April 28, 2020--The Andrew Cuomo Show

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is having a moment.

New Yorkers I know who for years have not paid any attention whatsoever to the politics of the Empire State are setting kitchen timers to remind them to tune in to his seven-day-a-week Andrew Cuomo Show about the status of coronavirus and what he has encouraged and ordered us to do to reduce the chances that we will catch it and how to seek help if we do.

Unlike someone we know, he is not recommending Lysol enemas. 

That's some of the point--Cuomo is looking good in part because he is not Donald Trump. He is so outperforming the odious president that comparisons can be painful to watch.

Many have become so cynical that they are wondering if Cuomo is mainly interested in positioning himself to scoop up the Democratic presidential nomination this summer if 77-year-old Joe Biden falters. Or, they suspect, Cuomo may already be thinking about 2024 when he will be only 65. 

But even a glance at Cuomo's record reveals he is more than just the latest political heartthrob who gives good press conference. Though that in itself is welcome.

He record of accomplishment, especially when it comes to big and bold infrastructural projects, is more impressive than that of any recent governor as well as any president since Franklin Roosevelt. Yes, that FDR.

Let me list the top five or six--

In the news yesterday there was a report about the L-Line subway in NYC that runs from the hippest part of the new Brooklyn to Union Square Park in Manhattan. The L's tunnel under the East River was badly damaged by super storm Sandy. For seven years the city struggled to come up with the best way to restore it. The ultimate plan included suspending service for three years and was budgeted to cost upwards of a billion dollars.

Cuomo stepped in, claiming that was too long to wait and too much to spend. He offered an alternative plan that he claimed would take 12 months and cost less than a billion.

He was right. Though the governor was mocked by experts who insisted he was overreaching and didn't know what he was talking about, the L Train will be reopened this week, six months ahead of schedule and $100 million under budget.

And then, after languishing unfinished for many decades, the massive project to extend the Second Avenue Subway, Andrew Cuomo got it back on track (pun intended). Relentlessly pressed by him the work was completed, ahead of schedule and again below budget.

Also, there are two massive bridge projects that he pushed to completion--the replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River (now named for his father, former governor, Mario), and in Brooklyn, the replacement of the perpetually traffic-clogged Pulaski Bridge.

Another project that was stalled for decades is the conversion of the 42nd Street post office to a new Penn Station, the nation's busiest railroad terminal. Pressed by the governor, work is finally underway.

Even more remarkable, also talked about for decades, is the replacement of LaGuardia Airport, which then Vice President Joe Biden, not inappropriately, compared to a "third world airport."

To quote Barack Obama, at a time when many wonder if America is any longer capable of doing "big things" in eight years, Andrew Cuomo has demonstrated that with the right leadership we can.

So, if he's running for president, more power to him.  

Mario Cuomo Bridge

April 2, 2020--Cuomo Time

Anyone paying attention knows what Donald Trump did and didn't do to make the COVID-19 pandemic much worse than it would have been if a more competent and compassionate president had been leading the fight to contain it.

We know he sacked most government workers who had expertise about pandemics, claiming they weren't necessary because, grandiosely, he knew all that was needed to take on global epidemics.  

We know that when he could no longer ignore the signs that a pandemic was heading our way he tried to get away with happy talking Americans to distraction, telling then he was on top of things and very soon it would miraculously disappear.

All the while a number of governors, New York's Andrew Cuomo most prominently, were begging for help with supplies, medical equipment, and protective masks and gowns.

To many, Trump was the villain and the governors were adulated, especially Cuomo who has been so visibly on the case that a number of leading Democrats are hoping that a way can be found to nominate him to run against Trump.

I wish that Trump would disappear from the scene later this afternoon. Actually, in half an hour. 

But is it accurate to blame the failed response to the coronavirus to only Trump and his administration?

My view is it's worse than that--there is much more blame to spread around that it even includes governors such as Andrew Cuomo. 

The entire health care system is to blame: presidents, governors, mayors, and especially hospital and health care administrators. Administrators, not the galant staffs.

The federal government, even a competent one, is not exclusively responsible for assuring that hospitals are adequately equipped to take on medical emergencies. 

Do we expect the federal government to be in charge of hospitals' supply of scrubs, face masks, and sterile gloves? Should we expect the central government to make and store enough ventilators to handle everything heath care workers and institutions require to confront an emergency?

There are of course things that the government is best able to do. For example, deploy hospital ships and field hospitals. And perhaps top off emergency supplies when state resources are overwhelmed as they now are.

Isn't it reasonable to expect individual hospitals and state systems to stock at least 50 percent of the supplies and equipment needed to handle a crisis?

Listening to governor Cuomo and his colleagues it sounds as if they see this to be a federal responsibility. That perhaps FEMA should be in charge of it.

This is not the way our health care system is organized. Perhaps it should be. It is not centrally organized and controlled. I suspect Bernie Sanders would make the case that it should be, but to me, when faced with a pandemic, the buck stops a number of places.

April 20, 2018--Trump's End Game

Many of us have been comforted by the belief that even if Robert Mueller is fired and his report gets squelched, even if President Trump pardons 20 or more people, everyone from son-in-law Jared Kushner to Paul Manafort to Michael Flynn and especially his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, all or most of them would still be prosecutable by state attorney generals such as New York's Eric Schneiderman for violating state law because presidential pardons pertain only to federal law.

For example, if Cohen secured a home equity loan from a New York bank, claiming it was to renovate his apartment but then used it to buy Stormy Daniel's silence, he might have committed bank fraud and thus could be pursued by Schneiderman.

Well, it may turn out, not so much.

Just two days ago the New York attorney general asked Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature to pass a new law to cover a potential loophole in the current law that might not allow the state to prosecute anyone who had received a blanket federal pardon by a president. That to do so might be a technical form of double jeopardy.  

A quick analysis of how possible it would be to pass such a law suggests it could be quite unlikely. Though the New York Senate has a slim Democratic majority it is hard to believe that it is solid enough to go along with Schneiderman's request.

And so . . . 

In this circumstance, "and so . . ." is not very comforting.

Also on Wednesday, at his press conference in Florida with Japan's prime minister Abe Trump, Trump was asked if he is going to fire deputy attorney general, Ron Rosenstein, or Robert Mueller. His response, "Well, they're still here."

They are, and more germane, so is he. Trump will continue to be here, he is gambling, even as the circle of protection closes in on him.

Here's how that might work--

Of course he pardons everyone in sight who has been investigated, questioned, deposed, or indicted by Mueller's people. That could include pardoning himself  

Then he fires everyone in sight associated with the Justice Department (Rosenstein, Sessions, Mueller) and in the federal southern district in New York City where the Michael Cohen case now resides.

Then all the Trump-associated lawyers move to shut down the possibility of any state attempting to prosecute him or any of his people via state law, claiming that would constitute double jeopardy.

There of course would be a firestorm of outrage. A "constitutional crisis" (whatever that means). All but Fox News and the right-wing crazies on talk radio would seethe, investigate, and run six-inch high banner headlines decrying these step toward a tyrany. And it would be that. A big step in that direction.

Some would see this scenario to be unlikely. Trump would instantly become the most reviled president in history. His ego is such that he wouldn't willingly take on all the abuse that would be heaped upon him. He'd rather take his chances. This could include impeachment, though he wouldn't be convicted. 

Most constitutional lawyers say that sitting presidents can't be criminally indicted. Couple that with the knowledge that the two presidents who have been impeached (Nixon, though he came close, never was) were not convicted and tossed out of office by the Senate. 

Thus, in Trump's mind there is a case to be made for standing pat. For letting things play out. In fact, Bill Clinton became more popular after being impeached. Andrew Johnson is a whole other story.

Trump has already been more fully exposed (almost literally) then any other president. ("Best sex ever!") He perversely seems to thrive on being humiliated. It's the old story of not caring what's said about you as long as they spell your name correctly and keep the spotlight on you.

So, he could be thinking, ride it out. How long will members of Congress go on cable news and rail about him and what he is bringing down upon the country? More than two weeks? I doubt it.

And so there he might continue to sit. Still with Air Force One available to whisk him back and forth to Mar-a-Lago. And he'll continue to be commander in chief, having his hands on all those terrible toys.

I know this is darkly pessimistic. But if any of it is true we have to face it and deal with it.

So here then is the good news--

THIS SCENARIO IS IN OUR HANDS TO RESIST AND OVERCOME.

By voting first in November and then in 2020. 

It really isn't that difficult. We don't need to take up arms. We just need to vote and get everyone we know to do so.

If the Democrats take over the House, investigations and articles of impeachment will follow quickly. If Democrats gain control of the Senate, though there will not be enough of them even with a few courageous Republicans to convict him--that requires a two-thirds vote--but Trump will be effectively neutered. That will get us safely to 2020 when he will be eminently defeatable. As long as we don't get stupid and nominate someone sure to lose. A list of those to follow one day soon. Hint--it includes Bernie and Warren.

Then the rebuilding will begin. Don't forget, we fought a Civil War that tore the country apart. But we survived and emerged stronger than ever.

Eric Schneiderman

April 12, 2107--Free Tuition

In cost-benefit terms the best social policy investment the United States could make would not be to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure (though we need to do that too) but to deploy that $1.0 trillion to wipe out all outstanding student loans.

There are 44 million who borrowed money to help pay the cost of their college educations and they owe on average about $37,000. Of these borrowers, more than nine million are in default.

Those in default and those struggling to pay back what they owe are trapped in a tsunami of debt and collapsed FICO scores at a time when it is difficult for young people to find employment that pays enough to make repaying manageable. As a result record numbers continue to live with their parents well into their 30s or are reluctant to take chances to switch career paths or start their own businesses. This in turn, in macroeconomic terms, dampens growth and interferes with the traditional churn of the free market.

There are no direct correlates, no lessons from history that we can turn to as models of federal fiscal policy that would be helpful in making the case for this radical suggestion. And, to balance the debate, there are no large-scale examples on the other side of the argument that have credibility.

That is except for those times in America's history when the government stepped in to prop up or even bail out imperiled institutions. We did this in the 1930s during the Great Depression to help rescue the country from a a precarious economy and dramatically, more recently, when we did a version of the same thing to help get us through the Great Recession.

On a less dire note there was the GI Bill that was passed in 1944, toward the end of the Second World War, to provide various sorts of assistance to men and women who volunteered or were drafted to serve in the military.

The GI bill is best known for the support it provided to veterans who enrolled in various forms of education, from vocational training to college and university studies. It paid the full cost of tuition and even offered a monthly subside to help offset living expenses.

It was a massive program: 8.8 million GIs used the educational benefits with a full quarter of them (2.2 million) enrolling in post-secondary education. This not only benefitted those attending but contributed to the dramatic expansion of educational opportunities and facilities that served the nation well in subsequent decades, even after veterans completed their studies. By 1960, only 15 years after the end of the war, a new community college was founded each week, fully 50 a year for over a decade. Now there are 1,200 two-year colleges serving 7.4 million degree-seeking students.

Even those fiscal conservatives who resisted the federal government's involvement in education funding could not help but be impressed. The die was cast--higher education became a virtual right as a result of the GI Bill and its longer-term reverberations. For the first time in world history higher education became fully democratized. Not perfect, but impressive.

And those who study these matters have retrospectively found that the accrued benefits to the nation, in monetary terms, more than offset the direct costs of subsidizing this expansion of educational opportunities. There was unprecedented economic growth between 1947 and 1975 and a significant narrowing of economic inequality. The poorest 20 percent of the population saw their incomes rise at a rate higher than that of any other population cohort.

In other words there was no better engine for economic growth than offsetting the cost of offering these higher-educational opportunities.

To put it simply--better educated people, college graduates especially, earn more over their lifetimes than people with only a high school education and as a result pay more in taxes. Enough in taxes to more than cover the subsidized costs of tuition and even the monthly stipends.

Thus it is exciting to note that the New York State Legislature, pressed by 2020 presidential candidate Governor Andrew Cuomo, just this past week passed a bill to make all public colleges in the state for families earning less than $250,000 a year tuition free.

"Tuition free" is a wonderful oxymoron and one can expect to see over time some of the same economic benefits that were the result of the GI Bill.

Think, then, what a positive jolt to the nation's economy would result from wiping out all accrued student debt. This obviously would be complicated to do (forget for the moment what conservatives would say!) but it is worth thinking about and running the numbers to quantify what a benefit it would be. Increased tax revenues, among other things, would be sufficient to pay for the renewal of much of out failing infrastructure.

Governor Andrew Cuomo

August 20, 2015--Election Update

I can't believe myself--it's fully 15 months before the election and six months before the Iowa caucuses yet I am obsessed with presidential politics. Almost equally interested in what is happening in both parties.

Friends are as well. And it's all because of Donald TRUMP and Hillary Clinton--one on the ascendancy the other soon, in my view, who will be in free fall.

None of this interest has to do with policy matters, either domestic or international, but is because of their larger-than-life personalities and how what three months ago would have been unthinkable is now feeling unexpectedly likely.

For example, I just got a phone call from a family member, a very progressive and politically savvy woman who for eight years has been a passionate supporter of Hillary Clinton's, who left a message saying, "Are you ready for President TRUMP?"

She was not mocking my interest in him (my interest in his remarkable political standing not an interest in hoping he wins the nomination and the election) but is herself coming around to the view, not uncommon among liberals, that TRUMP is trumping the field in some profound way, as opposed to doing so because of his entertainment value--it is because, some say in explanation, August's dog days are hot and everyone is looking to do some escaping.

But he may turn out to be the Republican real-deal because at least half the GOP electorate want a non-politican to win (almost 50% of Republicans polled in the most recent Fox national survey, with their numbers rising, support one of the three non-politicans--Trump 25%, Carson 12%, Fiorina 5%).

Say goodbye to Bush and Walker and Christie and Perry and Santorum and Paul and Cruz and Huckabee and whoever else is running. Half of them will be gone or dead in the water before Iowa. Expect the GOP race to come down to TRUMP, Kasich, and Fiorina. If you want a preview of one of the finalists, keep an eye on whom the Koch Brothers begin to bet.

On the Democrat side, the e-mail controversy continues to fester. Actually get worse. You know the details. How now it appears that hundreds of Clinton's e-mails likely contained classified information (a potential crime) and soon investigators from the FBI no less will have their hands on the 30,000 (30,000!!) Hillary deleted because they were too personal--about her yoga classes, Chelsea's wedding, and the like. Would you be surprised if quite a few of them contained a smoking gun? We'll know by the end of September.

In spite of this, all the Internet and cable news political junkies are saying Clinton's lead is insurmountable and that there is no way that even crazy Democrats are going to have Bernie Sanders representing their party come November 2016. That would guarantee a Republican president. Though they did go for George McGovern and Mike Dukakis.

So that means Joe Biden will soon get into the race and, considering the mediocre competition, be nominated.

A related sidebar--of those Hillary supporters you know, are any enthusiastic about her candidacy, saying that she will make a good much less a great president? Or are they saying they're for her because she's a woman? That having a female president is long overdo? If anyone said a similar thing about, say, Andrew Cuomo--that's it's time we had an Italian-American president--that person would be shouted down. And rightly so. But such is the still sad state of things in regard to gender. I get it but hate it.

Thus, I am predicting a TRUMP-Biden race with the outcome a tossup.

April 27, 2015--Testing One, Two, Three

All over America school kids are being tested. Some are taking tests that derive from what their states require while others are being tested to see how well they have absorbed the material associated with the controversial Common Core curriculum which 44 states have adopted.

And then there are the hundreds of thousands of children not taking any tests at all. This, for many, to protest the importance assigned to tests that supposedly call for rote learning or have high-stakes consequences. Consequences for the kids, their schools and districts, and for their teachers.

Let me be clear that in virtually all instances it is the parents lodging these protests by keeping their children home, not the kids themselves making these decisions. Sort of like the anti-vacine parents.

There are many layers that require unpacking in order to understand what is going on. It is not as simple as it may seem.

First, whose fault is it that we have all these tests? Some say it's former president George W. Bush's since he allegedly wanted to break teachers' unions by holding them accountable for the results. And Teddy Kennedy's, who wanted to show he could work in a bipartisan way and made a deal with Number 43 when he signed off on Bush's signature school reform program, No Child Left Behind that required universal testing and meet certain standards in order for states to leverage federal funds. And, of course, like everything else people do not like, it's Barack Obama's fault since he has a radical agenda for the federal government to snatch authority from the states and take over the education of our children, very much including indoctrinating and testing them. Some feel, through the imposition of Common Core.

If you live in New York and watch TV, you are being flooded with ads paid for by the state's teachers' unions that claims it's governor Andrew Cuomo's fault. He's doing a Scott Walker, they say, by showing how tough he can be on teachers, using testing as a way to fire teachers he doesn't like. All this presumably to get ready to run for president if Hillary Clinton continues to falter.

And then there are those (me included) who feel requiring some forms of achievement testing is one way, one way, to see if kids are learning and to use what the tests show as part of the mix, part of the mix, of evaluative tools available to hold everyone involved accountable for how well students are faring--individual teachers, school principals, school districts, states, and the children themselves.

Then there is the matter of using test results to distinguish between the achievement of individual students. This is very complicated business in a society that conservatives sees as guided by meritocratic values--that there is a natural hierarchy based on talent, hard work, and success--while at that same time to others, progressives, there is the belief in human equality and thus call for polices to assure not just equality of opportunity but equality of results.

This in a society that often overpraises children, awarding trophies to all, including to those who come in last. Awards for showing up and trying. Or maybe just for showing up.

Often the anti-testing people are the very ones seeking advantages for their own children at all levels of schooling, especially those that can afford to supplement what is available even in private schools to assure their own children's ultimate advantages.

Some years ago when the arguments about testing first roiled discourse about schooling and its outcomes, I had a colleague at the very progressive Ford Foundation, actually the vice president to whom I reported, who was a fierce critic of traditional forms of testing and a strong advocate of what was thought to be "authentic assessment." Approaches that called for more nuanced and three-dimensional methods to measure student achievement. Including non-traditional forms of assessment where student outcomes would be evaluated by things such as portfolios of their work. It was felt that this was a fairer approach than the usual testing and would thus contribute to narrowing the achievement gap.

She at the time had high-school-age twins who attended a selective private secondary school. At that school, as you might imagine, they emphasized authentic assessment. One Saturday mornings we ran into my colleague on lower Broadway. We stopped to chat. It turned out that she was there, far from where she lived, to take her daughters to an SAT-prep workshop.

I not-so-innocently asked her how come, if she rejected the validity and fairness of tests such as the SAT, she was paying for her daughters to prep for it.

"Because I want them to do as well as possible," she said, "So they can get into good colleges."

I asked, "Then in your Ford Foundation role how come you resist funding programs that would help low-income students have the same test prepping opportunities?"

She stammered something I couldn't quite hear and ran off to an appointment.

I am still waiting for her answer.

October 17, 2104--Liberal Wusses

For about 10 minutes last night, on TV, I stumbled onto the Maine governor's debate. That's all the time it took--actually, five minutes would have sufficed--to figure out who will win: current Republican governor Paul LePage in a walk.

It will help that he has two opponents, both in effect Democrats, and they will split the progressive vote so that LePage, as last time, will win with less than 40 percent of the vote. Actually, his two opponents this time are such wusses that he could easily get close to that magic 50-percent-plus-one.

Even as a part-time resident I know enough about LePage's record to cause me to hate the idea that he is one of my governors. (The other two, Rick Scott in Florida and Andrew Cuomo in New York, are in their own ways as terrible as LePage.)

I know--so what else is new.

I see LePage winning easily in spite of the fact that he's currently in a statistical dead heat with Mike Michaud--he's at 40 percent, Michaud 39 percent, and Eliot Cutler trails with less than half that.

Here's how I know--

LePage has an awful record when it comes to government programs targeted to make life a little easier for low-income Mainers. Of course he's against Obamacare and refuses to support it here. He also turned down federal support for the expansion of Medicaid. And you should only hear what he has to say about Food Stamps and minorities, even though Maine is almost all white.

Michaud and Eliot favor all of these programs and then some. They even look like central casting governor material--tall, slender, full heads of hair--while LePage has a weight problem, is height challenged, and has a snarly-looking face.

So, what's the story and why am I so sure that LePage will trounce the two of them?

I needed to hear responses to just one question to convince me who will win--

One of the things LePage has not done is expand food programs for poor, school-age kids. The host of the debate asked all three candidates what they would do about the 20 percent of Maine youngsters who do not get adequate nourishment. This should have been an easy one for Michaud and Cutler. Who doesn't want to see kids get fed? Especially if the federal government picks up most of the tab.

The two governor-types, all earnestness, took weak shots at LePage (missed opportunities) and proceeded to rattle off a long list of forgettable statistics, none of which scored any points with the audience or this viewer.

Then it was LePage's turn to respond.

He leaned forward, depositing his full weight on the podium (I feared for it) and snarled, "I know what it's like to be hungry. I didn't grow up rich [a swipe at his two rivals]. There were days I went to school hungry. I know about hunger. So don't lecture me about feeding kids. I favor that and have done everything I could during my first term to work on the problem [a lie]. And if I'm reelected I'll do more [probably another lie]."

Case closed. Election over.

One reason Republicans are doing better than Democrats is because Republican politicians, as insincere and hypocritical as they are, are better at coming across as authentic.

Take George W. Bush as as example--people thought that Yale-Harvard graduate George W, a third generation Brahmin Prescott-Bush who never wanted or worked hard for anything, was actually one of them. Just plain folks who it would be fun to hang out with and have a (nonalcoholic) beer. This also explains the appeal of a Chris Christie. Another faux-authentic.

Most Democrats, in contrast, come off as effete know-it-alls, telling people that they know best what's good for "ordinary people." Think John Kerry and Hillary (not Bill) Clinton. People are tired of hearing this, being treated this way. Lectured to.

I hate the idea, but I am trying to get used to the idea that I'll have four more years of LePage and probably Rick Scott. Cuomo I can swallow. But if liberals want to make a comeback, they had better practice being real. Or at least how to pretend to be.

March 19, 2114--The Education Mayor

I'm no fan of most big-city public school systems (I could tell you stories from my own work with them that would spoil your day) and though I think of myself as a liberal who believes in the importance of strong unions, most municipal teachers unions, again from my experience and research, are often impediments to effective change.

So, though I know the mixed data about charter schools and the threat they exert on business-as-usaul (which, in itself can be a good thing), with caveats, I favor their existence and even the expansion of those, and only those that have proven to yield good results.

Something needs to be done to shake up the way we attempt to educate our most vulnerable citizens.

With this as context, I am feeling that the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, as an education mayor, is off to a false start.

As a candidate he ran against the idea of charter schools, saying that if elected he would not allow any more to be established and would cut back on city resources for the 183 that do exist. These serve 70,000 of New York's 1.1 million public school students. Well under 10 percent.

As mayor, he had his school chancellor break deals that former mayor Mike Bloomberg made with the Success Academy, one of the charter operations that runs 22 schools and, again with caveats, has a record of producing good results--essentially, high test scores and graduation rates.

The parents of children in these schools are pleased enough with the outcomes that 11,000 of them (an incredible number even by Big Apple standards) recently schlepped 150 miles to Albany to pressure the state legislature and the governor, Andrew Cuomo (who favors charters) to continue to support these independent public schools.

Some claim, that since the teachers union opposes charters (they are permitted to employ non-union staff) and since de Blasio was elected with overwhelming teacher support, his opposing charters is payback.

I do not know if that is true, though I have my suspicions. But what I do know is that many charters are exceptionally good, serve the lowest-income students, and are passionately defended by parents.

Also upsetting, again attempting to fulfill campaign promises, de Blasio has been moving rapidly to implement universal pre-kindregarten. His first moves have all been about securing the hundreds of millions needed to do this. His plan calls for a surcharge tax on NewYork City residents earning more than $500,000 a year. But since Cuomo and the legislature will not agree to this, he has been lobbying them to come up with the money in other ways. He appears to be making headway.

I call the call for universal pre-K upsetting because its effectiveness has never been demonstrated.

It sounds like a good idea--to get kids into a learning-rich environment as early as possible makes common sense. But, there are no large-scale studies about whether or not prekindergarten programs shrink the academic achievement gap.

There are some small-scale pre-K programs around the country, quite small scale, that appear to be effective--participating in them seems to lead to long-term gains--but none that have been objectively evaluated and proven to show that they can be brought successfully to scale.

Thus, to get the money to put tens of thousands of New York 4-year-olds in school feels irresponsible when educators have no experience doing this for such large numbers and there is no evidence that it works.

But do it we will because ideology is driving this agenda, teachers unions support it, and the money will in one way or another be found to implement it.

I almost forgot, according to a report last week in the New York Times, there will finally be a longitudinal study. Conducted by the reputable MDRC, 4,000 children in pre-K in 69 schools and community organizations will be tracked. Half the kids will participate in the perhaps-promising Building Blocks Program and the other half won't. Along the way, at least until third grade, they will be compared. If Building Blocks works, that would be persuasive. That, then, would be the time to scale it up. Not now before we know its worth.

But then again, universal pre-K feels like a good idea so why not try it? From history, though, when it comes to school reform efforts, there is a long list of reform silver bullets that turned out to be blanks.