehicles are needed over six weeks to pick up leaf bags and suck up piles of leaves from curbs; unlike other towns, it composts them on site, so it does not pay for hauling.
Now Ms. Mitchell does her own leaves, switching the blades on her mower come fall. She said the leaves provide so much benefit to her soil that this fall she “borrowed” some from her neighbor to mulch. And she has become something of a proselytizer for the practice among her neighbors and those in other towns.
“I’m afraid I’m becoming a bit of a mulching police,” she said. “My friends call out, ‘I’m mulching, I’m mulching,’ when I walk by their houses.”
Pulling a More Diverse Group of Achievers Into the Advanced Placement Pool
http://nyti.ms/1ggB4LY
ORLANDO, Fla. — Every year, more than 600,000 academically promising high school students — most of them poor, Latino or black — fail to enroll in Advanced Placement courses, often viewed as head starts for the college-bound.
Some of them do not know about these courses, which offer an accelerated curriculum and can lead to college credit. Others assume they will be too difficult. But many are held back by entrenched perceptions among administrators and teachers, whose referrals are often required for enrollment, about who belongs in what has long served as an elite preserve within public schools.
“Many teachers don’t truly believe that these programs are for all kids or that students of color or low-income kids can succeed in these classes,” said Christina Theokas, director of research at the Education Trust, a nonprofit group. Ms. Theokas said that if those underrepresented students had taken A.P. courses at the same rate as their white and more affluent peers in 2010, there would have been about 614,500 more students in those classes.
In an effort to overcome those obstacles, an increasing number of school districts, including Boston, Cincinnati and Washington, have recently begun initiatives to expand Advanced Placement course offerings and enroll more black and Hispanic students, children from low-income families and those who aspire to be the first in their generation to go to college. In the spring, lawmakers in Washington State passed legislation encouraging all districts to enroll in advanced courses any student who meets a minimum threshold on state standardized tests or the Preliminary SAT exam.
While some critics say A.P. classes are little more than another round of test prep, supporters say they can foster a culture of learning. Humberto Fuentes, a senior here at Freedom High School taking his first A.P. classes, in English literature and economics, said they were the first time he had been around peers who enjoyed school.
“In regular classes, people are trying to distract you with music videos or saying, ‘Hey, look at this cat playing a piano’ on their phones,” said Humberto, 17, who emigrated with his parents from Ecuador when he was an infant and hopes to be the first in his family to attend college. “Whereas in an A.P. class, they will show you something from the text and say, ‘Hey, this is fun.’ ”
Expanding access to the advanced classes can require far more of teachers. “If A.P. courses are going to be a successful experience for a variety of students,” said Trevor Packer, the head of the Advanced Placement program at the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the exams, “A.P. teaching can’t rely on the ‘sage on the stage’ model that characterized and continues to characterize some of A.P. teaching today.”
At Freedom High School, teachers offer tutoring at lunchtime, after school and on Saturdays. Starting this year, their district, Orange County Public Schools, allocated $12,000 to $14,000 to each high school to pay for extra instructional time for A.P. students. Many students are also enrolled in study review classes sponsored by Advancement Via Individual Determination, a nonprofit group that works to help prepare disadvantaged students for college.
Cashira Chery, a lanky 14-year-old whose mother works as a hotel housekeeper, is one of the new A.P. students. In middle school, she was a straight-A student who scored well on standardized tests, and her guidance counselor at Freedom High registered her for two Advanced Placement courses, biology and geography.
Sometimes, Cashira said, she asks classmates to “dumb down” material. But she is determined to stick with the courses, which she sees as prerequisites to her plans to pursue a career as a pediatrician or an engineer.
“It’s very important to finish college,” said Cashira, who is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. “Not finishing college has gotten my mom into her job.”
As A.P. classes across the country have opened to a more diverse group of students, some teachers and parents worry that instructors will be forced to water down the curriculum, while some educational experts say there is little conclusive evidence that students who take such courses perform better in college.
In Orlando, however, school officials are convinced that the courses will improve their students’ chances in college. Three years ago, the district dropped its requirement of teacher recommendations for A.P. classes, and schools began mining data from Preliminary SAT exams more intensively to find students with the aptitude for more difficult courses.
“We wanted to find the students who might be flying under the radar,” said Barbara Jenkins, superintendent of Orange County Public Schools, the country’s 10th-largest school district, where about half the black and Latino students with qualifying test scores take A.P. classes.
At Freedom High, a campus of 3,240 students, the administration began a push to increase A.P. enrollment five years ago, taking advantage of state bonuses for teachers whose students pass A.P. courses. Since 2009, the number of students taking the advanced courses at Freedom has nearly tripled, with the school offering 150 sections in 30 subjects, including macroeconomics, computer science and Mandarin.
This year, close to half the students in A.P. classes are Latino, 12 percent are black, and nearly half are eligible for free or reduced lunches. Schoolwide, 70 percent of students are Hispanic, 6 percent are black, and more than two-thirds qualify for lunch aid.
At the same time, passing rates on A.P. exams have edged up. In 2009, 49 percent of the Freedom students who took one received a passing score of 3 or higher. whereas last year, the rate was 51 percent.
Nationwide, the class of 2012 took 3.15 million A.P. exams, more than double the number a decade earlier, and 57 percent were passing scores. That rate was four percentage points lower than in 2002. When those additional 1.85 million tests were taken, the number of passing scores rose by more than one million from a decade earlier.
Some parents around the country have resisted the expansion of A.P., saying classes are filling with students who cannot manage the work. And pass rates remain low: Last spring, 25 percent of African-Americans and 32 percent of Hispanics who took an A.P. English exam received a passing score; the rates in the social sciences were 30 percent and 35 percent. About two-thirds of white students who took an exam in English or a social science received a passing score.
Some educational experts are skeptical that pushing more children into A.P. classes will help them. In research that has shown positive links between students who score a 3 or higher and their college performance, it is difficult to disentangle the factors, said Kristin Klopfenstein, the executive director of the Education Innovation Institute at the University of Northern Colorado.
“The things that cause kids to enroll in A.P. classes and do well in them are the same things that cause them to go to college and succeed in college,” Dr. Klopfenstein said. “Supportive families, a college-going culture at home, a high school with a college-going culture.”
Some teachers say students who come from more educated backgrounds can help the new A.P. students. During an advanced calculus class at Freedom High one morning, the teacher, Amanda Kraemer, circulated among student groups of four working together to solve quadratic equations. Most of them, she said, did not have college-educated parents. But peer grouping, she said, “gets kids who come in with a lot of skills to solidify them by helping other students.”
Ms. Kraemer’s approach seems to work: Last spring, more than 90 percent of her students received a passing score on the most rigorous A.P. calculus exam.
Pope Sets Down Goals for an Inclusive Church, Reaching Out ‘on the Streets’
http://nyti.ms/IkYcgQ
In his first nine months as leader of one billion Roman Catholics, Pope Francis has parceled out glimpses of his vision for remaking the church — in homilies and news conferences, interviews and offhand remarks to visitors.
On Tuesday, he announced his agenda in his own unfiltered words, reaffirming the impression that he intends to jolt the church out of complacency and enlist all Catholics in his ambitious project of renewing the church by confronting the real needs of people in need.
In a challenge to the Vatican hierarchy, Francis called for decentralizing power in the church, saying the Vatican and even the pope must collaborate with bishops, laypeople and in particular women.
“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,” Francis said in the first teaching document of his papacy that he alone composed.
“I do not want a church concerned with being at the center and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures,” he wrote.
The document, called “Evangelii Gaudium” (the Joy of the Gospel), is an apostolic exhortation — less authoritative than an encyclical, but an important pronouncement. He drafted it in August in Spanish, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, as a reflection on a synod of bishops last year that took up the “new evangelization.”
Francis’ prescription for the church is inextricably tied up with his analysis of what is wrong with the world. He devotes many pages to denouncing the “dictatorship” of a global economic system and a free market that perpetuates inequality and “devours” what is fragile, including human beings and the environment.
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” he wrote, in the folksy language that has already marked his as a memorable papacy.
Vincent J. Miller, a theologian who writes on economic globalization at the University of Dayton, a Catholic university, said that while other popes have critiqued the economy, Francis has perspective on economic injustice as the first pope from Latin America, and is putting forward the church as the counterpoint.
“He talks about an economy of exclusion, while he’s been modeling and practicing inclusion publicly through his whole papacy,” Mr. Miller said.
After months in which many have parsed his comments for hints of change, the pope used the document to reiterate church teachings on abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women. On abortion, he said, “It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations,” who may seek abortions because of rape or extreme poverty.
Nowhere in the document did Francis speak explicitly of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. However, he said the church should not give in to “moral relativism,” and cited with approval a document written by the bishops of the United States on ministering to people with “homosexual inclination.” The pope said the American bishops are right that the church must insist on “objective moral norms which are valid for everyone” — even when the church is perceived by supporters of gay rights as promoting prejudice and interfering with individual freedom.
Echoing his predecessors, Francis said that ordaining women to the priesthood “is not a question open to discussion.” He acknowledged that “many women share pastoral responsibilities with priests,” and said, “We need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the church.” But he offered no specifics on doing so.
But the document dwells at length on how priests can preach better homilies, which he said are the “touchstone” for judging how close a pastor is with his people. Francis said that both clergy and laypeople suffer from homilies: “The laity from having to listen to them, and the clergy from having to preach them! It is sad that this is the case.”
Francis criticized those within the church who foster division to the point of “veritable witch hunts.” In recent years, some bishops in the United States and Europe have advocated denying the eucharist, or holy communion, to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights or same-sex marriage. Francis did not take up this issue directly, but he advocated open doors.
“Everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason,” Francis said. “The eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
Francis proposed a vision of a decentralized church. Bishops and priests have a better sense of the needs of the faithful, he said. Parishes should be the point of “contact with the homes and the lives of its people,” not a “useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed cluster made up of a chosen few.”
“Laypeople are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God. The minority — ordained ministers — are at their service,” Francis wrote.
John Thavis, a former Vatican bureau chief for Catholic News Service, who wrote “The Vatican Diaries,” said, “He’s laying down some real markers about the kinds of reforms he expects to preside over, including greater decentralization, openness to diversity in the church, and a greater emphasis on the gospel message of salvation as opposed to church doctrines and rules.”
The pope wrote that national bishops’ conferences can be fruitful sounding boards.
Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, noted Tuesday that the document made repeated references to documents drafted by various bishops’ conferences — a first. It signals the will “to allow the bishops of the world to participate in the leadership of the church,” he said.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, editor of the leading Jesuit journal in Rome, who interviewed the pope last summer just as Francis was writing the exhortation, said, “It is an ample and profound document,” which finds its roots in the pope’s personal history.
“But it isn’t complete,” he said. “I think we’ll see more.”
Gynecologists May Treat Men, Board Says in Switch
http://nyti.ms/ImyDvW
A professional group that certifies obstetrician-gynecologists reversed an earlier directive and said on Tuesday that its members were permitted to treat male patients for sexually transmitted infections and to screen men for anal cancer.
The statement from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology eased restrictions announced in September, which said that gynecologists could lose their board certification if they treated men. Exceptions were made to allow certain procedures, but screening men who were at high risk for anal cancer was not permitted, so the September decision left some gynecologists struggling to find colleagues in other specialties to treat their male patients and to track those who were enrolled in studies.
Like cervical cancer, anal cancer is usually caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which is sexually transmitted. This type of cancer is rare, but its incidence is increasing, especially among men and women infected with H.I.V.
Experts in anal cancer asked the board to reconsider its position, and some started letter-writing campaigns. Patient advocacy groups expressed worry that the prohibition would interfere with research and make it harder for male patients to find screening and treatment.
The board had said it wanted to protect the profession as a female specialty and limit the nongynecological work performed by its members. But Dr. Kenneth L. Noller, the board’s director of evaluation, said board members had reconsidered and realized that gynecologists had a long tradition of treating sexually transmitted infections in both men and women, and that HPV and problems related to the virus fell into that category.
In addition, he said, the board recognized the importance of an coming study on anal cancer, funded by the federal government, and did not want to interfere with it. Finally, board members said that they did not want to “disturb the doctor-patient relationship.” Dr. Elizabeth Stier, a gynecologist at Boston Medical Center who had been forced to drop male patients who had been in her care for years, said she was happy and relieved to hear that the board had changed its mind.
“Having canceled all the men out of my clinic, I now have to un-cancel them,” Dr. Stier said. “They’ll be very happy.”
Dr. Mark H. Einstein, a gynecologic oncologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who had also been compelled to stop treating male patients, said: “Cool heads have prevailed. This is the best decision for our patients.”
Though most of Dr. Stier’s patients are women, she also took care of about 110 men last year who were at high risk for anal cancer. Screening tests for anal cancer involve techniques adapted from those used to screen women for cervical cancer. Dr. Stier had undergone extensive training to detect cancers and precancerous lesions in the anus, and she will be involved in the federally funded study of men and women, aimed at finding out whether screening and treating precancerous growths can prevent the cancer. The statement issued in September would have barred her from screening or treating men in that study.
Art Makes You Smart
http://nyti.ms/17Q4EYq
FOR many education advocates, the arts are a panacea: They supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility and turn around failing schools. Most of the supporting evidence, though, does little more than establish correlations between exposure to the arts and certain outcomes. Research that demonstrates a causal relationship has been virtually nonexistent.
A few years ago, however, we had a rare opportunity to explore such relationships when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Ark. Through a large-scale, random-assignment study of school tours to the museum, we were able to determine that strong causal relationships do in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes.
Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions.
Crystal Bridges, which opened in November 2011, was founded by Alice Walton, the daughter of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. It is impressive, with 50,000 square feet of gallery space and an endowment of more than $800 million.
Thanks to a generous private gift, the museum has a program that allows school groups to visit at no cost to students or schools.
Before the opening, we were contacted by the museum’s education department. They recognized that the opening of a major museum in an area that had never had one before was an unusual event that ought to be studied. But they also had a problem. Because the school tours were being offered free, in an area where most children had very little prior exposure to cultural institutions, demand for visits far exceeded available slots. In the first year alone, the museum received applications from 525 school groups requesting tours for more than 38,000 students.
As social scientists, we knew exactly how to solve this problem. We partnered with the museum and conducted a lottery to fill the available slots. By randomly assigning school tours, we were able to allocate spots fairly. Doing so also created a natural experiment to study the effects of museum visits on students, the results of which we published in the journals Education Next and Educational Researcher.
Over the course of the following year, nearly 11,000 students and almost 500 teachers participated in our study, roughly half of whom had been selected by lottery to visit the museum. Applicant groups who won the lottery constituted our treatment group, while those who did not win an immediate tour served as our control group.
Several weeks after the students in the treatment group visited the museum, we administered surveys to all of the students. The surveys included multiple items that assessed knowledge about art, as well as measures of tolerance, historical empathy and sustained interest in visiting art museums and other cultural institutions. We also asked them to write an essay in response to a work of art that was unfamiliar to them.
These essays were then coded using a critical-thinking-skills assessment program developed by researchers working with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Further, we directly measured whether students are more likely to return to Crystal Bridges as a result of going on a school tour. Students who participated in the study were given a coupon that gave them and their families free entry to a special exhibit at the museum. The coupons were coded so that we could determine the group to which students belonged. Students in the treatment group were 18 percent more likely to attend the exhibit than students in the control group.
Moreover, most of the benefits we observed are significantly larger for minority students, low-income students and students from rural schools — typically two to three times larger than for white, middle-class, suburban students — owing perhaps to the fact that the tour was the first time they had visited an art museum.
Further research is needed to determine what exactly about the museum-going experience determines the strength of the outcomes. How important is the structure of the tour? The size of the group? The type of art presented?
Clearly, however, we can conclude that visiting an art museum exposes students to a diversity of ideas that challenge them with different perspectives on the human condition. Expanding access to art, whether through programs in schools or through visits to area museums and galleries, should be a central part of any school’s curriculum.
Vanities, and Hungry New Yorkers
http://nyti.ms/1baWF93
This past week the New York Public Library acquired the papers of Tom Wolfe for the sum of $2.15 million. The material, which fills about 190 boxes and includes correspondence between Mr. Wolfe and his tailor, was paid for largely with a private donation, and while the figure is hardly exorbitant in the realm of cultural philanthropy, which vastly outpaces social-service philanthropy, it represents more than twice the amount of the biggest gift ever made by an individual to the Food Bank for New York City. The all too obvious irony is that it is just this sort of fracture in the city’s psychology that might find trenchant expression in a piece of writing by Tom Wolfe.
While it arguably strains fairness to impugn the generosity of New Yorkers, who demonstrate exceeding largess, charity here is more closely tied to self-promotion than to the anonymous doing of good works. Although it is one of the largest food banks in the country, supplying food to more than 1,000 pantries and soup kitchens, and although it has been in existence for three decades, the Food Bank received its first $1 million donation from a private citizen only two years ago, and it came from a foreigner who had moved here and become appalled at how little the affluent classes seemed to understand problems of native poverty and hunger.
There is virtually no more immediate way to affect the lives of the poor than to give to the agencies that help feed them, especially now when need has so greatly escalated. As a result of cuts to SNAP, the federal food stamp program, which went into effect on Nov. 1 (and precede further potential reductions of $4 billion to $40 billion), food pantries are already experiencing mounting burdens. One of the city’s largest, the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger in Brooklyn, has seen more than a one-third increase this month in the number of people coming in, compared with November of last year. Another, the New York Common Pantry in East Harlem, was seeing a 25 percent rise during the five months before the cuts.
Even before the cuts went into effect, matching supply with demand presented wounding challenges. According to a study of emergency food program participation released by the Food Bank last month, there are 100,000 more New Yorkers relying on these services today than six years ago, while there are fewer pantries to serve them. In another sign of distress, the term “emergency” now seems misapplied.
When the Food Bank was created in 1983, its founders foresaw a life span of merely a decade or so, in which the organization would primarily serve homeless men. Instead it functions today largely to assist working families, Margarette Purvis, its president, said, and 60 percent of those surveyed for the Food Bank’s study reported that they had been coming to a particular soup kitchen or pantry for more than a year. This notion that hunger has come to exist as the status quo is reflected in a 2010 analysis conducted by the national organization Feeding America, which supplies food to local food banks. The study revealed that the majority of clients in the group’s network were visiting food pantries not for temporary assistance but for continuing sustenance.
And sustenance is broadly defined. If you visit the New York Common Pantry on a Wednesday morning, you are quite likely to find men lined up for haircuts, as pantries find themselves forced to evolve into purveyors of more than groceries and sandwiches. The poor have come to depend on pantries for diapers, shampoo, paper towels, toothpaste — the sorts of products that are costly, necessary and typically not covered by food stamps.
What further complicates matters in the world of food relief is the increased complexity of sourcing. In the early days of food pantries, much of what came in arrived in the form of canned goods, but the country’s growing investment in nutrition has meant that relief groups strive to supply more fresh fruits and vegetables now, which requires them to incur greater costs of refrigeration. At the same time, the buying patterns of grocers have become ever more sophisticated, meaning that they can more closely predict the number of pears, for instance, that they can sell, leaving less overstock available for donation. (At the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, “the produce coming in is at compost level,” Melanie Samuels, its executive director, said, which isn’t entirely useless because the organization runs an urban farm.)
Another trend that has developed over the past decade is the diversion of food to secondary markets. Food close to its expiration date, which otherwise might have found its way to a food bank or pantry, is now sold to dollar stores or countries where regulation may be less stringent.
In this country at this time of year, many of us are called to the food drive, the ritual of delivering canned cranberries, or turkeys or breads to a designated location from which they must be transported to a warehouse and then sorted, edited and so on. This, too, isn’t quite as simple as it may seem, presenting the problem of what Ms. Purvis calls “high touch,” the involvement of too many hands driving up costs and reducing efficiency.
As it happens, there is little to surpass the efficiency of money. While it may feel more intimately virtuous, more morally instructive, to tell a small child that you’ll be packing up food for the needy and taking it to school, it may ultimately be more effective just to have that child sit and watch you write a check.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-28 07:27 am (UTC)Some educational experts are skeptical that pushing more children into A.P. classes will help them.
nnNGNGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!AGHKLAHLR 24EHL5HI3HEF GDHKfehl; fHLGSDHGRH!!!!!!!!
A passing grade on an AP test is worth college credit. This can be used, at some colleges, to get effectively a discount on tuition: since you already passed the class, you don't have to pay to take it for your degree. THIS MATTERS TO LOW INCOME STUDENTS, LIKE, A LOT.
I seem to recall meeting a young woman who entered college with 9 passing AP scores, and basically getting a year off her bachelors degree.
And even where you can't use an AP test score to get out of paying for a college class, sometimes you can use them to knock off required courses in college, so you can then take more interesting electives. Analogous situation: my graduate school let me test out of three required classes; I couldn't apply those tests scores to the total credits I needed to graduate, but I could substitute interesting electives that would actually enrich my education and enhance my resume, instead of, e.g., Graduate Writing.
If you take an AP class and not do well on the test, the worst that happens is that your ego takes a bit of a beating and maybe your GPA takes a minor hit[*]. If you take the class -- or hell, skip the class, I took two AP exams cold -- and pass the test, you actually have something that makes your college application look better, better prepares you to do college work, and maybe saves you over a grand. If 35% of people of one's race manage to pull this off, YOU HAVE A ONE IN THREE CHANCE OF WINNING $1k+ OFF OF COLLEGE TUITION, GOOD LORD DO THIS.
[* I don't know how prevalent this is, but at my second HS, AP classes were graded 2-5 instead of 1-4 precisely to compensate for that. I had a classmate graduating with a 4.5; she was in my shop class, and opted to take it pass/fail, because even if she got a perfect grade in it, it would reduce her GPA.]