Although a few political analysts have been focusing on the white working class for years, it is only in response to the rise of Donald Trump that this large group of Americans has begun to receive the attention it deserves. Now, thanks to a comprehensive survey that the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) undertook in collaboration with the Brookings Institution, we can speak with some precision about the distinctive attitudes and preferences of these voters.

There are different ways of defining the white working class. Along with several other survey researchers, PRRI defines this group as non-Hispanic whites with less than a college degree, with the additional qualification of being paid by the hour or by the job rather than receiving a salary. No definition is perfect, but this one works pretty well. Most working-class whites have incomes below $50,000; most whites with BAs or more have incomes above $50,000. Most working-class whites rate their financial circumstances as only fair or poor; most college educated whites rate their financial circumstances as good or excellent. Fifty-four percent of working-class whites think of themselves as working class or lower class, compared to only 18 percent of better-educated whites.

The PRRI/Brookings study finds that in many respects, these two groups of white voters see the world very differently. For example, 54 percent of college-educated whites think that America’s culture and way of life have improved since the 1950s; 62 percent of white working-class Americans think that it has changed for the worse. Sixty-eight percent of working-class whites, but only 47 percent of college-educated whites, believe that the American way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences. Sixty-six percent of working-class whites, but only 43 percent of college-educated whites, say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In a similar vein, 62 percent of working-class whites believe that discrimination against Christians has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups, a proposition only 38 percent of college educated whites endorse.

This brings us to the issue of immigration. By a margin of 52 to 35 percent, college-educated whites affirm that today’s immigrants strengthen our country through their talent and hard work. Conversely, 61 percent of white working-class voters say that immigrants weaken us by taking jobs, housing, and health care. Seventy-one percent of working-class whites think that immigrants mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages, a belief endorsed by only 44 percent of college-educated whites. Fifty-nine percent of working-class whites believe that we should make a serious effort to deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries; only 33 percent of college-educated whites agree. Fifty-five percent of working-class whites think we should build a wall along our border with Mexico, while 61 percent of whites with BAs or more think we should not. Majorities of working-class whites believe that we should make the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States illegal and temporarily ban the entrance of non-American Muslims into our country; about two-thirds of college-educated whites oppose each of these proposals.

Opinions on trade follow a similar pattern. By a narrow margin of 48 to 46 percent, college-educated whites endorse the view that trade agreements are mostly helpful to the United States because they open up overseas markets while 62 percent of working-class whites believe that they are harmful because they send jobs overseas and drive down wages.

It is understandable that working-class whites are more worried that they or their families will become victims of violent crime than are whites with more education. After all, they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder and criminal behavior. It is harder to explain why they are also much more likely to believe that their families will fall victim to terrorism. To be sure, homegrown terrorist massacres of recent years have driven home the message that it can happen to anyone, anywhere. We still need to explain why working-class whites have interpreted this message in more personal terms.

The most plausible interpretation is that working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability. On every front—economic, cultural, personal security—they feel threatened and beleaguered. They seek protection against all the forces they perceive as hostile to their cherished way of life—foreign people, foreign goods, foreign ideas, aided and abetted by a government they no longer believe cares about them. Perhaps this is why fully 60 percent of them are willing to endorse a proposition that in previous periods would be viewed as extreme: the country has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is prepared to break so rules if that is what it takes to set things right.

In new Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center analysis of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) take-up at the county level, Benjamin Harris, a fellow in Economic Studies, and Research Assistant Lucie Parker use zip-code level data on taxes and demographics to take a "fresh look" at the EITC. "Since its creation in 1975," they write, "the Earned Income Tax Credit has played a major role in the U.S. safety net." Earlier this year, Harris presented EITC take-up using IRS data from 2007. Compare that to the new list of ten counties with the highest share of EITC recipients below:

"The regional variation EITC claiming is stark," Harris and Parker conclude. "The counties with the highest share of taxpayers claiming the EITC are overwhelming located in the Southeast. ... [O]ver half the taxpayers in a large share of counties in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi claim the EITC. With few exceptions, almost all counties with high EITC claiming are located in the South. Relative to the South, the Northeast and the Midwest have much lower claiming rates. Moreover, average EITC benefit closely follows the pattern for share of taxpayers taking up the credit: in counties where more taxpayers claim the credit, the credit is larger on the whole."

Visit this U.S. map interactive to get county level data on share of taxpayers claiming EITC as well as average EITC amount, in dollars, per county.

In his state of the union and his budget, the President spoke of the stagnation of middle class incomes. Whatever growth we have had has not been broadly shared.  More than 78% of the growth in GDP between 1979 and 2013 has gone to the top one percent. Even Republicans are beginning to worry about this issue although they have yet to develop concrete proposals to address it.

Slow Growth in Incomes

Middle class incomes were growing slowly before the recession and have actually declined over the past decade.   In addition, according to the New York Times, the proportion of the population with incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 in inflation-adjusted terms fell from 53% in 1967 to 43% in 2013.  During the first four decades this was primarily because more people were moving into higher income groups, but more recently it was because they have moved down the ladder, not up.  One can define the middle class in many different ways or torture the data in various ways, but there is plenty of evidence that we have a problem.

What to Do

The most promising approach is what I call “the second earner solution.”  For many decades now, the labor force participation rate of prime age men has been falling while that of women has been rising.  The entry of so many women into the labor force was the major force propelling whatever growth in middle class incomes occurred up until about 2000. That growth in women’s work has now levelled off.  Getting it back on an upward track would do more than any policy I can think of to help the middle class.

Imagine a household with one earner making the average wage of today’s worker and spending full-time in the job market.  That household will have an income of around $34,000. But if he (or she) has a spouse making a similar amount, the household’s income will double to $68,000. That is why the President’s focus on a second-earner credit of $500, a tripling of the child care tax credit, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and providing paid leave are so important. These policies are all pro-work and research shows they would increase employment.

No Marriage = No Second Earner

One problem, of course, is that fewer and fewer households contain two potential workers.  So it would also help to bring back marriage or at least its first cousin, a stable cohabiting relationship.  My ideas on this front are spelled out in my new book, Generation Unbound. In a nutshell, we need to empower women to not have children before they have found a committed partner with whom to raise children in a stable, two-parent family. Whatever the other benefits of two parents, they have twice as much time and potentially twice as much income.    

Other Needed Responses

Shouldn’t we also worry about the wages or the employment of men?  Of course.  But an increase in, say, the minimum wage or a better collective bargaining environment or more job training will have far smaller effects than “the second earner solution.”  In addition, the decline in male employment is related to still more difficult problems such as high rates of incarceration and the failure of men to take advantage of postsecondary education as much as women have. 

Still the two-earner solution should not be pursued in isolation. In the short-term, a stronger recovery from the recession is needed and in the longer-term, more effective investments in education, research, infrastructure, and in labor market institutions that produce more widely-shared growth, as argued by the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity. But do we really expect families to wait for these long-term policies to pay off?  It could be decades. 

In the meantime, the President’s proposals to make work more appealing to existing or potential second earners deserves more attention.  

Each year millions of low- to moderate-income Americans supplement their income by claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) during tax season. Last year, 1 in 5 taxpayers claimed the credit and earned an average of nearly $2,400.

This tax season, some of those eligible for the EITC may also be able to claim, for the first time, a new credit created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to offset the cost of purchasing health insurance for lower-income Americans. It’s called the ACA premium tax credit.

To qualify for the ACA premium tax credit, filers need first to have an annual income that falls between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line (between $11,670 and $46,680 for a single-person household in 2014). Beyond the income requirements, however, filers must also be ineligible for other public or private insurance options like Medicaid or an employer-provided plan.

Why the tax credit overlap matters

Identifying the Americans eligible for both credits is important because it sheds light on how many still need help paying for health insurance even after the ACA extended coverage options.

In a recent study of the EITC-eligible population, Elizabeth Kneebone, Jane R. Williams, and Natalie Holmes estimated what share of EITC-eligible filers might also qualify for the ACA premium tax credit this year.

Below, see a list of the top 10 states with the largest overlap between filers eligible for the EITC and those estimated to qualify for the ACA premium tax credit.* Notably, none of these states has expanded Medicaid coverage to low-income families after the passage of the ACA.

Nationally, an estimated 7.5 million people (4.2 million “tax units”) are likely eligible for both the ACA premium tax credit and the EITC. Nearly 1.3 million of those tax units are from the following ten states.

1. Florida

Overlap: 22.5 percent / 405,924 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

2. Texas

Overlap: 21.4 percent / 513,061 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

3. South Dakota

Overlap: 20.5 percent / 15,124 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

4. Georgia

Overlap: 19.8 percent / 186,020 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

5. Louisiana

Overlap: 19.6 percent / 86,512 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

6. Idaho

Overlap: 19.3 percent / 28,855 tax units
State-based exchange? Yes Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

7. Montana

Overlap: 18.9 percent / 18,138 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

8. Wyoming

Overlap: 18.4 percent / 7,276 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

9. Utah

Overlap: 18.1 percent / 42,284
State-based exchange? No (Utah runs a small businesses marketplace, but it relies on the federal government for an individual marketplace) Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

10. Oklahoma

Overlap: 18.0% / 63,045 tax units
State-based exchange? No Expanded Medicaid coverage? No

* For the purposes of this list, we measured the overlap in “tax units,” not people. One tax unit equals a single tax return. If a family of four together qualifies for the ACA premium tax credit, they would be counted as one tax unit, not four, since they filed jointly with one tax return.

America is becoming a more class-stratified society, contrary to the nation’s self-image as a socially dynamic meritocracy. In particular, the barriers are hardening between the upper middle class and the majority below them. As New York Times contributor Tom Edsall writes (“How the Other Fifth Lives"), “The self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is…creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.”

This separation of the upper middle class by income, wealth, occupation and neighborhood has created a social distance between those of us who have been prospering in recent decades, and those who are feeling left behind, angry and resentful, and more like to vote for To-Hell-With-Them-All populist politicians. As I told Charles Homans, also writing on class for the Times, “The upper middle class are surprised by the rise of Trump. The actual middle class is surprised we’re surprised.”

Edsall cited my earlier essay, “The Dangerous Separation of the American Upper Middle Class,” and quoted me as follows:

“The top fifth have been prospering while the majority lags behind. But the separation is not just economic. Gaps are growing on a whole range of dimensions, including family structure, education, lifestyle, and geography. Indeed, these dimensions of advantage appear to be clustering more tightly together, each thereby amplifying the effect of the other.”

Just as certain disadvantages can cluster together, creating multidimensional poverty, so advantages may cluster together, resulting in multidimensional advantage. Is there more clustering of advantages at the top of American society? Yes.

The top fifth of households by income obviously have more money than the 80 percent below them. What about other advantages? Let’s take just three: marriage, employment and education. (See Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff’s paper on the geographical segregation of affluence). You would expect people in top-quintile households to be more likely to have a graduate or professional degree; to have two earners in the family; and perhaps also to be married. You would be right.

The difference in the proportion of the top fifth with each of these other advantages compared to the bottom four-fifths is around 20 percentage points (we restrict our analysis to those aged 40-50). For example, in 1979 a forty-something year-old in the top income quintile was about 6 percentage points more likely to be married that one in the bottom 80 percent. Now the gap is 17 percentage points.

This is hardly surprising. More education and more earners in the home will increase the chances that you make it into the top quintile for your age cohort. But it is noteworthy that the extent to which these different dimensions of advantage overlap has been steadily increasing over time. Along with the increased association between top-quintile income and marriage, the differentials for graduate education and two-earner status have each increased by around 10 percentage points between 1979 and 2014.

Particularly striking is the increase in the “marriage gap” between the upper middle class and the rest. This is an important factor in the transmission of class status to the next generation, since married couples are more likely to stay together, and stable families predict better outcomes for children.

Similarly, the adults with high levels of education are likely to raise children who end up towards the top of the educational distribution. In fact, the intergenerational persistence of education is even greater than of income, as some of our earlier work shows (“The Inheritance of Education”). Almost half (46 percent) the children of parents in the top education quintile end up in the top education quintile themselves. Three in four (76 percent) stayed in one of the top two education quintiles.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Ernest Hemingway’s later response was: “Yes, they have more money.” Today what separates the rich from the rest is not just money, but family life, education, zip code, and so on. This is a point made by a number of scholars, including recently both Robert Putnam in Our Kids and Charles Murray in Coming Apart. Our empirical analysis confirms that different kinds of advantage are increasingly overlapping with each other.

The framing of inequality in terms of social class used to feel distinctly un-American. No longer.

Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in Real Clear Markets.

The BBC is doing something I think is awesome but many of my American friends think is awful: gathering information of the social class background of their recruits. The move is part of an aggressive strategy to promote more diversity both on the airwaves and behind the scenes at the public service broadcaster. The civil service has been moving in the same direction.

Some questions arise:

Race and gender are relatively straightforward characteristics, notwithstanding the recent nonsense over restrooms for transgender people. Defining social class is a much more complex business. Many variables could be included, including occupational status, income or wealth, as well as education or cultural capital.

But the goal here is simply to find a measure that is good enough for the purposes at hand. The BBC asks whether either of your parents has a college degree. This is not a bad approach. Education is an important dimension of social class in itself, and strongly related to others. The BBC is also going to ask whether at any point in childhood the person in question was eligible for free school meals. (The questions are voluntary.)

Such proxy measures are narrow measures of class. But they are better than the current ones, since there are none.

Diversity can benefit organizations by widening the range of viewpoints and perspectives. A mixed team is a better team. Class background may be as important here as other factors.

Take two people of a different race or gender, each raised by wealthy East Coast parents, attending a top-drawer private high school, and graduating from an Ivy League college. They may not be as different from each other as they are from a white man raised by a poor single mother in a small Appalachian town.

The BBC is historically an upper middle class institution: “BBC English” meant a posh accent. The British professions in general have in fact tended to draw from a narrow talent pool. Around 7 percent of students attend private high schools (or “public schools”, in British). But they are strongly over-represented in the top professions, including journalism:

From a broader societal perspective, the persistence of class inequality is of course bad news for upward social mobility.

Simply raising awareness of a potential class bias in hiring and promotions could be valuable. Reforming institutional practices—for example the allocation of internship opportunities—may also help. Broadening the search for talent beyond the marquee brands of higher education is likely to diversify the class background of recruits; the BBC is also moving to both name-blind and institution-blind applications. At the same time, greater support for less traditional hires may help them to succeed.

The U.S. sees itself as a classless society, one reason Americans recoil against monitoring social class. It is an understandable instinct. But the perpetuation of class status is now at least as big a problem in the U.S. as in the UK. Even as white privilege and male privilege have diminished, class privilege has survived. A little more class-consciousness might not hurt.

Politicians and scholars often lament the persistence of poverty across generations. But affluence persists, too. In the U.S. especially, the top of the income distribution is just as “sticky”, in intergenerational terms, as the bottom. The American upper middle class is reproducing itself quite effectively.

Class reproduction is of course driven by a whole range of factors, from parenting and family structure through formal education, informal learning, the use of social networks, and so on. Some are unfair: playing the legacy card in college admissions, securing internships via closed social networks, zoning out lower-income families from our neighborhoods and school catchment areas. (These “opportunity hoarding” mechanisms are the focus of my forthcoming book, Dream Hoarders.)

It is natural and laudable for parents to want their children to prosper. It is also understandable that they’ll use the resources and means at their disposal to try to reduce the chances of their children being downwardly mobile. They are likely to try even harder if the drop looks big, in economic terms.

There is a significant earnings gap between those at the top and those in the middle. But this gap is much bigger in the U.S. than in other nations, and is getting bigger over time:

The cost of falling reflects the particular way in which income inequality has risen in recent years: namely, at the top of the distribution. The relationship between income inequality and intergenerational mobility is a much-disputed one, as regular readers of this blog know well. Overall, the evidence for a “Great Gatsby Curve” is quite weak.

But at the top of the distribution, there could be some incentive effects linking inequality and immobility. As the income gap has widened at the top, the consequences of falling out of the upper middle class have worsened. So the incentives of the upper middle class to keep themselves, and their children, up at the top have strengthened. It looks like a long drop, because it is.

Upper middle class Americans do seem worried. In 2011, while around half of American adults making less than $30,000 per year agreed that “today’s children will lead a better life than their parents,” only 37 percent of those making $75,000 or more were as optimistic.

The greater spending of upper middle class parents on “enrichment activities” is well known; recent evidence suggests the Great Recession did nothing to reduce it. American upper middle class parents are desperate to secure their children a high position on the earnings ladder. This makes sense, given the consequences of downward mobility for their economic fortunes. Inequality incentivizes opportunity hoarding, which reduces social mobility. Time, perhaps, to lower the stakes a little?

Editor’s Note: This blog post is one in a series of posts in which guest bloggers respond to the Brookings paper, “The potential and limitations of impact bonds: Lessons from the first five years of experience worldwide.”

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are one of a number of new “Payment by Results” financing mechanisms available for social services. In a SIB, private investors provide upfront capital for a social service, and government pays investors based on the outcomes of the service. If the intervention does not achieve outcomes, the government does not pay investors at all. The provision of upfront capital differentiates SIBs from other Payment by Results contracts.

Development Impact Bonds (DIBs) are a variation of SIBs, where the outcome funder is a third party, such as a foundation or development assistance agency, rather than the government. To date, 47 SIBs and one DIB have been implemented in the sectors of social welfare (21), employment (17), criminal recidivism (4), education (4), and health (2).

In a recent Brookings study, drawing from interviews with stakeholders in each of the 38 SIBs contracted as of March 1, 2015, we evaluate 10 common claims of the impact bond literature to date, so far made up of published thought-pieces and interview-based reports.

Figure 1. Common claims about Social Impact Bonds

Source:  The Potential and Limitations of Impact Bonds: Lessons Learned from the First Five Years of Experience Worldwide, Brookings Institution, 2015.

Of the 10 common claims about impact bonds, we found five areas where the SIB mechanism had a demonstrable positive effect on service provision:

1. Focus on outcomes. We found a significant shift in the focus of both government and service providers when it came to contracting and providing social services. Outcomes became the primary consideration in these contracts in which the repayment of the investment depended on achievement of those outcomes. Given that outcomes are the pivotal and defining piece of a SIB contract, it is unsurprising that many of those interviewed in the course of our research emphasized their importance, though we did find that this represented a more significant transformation in culture than expected.
2. Build a culture of monitoring and evaluation. The outcome-based contract necessitates the collection of data on outcomes, which helps build a culture of monitoring and evaluation in provider organizations and government. We found that the SIB is beginning to help solve longstanding problems in systemic data collection in multiple instances. In turn, government evaluation of outcomes and obligation to pay only for successful outcomes provides transparency and value for taxpayers. However, it is too soon to tell whether the monitoring and evaluation systems will remain in place after the SIB contracts conclude.
3. Drive performance management. The involvement of the investors and intermediaries in management of the service performance is a key component of SIBs. These private sector organizations often have stronger background in performance management and bring a valuable perspective to the social service sector. However, on average we find limited evidence that the service providers in SIBs to date have been able to significantly adjust their programs mid-contract in the case of poor outcomes, despite SIB proponents claiming this is one of the mechanism’s greatest merits.
4. Foster collaboration. In addition to collaboration between the for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors, we also find evidence of gridlock-breaking collaboration across government agencies, levels of government, and political parties due to SIB contracts. This was noted to be one of the most important aspects of SIBs but also one of the most challenging.
5. Invest in prevention. External, upfront capital for services allows government to invest in preventive programs that greatly reduce spending in the future, such as early childhood development programs that reduce remedial education, crime, and unemployment. We found that all but one of the 38 SIBs were issued for preventive programs. Going forward, SIBs will not necessarily need to be tied to cash savings for government, but could simply be used as a method to finance programs that achieve desired social outcomes. 

Where do SIBs currently fall short?

For the five remaining claims about SIBs, we found less evidence of impact.

1.  Achieve scale. Of the 38 impact bonds contracted as of March 1, 2015, 25 served less than 1,000 beneficiaries. The largest impact bond, the SIB to reduce criminal recidivism at Rikers Island Prison in New York City, aimed to reach up to 10,000 individuals, but was terminated a year early this July because it did not meet target outcomes. The smallest SIB supports 22 homeless children and their mothers in the city of Saskatoon in Canada. These numbers are nowhere near the scale of the toughest problems facing the globe, where, for example, 59 million children are out of school. However, since March of 2015, two larger SIBs have been contracted, which may be an indication of increasing confidence in the mechanism. The Ways to Wellness SIB in the U.K. aims to improve long-term health conditions of over 11,000 beneficiaries and the first DIB launched plans to improve enrollment and learning outcomes of nearly 20,000 schoolchildren in Rajasthan, India. Further, the impact bond fund model used in the U.K. for 21 SIBs—where teams of service providers, intermediaries, and investors bid for SIB contracts based on a rate card of maximum payments per outcome government is willing to make—could be used to reach greater scale by contracting multiple SIBs at once. The largest of the impact bond funds, the Innovation Fund, reaches over 16,000 beneficiaries across 10 SIBs.
2. Foster innovation in delivery, and 
3. Reduce risk for government. SIBs vary in the degree of innovation and risk to investors—SIBs based on more innovative programs pose a greater risk to investors and may have higher investment protection or greater potential returns to balance the risk. In our study we found that very few of the programs financed by SIBs were truly innovative in that they had never been tested before, but that many were innovative in that they applied interventions in new settings or in new combinations. The literature claims that SIBs reduce the risk to government of funding an innovative service (government pays nothing if outcomes aren’t achieved), but as of March of this year it did not seem that the programs were particularly risky. The SIB in Rikers Island Prison was one of the most innovative and risky, and the early termination of the deal was an important demonstration of the reduction in risk for government. The New York City Department of Correction did not pay anything in this case; instead the investor and foundation backing the investment paid for the program.
4. Crowd-in private funding. Our research also shows mixed evidence on the power of impact bonds to crowd-in private funding, the fourth claim with unclear results. The literature up until now has claimed that impact bonds crowd-in private funding for social services by increasing the amount of money from traditional funding sources and bringing in new money from nontraditional sources. There is some evidence that traditional service funders, such as foundations, are increasing their contributions because of the opportunity to earn back what would otherwise have been a donation. Many of the current investors in impact bonds, Goldman Sachs for example, are indeed new actors in the space and their increased awareness of social service provision may be a benefit in and of itself. However, if a program is successful, government ultimately pays for the program. In this case, investors are solving a liquidity problem for government by providing upfront capital and not actually providing new money. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that paying only for proven outcomes has motivated the public sector to spend more on social services and that the external upfront capital has allowed government to shift spending from curative to preventive programs. Further, most programs thus far have been designed such that savings to the public sector are greater than payments to investors, resulting in a net increase in available public sector funds.
5. Sustain impact. Finally, five years since the first impact bond, we have yet to see whether impact bonds will lead to sustained impact on the lives of beneficiaries beyond the impact bond contract duration. The existing literature states that impact bonds could lead to sustained impact by demonstrating to government that a sector or intervention type is worth funding or by improving the quality of programs by instilling a culture of outcome achievement, monitoring, and evaluation. However, the success of impact bonds depends on whether new efforts to streamline the contract development stage come to fruition and whether incentives for all parties are closely scrutinized.

The optimal financing mechanism for a social service will differ across issue area and local context, and we look forward to conducting more research in the field on the suitable characteristics for each tool.

This post continues a series begun in 2014 on implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  The first installment introduced an analytical scheme investigating CCSS implementation along four dimensions:  curriculum, instruction, assessment, and accountability.  Three posts focused on curriculum.  This post turns to instruction.  Although the impact of CCSS on how teachers teach is discussed, the post is also concerned with the inverse relationship, how decisions that teachers make about instruction shape the implementation of CCSS.

A couple of points before we get started.  The previous posts on curriculum led readers from the upper levels of the educational system—federal and state policies—down to curricular decisions made “in the trenches”—in districts, schools, and classrooms.  Standards emanate from the top of the system and are produced by politicians, policymakers, and experts.  Curricular decisions are shared across education’s systemic levels.  Instruction, on the other hand, is dominated by practitioners.  The daily decisions that teachers make about how to teach under CCSS—and not the idealizations of instruction embraced by upper-level authorities—will ultimately determine what “CCSS instruction” really means.

I ended the last post on CCSS by describing how curriculum and instruction can be so closely intertwined that the boundary between them is blurred.  Sometimes stating a precise curricular objective dictates, or at least constrains, the range of instructional strategies that teachers may consider.  That post focused on English-Language Arts.  The current post focuses on mathematics in the elementary grades and describes examples of how CCSS will shape math instruction.  As a former elementary school teacher, I offer my own personal opinion on these effects.

Certain aspects of the Common Core, when implemented, are likely to have a positive impact on the instruction of mathematics. For example, Common Core stresses that students recognize fractions as numbers on a number line.  The emphasis begins in third grade:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.2.A
Represent a fraction 1/b on a number line diagram by defining the interval from 0 to 1 as the whole and partitioning it into b equal parts. Recognize that each part has size 1/b and that the endpoint of the part based at 0 locates the number 1/b on the number line.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.2.B
Represent a fraction a/b on a number line diagram by marking off a lengths 1/b from 0. Recognize that the resulting interval has size a/b and that its endpoint locates the number a/b on the number line.

When I first read this section of the Common Core standards, I stood up and cheered.  Berkeley mathematician Hung-Hsi Wu has been working with teachers for years to get them to understand the importance of using number lines in teaching fractions.^[1] American textbooks rely heavily on part-whole representations to introduce fractions.  Typically, students see pizzas and apples and other objects—typically other foods or money—that are divided up into equal parts.  Such models are limited.  They work okay with simple addition and subtraction.  Common denominators present a bit of a challenge, but ½ pizza can be shown to be also 2/4, a half dollar equal to two quarters, and so on. 

With multiplication and division, all the little tricks students learned with whole number arithmetic suddenly go haywire.  Students are accustomed to the fact that multiplying two whole numbers yields a product that is larger than either number being multiplied: 4 X 5 = 20 and 20 is larger than both 4 and 5.^[2]  How in the world can ¼ X 1/5 = 1/20, a number much smaller than either 1/4or 1/5?  The part-whole representation has convinced many students that fractions are not numbers.  Instead, they are seen as strange expressions comprising two numbers with a small horizontal bar separating them. 

I taught sixth grade but occasionally visited my colleagues’ classes in the lower grades.  I recall one exchange with second or third graders that went something like this:

“Give me a number between seven and nine.”  Giggles. 

“Eight!” they shouted. 

“Give me a number between two and three.”  Giggles.

“There isn’t one!” they shouted. 

“Really?” I’d ask and draw a number line.  After spending some time placing whole numbers on the number line, I’d observe,  “There’s a lot of space between two and three.  Is it just empty?” 

Silence.  Puzzled little faces.  Then a quiet voice.  “Two and a half?”

You have no idea how many children do not make the transition to understanding fractions as numbers and because of stumbling at this crucial stage, spend the rest of their careers as students of mathematics convinced that fractions are an impenetrable mystery.   And  that’s not true of just students.  California adopted a test for teachers in the 1980s, the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST).  Beginning in 1982, even teachers already in the classroom had to pass it.   I made a nice after-school and summer income tutoring colleagues who didn’t know fractions from Fermat’s Last Theorem.  To be fair, primary teachers, teaching kindergarten or grades 1-2, would not teach fractions as part of their math curriculum and probably hadn’t worked with a fraction in decades.  So they are no different than non-literary types who think Hamlet is just a play about a young guy who can’t make up his mind, has a weird relationship with his mother, and winds up dying at the end.

Division is the most difficult operation to grasp for those arrested at the part-whole stage of understanding fractions.  A problem that Liping Ma posed to teachers is now legendary.^[3]

She asked small groups of American and Chinese elementary teachers to divide 1 ¾ by ½ and to create a word problem that illustrates the calculation.  All 72 Chinese teachers gave the correct answer and 65 developed an appropriate word problem.  Only nine of the 23 American teachers solved the problem correctly.  A single American teacher was able to devise an appropriate word problem.  Granted, the American sample was not selected to be representative of American teachers as a whole, but the stark findings of the exercise did not shock anyone who has worked closely with elementary teachers in the U.S.  They are often weak at math.  Many of the teachers in Ma’s study had vague ideas of an “invert and multiply” rule but lacked a conceptual understanding of why it worked.

A linguistic convention exacerbates the difficulty.  Students may cling to the mistaken notion that “dividing in half” means “dividing by one-half.”  It does not.  Dividing in half means dividing by two.  The number line can help clear up such confusion.  Consider a basic, whole-number division problem for which third graders will already know the answer:  8 divided by 2 equals 4.   It is evident that a segment 8 units in length (measured from 0 to 8) is divided by a segment 2 units in length (measured from 0 to 2) exactly 4 times.  Modeling 12 divided by 2 and other basic facts with 2 as a divisor will convince students that whole number division works quite well on a number line. 

Now consider the number ½ as a divisor.  It will become clear to students that 8 divided by ½ equals 16, and they can illustrate that fact on a number line by showing how a segment ½ units in length divides a segment 8 units in length exactly 16 times; it divides a segment 12 units in length 24 times; and so on.  Students will be relieved to discover that on a number line division with fractions works the same as division with whole numbers.

Now, let’s return to Liping Ma’s problem: 1 ¾ divided by ½.   This problem would not be presented in third grade, but it might be in fifth or sixth grades.  Students who have been working with fractions on a number line for two or three years will have little trouble solving it.  They will see that the problem simply asks them to divide a line segment of 1 3/4 units by a segment of ½ units.  The answer is 3 ½ .  Some students might estimate that the solution is between 3 and 4 because 1 ¾ lies between 1 ½ and 2, which on the number line are the points at which the ½ unit segment, laid end on end, falls exactly three and four times.  Other students will have learned about reciprocals and that multiplication and division are inverse operations.  They will immediately grasp that dividing by ½ is the same as multiplying by 2—and since 1 ¾ x 2 = 3 ½, that is the answer.  Creating a word problem involving string or rope or some other linearly measured object is also surely within their grasp.

I applaud the CCSS for introducing number lines and fractions in third grade.  I believe it will instill in children an important idea: fractions are numbers.  That foundational understanding will aid them as they work with more abstract representations of fractions in later grades.   Fractions are a monumental barrier for kids who struggle with math, so the significance of this contribution should not be underestimated.

I mentioned above that instruction and curriculum are often intertwined.  I began this series of posts by defining curriculum as the “stuff” of learning—the content of what is taught in school, especially as embodied in the materials used in instruction.  Instruction refers to the “how” of teaching—how teachers organize, present, and explain those materials.  It’s each teacher’s repertoire of instructional strategies and techniques that differentiates one teacher from another even as they teach the same content.  Choosing to use a number line to teach fractions is obviously an instructional decision, but it also involves curriculum.  The number line is mathematical content, not just a teaching tool.

Guiding third grade teachers towards using a number line does not guarantee effective instruction.  In fact, it is reasonable to expect variation in how teachers will implement the CCSS standards listed above.  A small body of research exists to guide practice. One of the best resources for teachers to consult is a practice guide published by the What Works Clearinghouse: Developing Effective Fractions Instruction for Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade (see full disclosure below).^[4]  The guide recommends the use of number lines as its second recommendation, but it also states that the evidence supporting the effectiveness of number lines in teaching fractions is inferred from studies involving whole numbers and decimals.  We need much more research on how and when number lines should be used in teaching fractions.

Professor Wu states the following, “The shift of emphasis from models of a fraction in the initial stage to an almost exclusive model of a fraction as a point on the number line can be done gradually and gracefully beginning somewhere in grade four. This shift is implicit in the Common Core Standards.”^[5]  I agree, but the shift is also subtle.  CCSS standards include the use of other representations—fraction strips, fraction bars, rectangles (which are excellent for showing multiplication of two fractions) and other graphical means of modeling fractions.  Some teachers will manage the shift to number lines adroitly—and others will not.  As a consequence, the quality of implementation will vary from classroom to classroom based on the instructional decisions that teachers make.  

The current post has focused on what I believe to be a positive aspect of CCSS based on the implementation of the standards through instruction.  Future posts in the series—covering the “bad” and the “ugly”—will describe aspects of instruction on which I am less optimistic.

The American people deserve to have a federal government that is both responsive and effective. That simply isn’t the case for more than 1 million people who are awaiting the adjudication of their applications for disability benefits from the Social Security Administration.

Washington can and must do better. This gridlock harms applicants either by depriving them of much-needed support or effectively barring them from work while their cases are resolved because having any significant earnings would immediately render them ineligible. This is unacceptable.

Within the next month, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, will launch a study on the issue. More policymakers should follow GAO’s lead. A solution to this problem is long overdue. Here’s how the government can do it.

Congress does not need to look far for an example of how to reduce the SSA backlog. In 2013, the Veterans Administration cut its 600,000-case backlog by 84 percent and reduced waiting times by nearly two-thirds, all within two years. It’s an impressive result.

Why have federal officials dealt aggressively and effectively with that backlog, but not the one at SSA? One obvious answer is that the American people and their representatives recognize a debt to those who served in the armed forces. Allowing veterans to languish while a sluggish bureaucracy dithers is unconscionable. Public and congressional outrage helped light a fire under the bureaucracy. Administrators improved services the old-fashioned way — more staff time. VA employees had to work at least 20 hours overtime per month.

Things are a bit more complicated at SSA, unfortunately. Roughly three quarters of applicants for disability benefits have their cases decided within about nine months and, if denied, decide not to appeal. But those whose applications are denied are legally entitled to ask for a hearing before an administrative law judge — and that is where the real bottleneck begins.

There are too few ALJs to hear the cases. Even in the best of times, maintaining an adequate cadre of ALJs is difficult because normal attrition means that SSA has to hire at least 100 ALJs a year to stay even. When unemployment increases, however, so does the number of applications for disability benefits. After exhausting unemployment benefits, people who believe they are impaired often turn to the disability programs. So, when the Great Recession hit, SSA knew it had to hire many more ALJs. It tried to do so, but SSA cannot act without the help of the Office of Personnel Management, which must provide lists of qualified candidates before agencies can hire them. SSA employs 85 percent of all ALJs and for several years has paid OPM approximately $2 million annually to administer the requisite tests and interviews to establish a register of qualified candidates. Nonetheless, OPM has persistently refused to employ legally trained people to vet ALJ candidates or to update registers. And when SSA sought to ramp up ALJ hiring to cope with the recession challenge, OPM was slow to respond.

In 2009, for example, OPM promised to supply a new register containing names of ALJ candidates. Five years passed before it actually delivered the new list of names. For a time, the number of ALJs deciding cases actually fell. The situation got so bad that the president’s January 2015 budget created a work group headed by the Office of Management and Budget and the Administrative Conference of the United States to try to break the logjam. OPM promised a list for 2015, but insisted it could not change procedures. Not trusting OPM to mend its ways, Congress in October 2015 enacted legislation that explicitly required OPM to administer a new round of tests within the succeeding six months.

These stopgap measures are inadequate to the challenge. Both applicants and taxpayers deserve prompt adjudication of the merits of claims. The million-person backlog and the two-year average waits are bad enough. Many applicants wait far longer. Meanwhile, they are strongly discouraged from working, as anything more than minimal earnings will cause their applications automatically to be denied. Throughout this waiting period, applicants have no means of self-support. Any skills applicants retain atrophy.

The shortage of ALJs is not the only problem. The quality and consistency of adjudication by some ALJs has been called into question. For example, differences in approval rates are so large that differences among applicants cannot plausibly explain them. Some ALJs have processed so many cases that they could not possibly have applied proper standards. In recognition of both problems, SSA has increased oversight and beefed up training. The numbers have improved. But large and troubling variations in workloads and approval rates persist.

For now, political polarization blocks agreement on whether and how to modify eligibility rules and improve incentives to encourage work by those able to work. But there is bipartisan agreement that dragging out the application process benefits no one. While completely eliminating hearing delays is impossible, adequate administrative funding and more, better trained hearing officers would help reduce them. Even if OPM’s past record were better than it is, OPM is now a beleaguered agency, struggling to cope with the fallout from a security breach that jeopardizes the security of the nation and the privacy of millions of current and past federal employees and federal contractors. Mending this breach and establishing new procedures will — and should — be OPM’s top priority.

That’s why, for the sake of everyone concerned, responsibility for screening candidates for administrative law judge positions should be moved, at least temporarily, to another agency, such as the Administrative Conference of the United States. Shortening the period that applicants for disability benefits now spend waiting for a final answer is an achievable goal that can and should be addressed. Our nation’s disabled and its taxpayers deserve better.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Politico.

As the United States and Cuba rebuild formal relations, certain challenging topics remain to be addressed. Among these are outstanding U.S. property claims in Cuba. In this report, Richard E. Feinberg argues that it is in both countries’ interests to tackle this thorny issue expeditiously, and that the trauma of property seizures in the twentieth century could be transformed into an economic opportunity now.

The report looks closely at the nearly 6,000 certified U.S. claims, disaggregating them by corporate and individual, large and small. To settle the U.S. claims, Feinberg suggests a hybrid formula, whereby smaller claimants receive financial compensation while larger corporate claimants can select an “opt-out” option whereby they pursue their claims directly with Cuban authorities, perhaps facilitated by an umbrella bilateral claims resolution committee. In this scenario, the larger corporate claimants (which account for nearly $1.7 billion of the $1.9 billion in total U.S. claims, excluding interest) could select from a menu of business development rights, including vouchers applicable to tax liabilities or equity investments, and preferred acquisition rights. Participating U.S. firms could also agree to inject additional capital and modern technology, to ensure benefits to the Cuban economy.

Though it is often argued that Cuba is too poor to pay some $2 billion of claims, the paper finds that Cuba can in fact manage payments if they are stretched out over a reasonable period of time and exclude interest. The paper also suggests a number of mechanisms whereby the Cuban government could secure funds to pay compensation, including revenues on normalization-related activities.

The Cuban government does not dispute the principle of compensation for properties nationalized in the public interest; the two governments agree on this. Cuba also asserts a set of counter-claim that allege damages from the embargo and other punitive actions against it. But a grand bargain with claims settlement as the centerpiece would require important changes in U.S. sanctions laws and regulations that restrict U.S. investments in Cuba. The United States could also offer to work with Cuba and other creditors to renegotiate Cuba’s outstanding official and commercial debts, taking into account Cuba’s capacity to pay, and allow Cuba to enter the international financial institutions.

Feinberg ultimately argues that both nations should make claims resolution the centerpiece of a grand bargain that would advance the resolution of a number of other remaining points of tension between the two nations. This paves the way for Cuba to embrace an ambitious-forward-looking development strategy and for real, notable progress in normalizing relations with the United States.

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• Reconciling U.S. property claims in Cuba
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