Center for Human Potential and Public Policy Conference

On May 6, 2004, the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy will host the first of a three-part annual series entitled “Child Education, Health, and Welfare in the Context of Economic Disadvantage: Integrating Social/Behavioral Science and Policy Perspectives.” The May conference will focus on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, passed into law January 8, 2002, and its impact on schools and student achievement.

Poverty and income inequality have consistently been found to seriously jeopardize children’s chances for success in academic achievement and overall educational attainment, disproportionately affecting ethnic minority children. NCLB focuses on school accountability and flexibility, and parental and student choice, clearly placing policy emphasis on both family-level and structural factors to account for the achievement gap between low-income and more economically advantaged children. Concentrating on this landmark legislation, conference presentations and discussions will include studies on students who are most vulnerable to educational failure and models for success, the effects of school choice on student achievement, and the sources of educational inequality.

Center for Policy Practice

The Center for Policy Practice (CPP) has had an active first year. During the Winter Quarter, CPP facilitated its first practicums, with the Illinois Department of Revenue and Action for Children (formerly the Day Care Action Council of Illinois). In the Mentor Program, CPP increased the number of mentors and hosted a discussion for students on policy careers in Latin American studies with mentor George Vickers, the Open Society Institute’s Regional Director for Latin America. For the Major Speaker Series, CPP sponsored several events: a public lecture by Philippe Kirsch, International Criminal Court President (see coverage in this issue); a discussion on democracy-building with Lew Manilow, member of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs’ Board of Directors, founding chair of NDI’s Middle East Committee, and member of the Harris School’s Visiting Committee; and a panel discussion on local economic development strategies in Latin America and their larger impact with featured speakers Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, and others. Co-sponsored with the University’s Center for Latin American Studies and International House, the panel was initiated by two Harris School MPP students, Claudia Puentes and Ernesto Silva.

Cultural Policy Center

The Cultural Policy Center (CPC) will host the inaugural “Emerging Scholars in Cultural Policy” conference on May 21-22, 2004, at the Harris School. Organized by CPC graduate research assistants, the conference is intended to foster community among cultural policy scholars and build a longer-term research agenda for the cultural policy field at large. In addition, the conference will provide a forum for discussing and critiquing cutting-edge research undertaken by graduate students at leading US policy centers.

Invited student panelists from Princeton University, the Ohio State University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago will present their work to colleagues, faculty, and policy practitioners and receive valuable feedback. Topics include: an analysis of the relationships between the size of a metropolitan area’s creative workforce and its economic performance, and a comparative study of amenity offerings and their effect on urban development.

In February, at the University of Washington, Seattle, the Cultural Policy Center also hosted a convening for Washington State government and related arts organizations to discuss “Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington.” Edited by J. Mark Schuster, Professor of Urban Cultural Policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published by the Cultural Policy Center in 2003, the report was funded through a three-year, $185,000 grant by the Pew Charitable Trusts. It involved policy researchers from the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, MIT, and the University of Southern Maine in the first effort to create a detailed map of the breadth and depth of state cultural interventions.