First Tuesdays

An estimated 3.3 million young men and women will leave high school in June with - or without - a diploma. The speed with which they secure steady employment or a seat in another classroom differs markedly by race. Black high school graduates, for instance, will take 20 percent longer than their white counterparts to land a job lasting six or more months, according to forthcoming research from the Urban Institute.

Imagine a high school that spends $328 per student for math courses and $1,348 per cheerleader for cheerleading activities. Or a school where the average per-student cost of offering ceramics was $1,608; cosmetology, $1,997; and such core subjects as science, $739. These schools are not anomalies. Marguerite Roza and colleagues at the Center on Reinventing Public Education regularly found a much greater per-pupil investment in sports and electives than in core subjects. They also found -- in Austin, Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, Cincinnati, Houston, Seattle, and many other cities -- that teacher salaries average $1,000 to $5,000 higher in schools with fewer poor students than in the highest-poverty schools in the same district.

The nation's loss of over 6.4 million jobs between 2007 and late 2009 coincided with a 12 percent drop in home values and a dramatic increase in foreclosures. But the recession's pain has not been uniformly distributed. Why are some metro areas in the grip of "double trouble"—big declines in house prices coupled with severe job losses—while others are coming through the downturn relatively unscathed, with flat house prices and much smaller job losses (or even small employment gains)? This forum will dig beneath the data—found on MetroTrends, a new Urban Institute resource about conditions in the nation's metropolitan regions—and discuss what the public and private sectors should (or shouldn't) do to lift population centers out of their doldrums.

The numbers are, simply put, mind numbing. The federal deficit will total $6.7 trillion this decade under current law, the Congressional Budget Office projects. The figure will nearly double to $12.7 trillion if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are not allowed to sunset as scheduled in 2011 and Congress, once again, "patches" the alternative minimum tax.

Much of the contentious immigration debate has revolved around the country’s estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants. Largely invisible have been the 5.5 million children with unauthorized parents. Almost three-quarters of these children are U.S.-born citizens.

As the recession sends more and more people into the ranks of the impoverished and vulnerable, the public is left to ponder the inadequate support available when hard times hit and why help comes from a patchwork of programs instead of from an integrated system. Panelists will discuss the oftentimes incongruous values, attitudes, and philosophies that drive the intricate U.S. safety net and the difficulties in providing effective services to people with complex needs.

While economic opportunity and upward mobility form the core of the American dream, we know too well that many Americans don’t move up the income ladder, and recent trends in wages warn of serious obstacles ahead. Urban Institute research, supported by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, also shows that most government spending doesn’t advance a mobility agenda.

Community organizations, local governments, foundations, businesses, and social service providers rely on residential stability in their efforts to alleviate the plight of impoverished families in hard-pressed neighborhoods. While trading up to a better neighborhood may improve an individual family’s circumstances, frequent churning of residents may have negative effects for communities. A forthcoming examination of evidence from the Making Connections initiative, a decade-long effort sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to improve neighborhoods in 10 cities, will be the starting point for a debate about the intersection of poverty, neighborhood quality, and economic advancement.

The Congressional Budget Office's most recent long-term budget outlook declared that "current policies are unsustainable." Translation, according to tax scholar Len Burman: if we don’t change course, we're doomed. America will celebrate its tricentennial with IOUs 6.5 times its total economic output if current policies continue, CBO says, and that is under implausibly optimistic assumptions about the economy.

Health reform - the "let’s do lunch" of public policy - is on everyone's lips in Washington. But like many long-postponed, obligatory meals, who is going to pick up the check? Capping the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) - an idea loved and loathed by politicians from both parties - is on the table to pay for subsidies for the uninsured and to moderate companies’ incentives to offer high-end coverage.