Don Peck:

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.
HOW SHOULD WE characterize the economic period we have now entered? After nearly two brutal years, the Great Recession appears to be over, at least technically. Yet a return to normalcy seems far off. By some measures, each recession since the 1980s has retreated more slowly than the one before it. In one sense, we never fully recovered from the last one, in 2001: the share of the civilian population with a job never returned to its previous peak before this downturn began, and incomes were stagnant throughout the decade. Still, the weakness that lingered through much of the 2000s shouldn’t be confused with the trauma of the past two years, a trauma that will remain heavy for quite some time.
The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little. Late last year, the average duration of unemployment surpassed six months, the first time that has happened since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number. As of this writing, for every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work.

David Davenport, Gordon Lloyd:

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. With the possible exception of Texas – where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings – no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.
It’s easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” because, he continued, it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before. And that’s precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.
There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.

Governor Tom Kean & Governor Brendan Byrne:

Q: The governor’s advisory panels made a number of recommendations, including a possible freeze on the salaries of teachers and other public employees. Given that contracts are involved, could this be done?
BYRNE: We have to get over this attitude of “not on my back.” We have to get it across that everybody has to make sacrifices in order to make this work. It’s not going to if all hell breaks loose every time you try to eliminate one fireman. It’s not going to be easy.
KEAN: I don’t think people yet have an understanding of how bad things are.
Comprehending a $10 billion-$12 billion deficit in a $30 billion budget is difficult, if not impossible. Everybody is going to be making sacrifices, not just scattered employees.
BYRNE: It’s nice being in Washington for a day, where the talk is in trillions.
Q: Politically speaking, is taking on the teachers and state employees a fight worth considering simply because of the message it sends?
KEAN: We haven’t any choice. We have wonderful public employees, but they get paid more than anybody in the country in similar positions. We simply can’t afford to do that anymore.
BYRNE: People think this is a minor problem, and it isn’t.
KEAN: In previous years, governors and legislators have been able to paper over the problem. They’ve done so irresponsibly, by increasing debt to much more than it ought to be. Now this is coming home to roost, and we’ve all got to deal with it.
BYRNE: And that will include cutting things that are dear to our hearts, and that’s tough.

Joe Barrett:

The housing boom has left the sprawling school district based in this former rail town on the Little Miami River with gleaming new buildings and a dilemma over how to keep them funded.
Three times in the past 15 months, voters have rejected levies that would have kept the Little Miami School District in the black. Each time, the district fell further behind and had to ask for more. On Tuesday, voters will face the biggest request yet–a new real-estate tax that amounts to $519 per $100,000 of assessed value, nearly twice the rate rejected in November.
Backers say the levy, combined with already deep cuts, is the only way to prevent a fiscal emergency that would force a state takeover of the schools. “It’s the downturn of an entire community. People are going to start looking at moving and your property value is going to go through the floor,” said Julie Salmons Perelman, a 44-year-old part-time veterinary technician with three children in the schools, who sat stuffing bags filled with campaign literature one morning last week.
Bill Nicholson, 54, a longtime opponent of the levies, calls the rising requests in the face of repeated rejections “insanity.” In the past, he has argued on behalf of people with fixed incomes, but he recently lost his own job as a consultant in the perfume industry. “How can I cut a budget of zero” to pay more taxes, he asked.