Reflections on a New Job (and dress code)

I recently started working at a K-5 charter school in New York City (the school will remain nameless) as an administrative assistant in the main office. I'm still learning the ropes, but a few things have come up already which inspired me to reflect here.

First, I have to talk about uniforms. The school is pretty adamant about uniforms, which consist of khaki pants and a shirt which MUST have the school's logo on it. Well, since charter schools generally--and certainly this one--serve low-income communities and struggle to engage parents, the uniform issue has been contentious, with parents neglecting to get the shirts embroidered with the logo. As we entered the 2nd week of school, students were sent home if they weren't in full uniform. So first graders who showed up impeccably dressed, very neat, are brought to the office and have to wait there until a parent either brings an appropriately embroidered shirt or takes them home. Students lose out on really valuable instructional time because of parental neglect AND, in my opinion, because of lousy school policy.

I understand the argument in favor of being strict about uniforms, and to some extent I agree with it; I'm in favor of being strict in this regard, but not to the point of pulling her out of class and forcing her to miss an entire day of school. One boy in kindergarten missed three days in a row because the embroiders were slow to finish his shirts. My concern here is twofold: on one hand, irresponsible parents are nothing new for this school and for others like it, but in addition, kids are being punished for something they have no control over.

It's a truism in education that parents have a lot of impact, especially in high poverty populations where parent involvement is most important. Many kids at this school are negatively impacted by the behavior of their parents or guardians, and as a school, we cant do much about that. Home life is outside of our purview, end of story. Public schools must provide a safe haven, a respite from what is often an extremely difficult home life.

Rigorous academics are also important. The kids in this school, even the 5-year-olds, work hard. Missing a couple days is a big deal, and they do fall behind in as little as a day out of school, let alone three straight. When a kid wants to come to school, I'm of the mind that they have to be allowed to come unless they're carrying a contagious disease or for some other reason a threat to others. Because the kids need to learn, they need to be there, or else we as school professionals are wasting our time.

Keeping kids who don't have the full uniform out of school is purely punitive. Discipline is important, but kids cant be held responsible for their parents' behavior any more than they already are. Our students' future is largely determined by their circumstances before they ever get to school. When they enter our school, the goal is that they can transcend whatever limitations they were born with--lousy parents included. When kids are punished for things they have nothing to do with, it sends a terrible message first off, and secondly, it has the effect of reinforcing the idea for kids that they aren't fully responsible for their own success (which of course as elementary schoolers they aren't, but nonetheless its an important idea).

A lot of charter schools are very serious about uniforms and such, and I really do understand why. But for professionals at our school to waste time with things like removing nail polish, calling parents about clothes and writing letters about embroidery is just silly. It's not only silly, it has a deleterious effect on student learning and overall school culture. When a school decides that a kid cant come until he wears the right shirt, the school is deciding for that kid "you won't learn anything today." That's the opposite message we ought to be giving to these kids.

How Moneyball ruined Education

Michael Lewis published Moneyball in 2003. The book was a profile of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, who at the time was overseeing a dramatic shift in the way baseball talent was evaluated. The baseball stuff is really interesting, and a movie is currently in production, featuring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Beyond that, Beane and his Moneyball tactics were credited with helping the Oakland A's compete with teams spending much more on their teams. The A's were perennial playoff contenders during the late 90's and early 00's, but they perennially lost to bigger market teams like the Red Sox or Yankees.

The key to Moneyball as practiced by the A's is that it valued complicated, sometimes obscure statistics, called sabermetrics, over the conventional wisdom of baseball veterans. Instead of looking at a young player's attributes and batting average, scouts would compile tables of data, looking at WHIP and DIPS for pitchers and VORP and WAR for hitters. The statistics within sabermetrics are complicated, and when it comes down to business in baseball front offices, some teams follow these stats religiously. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that some GM's make decisions based on numbers they don't totally understand. This is what's happening in education policy today.

The Los Angeles Times recently released a value-added analysis of all the 3-5 grade teachers in the LA Unified School District. Parents, policy-makers and everyone else can now go to the linked website and search for any of these teachers to see how well the LA Times has concluded they are doing. Value-added analyses make sense on a large scale, and the logical basis for these types of analyses is solid: judging teachers based purely on test scores isn't quite fair, nearly everyone has agreed. But we need some kind of data to evaluate teachers and determine effectiveness. So we take test scores from 2006, for example, and attach the scores to individual kids. If their scores go up after a year with Mr. Ehrenfeld, that improves my value-added score. Looking at each of the kids in my class, we can see how effective a teacher I am.

This analysis is useful for entire schools with lots of kids. For individual classes and teachers, it can be disastrous. Lots of factors affect student test performance; many of these are impossible for a teacher to affect, including family situation, student health, personal circumstances on the day of the test, there's a huge range. Also, classes are never assigned randomly, so there is selection bias. But don't simply trust me: there is significant debate, and many smart people agree that VAA analyses are not perfect and indeed are very flawed.

Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford advised President Obama on education issues during the campaign and his transition, only to be passed over for a position in the DoE for neophyte Arne Duncan. She wrote "Unfortunately...these measures are highly unstable for individual teachers." Her insistence on contextualizing test scores if they are to be used in evaluation is the most compelling argument on this issue; test scores alone, just like OPS alone, cannot be used to evaluate how well an individual does his or her job, be that a teacher or a third-baseman.

Diane Ravitch, a respected and controversial education historian, writes that VAA models are "problematic" and subject to extremely high measurement error, meaning that the results of the test could simply be wrong based on sample size and experimentation issues. With 3 years of student scores, Diane points out, the error rate is 25%, meaning many good teachers will be identified as "needing improvement" and some bad teachers will even be rated "highly effective."

Statistics can be accurate and correctly measured, but they can still be misleading. From year-to-year, baseball players, like teachers, have divergent statistics. In all likelihood, there are a few Alex Rodriguez teachers out there who are good consistently, but the more common teacher will be comparable to Eric Chavez, former A's third-baseman who Billy Beane frequently said was a better value and competitive with A-Rod. He was wrong, and so are the policy people who argue that VAA models can tell how effective a teacher is and will be.

The best, fairest teacher evaluations are comprehensive. Student test scores, even a value-added model, ought to play a small role in this process, but the biggest piece should be administrator and peer review. It's the only way to get an accurate picture of teacher effectiveness.

Moneyball and sabermetrics revolutionized the way Major League front offices evaluate players. But look at the case of Jeremy Bonderman, who was drafted by Beane's A's in the 2001 draft. Beane was so incensed that the player had been drafted that he reportedly threw a chair at the wall so hard that it exploded on impact. But looking at the career of the player, even using the advanced sabermetrics, Bonderman has been excellent, vindicating Beane's scouts who drafted Bonderman back in 2001.

But this is only baseball. Teachers and students and public education as a whole are too important to allow mistakes like this to happen. A great teacher who is fired for being ineffective loses his or her livelihood and deprives future students of all he or she has to offer. Denying students the opportunity to be taught by truly excellent teachers--those who really inspire greatness and help students develop--is a travesty beyond the mistake Beane made by trading Bonderman the year after he was drafted.

The obsession with statistics now commonplace in baseball and growing in import in education is extremely problematic. Just look at the recent scandal in New York: the bar for passing tests is extremely subjective, and it moves. Also look at David Leonhardt's review of teacher evaluation and test score obsession in last week's New York Times Magazine. Campbell's Law holds true in education as elsewhere: the more a quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making, the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt that which it was originally intended to measure and the more subject it is to corruption pressures.

Overvaluing test scores in teacher evaluation is wrong, and basing teacher evaluations wholly on VAA models is criminal. Thanks for nothing, Billy Beane.

Beware High-Stakes Testing

Before I begin, a few disclaimers. I'm not opposed to tests, not even multiple choice tests like the SAT which, for many high schoolers, are extremely high-stakes. National, well-researched tests are important, and the results can be meaningful and ought to inform practice at every level. I'm not opposed to judging schools and teachers--in part--on students' test scores. But test data, like anything else, must be looked at critically before running with it. And that has not happened many times.

Today, the New York Times reported on what should really be called a scandal for the New York Department of Education. Test scores were artificially inflated by making the tests easier to pass. When critics of the Bloomberg/Klein regime pointed this out over a year ago, the Times and the state looked the other way. Repeated claims of rising test scores should have been accompanied by the note that the benchmarks are moving, but instead, credit-claiming was all that we heard. It was obvious that test scores were rising due, at least in part, to manipulations of the test and the scoring, but the mainstream media remained silent.

Every year, test scores in many states rise and rise, but that only reflects manipulation of the tests! A few intelligent folks have pointed this out in the past: Diane Ravitch comes to mind. Here she notes that No Child Left Behind actually hurt student achievement and slowed student progress, particularly for racial minorities.

I'm pleased that the state of New York, at least, has finally realized the disservice they are doing when they advertise that an outrageously high percentage of students are "proficient" when, in truth, many high school students still are unable to read or do basic math. The "Shock Plunge" in test scores is actually not a plunge at all; instead, it's a realization that calling a kid proficient doesn't actually raise numeracy or literacy.

In defense of the state board of regents, they have been warning us for months that this was coming. The raising of proficiency levels for state tests has indeed been a long time coming, but the warning disguises the fact that the proficiency level for years was decreased specifically so that folks like Joel Klein could brag about improving test scores year after year, despite the fact that actual student achievement had remained constant or even decreased. It's dishonest, embarrassing and shameful, and those responsible ought to be held accountable.

from the NYT story:

And the results could cast doubts on the city’s improvements over the past several years; both the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have used increases in state test scores as evidence that schools have improved.

“It certainly complicates the Bloomberg administration message, because the state test is completely unreliable,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a researcher with the Fordham Institute, a Washington-based research group.

Just unconscionable. This is why tests should be just one measure of success for students, teachers, and schools. Test scores--clearly so malleable to the point of being almost meaningless--should only be considered as one part of a larger review. If tests are too important, they are likely to be manipulated, and that's exactly what we've seen in New York. The one major takeaway for ed reformers from this story: pay attention! Don't believe everything you here, and hold on to a healthy dose of skepticism.

The Failure of Obama's Education Reform Efforts

President Obama entered office as the great hope of many segments of the population, ranging from racial minorities to political progressives who were hoping for particular policy changes. Teachers and education reform activists were also excited by the ascendancy of Obama, and for good reason: he had detailed, exciting plans to reform public education, and during the campaign he had advisors like Linda Darling-Hammond on staff, leading many to believe that his efforts would encapsulate a certain set of policy prescriptions. Darling-Hammond was in fact a leading candidate for Secretary of Education, the post currently occupied by the controversial Arne Duncan.

Duncan was firmly ensconced in the "reform" camp of candidates, balanced by Darling-Hammond and others on the "pro-union" side. The reformers are folks like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, people with little teaching experience who believe in reforms like the removal of tenure, mayoral control of schools, expanding charter schools, and test-based accountability for both teachers and schools. The opposition, led by teachers unions and their spokespeople like Randi Weingarten, disagrees with the "reform" banner given to the other camp, because they too believe in reform.

Since Duncan was chosen, he has led the administration's education reform efforts--though some claim that none other than Bill Gates is truly in charge. He has followed in the footsteps of those like Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein in New York City and Rhee in Washington, pushing test-based accountability, closing struggling schools, and other reforms without input from teachers.

The biggest criticism of Obama's efforts thus far has been just that--he has disrespected those on the frontlines of education reform: teachers. The Race to the Top, the largest, most visible piece of a larger reform effort, is entirely top-down, without consultation even from principals and district leaders. It proscribes particular reforms that states should enact in order to become eligible for a huge pot of federal money.

Teachers have voiced significant complaints about RttT and other efforts. In early July, the National Education Association had their national conference in New Orleans. Union President Dennis Van Roekel summed up his feelings and a sentiment apparently shared by many in attendance this way: “Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced." This was one of many pokes and criticisms of Duncan and Obama throughout the conference, which last year warmly welcomed Secretary Duncan.

The NEA conference is far from an isolated incident. Critics of the administration come from every corner, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, one huge camp of critics are essential stakeholders in education reform: teachers. Across the country, teachers have voiced their disapproval loudly and clearly, protesting appearances by Duncan frequently. The teachers have latched onto a few points of criticism, but the substantive claims they have--meritorious or not--are fairly irrelevant.

Whatever reason given by teachers for their bitter opposition to the plans, the mere fact that teachers are opposed is enough to doom Race to the Top and other programs. Qualified, experienced, effective teachers are necessary for any education reform effort to succeed--Duncan and some of his compatriots have repeatedly stated that effective teachers are the most important piece of reform. The disrespect and resulting alienation of the nation's teachers in and of itself is the death knell of Arne Duncan's entire tenure in the Department of Education. Without teachers on your side, very little is possible in the field of education.

To be fair, what could we have expected from Arne Duncan? An old crony of Obama's from Chicago's Hyde park neighborhood, his efforts as Superintendent in that city have proven to be ineffective at best, and harmful at worst. Test-and-punish schemes like No Child Left Behind have been positive only for test-writers, and observers from every side have repeatedly pointed this out. Also, the accountability and stricter licensing guidelines he has proposed would have certainly disqualified Duncan from many of his former positions and certainly his current post. His resume includes highlights like a brief pro basketball career in Australia and the highest degree he has received is a BA from Harvard. Teachers in many states are now required to hold Masters degrees, but the Secretary of Education cant be bothered even to work towards a Masters of Arts degree in Teaching, or public policy, or something else relevant to his very difficult job. This hypocritical stance is particularly damning and has turned many against him; highly-qualified educators are important, and one should be installed at the DoE with all due haste.

Trimming RttT

The priorities emphasized in Race to the Top were always controversial and unsettling to me. Despite the fact that I supported President Obama all the way back when he was an underdog in the primaries and am, in fact, a Democrat for Education Reform (in a manner of speaking), I was always uneasy about the Obama/Duncan platform for reform. If you were a casual observer of education policy news, you might think there was a growing consensus around the program of reform: that is, charter expansion, test-test-test, standards, accountability, etc.

The reason this seems like consensus is because it isn't new; this is the reform embodied initially in No Child Left Behind, the much-lambasted reform program of the Bush administration. Though Democrats voted in droves for the bill initially, it became extremely controversial rather quickly. So instead of calling Race to the Top and current DoE policy the Obama/Duncan platform, let's correctly identify it as the Bush-Obama program for education reform. Kind of removes the luster, huh?

So when it came out today that Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, was planning to cut about $500 million from the Race to the Top fund in order to fund a new education jobs bill, I had mixed feelings. There are elements of RttT that I really appreciate and admire. Innovation is crucial in education, and new approaches are more than welcome. On the other hand, the RttT hurts teachers, damages community schools and threatens the foundations of public education in our country.

In the end, it has to be looked at as a good thing that money is going to save edujobs instead of promoting tests, test-based evaluation and charter expansion. If Race to the Top included more expansive and more meaningful types of reform, I might feel differently, but teachers truly need support. Cutting jobs in education is not the way to reform the system. And to be fair, $3.5 billion is still up for grabs in the second round of the Race--I think states will still apply for the funds and work hard to reform education in the way the Dept. wants.

The Race to the Top is unusually effective public policy. States around the country are passing legislation to move them in line with the DoE's expectations for reform in order for a shot at the money. Unfortunately, this move takes the control out of the hands of teachers, principals, even superintendents. Decisions made at the top levels without consultation are unlikely to prove durable in the classroom.

Teaching is an unusual job because it puts you at the crossroads of total independence and at the bottom of a complex bureaucracy. In the classroom, teachers are totally in charge, but in the scope of the larger education system, they are institutionally disrespected and disempowered. This has troubling consequences for education policy, but more importantly, it implies stark concerns for education reform. The major takeaway is that reforms must be democratic. That is, in order for teachers really to buy into reform, they must have a hand in shaping those reforms. This makes sense, because nobody knows how education works and doesn't work like those who are in the trenches every day. It also is logical because ultimately, reform will be implemented by teachers and principals, so these folks need to feel like they are part of the solution.

Ultimately, Race to the Top, while effective at shaping reform, is misguided in its attempt to institute policy shifts from the top-down instead of after consultation and discussion with educators. Trimming it in order to save teachers' jobs is an excellent idea, and I hope Rep. Obey's version of the Edujobs bill is the one that reaches Obama's desk, and I hope it happens soon.

Negative Learning

As I wrap up my undergraduate education--just over a week until commencement--I find myself thinking a lot about how different people learn. I was even asked at a recent job interview to create some type of art project in 15 minutes to explain, without words, what intelligence means. The conclusion I seem to be reaching more and more is simply that nobody knows how others learn. At least, the pontificators and the talking heads in the education world certainly don't. And neither do I, but I'm becoming convinced that there are different modes that some use effectively, and other modes of thinking--I consider them varieties of non-thinking, but that's not a great way to introduce them. These latter forms can be thought of as passive and disengaged forms of thinking or, better yet, forms of "knowledge enhancement." Because thinking implies an active process, we will only consider active forms of learning as involving thinking in a meaningful way. Passive learning, including rote memorization, homework, and following directions is really opposed to thinking.

Think back to when you were in school, especially high school. If your background is anything like mine, you probably survived high school, but only barely. I was miserable for huge parts of my public school education (in suburban, middle class Connecticut), and the hierarchical system in place ensured that I would continue to be pretty unhappy in that school. Without the money to afford independent school tuition and without good charter/magnet options, I just stuck around and found myself getting by fine. There were high points and low points, but on the whole, I think we all remember high school being a pretty lousy time.

When we're 15 or 16 and unhappy with what's going on in school, we're told--indeed, taught--that this is the way things work. We are trained to be satisfied with dissatisfaction, to get used to subpar experiences. When your 7th grade teacher can't pronounce the word "anecdote" or "tortilla," you aren't surprised when you have an open-book spelling test in the same class. This is not a joke, although it is funny. That teacher continued working for years, and I only hope she's since retired. In 9th grade, when my Spanish teacher disappeared for unidentified medical reasons for the second half of the year, we were told by the principal that substitutes were good enough, even if they didn't speak Spanish. This teacher pulled the same move in years prior and has done the same since. Administrators always say there's nothing they can do, this is just the way it is.

So we're taught obedience, sure, but we're also taught that bureaucracy is powerful. The lesson from the stories above is pretty clear, right? Don't rock the boat, this is just "the way it is," and there's nothing you can do about it. These are lessons of disempowerment as much as anything. Public schools don't teach kids to be active, discerning adults, they teach passivity. It should be no surprise that kids misbehave and cause trouble in public schools; they are treated like prisoners to be kept under wraps, and this treatment results in unsurprising behavior. Teachers become even more hesitant to cede control after such pushback. Now there's an entrenching effect and a vicious cycle developing, where teachers and school leaders treat students like robots, kids act like....well, like kids, in response to this treatment, and then teachers get nervous about control and take away any remaining freedoms kids might have. This has been status quo in public schools for decades.

As a result, conversations about school reform and education reform continue to focus on doing the same things over and over again. The call comes for "better" teachers, higher standards, more accountability. The discourse rarely touches on questions of why we do what we do and whether other approaches might work better. God forbid, of course talk never gets to the point of examining values and goals in education.

The way I learn best, and this is thanks to my family and university, but certainly not to my public school education, is through negative experiences and observations. It's this inclination that would make me a lousy investment banker, but I hope makes me a decent social scientist and politics/policy nerd. I see things and my mind first goes to what's wrong, what needs fixing and what we can do about it. So when I'm sitting in my fourth 82-minute class of the day, playing Trivial Pursuit in an Advanced Placement class, I'm not thinking about Coca-Cola ads or Oprah's career trajectory, I'm thinking about what a waste of time my whole day has been. I cant help but reflect on problems, which can lead to bouts with depression but also leads to what lots of smart people call "critical thinking," a key element of the 21st century skills that are being pushed into education in the U.S.

Alfie Kohn says it best:

"I suspect the key is a phenomenon that might be called “negative learning,” in which people regard an unfortunate situation as a chance to figure out what not to do. They sit in awful classrooms and pay careful attention because they know they’re being exposed to an enormously useful anti-model. They say to themselves, 'Here is someone who has a lot to teach me about how not to treat children.'"

From this, we get things like progressive, student-centered education. Well-intentioned, ambitious folks like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein seem to have forgotten both what it was like to learn and what teaching was like (both Rhee and Klein had brief stints in the classroom, Rhee with Teach for America). No student thinks the cure for his or her shitty high school is more testing and "accountability." The kids in Rhode Island whose entire teaching force was fired largely disagree with that decision, too. When I was in high school, I wasn't thinking about more hours spent in school as a potential solution for my classmates who were dropping out--they were dropping out because they didn't like high school, not because they wanted more of it!

But we keep hearing the same tired suggestions about how to fix struggling schools: longer school days, more testing, analysis of date, accountability and higher expectations. These are all tweaks, when what we really need is a revolution. Incrementalism won't get us there, but put Joel Klein back in a classroom in a poor public school, and I bet he'll remember some of the complaints he surely had when he was younger. If not, maybe somebody else would be better for the extremely important job of fixing New York City's public schools. Conveniently enough for Mayor Bloomberg, I'm available.

Thoughts on Health Care Reform

Below you'll find a reprint of another article I wrote for the Tufts Observer, this time focusing on health care reform, focused on students and the political implications.

My own thoughts on reform are more complicated than might be revealed by the (hopefully impartial) news article. I'm genuinely happy that the bill passed, but it's just grossly inadequate. Doesn't do nearly enough. And I worry especially that this will allow Congress to ignore health care for many years into the future--when in reality, reform is still needed. That being said, enjoy the article.


Healthcare Cram Session: Ensuring You Know the Facts
Will Ehrenfeld

Minnesota Governor and potential 2012 presidential nominee Tim Pawlenty called it an “unprecedented overreach by the federal government.” Georgian Congressman Paul Broun called it “a war of Yankee aggression” (really). But Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma put it in terms everyone can understand: “To our seniors, I have a message for you: you’re going to die sooner.”

What are these Republicans responding to so angrily—and some might say outrageously? The recently passed health care bill, of course. Few pieces of legislation in recent memory have been so divisive, caused such national furor, or fueled so many protests and rallies on both sides of the political spectrum. Likewise, rarely has legislation brought with it such a dramatic change.

For all the discussion and debate regarding the health bill, knowledge of its key provisions is sorely lacking. The news media has focused on sound bites and all the outrageous rhetoric flowing from competing sides of the senate floor. For some, it has be difficult to find out how we may actually be affected by the bill, signed into law by President Obama on March 23.

Senior Andrea Lowe, president of the Tufts Democrats, highlighted the primary effect of the bill on college students nationwide—including, of course, the impact here at Tufts. Until age 26, young adults will be able to remain on their parent’s health insurance, which she said “will have a profound impact on young adults.” Previously, individual states regulated the age of maturity when children were no longer covered by their parents’ policies, generally age 18 or, in some cases, upon the completion of an undergraduate degree. Now, a universal cutoff age for health care coverage under family plans has been set, ensuring care for most undergraduates.

The reform’s impact on college students is enormous. While salvaging draining funds, undergrads will no longer need to worry about establishing an independent insurance plan apart from that of their parents until the ripe age of 26—a time when (hopefully) carefree college kids have transformed into responsible and financially secure adults. With the passing of the health care bill, a heavy burden has certainly been lifted across college campuses nationwide.

Beyond its effects on college students, the healthcare reform will help millions of other Americans. Insurance coverage will be extended to 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured. The bill also mandates that individuals cannot be denied coverage due to preexisting conditions, a provision that will be put into effect immediately for children and in 2014 for adults.

The response from Tufts’ Right, unsurprisingly, was less positive. “They are just reinforcing the status quo system of heavily regulated, private insurance,” according to senior Xander Zebrose, a member of the Tufts Republicans. The primary effect of the bill, he said, is “just forcing more people into a system that doesn’t work particularly well.”

Like the new ban on restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions, many of the bill’s more audacious reforms will not be implemented until 2014. The individual mandate to enroll in an insurance plan—the lynchpin of Massachusetts’ health regime, which was in large part echoed in the federal program—will also be delayed until 2014, along with the ban on lifetime caps for insurance coverage. These caps, which limit the amount of money a patient can receive regardless of need, often leave families with huge debts after loved ones pass away.

A large point of contention surrounding the bill is how it will affect prices for consumers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan body that reviews legislation for its financial impact, said that by 2016, it expects little if any increase in premiums for those with employer-sponsored plans. While individuals and families enrolled in unsponsored plans may see some rises in cost, according to the CBO, more than half of these people will qualify for federal subsidies—reducing costs by 60% on average.

Generally, these reforms will benefit middle-class families, while upper-class individuals and large corporations are likely to see increased costs and higher taxes in order to cover the cost of the new changes. Yet President Obama has taken pains to highlight the bill’s positive effects on small businesses: “This year, millions of small-business owners will be eligible for tax credits that will help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees,” he remarked in a speech in Iowa a few weeks ago.

Many commentators and pundits argue that the bill’s biggest impact will be seen in November, when mid-term elections roll around. What effect will healthcare reform have on the prospects for both parties in the 2010 elections?

The health reform bill “gives the Democrats a platform to run on,” in the words of sophomore Seth Rau, the Speakers Coordinator for the Tufts Democrats. “Once people start to know that they will be saving [money] from the bill, some more popular support will come about,” he predicts, forecasting that the Democratic Party will retain control of both chambers of Congress.

Xander Zebrose of the Tufts Republicans agreed. “I don’t think the Democrats are going to be any worse off because they passed it,” he said. The reason for this, he explained, is timing. “All the costs are delayed…the real effects will probably be farther down the road, once the bill has a real impact.”

No matter the political ramifications, it is clear that the passage of health care reform marks a dramatic shift in US social policy. It seems almost inevitable that this bill will indeed extend coverage to millions and make health insurance available and affordable to all Americans—a change that is long overdue. And, if anything, this healthcare reform will guarantee us Tufts students at least a couple more years of free insurance, courtesy of mom and dad.