ClimateProgress, July 29, 2013
By Marina Fang
A growing number of polls and research suggests that minorities are ahead of the curve when it comes to supporting serious climate policy.
For Asian-Americans, the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S., climate change looms large among issues of concern. As Grist noted, “most Asian Americans hold particularly strong green values,” citing a 2012 survey of Asian-American political attitudes in the leadup to the presidential election, which found that 70 percent of Asian-Americans consider themselves environmentalist, compared to 41 percent of Americans overall, and 60 percent of Asian-American prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, compared to 41 percent overall.
African-Americans are similarly worried about climate change. A 2010 study from the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that “in many cases, minorities are equally as supportive, and often more supportive of national climate and energy policies, than white Americans.” In particular, 89 percent of blacks supported the regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, compared to 78 percent of whites.
What accounts for strong minority support of climate change policy?
Political affiliation: Minorities overwhelmingly voted Democratic in the 2012 election, so it makes sense that they would express progressive views on environmental issues. A recent poll found strong bipartisan support for climate change policy. The fact that minorities are adding their voices provides a stark contrast to the climate change deniers continually obstructing efforts to combat climate change, most recently in their quest to challenge President Obama’s climate agenda.
Environmental justice: Growing evidence suggests that minorities are disproportionately affected by the negative consequences of climate change. For instance, the NAACP found that of the six million Americans who live in close proximity to a coal plant, 39 percent of them are people of color. Additionally, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that African-Americans visit the emergency room for asthma at nearly 350 percent the average rate of whites, and thus air quality regulations are particularly important to them.
Global effects: Finally, many minorities have immigrated from countries acutely affected by climate change. Last year, more than 32 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters, most of whom lived in Asia and Africa. The Japan earthquake and subsequent nuclear disaster rattled people all over East Asia, and extreme monsoons in India, caused by melting glaciers, have increased in recent years. Firsthand experience with the impact of climate change has made minorities firm believers in climate science.
Interestingly, Hispanics are less likely to express concern regarding climate change than blacks and Asians, but in many polls, they are still ahead of Caucasians. In a 2012 MPO Research Groups survey, 60.3 percent of Hispanics believed that humans contribute to climate change, compared to 67.3 percent of African Americans, 69.2 percent of Asian Americans, and only 56.7 percent of Caucasians. A 2012 survey conducted by the National Council of La Raza and the Sierra Club found that 77 percent of Latinos believe climate change is already happening, compared with only 52 percent of overall respondents. And in the Yale/George Mason study, 82 percent of Hispanics supported regulating carbon dioxide.
Marina Fang is an intern for ThinkProgress.

NJ Spotlight, July 1, 2013
By Colleen O’Dea
In 1975, Mount Laurel was the first ruling in the country to prohibit communities from enacting "exclusionary zoning" practices.
Named after a South Jersey township, the Mount Laurel decisions are New Jersey Supreme Court rulings that have defined the responsibility communities have to provide a certain amount, known as their “fair share,” of affordable housing to people with low or moderate incomes.
What it means
Every New Jersey municipality must provide its share of affordable housing. The first Mount Laurel decision, in 1975, was the first of its kind in the nation, prohibiting municipalities from “exclusionary zoning” practices, so towns cannot enact land-use rules that make it impossible for affordable housing to be built. The second decision, in 1983, went further and ordered communities to provide housing for those with low or moderate incomes. In response, the state Legislature passed theFair Housing Act that created the Council on Affordable Housing to determine municipal housing needs and approve plans to meet those needs.
History
In the 1960s, then-rural Mount Laurel began developing housing and commercial units designed to attract tax ratables and middle- and upper-middle-class families. At the same time, the township was condemning substandard homes – some wereconverted chicken coops — of mostly poor blacks, who worked on the farms. They could not afford the new single-family homes. A nonprofit group sought approval to build 36 garden apartments for displaced residents and the township turned them down, with the mayor saying that anyone who couldn’t afford to live there should leave town. So a group of citizens led by Ethel R. Lawrence, who has been called the Rosa Parks of affordable housing, and the NAACPs of Southern Burlington and Camden filed a class-action lawsuit against Mount Laurel.
The case ultimately made it to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which in March 1975 issued what would become an oft-cited decision barring the practice of exclusionary zoning. The court ruled that all municipalities, through zoning, had to allow enough housing for people of all classes, including the low- and moderate-income, to meet its share of the need in its region. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge.
Mount Laurel II
But many municipalities refused to follow the decision. Mount Laurel itself rezoned three tracts of land that were less than ideal – one site was in an industrial park and another was wetlands. The plaintiffs went back to court, saying the township had not met the Supreme Court mandate. They lost in Superior Court and appealed, prompting the state Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel II ruling.
In that decision, the court said that every municipality must provide its “fair share” of the regional need and set up some requirements for doing so. Towns have to provide realistic zoning opportunities for the housing and show how their zoning and other actions would lead to the actual construction of affordable housing. It also established the “builder’s remedy,” allowing a developer willing to make 20 percentof a development low- and moderate-income housing to sue for a zoning change.
Fair Housing Act of 1985
In response, the Legislature passed the Fair Housing Act of 1985, creating theCouncil on Affordable Housing, which oversaw municipal efforts at providing housing for the low- and moderate-income. COAH was charged with devising municipal housing quotas every six years. Voluntary participation in the council would protect a municipality from builder’s remedy lawsuits.
Some towns have complied and others have not, choosing to try their luck in the courts instead. The Mount Laurel decisions have led to the construction of about40,000 affordable units throughout the state. But some municipal officials continue to balk at providing any such housing.
Legal Challenges
The system is currently in a state of uncertainty. The third set of quotas issued by COAH cut housing obligations and exempted municipalities that choose not to grow from having to provide any additional affordable units. They also allow communities to transfer half of their obligation to another municipality and fulfill up to half their units with senior-citizen housing. The Appellate Division of Superior Court ruled in January 2007 that those rules violated the earlier Mount Laurel decisions and the FHA and ordered COAH to issue new regulations. It did so in October 2008 and those are the subject of a current legal challenge.
The COAH Conundrum
In the meantime, Gov. Chris Christie tried to abolish COAH twice and ultimately was told by the courts that he did not have the authority to do so. Legislators have sought to do the same, but have not been able to agree with Christie on a new mechanism to replace the COAH process. The council has met only once since the court ordered its reinstatement and that was primarily to start the process of taking money meant to help build affordable housing from municipalities and giving it to the state. That action, too, has been the subject of court action. And while COAH has not been functioning, little affordable housing has been built.

NRDC Switchboard, Aug, 1, 2013
By Melissa Lin Perrella
Yesterday afternoon [July 31, 2013], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Coast Guard and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The lawsuit challenges the Coast Guard’s decision to authorize the raising of the Bayonne Bridge without sufficiently evaluating the very real public health and environmental risks the current project poses to neighboring communities. NRDC brings this lawsuit with the Coalition for Healthy Ports, North Shore Waterfront Conservancy of Staten Island, Elm Park Civic Association, and Eastern Environmental Law Center.
The current project will increase the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, other respiratory illness and premature death in Newark, Staten Island, Bayonne and other communities near the port. That’s because the project will increase cargo volumes handled at the port, which will mean more harmful, diesel-polluting trucks, trains and ship traffic through these neighborhoods.
Construction of the project also risks exposing residents in Staten Island and Bayonne to arsenic, lead, asbestos and PCBs. This is particularly troubling because Staten Island children have a long history of being exposed to lead. In fact, the EPA designated the North Shore of Staten Island an “Environmental Justice Showcase Community” because of the number of children in that community with elevated levels of lead in their blood due to former industrial uses in the area.
Our lawsuit alleges that the Coast Guard violated the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) by failing to thoroughly evaluate these public health and environmental risks before authorizing the Port Authority to raise the Bridge. Our lawsuit does not seek to kill the project. In fact, we are in favor of renovating the Bridge. Rather, our lawsuit calls on the authorities to disclose how the project may harm local communities and identify measures that can mitigate this harm. This is what NEPA requires. We are suing the Coast Guard and Port Authority to ensure they comply with the law.
The Bayonne Bridge crosses the Kill Van Kull, which is the primary shipping channel between the New York Harbor and several major cargo terminals. More than 2,000 vessels passed beneath the Bayonne Bridge en route to and from these cargo terminals in 2010. Shipping companies are increasingly using larger vessels (taller, wider, deeper draft) to transport cargo between foreign ports and the U.S. The existing height of the Bridge, however, restricts the port’s ability to service the influx of these larger vessels. As a result, the Port Authority sought authorization from the Coast Guard to raise the roadway of the Bridge so that larger ships can pass under it and access the port’s terminals. Before the Coast Guard could authorize the Port Authority to raise the Bridge, however, it was supposed to comply with NEPA.
But instead of taking a hard look at how the project could harm public health and the environment, the Coast Guard and Port Authority attempted to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, in an attempt to skirt the law and avoid addressing these harms.
For example, the Coast Guard denies that raising the Bridge will enable the port to handle increased cargo volumes even though the Port Authority has represented to the Department of Transportation in a funding application for millions of dollars that the purpose of the Bridge project is to enable the Port Authority to remain competitive and handle increased trade in the future. The Port Authority made similar statements to President Obama when it asked that the Bridge project be “fast tracked.” The Port Authority’s clients, the business community, and EPA, among others, have also linked the Bridge project to increased cargo volumes at the port.
As stated, greater cargo volumes at the port means more diesel trucks and other vehicles and equipment operating around the clock to move cargo in and out of the port and through neighborhoods in Newark and Staten Island. The Coast Guard concedes that Newark and Staten Island are environmental justice communities. Moreover, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and EPA have already found cancer risks from air pollution in both communities that far exceed what EPA deems acceptable. Despite this, the Coast Guard refuses to provide an honest assessment of how the project may exacerbate pollution levels in these communities.
To make matters worse, the Coast Guard’s environmental analysis for the project was based on an allegedly proprietary model that the agency refused to release to the public for comment and review. By refusing to release the basis for its conclusions, the Coast Guard insulated itself from public scrutiny, essentially thumbing its nose to NEPA’s purpose, which is to foster public input and informed government decision-making.
The Coast’s Guard’s NEPA violations do not end there. The soil, structures, and groundwater where construction will occur contain pollutants such as lead, PCBs, arsenic and asbestos. The Coast Guard and Port Authority admit this but refuse to disclose what the potential harm to local residents will be when construction activities in Staten Island and Bayonne disturb and release these contaminants. This is the case despite the North Shore of Staten Island’s past exposure to lead.
Instead, the Coast Guard takes an “act now study later approach” in violation of NEPA. The Coast Guard green-lit construction with a promise to study the extent of the harm later, and with a vague commitment to deal with any problems by abiding by existing law. The Coast Guard’s promises are hardly reassuring to local families, and don’t come close to complying with NEPA.
The “construction zone” includes dense residential areas, at least seven schools, multiple churches, at least five parks, and a number of businesses that may be affected by these activities. Approximately 10,000 Staten Island residents and approximately 7,000 Bayonne residents live within this area. These individuals have a right to know how the project will affect their health.
We want the port to thrive economically so that good jobs can be brought to the region. But we also want to make sure that the risks that accompany the benefits of the Bridge project are disclosed and dealt with. We can raise the Bayonne Bridge and protect the health of surrounding communities at the same time—but the Port Authority and Coast Guard must stop cutting corners. By taking the time to properly evaluate the risks and identifying how to protect against them, we can capture the economic promise of a renovated Bridge without sacrificing the health of its neighbors. That’s not asking for much and it’s what the law requires.

Alternet, July 25, 2013; Reprinted from Washington Monthly
By Richard D. Kahlenberg [2]
The following is a book review of David Kirp’s Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools. [3]
If you believe that education can only be reformed by center-right business notions — that privately run nonunion charters will outperform public schools; that teachers need to be goaded into doing a good job — David Kirp is here to tell you that absolutely the opposite is true. Generous funding, tied to a rigorous and rich curriculum, with testing as a diagnostic tool, can produce extraordinary results. Kirp, a professor at the University of California Berkeley who has written extensively about education for decades, is most recently the author of Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools, a beautifully rendered account of the schools of Union City, New Jersey. Kirp spent the entire 2010-2011 academic year visiting classrooms in Union City, a low-income, mostly Latino school district of 12,000 students, located five minutes from the gleaming towers of Manhattan. His story is written with the empathy that characterizes Jonathan Kozol’s books on urban education, but with a far more hopeful message.
Kirp quickly falls in love with the children he studies, a group that includes many undocumented students who face difficult home lives. “Be my father!” one boy, Joaquin, cries out one day, a reminder that Joaquin’s father has been gone for two years. Another boy, Andres, calls out, “Be my father.” Writes Kirp, “That’s harder for me to hear because Andres is in fact living with his father.” And when Kirp goes to Paris for Thanksgiving, a boy named TomÃis asks, “Can you return? Do you have papers?”—an indication of the fragile lives these children are living.
Nationally, high-poverty schools are twenty-two times less likely to be high achieving than middle-class schools. That was generally the case with the Union City school district, which ranked next to last in the state in 1989, Kirp notes, sparking the mordant response, “Thank God for Camden!”
But today the situation could hardly be more different. Union City students, overwhelmingly low income and Latino, score at roughly the New Jersey average in reading and math from third grade through high school—this in a state where scores are consistently among the very best in the nation. The graduation rate is 89.4 percent, compared with about 70 percent nationally. Union City High School, according to the American Institutes for Research, ranks among the top 12 percent nationally, and sends students to top colleges.
What happened to turn around an entire high-poverty district like Union City? Generous funding, for one thing. Union City is the beneficiary of a series of New Jersey Supreme Court rulings, including one in 2011 that decreed that the state would have to rescind budget cuts and spend an extra $500 million in impoverished school districts. Among the extras this money bought was a high-quality preschool program. Beginning at age three, students in New Jersey’s high-poverty school districts are entitled to receive free preschool, six hours a day and 245 days a year, taught by teachers with college degrees in small classes. Although the program is not compulsory, about 90 percent of Union City children participate.
Many high-poverty New Jersey districts got this extra funding but continue to fail, while Union City students have flourished. Trenton, for example, embraced what Kirp calls “the Great Leader Theory,” hoping that superstar principals would jump-start individual schools, but has had little success. Union City, instead, pursued system-wide reform, with a number of key elements. The district adopted a consistent curriculum across classrooms, with a relentless focus on early reading and expanding the vocabulary of students. Tests are used as diagnostic tools, rather than to punish, and every new teacher gets a mentor.
In a district where students come from a number of foreign countries, the Union City schools also do the important work of instilling a strong sense of American identity. At an end-of-year school ceremony, children hoist flags from more than fifty countries, says Kirp. A roar goes up for the Dominican Republic flag, but the “longest, loudest cheer is heard when the flag of the United States, their new homeland, is unfurled.”
Kirp is emphatic in noting that Union City achieved its success by hewing to fundamentals. There are no charter schools in Union City. And while teacher’s unions have come under fire for much of what ails public education, Kirp says, Union City’s teachers are part of a strong union, as are other teachers in New Jersey’s highly ranked schools.
Of course, Union City schools are not immune from national education policy. Kirp is concerned that the No Child Left Behind Act causes teachers to skip interesting lessons like plant experiments because science is not among the tested subjects in elementary school. He also worries when teachers provide extra learning sessions only for the “cusp” kids—those just within reach of passing the tests.
To his credit, Kirp does not join the militant anti-testing crowd. “High-stakes exams contributed to making Union City’s schools better,” he writes; if used properly, to identify areas for student improvement, “testing can be a force for good, especially for the have-less kids on whom schools have too often given up.” Unlike many state tests, New Jersey’s assessments measure students’ critical thinking skills rather than just their ability to memorize material. “Teaching to this kind of test means readying students to become problem-solvers,” notes Kirp.
Skeptics will likely ask whether Union City’s success can be replicated in high-poverty districts elsewhere, given the district’s relatively small size. Likewise, as Kirp points out, sociologist Anthony Bryk has found that Latino schools are often an exception to the “straight-line connection between poor neighborhoods and failing schools.” Trust levels are higher in Latino schools, Bryk found, and “Latino neighborhoods tend to have significantly more social capital and neighborhood organizations” than other poor neighborhoods. Would Union City’s programs work with African American students, who continue to bear the legacy of the nation’s most egregious forms of discrimination?
Yes, says Kirp, in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C., for example, which educates ten times as many students as Union City. Montgomery County, which includes wealthy white areas alongside more diverse and low-income communities, has devoted extra funds to lower-income “red zone” schools than to the wealthier “green zone” schools—for such interventions as reduced class size and extended learning time. The approach has worked. Kirp writes, “In 2003, only half the district’s black and Hispanic fifth graders passed the state’s reading test; by 2011, 90% did.”
Significant as Montgomery County’s “red zone” approach has been, Kirp fails to discuss a far more effective educational strategy employed by the county. Under an inclusionary zoning initiative, public housing units are made available to low-income families throughout Montgomery County, in the affluent green zone as well as the working-class red zone. An important 2010 Century Foundation report by RAND Corporation’s Heather Schwartz found that low-income elementary school students whose families were randomly assigned to housing units in the green zone and attended green zone schools had far more significant achievement gains than those assigned to red zone neighborhoods and schools—even though students in the latter group were showered with extra financial resources and did pretty well.
The omission of integration strategies is surprising, because in other contexts Kirp has written powerfully about the benefits of housing and school integration. In a 2012 New York Times article, for example, Kirp wrote, “The experience of an integrated education made all the difference in the lives of black children—and in the lives of their children as well.” Given legal constraints on using race in student assignment imposed by the Supreme Court, more than eighty school districts now pursue integration by socioeconomic status, an approach that not only raises student achievement but also allows low-income students access to the kind of middle-class social networks that are powerful determinants of employment.
Despite this lapse, Kirp is to be credited with providing critical balance to our education debates. While much ink has appropriately been spilled on the success of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools, Union City has done something in many ways even more impressive: taking low-income children who happen to live in a jurisdiction and helping them make dramatic achievement gains. (The one time KIPP tried to take over a regular public school population, in Denver, Colorado, it failed.)
Like the KIPP approach, the Union City strategy involves large amounts of money, which makes it less attractive to policymakers than getting tough with teachers and their elected union representatives. But as Improbable Scholars makes clear, the success in Union City suggests that money spent on effective educational strategies is likely to pay substantial dividends for years to come.
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/education/how-union-city-njs-school-district-achieved-huge-gains
Links:
[1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/richard-d-kahlenberg
[3] http://global.oup.com/academic/product/improbable-scholars-9780199987498;jsessionid=80FB9E4B6028F4956E54F082699396C1?cc=us&lang=en&
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/union-city
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/new-jersey
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/david-kirp
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/improbable-scholars
[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/corporate-school-reform
[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/teachers-unions
[10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B