Think-tank dreamers cling to '60s failed solutions

CKERNER2 DEC 19
When riots flamed through America's cities in the 60s, a panicked administration commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to explain what had gone wrong in American society.
The Kerner Riot Commission report, named for Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, appeared March 1, 1968. True to its time, it forecast a future of ever deepening gloom that could be averted only by massive federal intervention in every sector of the economy.
With massive federal intervention no longer enjoying popular favor, and the economy ticking along rather nicely anyway, the Kerner report ought to have faded into deserved obscurity. But a dedicated remnant of social activists at the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation works to keep its dream alive.
Last year, the foundation issued a 30-year update of the Kerner report, and revised it for this year's 30th anniversary of a related 1969 report on the causes and prevention of violence. If it weren't for the occasional reference to current events like the Columbine shootings (blamed on ''rampant suburbanization'') you'd think these people had been in a time warp for 30 years. They've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
They claim to know ''what works'' to solve social problems, and to limit their recommendations to proven solutions that have proved their worth in controlled studies. An excellent principle, to be sure. But they don't follow it.
For instance, they recommend ''full funding'' for Head Start, and they cite the Perry Preschool Program as evidence that effective early-childhood programs pay off. In that, they have plenty of company. The RAND Corporation has identified it as cost-effective, and the University of Colorado's Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence lists it among 10 'Blueprint'' programs of proven effectiveness.
The Perry Preschool program was a research study done in Ypsilanti, Mich., in the 1960s, on 123 extremely disadvantaged children, 58 of them in a treatment group that received extensive services from highly trained professionals over several years, and a control group of 63 children. Even at that, the results were real but modest. By age 19, only 31 percent of the treatment group had been arrested, compared with 51 percent of the control group.
But the Perry Preschool program is nothing like Head Start. As the report concedes, Head Start has no lasting positive effects. ''What would you expect?'' the authors ask, since the children go straight back to the mean streets. But the Perry children did too, and yet the effects lasted. No one has any idea how to scale up the Perry program to the entire Head Start population. Lynn Curtis is president of the Eisenhower Foundation, and last year he spoke at the National Conference of Editorial Writers meeting in Ottawa. It ought to have been a philosophically sympathetic crowd, but his arrogance and moral preening brought even that audience to the point of muttering under its collective breath.
He assured us that it was immoral for states to spend more on prisons than on higher education. But they are unrelated issues. States spend money on prisons not to benefit criminals, but to benefit the people who would otherwise be their victims. The benefits of higher education, however, accrue primarily to the people who get it, in the form of higher incomes. Society benefits too from a well-educated populace, so some public spending on higher education may be justified, but how much is not a moral question, it's a practical one.
He also said it was immoral to take from the poor to give to the rich, but after all, that's what public support of higher education largely does. So does Social Security.
The media response to last year's update was favorable, they note, and ''the naysaying was superficial and often dishonest; it was easily and effectively dismissed.''
These people have no business talking about intellectual dishonesty. The introductory page to their Web site, eisenhowerfoundation.com, offers visitors a choice of ''who are you?'' buttons, for community activists, philanthropists, media, legislators and so forth. A nice touch - except that whichever button you push you get exactly the same menu of solutions. It's the perfect metaphor