Conservative sheriff opts for liberal alternatives to jail time

This essay was first published in Newsday. Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco is an unusual kind of sheriff. What law enforcement chief doesn't want a bigger jail? But he is doing all he can not to build.

On a recent Thursday morning, DeMarco eviscerated an 82-page report by the Suffolk County Probation Department that said the department is doing a great job of clearing the jail of nonviolent, low-level offenders, and preventing them from returning. DeMarco spoke to the county legislature's Public Safety Committee and made enough of an impression that it appears the legislature will vote on Sept. 14 to have an outside consultant come in to check the Probation Department's math.

That's important, because unless the sheriff can prove that he can move people out of jail and reduce crowded conditions, the state is going to force him to build space for 440 more beds at a cost of $100 million, even as Suffolk faces a $250 million budget deficit.

In an interview, DeMarco said of the Probation Department, "These guys go to conferences around the state and B.S. everybody. They tell everybody how effective their programs are." He went on to say, "But it's outdated and incomplete data. I like these people; I work with them every day. It's not personal."

You have to hand it to him, that's blunt. That's because overstating the effectiveness of the probation system makes it harder to get low-level criminals into the alternative programs that could have a better chance of keeping them from returning to jail down the line.

It's an excellent position for a Conservative Party sheriff to take during a re-election campaign: Save the county $100 million. But DeMarco has been cross-endorsed by every major and minor party in the county, and he probably doesn't have much to fear electorally from his opponent, Sam Barreto, a Suffolk canine unit police officer who is challenging him in the primary for the Republican line.

Still, it's remarkable that DeMarco's fiscal conservatism is marching him directly toward liberal criminal justice policies. He likes to tell a story about the first time Bob DeSena asked for a meeting. DeSena is a former New York City high school teacher and the founder of Council for Unity, which has brought together rival black, white and Latino gang members to work out their differences at the Suffolk County jail in Riverhead. DeMarco told his secretary to interrupt the DeSena meeting after 10 minutes.

"I thought he was nuts," DeMarco said.

But in the years since, the sheriff has spearheaded such life-changing programs for "justice involved" young people - teens who are facing jail time and perhaps a life of cycling through the criminal justice system, unless someone helps them.

DeMarco's youth re-entry task force in Suffolk, and the youth tier initiative at the jail, have just won recognition from the National Association of Counties. The sheriff has embraced the counseling and housing services of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson and Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead.

Soon, with the sheriff's support, District Court Judge Fernando Camacho will open a youth court - similar to the veterans, drug and mental health courts in Suffolk County - to make sure teenagers have every opportunity to turn their lives around.

Camacho spoke recently to a gathering of representatives from Suffolk County youth agencies. In his 30 years as a judge, he said, he's seen the same types of problems plaguing kids who show up in the criminal justice system at 16 or 17: an absent father, an addicted mother, a string of foster homes, learning issues, fighting in school, drug use.

"That person is angry, really angry," Camacho said. "If you take that 16- or 17-year-old and lock them up for three years, you're going to have one angry 20-year-old coming back into your community."

For reasons of mercy or money - who cares which? - Suffolk is trying to end that cycle.

Closing the only psych ward for kids is disastrous

In a decision that seems as ill-timed as possible, the state Office of Mental Health announced last month that it will close its only inpatient children's psychiatric program on Long Island. Families in crisis, with delusional or suicidal children, will in the future be required to travel to Queens or the Bronx.

The added human misery that this decision is likely to rain down on some Suffolk and Nassau residents is immeasurable. That it comes so soon after a string of mass murders by people with mental illness - just seven months after Sandy Hook - is inconceivable.

"It came as a surprise," said Dennis Dubey, former executive director of the facility that is closing, Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center in Dix Hills. "It's a surprise that throughout the rest of the state, OMH is saving money by consolidating children's centers into larger hospitals, but that only on Long Island are they totally eliminating beds."

After a six-week "listening tour" - geared to reassuring mental health employees that they will be eligible for other state jobs - the Office of Mental Health published a report on July 11 saying that the center will close in 14 months - but offered no plan for winding down services. Local leaders are supposed to suggest something by Oct. 1.

"To me that's sketchy," Dubey said.

The state report is titled "Regional Centers of Excellence," but you won't find any discussion of excellent treatment within its 57 pages. The entire focus is on cost and changes in insurance, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The plan could save $20 million over three years. I'm in favor of government saving money, but dropping services to the most vulnerable - poor, possibly abused and desperate - is foolish.

The 57-bed Sagamore center is a waystation where children - usually between 9 and 17 - can step out of their lives, feel safe and begin getting support with their families involved. The facility also offers classes to keep students up-to-date with their schoolwork. Several current and former employees say there is a continual waiting list for the nationally recognized program.

OMH says it is committed to expanding Long Island's community-based services - outpatient care - which keeps kids close to their families and in school, and to minimizing the need for hospitalization.

But sometimes inpatient care is necessary. When it is, shipping children away could prevent families from participating in their recovery and worsen their prognosis, says Emily Engel, a psychologist who interned at Sagamore. She wrote a letter to leaders in Albany protesting the closure. "How many times does a mass shooting occur - when people then ask why warning signs were missed, why that clearly mentally ill individual did not receive help? SCPC is the type of facility that evaluates and treats the potential school shooters, that treats child victims of rape and violence."

Fern, a Sagamore worker who did not want her last name used, said many of the children improve and go on with their lives. "We see so many - we call them clients - who are now working and going to college."

To be sure, New York has more psychiatric hospitals than any other state - 24, compared with five in California. But Americans have begun to question the wisdom of the decision in the 1980s to dismantle the mental health care system. We only need to look to many of the homeless people wandering our streets, the high suicide rates - especially among teens and returning veterans - and the mentally ill people who pack our jails, receiving no support to help them get well. Abandoning people to their inner demons is not "excellent."

Dr. Ronald Marino, the associate chair of pediatrics at Winthrop-University Hospital, said general hospitals like his are ill-equipped to handle kids who come to the emergency room with suicidal thoughts, extreme panic, drug abuse and eating disorders. And yet, they're seeing more of them. Marino believes that media violence and economic pressure on adults to hold many jobs - among other stresses of modern life - are finding their way to young people.

We must stop pulling the supports out from under them.

Corporate social responsibility, in Bangladesh and at the diner

This essay was first published in Newsday.

The clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed 1,129 workers in May tragically dramatized the need for a movement that's been building for two decades: corporate social responsibility.

The idea of this movement is that good behavior can be cultivated among employers through a combination of public pressure and consumer purchases - rewarding companies with loyalty when they show care for the environment or treat workers well. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but in fact 57 percent of Fortune 500 companies issued reports about their environmental, social and governance strategies in 2011, more than double the previous year, according to the Governance & Accountability Institute, a research firm.

These are leading companies protecting their reputations. And, as business guru Warren Buffett says, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and just five minutes to lose it. Just ask BP PLC, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or Apple Inc., following the revelations about poor working conditions and suicides at its Foxconn factory in southwest China. Although Apple sales remain strong, the company has agreed to rounds of audits of its factories by labor and environmental organizations.

The trail of responsibility for the factory collapse in Bangladesh led to western retailers that sell clothing made there. Of course, giant American retailers didn't inspect the Rana Plaza building for safety violations - that was the job of the Bangladeshi government - but they chose to buy the clothing from poorly regulated countries, in exchange for low-low prices.

Last week, in a nod to corporate social responsibility, Wal-Mart, Gap, Target, Macy's and other retailers agreed to donate $42 million for worker safety in Bangladesh, including inspections and an anonymous hotline for workers to report problems. One global activist group, Avaaz, launched a Facebook and Twitter campaign to pressure Gap to sign, when it looked as though that company might not. The Internet has put reputation management on steroids.

Of course, it's possible we shoppers will see higher prices for clothing now, as a result, but the peace of mind will be worth it. "Someone selling a T-shirt for $1.50 is taking big risks," Philip Rooke of T-shirt seller Spreadshirt.com told USA Today. "It is not possible to do it ethically."

Wouldn't it be great if stores had a way of signaling to shoppers that the $2.50 we're now paying for a T-shirt means we can rest easy that nobody died sewing it? Like the disclaimers in films - "no animals were harmed in this film's production" - or fair trade stickers on coffee and chocolate, or the triangular "recycled" logo on paper products.

A seminal thought leading to corporate social responsibility was the idea of a "triple bottom line" formulated in 1994 by British planner John Elkington. He said companies could go beyond reporting their bottom-line profit to a broader measurement of environmental and social achievement. It became known as the Three P's: profit, planet and people.

Personally, I think we need more emphasis on the people. I would be willing to pay more for a restaurant meal if I knew the waitress were able to afford child care. "The Third Shift," a report issued last week and funded by the Ms. Foundation for Women, showed that, with a federal minimum wage for tipped workers of $2.13 an hour, it's nearly impossible to pay for safe, high-quality care given the unpredictable, late hours.

Or perhaps we could devise a sticker or a logo to convey to consumers that a given company offers paid sick days - 38 percent of American workers don't have them - or paid maternity/paternity leave.

Those are my priorities; others will have their own. A diverse workforce? A no-layoff policy? A smaller carbon footprint? Profit-sharing? The possibilities are plentiful when capitalism adopts a social conscience.

9 reasons this mom regrets staying home with kids

This essay was first published in Newsday.

More than two decades after leaving her job on the trading floor of a London bank to stay home with her three children, Lisa Endlich Heffernan has written an essay titled "Why I Regret Being a Stay-at-Home Mom." Published recently on The Huffington Post, her piece drew nearly 800 comments and more than 14,000 "likes" on Facebook.

The comment she relishes for succinctly summing up her point is this: "When I look at how amazing my kids are, I do not have regrets. When I look at my career and passions, I have only regrets."

It's the sort of rearview calculation familiar to those of us 50 and older. But Heffernan's midlife lament lands at a moment when millions are asking themselves such questions. In an interview from her Westchester home, she described three broad reactions.

"One of the big surprises was from young women," Heffernan said. "I had a rush of comments from women on maternity leave or just back saying, 'Every day I wrestle with myself, whether this was the right decision or not.'"

They are grateful. They told Heffernan they might have anticipated one or two regrets she disclosed, but not the full nine. "My world narrowed," was one. And another: "I used my driver's license far more than my degrees," including an MBA from MIT.

Other comments came from stay-home moms in their 40s and 50s who praised Heffernan's courage for speaking up. They felt the same way.

And then, she said, "There was the hate mail" - stay-home moms who felt criticized. To them, she responds, "I do not presume to speak for one other woman on this planet." The essay was purely personal.

But of course, we are living a moment in history when these "personal" questions have been dragged into the public square for a full examination. Heffernan, who blogs at GrownAndFlown.com, believes that's because baby boomers were mostly raised by moms who stayed home or held "women's" jobs instead of managing high-stress careers. So, the change is unsettling. Also, the Internet lets us converse with thousands - instead of two or three friends, who probably thought the same way we did, as in years past.

Work-family debates also likely draw so many defensive, injured voices because they affect a much larger group today. Having a parent at home is no longer an option for most middle-class families, as wages have declined over 40 years and layoffs have ratcheted up job insecurity. In 1975, about 47 percent of mothers were in the labor force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, it's almost 71 percent.

But even as the temperature of the debate mounts, so does the importance of holding it right out loud. Heffernan's openness does a service for younger people weighing their choices. I work full time now, but I've played other roles; my husband and I stayed home with our two daughters for about three years each. We didn't plan it that way; we made it up as we went.

For another perspective, I spoke to Frederick Goodall, who blogs at MochaDad.com. He and his wife have traded off staying home with their three kids. They're younger - Generation X - and believe many of their peers see staying home as old-fashioned.

But Goodall thinks society has short-shrifted parenting. "We need women to understand - and guys too - that family responsibility is just as important as work responsibility."

The key to having a parent at home may be setting material sights lower. "You have to start budgeting for it, if it's something you really want to do," he said.

Will we be hearing from Goodall in 10 years about his career regrets? That's hard to know. But I hope if we do, we'll tell him to lighten up on himself. Easy choices these are not.

Snowden has performed an act of patriotism

At the moment, squirrely data contractor Edward Snowden doesn't look much like a hero. He's reportedly still holed up in a neutral wing of a Moscow airport, searching for a country to protect him from the U.S. government's espionage charges. He's leaking information about the United States spying on its allies, in an apparent effort to embarrass President Barack Obama.

Not heroic, no. In fact, just the opposite. But on this day we celebrate the founding of our democracy, and I believe that Snowden made choices that reaffirm the founders' values. In a democracy, the government's work shouldn't be shrouded in secrecy. Snowden's revelations have exposed policy-makers to needed public debate.

Of course, some secrecy is necessary. But there's evidence that our government's reticence goes well beyond the demands of national security. The Defense Department only last year declassified the Pentagon Papers, 40 years after they ran in American newspapers. Shhhh!

Snowden originally appears to have acted out of conscience. The former National Security Agency techie said he leaked information about the government collecting millions of telephone records and emails in the hope of provoking a national dialogue about surveillance and secrecy.

As a result, we have received vital reassurance from federal officials about how they use this data. To our great relief, we now know that officials aren't reading each email message or listening in on phone calls. The NSA says it sifts for patterns that may reveal terrorist plots. If a computer program catches something suspicious, agents must still obtain a court order to look at the stored data. Officials have also been forced to justify the surveillance by detailing thwarted terrorist plots.

Admittedly, the reasons for Snowden's recent declarations seem less noble. He told a Chinese newspaper that the NSA intercepted the private mobile-phone text messages of millions of Chinese. And a German magazine published his reports of the United States' electronic monitoring of European Union offices and computer networks. Starting trouble for Obama with other governments seems merely vengeful on Snowden's part.

Of course, the president is after him. He wants to put Snowden on trial for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 - the same law under which Pfc. Bradley Manning now faces court-martial. Manning could be sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of giving classified U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. I doubt very much that the military court will consider whether Manning served democracy when rendering its verdict.

Government's first inclination is not to preserve democracy, but to preserve itself. So, it's no wonder Snowden is running and hiding. But that doesn't erase the good that has come from his bravery.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Washington did nothing in response to Newtown killings

Remember the righteous calls for action coming from federal officials after the Newtown, Conn., shootings? That horror in which six adults and 20 first-graders lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Who could forget?

Apparently, Washington.

During these two months that Congress has been in session, no significant money, emergency training or legal safeguards have been approved for the mental health system - at least not that the federal government will supply.

There's hope, however, because we live in a country where average people - make that, extraordinary people - are acting to help families and therapists who might be able to predict delusional violence but too often can't prevent it.

Here's a rundown of disappointments from our nation's capital.

When the president's gun-control bill failed in April, so did an amendment to teach "mental health first aid" to emergency workers, teachers and others who interact with people struggling with mental illness.

Although President Barack Obama launched the first White House Conference on Mental Health on June 3, to begin a national dialogue about mental illness, associated funding proposals are on hold because of the federal budget sequestration.

The Affordable Care Act will require new health plans to cover mental illness as they do physical illness, because of the federal Mental Health Parity Act of 2008. But nobody knows how to enforce that law, because in the five years since it was passed, the Obama administration still hasn't written the rules.

"There's been a lot of talk, but no action and no money. Everybody's forgotten about" the promises, says Carolyn Reinach Wolf, a lawyer with offices in Lake Success and Manhattan who has developed what may be the country's only mental health law practice.

Over two decades, Wolf has represented families in crisis navigating hospitals, insurance companies, courts and social services. Gaining a stable life, for seriously mentally ill people, can take many years and temporary failures. Living through this with her clients, Wolf has witnessed where the law makes the battle more agonizing and protracted.

She's one of the extraordinary people working on two changes to federal law. The first would modify confidentiality so that families, if they meet certain criteria of involvement and support, can receive confirmation that their loved one is in treatment, and can discuss medications and the treatment plan - instead of hitting the silent wall of therapist-patient confidentiality.

Second, Wolf wants to alter the standard for involuntary commitment. Right now, the only reliable way for a person in trouble to get help is if he or she threatens suicide or to harm someone else. Wolf would reduce the bar to include those who could benefit from inpatient care and treatment - for example, because they have in the past.

Wolf's ideas will rankle civil libertarians, but her long bouts with the mental health system add weight to her words.

Some other extraordinary people are "The Blinking Cowboys," three young men profiled in Newsday earlier this month and so named for their flashy green outfits. Brothers Matthew and Christopher Prisco, and their friend Brian Gallagher, will travel to 50 states this summer. In 2009, Matthew and Christopher's mother, Kathleen Prisco of Fort Salonga, was charged with stabbing their father to death and was found not guilty by reason of mental disease and defect.

You can follow the cowboys' summer travels on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as they seek to refocus the notoriety about their father's death to assist other tortured families. They want to raise public awareness and encourage others to seek help.

Maybe they can show Washington what it means to turn tragedy into positive action.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Persuasive film on anti-nuke zealots who changed their minds

Director Robert Stone made his reputation with documentaries such as "Radio Bikini," which in 1988 exposed the hazards of nuclear testing, and "Earth Days" in 2009, which celebrated the rise of environmentalism. So it's startling to witness the pro-nuclear power message of his film opening this week, "Pandora's Promise."

Stone begins with the story of his own conversion from anti-nuclear to the conclusion that "the rapid deployment of nuclear power is now the greatest hope we have for saving us." Along with his transformation, Stone gathers on camera five prominent activists who've traveled the same path from "anti" to "pro," including anti-Shoreham activist Gwyneth Cravens.

"Pandora's Promise" is intended to follow on the 2006 success of "An Inconvenient Truth," which woke many to the threats of global warming. At the same time, that film divided environmentalists who can't agree on the greater evil: nuclear power or climate change.

Stone's effort to repair the rift gives the film its name. Once the horrors had flown from Pandora's mythical box, in the bottom was hope. Nuclear power offers the hope of near-zero carbon emissions.

This compelling documentary pushed me further along my own conversion path. Among the thousands of faces the camera pans from the 1979 "No Nukes" concert in Battery Park City, I'm there with my college pals. "No nukes" is how I felt then, but now I am open to the possibilities.

In another New York moment, "Pandora's Promise" tells of the epic fight over the closed Shoreham nuclear power plant. "People were so afraid of it that they shut it down," says Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the film's converts to support for nuclear power.

That's too dismissive of Shoreham's history, of course. No valid evacuation plan, in case of an accident, was ever approved for Long Island.

This film is a full dose of strong opinion - and also supplies some much-needed facts. For example, "Pandora's Promise" reports that all the nuclear waste generated in U.S. history could fit in 10-foot-high barrels covering a single football field. New-generation reactors may actually use recycled nuclear waste. And nuclear warheads from Russia, reprocessed, are supplying 10 percent of America's electricity.

According to the World Health Organization and the United Nations, only 56 deaths can be tied to the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, which is a design of reactor that's no longer built. Greenpeace and other activists claim that 1 million died. And the deaths and radiation poisoning widely feared after the Fukushima explosions in 2011 haven't happened.

"If you are exposed to the fallout from Fukushima ... the increased risk of getting cancer is estimated to be so infinitesimally small that you would never be able to identify its impact," says Mark Lynas, a British author and blogger on climate change.

Using a handheld digital device, Lynas finds more radioactivity coming from a sidewalk weed than on a Fukushima beach. Yet the interviews with Japanese parents who keep their children indoors because of fears of radioactivity are heart-rending.

"You can't reassure people," Lynas says. "People are so terrified ... because they don't have that background context of what radiation means, they can't actually decide for themselves what's safe."

New Yorkers will unfortunately have limited access to this film - at least in the first round. It's scheduled to screened at the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side this week, in Rhinebeck beginning July 12, and in Albany starting July 19.

"Pandora's Promise" deserves wider distribution. It's essential viewing for anyone who cares about today's energy decisions.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Archie Bunker would be a 'birther' today

We open to a couple seated at a piano, their shoulders amiably pressed together as they move to the music. The man plucks a cigar from his lips and begins in a baritone, "Boy the way Glenn Miller played ... "

Then the wife: "Songs that made the hit parade!" - delivered in a nasal screech that is as unselfconscious as it is grating. Lovable Edith Bunker, as played by Jean Stapleton, who died Friday at age 90, was the good-hearted "Dingbat" who made Archie Bunker bearable - even comical - despite his stony bigotry.

Stapleton's death reminds us of the glory of "All in the Family," the daring sitcom set in a modest Queens living room that spoke truth about racial prejudice, gender inequality, ethnic bias and religious animosity like nothing else on television before its January 1971 premiere. Archie Bunker was the aggrieved working-class white man who saw his world as changing too fast - "Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days!"

What would a guy like Archie be doing if he were alive today? (Actor Carroll O'Connor, who played him, died in 2001.) Which issues would he groan about from his favorite armchair, beer in hand?

The most obvious is a black president of the United States. Bunker had little regard for "spades," and was hostile toward interracial couples. I picture him today as a "birther" - calling for copies of the birth certificate, passports and school transcripts from President Barack Obama -- or, Barry Soetoro, as some modern Archie Bunkers call the president, using the surname of Obama's Indonesian stepfather, presumably to make the president seem deceitful and foreign.

Archie would object to women holding roughly as many jobs as men today. "Ms., Ms., Ms. I hate that 'Ms.' It sounds like a bug," Archie tells Edith when she comes home to serve him his dinner - late - after her women's club meeting. "What is the matter with the way you're running your life here, anyway? Huh? It's the world's oldest profession, running a house."

Modern Archie would blame the problems of the economy and schools on single mothers. They're responsible for the huge increase in food stamps, they don't teach their children discipline or manners, and they're too busy to help with homework, he'd probably say. The burden falls to the classroom teacher - and, ultimately, for school costs, to taxpayers. "The Democrats' way of running this country is to go tell us all how we ought to make sacrifices," Archie says in one episode. "I'm sick and tired of people ... giving away my hard-earned money to a bunch of families who ain't even related to me."

Similarly, he'd have a few words for immigrants who fail to assimilate into American culture. One episode has Archie facing a judge with his arm in a sling. The judge explains that Archie's assailant has been released because the arresting officer read him his rights in English, which he doesn't speak or understand. "No bum who can't speak perfect English ought to stay in this country," Archie says. He "ought to be de-exported the hell outta here."

And Archie would have sided with National Rifle Association leaders who proposed armed guards in schools after the Newtown, Conn., shootings in December. Archie suggests in one episode that the way to end plane hijackings is to "arm all the passengers."

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Archie Bunker thrives among us today. Maybe it's time for another TV parody to shed light on some of the ignorance, resentment and hatred.

Stapleton had this to say about the nine-season "All in the Family," in an interview in 2000: "It was very honest, very funny, at uncovering a lot of bigotry and prejudice and nonsense."

Those were the days.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Kids' worth is more than a sum of their grade cards

It's that time of year again. Memorial Day is behind us, and the end of the school year will be here before we know it. Graduating seniors know where they're going to college, and high school and middle school students have learned whether they'll be attending honors classes and advanced placement courses - or not. Some elementary school kids were accepted into gifted and talented programs.

Based on these academic measures, we parents judge ourselves accordingly. Have we been successful?

I thought about this recently on the phone with my mother-in-law, who didn't work outside the home. I asked, "What's new with you?" She said she didn't have any big news. No Nobel Prizes or Pulitzers.

Parenting doesn't have such concrete accolades. There are no bonuses or tangible rewards for performance. It's a subjective enterprise that one day can seem wonderful and the next, dreadful. So, we look to proxies - like college acceptances and honors classes - to tell us how we're doing.

But parents give over too much power to the schools - and especially college admissions offices - to decide which children are doing well in life.

This is a mistake. First, it's wrong to think every kid must aspire to the Ivy League. Certainly, that achievement gives parents bragging rights. But, what if a kid isn't studious? What if his or her gifts lead in another direction? Have we built enough alternatives into schooling to explore these?

These questions are crucial to unraveling our current anxiety over school testing. If parents are judging themselves based on where their kids go to college then we're on a track where one kind of skill - academic - is valued, and anything else is lesser.

There may be signs this attitude is changing. Since 2008, roughly 47 percent of seniors graduating from New York public schools were planning to enter four-year colleges. That compares with 53 percent earlier in the decade.

Also, the Obama administration is working to make high school vocational education more relevant to careers. In his State of the Union address back in February, the president pointed to the German system of work apprenticeships.

Another problem with judging kids by their academic performance is that it omits so many dimensions of what makes a person a good human being. As a society, we place too little emphasis on character. We elect people to office who use power for sex or money and then lie about it. We admire celebrities who demonstrate all too often that character didn't earn them their place in the spotlight. Up this week: Amanda Bynes.

I asked one of my favorite parenting writers, Laura Markham, an author and clinical psychologist who blogs at AhaParenting.com, how she would define a well-raised person. Here's her list:

Can he take responsibility when he makes a mistake? Can she do what's right even when it costs her (and doing what's right almost always costs us)?

Can he keep himself from lashing out at someone else when he gets angry?

Can she forgive herself for being imperfect? Can he apologize and repair when he inadvertently damages a relationship?

Can she pursue her passions, overcoming the inevitable hurdles and setbacks, and find the courage to get up the next morning to try again even when everything goes wrong?

Can he love deeply?

That's a difficult list to live up to, but it's a far better gauge of successful parenting than a Regents score.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

DREAMers' potential is among our best investments

In Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," everyone believes Tess' father is a poor peddler, including the man himself. Then, in a chance meeting, a parson tells him he's descended from a noble family. After that, the villagers look at Tess' father through new eyes.

Similarly, we're often mistaken in our perceptions about DREAMers - young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children and who would be eligible for the state and federal DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Acts. We often don't recognize them for who they are. They're neighbors, classmates and children's friends.

A couple of years ago, I remarked to another mom about a boy who was becoming an academic superstar. He was one of those boys every girl had a crush on in sixth grade. My friend said, we'll see where his hard work gets him when he applies for college. The boy isn't an American citizen. He's one of roughly 1.8 million such children in local school districts across the country.

Under current law, many colleges and universities won't admit noncitizen students. And even if they enroll, most financial aid is not available to them.

In all but 13 states, these students must pay out-of-state tuition; New York is one of the 13 exceptions. But even here, DREAMers can't qualify for state academic scholarships, student loans or the need-based Tuition Assistance Program.

After realizing how many hurdles were in front of that boy, I began to look at him differently. What might his future hold? Working off the books somewhere? Turning to crime? I became a passionate supporter of the DREAM Act - federal and state.

In April, Newsday ran an op-ed by Destiny Thompson, a senior at Valley Stream South High School, whose Jamaican family moved her to the United States when she was 2. Another hard worker, she made a plea to pass the New York DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students with good grades and low family income to get financial aid through TAP.

Readers sent many letters in response. Certainly, some had compassion for Thompson. But others worried that their chances would be spoiled by the competition. Several said they wanted the government to help Americans first.

One misconception about the New York DREAM Act is that it would take money away from citizens. Instead, anyone who meets the TAP guidelines, one of which is low income, would be eligible. The liberal Fiscal Policy Institute think tank estimates that passing the DREAM Act would cost New York just $17 million a year, or a 2 percent increase in TAP grants.

Another fear is that DREAMers would displace citizens in coveted college slots. For this reason, among others, schools with racial preferences should eliminate them. But if a minority DREAMer won a place at a university on merit, over one of my kids, that's fair. Rewarding hard work and intelligence is the moral foundation of our culture.

College graduates earn about $12,000 more a year than those without a degree - and therefore pay more in taxes. But forget the dollars for a moment. Higher education adds meaning to people's lives. It allows a person to bring art, literature, history and science to his or her endeavors. Where some see DREAMers wanting to take something away, I believe that an educated person returns gifts to the community many times over.

Let's see DREAMers for who they are: young people whose potential is among our best possible investments.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Mother's Day wishes for teen jobs, child care slots

Mother's Day comes around again this Sunday. The holiday stirs mixed emotions in people. My family has always treated me to a nice, low-key Mother's Day - a homemade card, some extra help around the house, a special meal at home.

But my mother was, sadly, never satisfied with her Mother's Day celebrations. Maybe one day a year couldn't sufficiently thank her for the hard, loving work she was doing raising seven children, or the things she went without so that we could all attend college.

So this year, on behalf of my late mom and mothers everywhere, I'm going to think bigger about our wishes for Mother's Day.

I wish for an end to the stories about pervy teachers, coaches and school administrators. This week, a Bellport High School history teacher posted bail after he was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old student. Last week, a substitute teacher at Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School, who also coaches girls' volleyball and gymnastics, was also charged with having sex with an underage girl. In March, the same allegation was made against a Freeport middle school principal with an undetected felony record. The schools aren't a singles bar. Hands off.

I wish for better employment prospects for teenagers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than three in 10 American teenagers find summer jobs. This isn't just about earning money. Jobs teach young people about responsibility, cooperation, time management, handling conflict and choosing a career. Yes, parents teach these too, but at some point, teens must move into a wider world. How about a well-run, creative, summer volunteer corps for teens? They could collect trash or fix up homes - and put it on a resume.

I wish the child care subsidies for working people in Suffolk and Westchester counties, among others, would be restored. People shouldn't have to quit jobs because there's no one to watch their children. Nor should they be forced to leave their kids in dangerous situations - home alone or with a too-young sibling? - because they have to work.

I wish for a new federal policy that would make it easier for workers to take time off when their child or parent needs care. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Family Medical Leave Act, which provides for 12 unpaid weeks of leave with a guarantee that a job will be waiting afterward. That landmark law originally applied only to companies with 50 or more employees. But even for smaller companies, in just one generation, complying with the FMLA is often the norm. Still, it's not enough. Some people can't afford unpaid time. We need new thinking on how work and family responsibilities can coexist.

I wish schools would bring back late buses, so more kids could participate in sports, extra-help sessions and clubs.

Oh, and one more. I wish for "Princesses: Long Island" to be painfully accurate. The upcoming Bravo reality series, which begins June 2, has the potential to make my life as a mom a lot easier - if it's realistic about the excesses of Long Island girl life. Being driven around in limousines, discovering new must-have spa treatments, dropping hundreds of dollars weekly on clothes - if my daughters see that only "princesses" get this treatment, maybe they won't think they have to have it too.

Wishing won't make it so, of course, just as appreciating Mom one day a year isn't enough. But sometimes change begins with a wish.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Once more in defense of the Common Core

Two weeks ago, I defended the Common Core - the new, more analytical way of approaching learning in public schools that's now being rolled out in 46 states, including New York. I think it's worth trying to raise education standards in this country, I wrote, because our students score embarrassingly low in comparison with other developed countries.

It's an understatement to say that I received a lot of mail.

There's almost nothing that riles Long Islanders like an education debate. For reader response, this issue is rivaled only by the recent furor over gun control.

Some people agreed with me; most didn't. (People respond most often when they disagree.) Some of the arguments against the Common Core and the way it has been implemented were so heartfelt that I felt I had to take another look at opposing views.

The one I find most persuasive comes from parents and teachers of kids in third and fourth grades. They feel as though the Common Core methods and tests require abstract thinking from kids who are much too young.

"The mother of one student I am tutoring called me on Sunday morning in tears trying to do a 4th-grade practice test with her daughter," one longtime teacher wrote. "The stress that this is causing families is beyond belief. Imagine an ESL or special ed student trying to do the same assignment without the benefit of private tutoring. They don't even have a chance."

Another teacher said that if parents can't understand Common Core methods, they can't help their kids with homework. That threatens to weaken one of the keys to achievement: parents supporting their children.

A third teacher said the Common Core won't even be fully rolled out into classrooms until December, and therefore we are testing students now on work they haven't yet learned.

I sympathize with these concerns. Change is disruptive, and the Obama administration and New York State education officials have done a terrible job explaining the Common Core. But I'm still hopeful that this change will benefit our country - that taking a chance to raise standards will have been worth the disruption.

Another persuasive argument is that testing is taking the creativity out of teaching, and draining the classroom of a love of learning. Carol Burris, the distinguished principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, says parents are concerned about classroom time increasingly dedicated to test preparation. Also, students who receive low scores on what she calls this "toughen up" test year, may find that parents lower their ambitions for them. They will cease to dream big. That is too sad for words.

Burris co-wrote a book, published last year, that is supportive of the Common Core. But she argues that the way it has been introduced in classrooms has been so rushed that it sets kids up to fail. And tying teachers' evaluations to test scores creates dangerous incentives.

"There are teachers who will be very concerned about who is in their classes, and that's not healthy," Burris told me.

Advocates of the Common Core say it was developed, in part, by asking business people what skills they need from graduates. Curriculum designers took those skills and worked backward from 12th grade, to build a stepladder toward mastery. This makes sense. An education should move us along a path toward self-support - from classroom to work.

The Common Core methods also involve every student in analyzing texts, not just listening to the interpretations of the teacher and the top four or five kids who raise their hands in class. That also seems smart.

Perhaps the Common Core will need to be modified, or its implementation slowed. I don't think that debate will be resolved easily. So, let's keep talking.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Colleges email aggressively to recruit 10th-graders

My 10th-grader took the PSAT exam last fall. A few weeks later, we received an email from a prestigious college. No, not Harvard, but a decent, private, liberal arts school. I was thrilled. I thought, "She must have done very well on her PSAT." I told my daughter about the email, and then we were both thrilled.

Poor, gullible Mom.

Shortly after receiving that first missive, I began fielding a flood of emails from colleges and snail mail, too.

When we met with her guidance counselor to discuss her 11th-grade class choices, I asked about all the mail. She said this is typical. The schools get names from the PSAT registrations and begin to woo the college-bound.

Our counselor advised me to hang onto the materials until Isabelle is ready to begin her college search. So, I created a virtual folder for the email - up to about 75 unread at the moment - and set a basket on her desk for the paper brochures and envelopes.

It's looking a little overwhelming to me, all of these choices. But I feel we'll narrow it down in time.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Don't boycott Common Core standards, tests

There's so much noise around school testing this year that one would think "high-stakes" and "standardized" were New York's newest cuss words.

The noise has been so distracting that it took me quite a while to understand what's really been going on in classrooms. As a sometimes critic of how the United States stacks up for education, I'm encouraged by the changes.

It took a visit to Newsday by New York's top education officials for me to get what was really going on. I'm embarrassed to admit this, since I consider myself an involved mother of two teenagers. I attend all the parent-teacher nights, meet or talk with guidance counselors several times a year, communicate with my kids' teachers, check eboards and volunteer in the school. So, I was aware of something called the Common Core - usually mentioned by teachers with an eye roll. But I didn't have much of an idea of what it meant until seven months into the school year.

Last week, in fact.

I had thought that the Common Core was a new curriculum fad, one of the many waves to roll through over the past 30 years. Instead, it's a way of training students to attack problems and think analytically.

Sure, I had noticed that my daughters were doing different homework. Instead of the floppy standards of prior composition, they were having to write introductions, provide evidence and craft conclusions - in subjects from social studies to science, not just in English class. In math, they were required to show the steps they took to get their answers.

Standardized tests began this week, and some parents are boycotting them, in part because they're making kids so anxious. But the new standards have been making my kids (mildly) anxious all school year. So, when I finally understood the Common Core myself, and its goals, I sat down with them and explained it.

My eighth-grader seemed relieved to finally understand why this year had seemed so much harder.

"That would explain the lower grades," my 10th-grader mused about her academic performance this past year. But in the next breath, she said, "Well, I guess I'll be better prepared for college."

Then she pulled up a YouTube video from HBO's "The Newsroom," in which actor Jeff Daniels rants about how great America used to be. "We aspired to intelligence," he said, "we didn't belittle it." He rattled off statistics on how poorly we compare to other countries in education.

Note to the nation's parents: We're not doing our kids any favors when we fail to raise education standards. And they know it.

State Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. notes that only 75 percent of the state's students graduate high school. Only 35 percent of ninth-graders graduate in four years ready for college coursework. The rest are taking remedial classes in college - high school classes that they and their parents get to pay for. Again.

The public school system, from King on down to the teachers, has done a poor job of explaining the Common Core. Too much of the focus has been that teachers will be evaluated, in part, on students' test results.

But I wonder, if teachers' job ratings weren't on the line, would they take the Common Core so seriously? Or would it become another of the fads that seem to wash in and out of our country's classrooms like ocean tides?

Along with New York, 45 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. territories and the Department of Defense schools have adopted Common Core standards. Will this new national standard raise the fortunes of America's future graduates? Not without some anxiety.

But let's not allow that to distract us from a worthy effort.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Believe it, teen years aren't all bad

People say some incredibly unhelpful things to parents. At the top of my list: When your child turns 11 or 12 or 13, he or she will become unbearable for roughly the next decade.

I'm here to tell you that my daughters are 14 and 15, and I actually like them most of the time.

A few years ago, people would often comment, "Well, you've got a couple more good years with your daughters before they turn into teenagers." And this comment is supposed to be ... what, exactly? Certainly not helpful. It's not even constructive criticism. I heard the comment so often that I began to truly fear the teen years.

I also receive email from organizations called "EmpoweringParents" and other such names. The organizations offer advice on how to handle hostile, angry, back-talking, defiant, disrespectful, anxious kids.

I know that the teen years can be rough. I was one difficult, angry teen myself. But this can be a wonderful phase of life, too. Tweens and teens are deciding whom they want to be. It's been magical to watch my daughters discover interests that light them up - marching band, acting, lacrosse, the Warped Tour. Sure, I sometimes wish they cared more about what interests me - community service, books. But they have broadened my world.

There's nowhere I'd rather be than talking with one of them when they have a decision to make about how to treat a friend, stand up for themselves or style their "look." They usually don't ask for my advice, but if I listen carefully, I know when there's an issue they might want help with.

So, now I make it a point to tell parents with younger kids, the teen years can be OK. In fact, exciting. One kind mom - out of dozens of moms and dads - told me that along the way, and I'm grateful she did.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Parents need paid sick days to care for kids

Places around the country with any labor union strength at all - New York City among them - are passing paid sick day laws. By October 2015, nearly a million additional New Yorkers in the city will be guaranteed paid sick leave, and it will be against the law to fire a worker for calling in sick.

Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Seattle and Connecticut have recently enacted similar measures, and Democrats in the House of Representatives are talking about a national law.

The New York bill is a result of years of debate and expert testimony about workers' rights and employers' costs. Yet, in all, very little has been said about an underlying cause of sick days - that is, sick children. The rise in the number of working parents and single-parent homes has meant that the common childhood cold, flu, earache or strep throat has inserted itself into the workplace. For this reason, sick-day protection is an idea whose time has come.

"Workers will no longer have to choose between their jobs and their health or their children's health," one labor leader, Stuart Appelbaum, told the media after the New York City Council reached an agreement.

So often, our public discourse about work and family concerns the upper echelon: Can new mom Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, really "have it all"? Stay tuned! This shift in focus to a benefit that potentially affects a broader swath of parents in retail, restaurant, hotel and other service jobs is welcome.

People who work with children know how often parents must choose between work and staying home with a sick kid. Recent advice to day care centers warns about the "drop and go" syndrome. Some parents leave a child with a caregiver and run out the door before it's noticed that the child is ill. Some parents give their child a dose of medicine to ease symptoms just long enough to sneak him or her into school or day care.

This can't be good for public health. Kids in groups spread illness among themselves, then return home and infect their parents - who in turn go to work and expose their co-workers and customers. What kind of sick way is that to run a healthy planet?

A friend of mine works from home when her infant son is sick. But she's well aware that not everyone can do that. And so, she worries about bringing him to the day care center even when he is well. He might catch something.

A better option would be child care for kids who are too sick to be in regular day care. But it's very hard to make these work financially. Most day care in the United States is supplied by people who take children into their homes, according to the Census Bureau. Were an operator to convert to sick care, the caregiver could charge higher rates. But he or she could go weeks without a client dropping off a sick child. There's also the liability of dispensing medications, and dehydration and other medical problems.

A physician in Arizona last year announced the opening of two "get well child care" centers. They are run in conjunction with a preschool, so the income is steadier. Still, they won't take children with measles, mumps, hepatitis, chickenpox or flu in its early, most infectious stage.

The new sick day laws are a sign of the times. Industrial production and factory jobs at one point in our history led to laws limiting the workday to eight hours and banning child labor. Sick day standards are simply one more way to shelter the nation's families.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Young men are most in need of mental health intervention

A 17-year-old who had no issues growing up begins to be annoyed by everything: lights in the bathroom, the sound of water running. He has trouble sleeping. He begins self-medicating, turning to drugs or drinking to quiet the anxiety he feels. He also wants to silence the voice in his head that is telling him to throw rocks at anyone who tries to get him to come down from the roof of his home.

This boy is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, but only after he has had multiple episodes, according to a story told by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) at a hearing on mental health reform. Experts say it takes one to two years, typically, after teens' first episode of psychosis for them to be diagnosed and helped. The longer they go on unstable, the worse their illness gets.

When it returns to session next week, Congress is scheduled to take up mental health care reform, an issue touched off by the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and other recent mass murders.

There are many good proposals. One bill from Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) would train law enforcement and school officials in "first aid" for mental illness - how to detect problems early and intervene effectively. The Obama administration is also working on a public awareness campaign.

But there are off-point ideas too. One of them is broad funding of community mental health clinics - a bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

It's not bad to promote better access to and affordability of mental health services. But, if we want to prevent massacres, let's be more direct. Let's shrug off the fear of stigmatizing one group, shed the political correctness, and admit to ourselves that untreated psychosis is a crisis among mostly young men.

These are the facts: Adam Lanza, 20, attacked a school in Newtown, Conn.; James Holmes, 24, shot up a Colorado movie theater; Jared Loughner, 22, opened fire in a Tucson supermarket; Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 at Virginia Tech.

There are two current political distractions to talking plainly about the causes of mass shootings. One comes courtesy of the National Rifle Association, which is trying to turn the national conversation away from gun control. David Keene, NRA president, has repeatedly called for Americans to "fix the mental health system." Yet NRA opponents are so virulent that they seemingly refuse to agree with the NRA about anything, even this commonsense goal.

The other distraction is from advocates for the mentally ill. They seem to believe that if we admit that some mentally ill people are violent, then we are painting all as violent. This intonation surfaces after every mass murder: People with mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than they are to be the perpetrators.

Fine. Let's agree to this and get down to solving the problem.

At a congressional hearing in January, Dr. Thomas Insel, director of mental health at the National Institutes of Health, talked about why mental illness is difficult to diagnose. There are no blood tests, and it's often a disease that starts young.

"When we talk about mental illness, we're talking about illnesses that begin early in life," Insel said. "It requires a different mindset about how do you detect, how do you intervene, and how do you make sure that you can make a difference."

Before treatment, people are at a 15-fold greater risk of becoming violent than after treatment, Insel told the congressional committee. There's hope in that statistic. It means that treatment can work, he said, and people can recover.

Like treatments for cancer and heart disease, cures are most effective when the illness is caught early. Allowing people to suffer for years with paranoia and hallucinations is cruel. To catch this killer, let's be honest enough with ourselves to look at young men.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

A few women at the top isn't enough reform

Last month, news broke that international consulting giant McKinsey & Co. is recruiting moms back from stay-at-home status.

In a Wall Street Journal Web video, reporter Leslie Kwoh said, "From what we understand, this is really an effort for them to get back some of the talent that they lost ... as women left to become mothers."

Sadly, the hopeful-triumphant gleam in Kwoh's eyes was all too familiar.

I say sadly, because it's been 20 years since I've been reporting such hopeful developments for working mothers. I interviewed the originator of the "mommy track" idea, Felice Schwartz, back in 1993. Sadly, we are still having the same discussions. And, sadly, we've learned very little.

Even if McKinsey is successful at luring MBA moms back from the home front. Exactly how many moms are we talking about? A few dozen? A few hundred?

The numbers are small, and the potential benefits are reserved for the highly educated - not to mention, those women who had enough financial security to leave work in the first place. That is, they are very likely married, and likely married to a fast-track partner.

Are these ranks seeming more infinitesimal by the minute? McKinsey alumnae, with kids and high-earner husbands? Whoa. Stop the revolution!

In fact, we have been settling for years for tokenism - the vision of a few women at the top as a signifier that we can have it all, every one of us.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, is one of the successful working mothers we're looking to today. Her recently published "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead" advises young women to emphasize career and believe in themselves, so that by the time they have children, they'll have a career that's worth staying for - and bargaining power to make the work-life combination livable.

That's fine in theory, but how many chief operating officers does Facebook need? I wonder if women - and parents in general - wouldn't be better served if Sandberg were to argue for changing the practices of the workplace.

Marissa Mayer is another symbol for working mothers, having accepted the chief executive spot at Yahoo a month before giving birth to her first child. She has subsequently revoked the work-at-home privileges of her staff, which appears anti-parent, and she has built a nursery next to her office to care for her own newborn.

Talk about bargaining power.

I don't second-guess Mayer's decision to bring her staff back into the office. She knows more about the business needs of Yahoo - the grandfather of the Internet - than I do. However, perhaps when she's done rejuvenating this granddaddy, she could get around to opening a day care center for the employees.

Schwartz had a lot of good ideas for working parents that didn't deserve to be buried under the derisive name "mommy track." That wasn't Schwartz's term; it was a name given by journalists and feminists who were aghast at her suggestion that women couldn't combine ladder-climbing and child-raising. She published a study, "Management Women and the New Facts of Life," in the January-February 1989 issue of the Harvard Business Review noting that companies were losing women midcareer - an effect that is still blamed for the dismal number of female chief executives.

Schwartz suggested, for employees who desired it, offering part-time and flexible schedules, shared jobs, telecommuting and even the possibility of leaving work altogether and returning years later. It's time to revive those ideas for working parents. A few token moms at the top don't represent enough change for the majority.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Long work hours cut into family life

The news that the Dow Jones industrial average is at record highs is perplexing, given that the companies doing so well are apparently not creating jobs - or, at any rate, not creating jobs here. The U.S. unemployment rate remains stubbornly stuck just below 8 percent, and is 7.1 percent on Long Island.

Normally, you'd think that more workers would be required to fuel companies' growth. Instead, a lot of employers are "doing more with less" - a phrase for our time. In many jobs, technological advances allow people to produce more in the same amount of time, so fewer people are needed.

But another factor is that those fortunate enough to have jobs are working longer hours. Everyone seems to have a story about someone who's taken over the jobs of three people, or is answering work emails from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. In Europe, the average employee works 1,625 hours annually; in the United States, it's 1,797.

All this work can take a toll on family life. Most parents have outside employment; in just a quarter of American homes are children cared for by a stay-home parent. We should be asking, what portion of time should paid work justly demand, and what portion is necessary for family and community well-being?

A lower quality of life for families can have vast repercussions - for crime, unwanted pregnancy, poverty rates, domestic violence, education levels. Ultimately, our economy will suffer if family life does.

There's growing evidence that the psychological, physical and economic life of the family is eroding. Of 3,000 adults interviewed for the American Psychological Association's "Stress in America" survey in 2010, 75 percent said they were "stressed to unhealthy levels." A 2004 study of working New York parents in Erie County demonstrated a strong relationship between family-work conflict and depression, heavy alcohol consumption, poor physical health and high blood pressure.

Parents are caught between spending time with children and maintaining an income that will pay for kids' higher education. Wages of middle-class workers in the United States, adjusted for inflation, are lower than they were in 1970. And it's not just the middle and working classes that feel this pressure. Six-figure earners are often connected to their jobs - via laptops and smartphones - so that work invades every minute of their waking lives.

Experts say that kids do better emotionally - they are more able to combat bullying and suicidal impulses - when parents are more involved in their day-to-day lives. Yet, studies show that daily work stress causes parents to withdraw from family interaction because their capacity for intimacy and emotional engagement has been used up at the office. Parents are often so worn down by their multiple demands that they have nothing left for the effective nurture, structure and discipline that children need.

We need to update societal supports for families. Longer school days and years, for example, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has proposed, would better match parents' workdays. Employers should consider the social consequences of their decisions. Some companies are broadening their goals to encompass the so-called Three Ps: profit, planet and people.

We also should look to rewrite some public policies - as California and New Jersey have done with paid family leave - and raise the quality and availability of child care.

Today's upcoming generation is expected to be educated, technologically savvy and self-starting. Families and communities can prepare them for these challenges - but only if families' psychological, physical and economic health are strong.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Gov't spends $18B in training; where are the jobs?

I don't know how often Republican members of the House of Representatives use quotes from President Barack Obama in their slideshows. Given the caustic partisan scene in Washington, it's probably rare.

But on Tuesday morning, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who chairs the Higher Education and Workforce Training Subcommittee, included a promise from the president's 2012 State of the Union address as she rolled out hearings on her job-training bill.

"I want to cut through the maze of confusing training programs, so that from now on, [job seekers] have one program, one website, and one place to go for all the information and help that they need. It is time to turn our unemployment system into a reemployment system that puts people to work," the president said on Jan. 24, 2012.

Foxx then declared, matter-of-factly, that her SKILLS Act - short for Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills - is "the only proposal that moves us toward the president's goal." She looked around the meeting room. "We had a quote up there a second ago, and I hope everyone had a chance to see it."

It was good political theater - diplomatic and pointed - and I hope it works. The jobs crisis in this country is entering its fifth year, and notwithstanding the president's statement, the Obama administration has focused too little on expanding opportunities for people to work.

Foxx's bill, by contrast, could bring some much-needed reform. Though her delivery was subdued, the facts she cited were startling. The federal government is spending $18 billion a year on employment and training services. That's a lot of money. There are more than 50 programs, spread across nine federal agencies.

About 2 million people have managed to find their way through this maze to enter a federal program, according to Foxx, yet only a pitiful 14 percent finished the instruction. And less than half of those who received employment assistance - resume writing or job searches - found work.

It makes you wonder what we're getting for that $18 billion. That's like building five new Tappan Zee bridges each year. If we spent the money on bridges like that instead, at least we'd get about 16,000 jobs per bridge out of it.

Foxx's SKILLS Act would eliminate 35 ineffective and redundant programs in favor of a one-stop workforce investment fund.

It would give more flexibility to regional workforce investment boards, which are responsible for policies and oversight of the programs, and require two-thirds of the board members to be employers. That makes unions nervous, but we have to do more for the estimated 13 million people out of work, and 8 million part-time workers who want more hours.

To date, the workforce investment boards, which were created in 1998, have followed 19 federal mandates about who can serve - leading to "large, unmanageable and unengaged boards," according to Todd Gustafson, executive director of Southwestern Michigan's workforce investment board. That can make it hard to recruit good people for the boards, he told Foxx's subcommittee on Tuesday.

More dynamic, locally focused employment boards could make better use of that $18 billion. When you have 7.1 percent unemployment on Long Island, and an executive of the North Shore-LIJ Health System writing that he's unable to fill high-skills jobs, as he did on these pages in January, you know that some puzzle pieces are missing.

The SKILLS Act would also give local boards freedom to contract directly with community colleges - important players on Long Island - to provide training for large groups.

We shouldn't allow these good ideas to sink under the weight of partisanship. As Foxx made quite clear this week, we all agree on the goal.

This essay was first published in Newsday.