Special to the NNPA from the New York Carib News

ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – The World Bank has suspended disbursements to Grenada after seven loan defaults in February.

The Washington based financial institution said no new loans would be issued to Grenada unless the island makes good on the overdue payments amounting to US$750,000.

The payments were due on February 15 and the World Bank has written to Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell saying failure to make the loan payments on time is hampering its ability to assist other member countries. “As of today, March 18, 2013, we have not been advised by our Depository Banks that the payments cited above have been paid into our accounts,”said the Bank in a letter Mitchell, whose New National Party (NNP) won the February 19 general elections by sweeping all the 15 seats.

“Our ability to mobilize resources for the benefit of our member countries depends critically on the punctual servicing of loan and credits. For this reason, we insist on settlement of all payments when they fall due”. The loans, covering projects such as disaster management, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) education, skills for inclusive growth and Hurricane Ivan recovery, also include separate overdue amounts of more than US$300,000.

The Washington based institution told the new government that it has been forced to take this action since the seven payments are more than 30 days overdue.

The World Bank’s action against Grenada comes on the heels of similar decisions taken against the island in recent months reflecting concerns about the general management of the local economy.

The Kuwaiti fund suspended disbursement to the island after the government fell behind on payments to existing loans, and last December Standard and Poor’s lowered its credit rating on the Caribbean Development Bank blaming CDB’s public-sector loan portfolio.

Standard and Poor’s said one government borrower, known to be Grenada, is more than 180 days in arrears to CDB on interest and principal.

The new government has embarked on an aggressive program on making current, overdue payments on outstanding loans so as to save the country from these embarrassing situations.

A government statement issued Wednesday said that Prime Minister Mitchell held talks with members of the Grenada Bankers’ Association, indicating that the relationship between them has to be one of partnership.

“We have to work together as partners in this process of economic revival, if we want to move Grenada forward,” he said, proposing the establishment of a Growth and Competitiveness Council, to advise government on economic policy and initiatives that will promote economic growth.

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Dwindling state budgets have had an unintended positive effect – prompting states to reduce the number of juveniles arrested and detained, according to a new report by the Justice Policy Institute.

JPI, a nonprofit group that advocates for criminal justice reform, identified five states that achieved more than 50 percent reduction in youth confinement: Connecticut (down 57.2 percent), Tennessee (55.0 percent), Louisiana (52.7 percent), Minnesota (50.6 percent) and Arizona (50.2 percent). The confinement population includes those held at youth detention centers mandated by the courts, those await court proceedings and youth admitted voluntarily as a form of shock therapy to discourage future lawlessness.

“If you take a look at the list of states, they don’t have a lot in common geographically or culturally,” said Spike Bradford, a senior research associate at JPI. “This change in juvenile confinement can happen anywhere.”

The study from the Justice Policy Institute described how states have worked to reform their juvenile justice systems with varying levels of success.

Some states achieved a reduction in their youth incarceration numbers by changing the “fiscal architecture” of the system where some locales spend as much as $240 per day, per youth; others placed a greater emphasis on treatment and some closed facilities.

The JPI report found a number of similarities between the states that were able to reduce their numbers by more than half. Class action lawsuits were filed against those states over the conditions of the juvenile justice system.

“State leaders and stakeholders understand that successful lawsuits may result in costly settlements and other sanctions if remedies are not met,” said the JPI report. “Savvy community leaders also recognize that negative media attention on a state’s treatment of young people–adjudicated delinquent or not–influences public opinion about their government.”

The juvenile justice system was also separated from the adult system and inter-agency partnerships were beefed up. State officials also recognized the myriad difference between youth behavior and their mistakes and adult criminal behavior.

“Four of the five top performing states uncoupled juvenile and adult corrections and/or integrated juvenile corrections with child welfare services,” said the JPI report.

This strategy could greatly benefit Black youth who compromise 62 percent of the young people prosecuted in adult courts, but roughly 17 percent of the entire youth population, according to the CDF.

“When you look at young people as kids that make certain kinds of mistakes and have certain kinds of decision-making skills you will be less likely to put them behind bars and more likely to give them behavioral treatments that are more appropriate for their age,” said Bradford. “By doing that you’re saving money because confinement is the most expensive thing that we can do.”

Bradford said that the key to steering youth away from prisons is to treat them as young people not as adults.

“Developmentally appropriate responses, because you’ll find that when you look at young people as kids that make certain kinds of mistakes and have certain kinds of decision-making skills you will be less likely to put them behind bars and more likely to give them behavioral treatment that are more appropriate for their age, said Bradford. “By doing that you’re saving money because confinement is the most expensive thing that we can do.”

Bradford added: “If you can divert kids from confinement in developmentally appropriate ways you almost have to save money.”

According, to the Justice Policy Institute, there were 70,792 youth serving time in American correctional facilities in 2010, down from 107,000 in 1999. The Children’s Defense Fund, a child advocacy organization, found that two-thirds of the young people in the juvenile justice system were minorities.

JPI also reported that states have also reduced the number of youth held for drug offenses over the last decade from 8.7 percent in 2001 to 7 percent in 2010. Status offenses like running away and under age drinking saw little improvement over the same period and public order offenses that range from “disorderly conduct to bringing weapons to school” climbed from 10.4 to 11.5 percent.

Despite the success that states are seeing, Black youth and minority youth are still incarcerated at higher rates than their White counterparts, a trend that has gotten worse since 2001, according to the Justice Policy Institute.

“Disproportionality in the juvenile justice system permeates every stage of the process: from who and where we police, to the sentencing stage of adjudication, to community supervision policies and practices. Scant research has been done on why these disparities are deepening,” stated the JPI report.

JPI recommended a number of strategies for jurisdictions seeking to curtail juvenile confinement including: supporting a juvenile justice commission, reaching out to organizations such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Model for Change and Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, separating the juvenile justice system from the adult system and developmentally appropriate interventions and perform better research for sharper analysis.

The report said that states must also address disparities between White youth and youth of color and perform more research to better track problems that lurk within the system.

“That’s really the billion-dollar question,” said Bradford. “Every time someone tries to change something at different parts of the system, no one seems to hit whatever it is that’s going to change [the disparities between Whites and Blacks],” said Bradford. “I don’t’ know if it’s a bigger cultural problem or the way we police. It could be any number of things.”

By Maya Rhodan
Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As the pool of students in American schools grows more diverse, those studying to be teachers remain mostly White.

According to a new report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, a national organization that analyzes teacher education programs, 82 percent of people who earned Bachelor’s degrees in education in 2009-2010 school year were White.

The study surveyed more than 700 colleges and universities that train about two-thirds of the teaching force.

Nearly half of the U.S. student population is members of racial or ethnic minorities, yet only about one in five teachers are people of color. Only 6 percent of teacher candidates were Black and 4.2 percent were Hispanic.

Of the 29 million students enrolled in public schools in 2010, 15 percent were Black and 23 percent were Hispanic.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a smaller number of racial and ethnic minorities in front of classrooms for a number of reasons,” said Anthony Graham, the chair of the department of elementary education at North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro. “Salaries, for one, are an issue. Also, a lot of students are not interested, based on their own experiences. There are a lot of things that play into this.”

The average starting teacher salary is $30,377 according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Computer engineers make about $70,000 coming out of school.

“We’re finding that college-bound minority students have so many career options,” said Sharon P. Robinson, the president of the association told the New York Times. “We have to develop some specific recruitment strategies to attract our share of those students into those teacher education programs.”

Alternative programs that license teachers, but do not award degrees have a more diverse pool of students, with about 76 percent of the candidates being White, 7 percent Black, and 8 percent Hispanic.

“We have to a better job of a pipeline approach,” says Graham, whose program awards about 60 students with degrees in education per year. “By introducing the career at an earlier age we can better showcase the benefits of returning to a community and uplifting it through teaching.”

Graham, however, notes that despite efforts schools may already have to recruit minority teacher candidates, many fail to pass the Praxis exam, the required teacher certification test.

“Despite the teachers we try to produce, we’re losing a number of them to this exam,” says Graham.

Between 2002-2005, Black teacher candidates had a Praxis passing rate of 52.1 percent, according to a study by the Educational Testing Service, which prepares the Praxis exams as well as the SAT tests. White teacher candidates had a passing rate of 83.5 percent during that same period.

“It causes a ripple effect in terms of their own education,” says Kimberly Garrett, an assistant professor of early childhood education at Dominican University in Chicago. ”They haven’t had proper teaching themselves so they aren’t able to teach. It’s an additional struggle for black and Hispanic students.”

Garrett’s program has 36 candidates in early childhood education right now, only three are Black, two are Hispanic, and one is Asian. Of Chicago Public Schools’ 400,000 students, 41.6 percent of students are African American and 44.1 percent are Latino.

“The race and ethnicity of teachers is important because it supports a child’s developing self-image to see someone of authority they can relate to of have some level of comfort around,” Garret says.

According to a report by the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, teachers of color can not only help close the achievement gap, they also help students of color reach higher academic, personal, and social performance.

Garrett says, however, that although students benefit from having teachers of color, its more important for them to have culturally and intellectually competent adults in these roles than anything else.

“There is an aspect of value that someone from the same ethnic group brings to the classroom that helps to develop students on a deeper level,” says Garrett. “But it’s not just an ethnic match that’s important.”

“There was a special rapport that I had and do have with students of color that added to the experience,” she adds. “But that doesn’t take away from the connection all teachers can have if they’re aware of their students and their varying needs.”

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As lawmakers and special interests groups paint immigration reform as a critical component in shaping the future of Latinos living in the United States, Black leaders say that there is too much at stake, economically and politically, for Blacks to allow the debate to be framed in narrow terms.

Despite many reports, the pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals is just one ingredient in the multi-layered immigration policy, yet to be written, that will have far-reaching impacts for Blacks and African descendants in the United States and abroad.

“This is a very controversial issue on the ground in the Black community,” said Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, an organization that works to advance the social, political economic growth of the Black community in the United States and around the world. “If you hear the leaders talk about [immigration reform], it sounds like everything is hunky-dory and it’s all kumbaya.”

According to Daniels, everything isn’t hunky-dory and Blacks aren’t singing old feel-good songs. He hears the grumbling voices opposing immigration and the misconception that “illegals” flood the job market crowding out American-born workers, driving down wages and contributing to high rates of unemployment, nationally and in the Black community.

It’s not just disgruntled, out-of-work Blacks that feel that way.

According to a recent Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, more than half of Americans oppose immigration and say that illegal immigrants “take jobs from American workers.” Thirty-nine percent said that the number legal immigrants should be decreased.

The Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate was 7.7 percent and the Black unemployment rate was 13.8 percent in February. The jobless rate was 6.8 percent for Whites and 9.6 percent for Latino workers over the same period.

According to Daniels, opposition to immigration and the misconception that immigrants are to blame for depressing wages and taking jobs could hinder progress and support for any immigration bill that is crafted by Congress.

Daniels and the Institute partnered with a number of groups from the African diaspora to form the Pan-African Unity Dialogue to develop an immigration agenda tailored to meet the needs of Black Americans and Blacks of African descent in the U.S. and abroad.

“Immigration affects us all, immigration is local, national and international,” said Waldaba Stewart, economic advisor for Southern Caucus of Non-Governmental Organizations for Sustainable Development. “Immigration involves economics and political power.”

Stewart said that right now Blacks and African descendants are not being considered and it’s the fault of the Black leadership for not explaining the significance of the legislation.

“That was our fault,” said Stewart. “We as a people acted as if immigration was someone else’s concern.”

The group said that any immigration reform needs to address a number of key issues important to the economic and political future of Blacks and people of African descent that reside in the United States.

The group wants the U.S. Commerce and Agriculture departments to foster partnerships between Blacks in the United States and Blacks in the countries where the federal government is already working to advance it’s own interests in agriculture.

The group said that all legislation for immigration reform must include provisions that “are applicable to Blacks and other groups that are historically victims of racism.”

Companies and organizations that utilize the special visa and guest worker programs must make those same opportunities available to Blacks and documented workers before new permits are granted, stated the group. The group also wants to make sure that the immigration process provides equitable allocation of visas to Sub Saharan African countries, to the Caribbean and to countries in Latin America that are underrepresented.

Experts say that both the powerful business lobby and labor groups want to change the way the guest worker program works. Business owners want more visas and a streamlined process, while unions want more control over the number of special visas that are allocated during tough economic times.

Utilizing the special visas, companies import foreign workers to perform housekeeping, landscaping, food processing and other low-wage jobs that they claim that Americans no longer want. PAUD said that the government needs to apply more pressure on those companies to pay a living wage and hire American workers.

The group also asserted that the immigration process should provide equitable allocation of visa quotas to Sub Saharan African countries, to the Caribbean and to countries in Latin America that have a disparity in processing of visa applications by people of African descent.

Daniels and the PAUD group also want provisions included in the immigration bill that will protect the interests of Black farmers in the United States and around the world. Stewart said that because of globalization and discrimination in the industry, Black farmers who once controlled a quarter of agriculture industry in the U.S. now only make up about 7 percent.

Although Daniels said that he looks forward to working with leading Latino and Asian groups to address immigration reform, it was important for Blacks and African descendants to develop their own agenda first, so that all parties can benefit from a future coalition.

Latino interest groups are greatly concerned with any pathway to citizenship language that will ultimately go into the final bill.

According to 2009 Pew Research study, Hispanics account for 76 percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including 7 million from Mexico alone. If those immigrants became legal citizens, the nation could see a dramatic shift in economic and political power.

Daniels acknowledged that the road ahead isn’t going to be easy and that educating the Black community about immigration reform will be important in gaining their support, but it’s something that must be done.

“The worst thing that we can do is to not have this conversation or have this struggle because the power elites, the business community will end up pitting, the different groups against each other,” said Daniels. “But to act as if there are no consequences, politically or economically, would be disastrous.”