The Atlantic, June 12, 2014

By Rebecca J. Rosen

Last month, the unemployment rate for white Americans was 5.4 percent. For black Americans, it was more than twice that, at 11.5. Why?

Writing in The Guardian, Jana Kasperkevic points to a compelling theory advanced by Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute. Black unemployment is high, Wilson suggests, not only because black joblessness is high (for reasons well documented in Ta–Nehisi Coates’s recent Atlantic cover story), but because black people are more resilient when it comes to sticking to their job search.

The key to understanding Wilson’s point is knowing that unemployment doesn’t measure the number of people who are, well, "unemployed" in a conventional sense of the word — without a job. What the unemployment rate measures is how many people are actively looking for work. If someone gives up on his or her search, he or she is no longer counted as unemployed. In May, Kasperkevic writes, "there were over seven million Americans who want a job but were not counted as part of the labor force."

Wilson says that when you look at the data coming out of the recovery, you see two things. First, you see that the black unemployment rate has recovered more slowly than the white unemployment rate. Alone, that would seem to indicate that black people are having a harder time finding work. But, she says, you also see that since 2007, before the recession, "the percentage of blacks in the labor force (employed or actively seeking work) has fallen by less than the comparable figure for whites (a 2.8 percentage-point decline versus a 3.3 percentage-point fall)."

Economic Policy Institute

Together these two data points indicate that when black Americans lose their jobs, they stick to their job search for longer than white Americans, inflating the black unemployment rate relative to white’s.

Wilson’s work illustrates that every time you read about high unemployment (black or white or anyone), what you’re reading about isn’t people who are merely out of a job, but people who are working to find their next one, month after month.

Copyright © 2014 Atlantic Monthly Group

Channel 4, New York City (I-Team Report), June 13, 2014
By Ann Givens and Chris Glorioso
A waste disposal project across the harbor from Staten Island that envisions using soil from other industrial sites to top off 2 million tons of cyanide sludge is causing concern among environmentalists and some New York lawmakers.
So far, regulators have sided with the company that wants to do the dumping, Chris Glorioso tells us in this TV report.
The Rahway Arch is a 90-acre plot of land on the banks of the Rahway River in Carteret, N.J., that was a dumping ground for chemical manufacturer American Cyanamid in the 1970s.
Soil Safe, a Maryland-based company that specializes in recycling contaminated soil, has gotten approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to top the cyanide sludge still on the site with 15 feet of petroleum-tainted dirt, which the company says has been treated to make it less toxic.
The plan has drawn criticism from some engineers, environmentalists and New York politicians – all of whom say it could be structurally unsound, and risks spilling cyanide and other pollutants into New York Harbor, especially in the event of a flood.
During Hurricane Sandy, the site was almost completely covered in water, which worries environmentalists, who say even a lesser storm could trigger a release of toxins into the river.
“It just defies logic to understand why you would put all this contaminated material in a place that could flood and go into the community,” said Debbie Mans, of the environmental watchdog Baykeeper.
Mark Smith, president of Soil Safe, said his company’s treatment process will rid the petroleum-laden soil of all but six potentially toxic compounds, and the soil cap would be far less hazardous than the cyanide sludge underneath.
“Nobody has been able to come up with a solution for this troubled site and we’ve strived to be open and transparent, yet we get banged left and right by critics and the media,” Smith said.
Two City Council committees have scheduled hearings Thursday to discuss the project.
Initially, even staffers at the DEP raised concerns about the plan.
Last year a DEP risk manager who authored a report on the project wrote that it was “technically questionable” and would likely lead to “a release of sludge.” Another DEP inspector wrote in a report that “loading will likely result in discharge to the river.”
An internal email from DEP staffer Kevin Schick to a fellow DEP project evaluator warned putting 2 million tons of fill on top of sludge could force “contaminants into the adjacent Rahway River.” The email was obtained by environmentalists through an open records request.
But since then, DEP officials have said they changed their minds about the project, thanks to meetings with Soil Safe and a geotechnical report that has been redacted for the public.
The report, commissioned by Soil Safe and completed by an independent evaluator, addresses the stability of the ground under the proposed cap. But its evaluation and recommendations – making up nearly half the report – are redacted.
DEP and company officials say that’s because that section contained proprietary information about Soil Safe.
The report “gave us confidence that this was appropriate,” said DEP Director of Remediation Management Ken Kloo.
Some are asking why the DEP won’t release the study.
“Why not give the data to everyone so it can be critically evaluated?” asked civil engineer Bill Mercurio.
In a statement, a DEP spokesman said the agency “has thoroughly evaluated the Rahway Arch project and has determined that it meets the state’s environmental, engineering and technical standards and requirements.”

NY Times, June 13, 2014

By The Editorial Board

The “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies that swept through the country’s schools beginning in the 1990s have led to millions of children each year being suspended, expelled and even arrested, mainly for minor misbehavior that would once have been dealt with at the principal’s office. Federal civil rights officials warned this year that these tactics are often used in a discriminatory fashion against black and Latino children, who are at greater risk of being thrown out of school and denied an education.

The good news is that these policies are being rolled back. A new report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonprofit policy group, shows that states and school districts can cut down on suspensions and unwarranted arrests at school within relatively short periods without sacrificing safety or disrupting the school environment.

That has already happened in Texas, which came under a national spotlight three years ago when a council study showed that nearly six in 10 public school students in Texas were suspended or expelled at least once between seventh grade and 12th grade. By focusing on solving minor misbehaviors at school — and keeping children out of the courts — the state has already driven down expulsions by 28 percent and suspensions by 9 percent. Similar improvements have been seen in New York City and in some school districts in California.

The new report, which includes 60 policy recommendations, lays out a clear road map for states and districts that want to preserve order without ejecting large numbers of students. For starters, schools need to have formal disciplinary codes that make suspension a last resort and that include approaches like referring students to peer counseling and other alternatives.

Schools should also have data-driven, early warning systems that identify at-risk students who need special help. They should avoid engaging police officers in routine classroom management, as doing so leads inevitably to unwarranted arrests, and they should take other steps to reduce the number of children referred to juvenile courts for minor misconduct.

© 2014 The New York Times