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India is Changing !!Passing the historic order, Justice Sudhir Agarwal directed the UP chief secretary to ensure that all Government servants, elected representatives, members of judiciary and any other persons who get any benefit or salary from the State exchequer or public fund send their children to schools run by the State Education BoardConsidering the pathetic condition of primary schools in Uttar Pradesh, the Allahabad High Court has recently passed a historic judgement.Hearing the writ petitions filed by Umesh Kumar Singh and several others with regard to appointment of assistant teachers in State’s primary schools, Justice Sudhir Agarwal directed the chief secretary to ensure that all Government servants, elected representatives, members of judiciary and any other persons who get any benefit or salary from the State exchequer or public fund send their children to schools run by the State Education Board.The CS has been told to take steps within six months so as to make the aforesaid directions effective from the next academic session of primary schools.The judge has ruled that “penal provisions” be laid down for those who violate the order, suggesting that persons not following the order “should be deprived of other benefits like increment, promotional avenues for a certain period, as the case may be”.Moreover, instruction has been given that amount equal to the school fees should be deposited by officials and elected representatives to the State exchequer, for every child going to a private school not maintained by the State Government.It is another story that many are not pleased by the judgment, terming it as encroachment on the right of the citizens by the court.The question has always been in debates about how we should educate our children. Given the competitive attitude it is believed that private institutions are better than public ones. However, in The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, A Christopher and Sarah Theule Lubienski, both Professors in the Department of Education at University of Illinois, offer potent evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones.I explain how the outdated data showing students at private schools performing better than those in public schools is being used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education. They argue that private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support.They conducted a comprehensive study on school type and the achievement of students in mathematics (study was focused on mathematics as mathematics is the best measure of in-school learning). Drawing on their study of three lakh elementary and middle school students in around 15,000 public and private schools in the USA they concluded that public school students are far better as compared to the private ones.Their study shows how the very mechanism of autonomy, which the market-based policy makers promote, prevents private schools from performing better. The autonomy enjoyed by the private schools has been misused to give undue importance to teaching methods preferred by parents but which are not effective for educating students.Citing an example they state, “Private school students are more likely than their public school counterparts to sit in rows, complete math worksheets and believe that mathematics is “mostly memorising facts” — a narrow view that captures neither the breadth of the discipline nor the reasoning that is central to it.The private schools provide solution to students without letting them think about the problem. The students are spoon-fed to please the parents. Whereas public schools have moved beyond traditional, repetitive exercises, and more often ask students to solve complex, real-world problems and to learn geometry, data analysis, and early algebra ideas, in addition to basic arithmetic. Since teachers are not overindulgent the students of public schools are compelled to discuss their problem with each other, which helps them to understand the problem. Such discussions are not common in private schools.Another important reason cited for the difference in the performance is related to the difference in the qualification of the teachers in public schools and private schools. They argue, “Public school teachers are more likely to be certified and to receive ongoing training in the field, keeping them current on research-based instructional standards and resources supported by professional entities such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Science Foundation. Private school teachers are rarely impelled to receive such training.”Similar views have been shared by researchers at the Educational Testing Service, Notre Dame and Stanford universities.However, in India things have to be analysed from the local perspective. India’s Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) released on January 15, 2014, presents an abysmal picture of the education system at the primary schools run by the State. Most children are in school, but very few are learning. Less than half the children in Grade V can read a Grade III text, and only about a quarter can divide a three-digit number by a one-digit number. The data shows that the learning level is going down every year.Why the Government schools in India have failed miserably?The Right to Education Act (RTE) provides children the right to free and compulsory education till completion of elementary education. It also specifies pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs), buildings and infrastructure, school working days, teacher working hours, appointment of trained teachers. But generally these norms are violated.The teacher-student ratio in Government schools is much higher as compared to private schools. According to a survey conducted by The Times of India, maximum number of primary schools has the teacher-student ratio of 50:1. Besides, the teachers play multiple roles. Many Government schools exist on paper only. Most of the Government schools in the rural areas are just confined to one room. These issues cause low attendance and high drop-out rates from Government schools.On the implementation of the RTE, NDTV surveyed 780 Government schools in 13 States of India. The results are really appalling. The survey has disclosed that most of the Government schools in India lack basic amenities of toilets and drinking water. Sixty-three per cent of them have no playgrounds. More than a third of the schools has unserviceable toilets or are in extremely poor condition.In case a student needs to use the washroom s/he has to go back home. This is one of the biggest reasons why girl students are dropping out. The study further shows that in more than 80 per cent of the schools admission is not taken according to age. Majority of Government schools have not been renovated for a long time. Students are often made to sit on floor outside the classroom given the pathetic condition of the classrooms.The quality of teachers at Government schools is another major concern. Despite being better qualified than private school teachers, most of the Government school teachers take their job for granted. Even the district administration takes Government schools for granted. Government schools are made election offices and the teachers are given election duties on and off. Every time there is election, be it municipality, panchayat, zila parishad, legislative assembly, parliamentary, classes are hampered.Teachers are not only made to perform election duties, but are also sent to survey census. However, private school teachers are completely exempted from all these non-academic duties. The question is whether Government schools were always in this deplorable state? Or has the situation worsened in recent times?What went wrong to the Government schools that in their glorious past produced brilliant scholars, scientists, professionals and leaders?The privatisation of education, corruption, manipulation of power, the faulty and corrupted recruitment process, and lack of collective responsibility have completely ruined the elementary education system in Government schools.Interestingly the Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) and the Army schools, despite being Government institutions not only have proper infrastructure but also perform academically better than most of the reputed private schools. Is it because these schools remain under constant surveillance as most of the Army officers and other Central Government employees send their children there? Does it create pressure on them to keep the performance high and impart quality teaching?The High Court has thus rightly observed that the pathetic condition of Government school is mainly due to the withdrawal of the rich and the middle class, which in fact comprises the influential section of society, and works as check on the Government schools.But the situation can only improve when children of all Government officials are compelled to go to Government-run schools. Then only the current indifferent Indian bureaucracy would be forced to take serious measures to develop these schools to save their children’s future.This is how the injustice meted out to the poor and backward classes of society in the name of education can be curbed.Can we imagine a school attended by the children of a District Collector suspending classes for a month due to Assembly elections? Can we think of a school that has child of the education secretary of a State being run by just one teacher? Can we imagine a school where children of the MPs, MLAs, PWD officials study being without proper infrastructure?The problem is not just limited to Government schools; other institutions suffer as well due to withdrawal of educated and influential section of society. For instance, since hardly any Government officials avail public transport the attitude of the DTC staff towards general public remains apathetic.Government buses instead of stopping at the stoppage just slow down and passengers getting down from the running buses are a common sight.However, the services provided by the Government institutions which are availed by the elites remain surprisingly unparalleled. In the institutions of higher education, the scenario is starkly different. No private institution of India in spite of having better physical infrastructure can surpass the standard set by IIT, AIIMS, DU, and JNU. Similarly, the services provided by Rajdhani trains, Delhi metro cannot be compared with any private transport.Ironically in India when everyone wants to join Government sector due to job security and its non-exploitative nature, anyone who is financially well-off hardly wants to access services provided by Government schools, hospitals or transport system. If any Government institution has failed to perform as expected it’s not because of dearth of qualified employees but due to their withdrawal from the services provided by them. This is what the justice of the Allahabad High Court has observed.When the Government of India can make it mandatory for the Government employees, claiming LTC and medical facilities, to travel by Air India and avail treatment at Government hospitals, respectively, then why can’t it make mandatory for the Government employees, claiming reimbursement of fees, to send their children to Government school?The employees not following the court order are liable to be fined as suggested by the High Court. This penalty can be termed as a fine for being indifferent towards the worsening condition of our primary education system which in turn acts as a hindrance in the growth of the nation as a whole.If free and quality education is made accessible to all irrespective of class and caste, then a lot of other related problems would be solved.India is the fastest growing economy in the world but our education system is still crawling. It becomes our collective responsibility to strengthen the basic education system of our country which forms the base of the students. The Allahabad High Court’s decision is thus a welcome step towards this achievement.One may question: Are the authors (Government employees) of this write-up sending their siblings/kids to Government schools? The answer is “no”. The condition of the Government schools has become so pathetic that one cannot imagine sending their children there. But if the decision is implemented on all Government officials we are certain that the condition of Government-run institutions will improve within a month, and we will be happy to send our siblings/ children to study there.Hope. like UP, other states adopt this policy to improve the quality standard of education in government schools

This is a great question. As with many questions having to do with colleges and universities there is no simple answer. As a result, I will first try to describe the landscape of wait lists at highly selective schools After that I will try to explain why most schools do not place students in a formal rank order.Why are wait lists so big and what are my chances?Schools are required to post how big their waiting lists were from previous years, but this information is hard to find. In addition, they are required to post how many students were offered admission from the waiting list. You won’t find this information posted prominently, however, because most of the information about wait lists numbers are bleak. If you are searching for the waitlist numbers from a particular school try doing a Google search with the name of the school the phrase "wait list" and the year 2014. You might find the information faster.I will give just one example from last year. UC Berkeley made waitlist offers to about 3,400 students..Generally speaking, the larger the school, the larger the waitlist, so this huge number at Berkeley number is not representative of the size of wait lists at small liberal arts schools that have only several hundred entering students rather than several thousand. A couple of years ago the NY Times provided a chart that lists many of the top ranked schools and shows the size of the wait list and how many were eventually offered admission. Once glance demonstrates two things-- schools put huge numbers of students on the wait list but mostly only a handful get in. A number of highly ranked schools did not provide data to The Times, as they do not want to perceived as either putting far too many people on the list, or, in perhaps a few cases, for having to take a large number off the list. (The last observation is purely speculation on my part, but some schools would not want the public or their governing boards to know that the admission office fell well short of their enrollment goals.)***********************************************************************The chart show shows it rarely happens these days that any school comes in far under their enrollment goals at highly selective schools. (It is another matter altogether at schools far down in the rankings. They are scrambling to fill the class and there are still many schools accepting applications for the fall semester throughout the summer.) Now that big data has become an essential part of the admission office set of tools, colleges and universities have access to lots of information that has significantly improved the prediction on yield—the number of students who accept offers of admission.Yield has become a big focus for schools as the higher the yield the higher the selectivity of the school often is (as the NY Times chart shows). If almost all students accept the offer (Harvard is at the top at 82%) then they will not offer admission to many more students than they have actually enrolling and this increases selectivity significantly. Schools that have only a 50% yield need to offer to twice the number of students in order to enroll a full class. The chart shows that aside from a few schools, the yield rate is actually not all that high, even at some of the most prestigious schools in the US. For example, Johns Hopkins yield rate comes in at about 40% --less than half of Harvard’s. Students applying to Hopkins have to be great to get in and many of them get accepted to other highly selective schools and end up not enrolling at Hopkins. This low rate of return is something that has become a big issue in admission as it is used as a factor in US News rankings. (Editorial opinion: Rankings drive many administrative decisions that may not always be in the best interest of families and students.)To put it simply-- because of the race to the top of the rankings selective and otherwise, schools have been investing a lot of money, time into increasing yield percentages. Some schools hire outside marketing firms to create a whole soup to nuts approach to admission. Gone are the days when students were accepted and then had a relatively quiet month to decide which is the best option. During the month of April, after decisions have gone out, parents and students can expect, from some schools, a blitz of emails, tweets, phone calls and other forms of outreach to encourage students to enroll. I have seen samples from schools this year and there are some schools sending stuff, if not every day, then at least every few days. In addition, many schools have special days in which to visit. On theses days invest lots of money and staff into rolling out the red carpet. Why? Students come, as those who visit are far more likely to enroll than those who don’t.The discussion about yield is really a long way of showing why the chances of any individual student getting off the wait list are anything but good. Schools have lots of data to help them predict accurately how many students they should offer to get the number of students they want. At virtually every college or university the percentage of students being offered a place off the wait list is far lower than the acceptance rate for students who have applied for regular or early admission. For example, two years ago Emory University put over 4100 students on the wait list but ended up offering to 25.These daunting statistics lead me to give this piece of advice before I begin to explore more about who are the students who do come off the wait list and why they are not placed in rank order. First and foremost put a deposit down at another school prior to May 1. May 1 is the national candidates reply date that all selective schools have agreed to honor. Because schools are so much better at predicting how many students will accept offers it has become increasingly rare for students to hear anything from a wait list school until after this deadline passes. It makes economic sense for a student hoping to get off a wait list to hold off making a deposit until late in the month, as on the off chance they do happen to get off a wait list prior to May 1 they can get a refund on their deposit to the initial school. On the other hand, if a school, for any reason, comes in far in excess of its targeted numbers at May 1, then they very rarely accept a late deposit and the student would be out of anyplace to go in the fall. (I have seen this happen. It isn’t pretty.)I also mention putting down a deposit for another reason. Since the odds are so steep for getting off the waitlist for any particular school, it is important for students to begin to think of the school where the deposit has been put in as “their” school. In other words, a lot of students who are wait listed spend a great deal of time and mental effort (and in some case physical effort) designing ways to get in off the wait list. While I have written about a couple very special cases where this kind of strategizing worked, the stats show that these are very rare cases.To me, most students would be much better off taking the time to embrace the school they have paid a deposit to attend—Start wearing the school sweatshirt, start filling out all the stuff that the schools send, gets on the entering class Facebook page etc.Start imaging a great life ahead instead of focusing on what will likely not happen.This will make the end of senior year less stressful and will prepare the student for where, in all probability, they will go. (I hope what I have just written will not be interpreted by anyone as inviting a student to slack off academically. Any low grade will not only doom a student’s chance of getting off the wait list but low grades that show up at the end of the year could also be a reason to lose the place a student already has—this does happen, not very often, but it is not worth the risk).***********************************************************************Why do almost no colleges and universities have a ranked wait list?Now that the preliminaries are over I can go on to explain why it is not in the school’s best interest to attempt to rank students on a wait list.For the purposes of creating a thought experiment let’s say the May 1 deadline has just passed and the school is now looking over their numbers. Let’s suppose that the school has 40 spaces to fill. They have over 2000 students on the waiting list. If they do not rank students how will they go about doing this?At first this seems like a huge task and that having a ranked waiting list would make it far easier to select students. While this initially might seem like a good idea there are many reasons almost no school follows this approach.Each school has its own mission and institutional priorities that they hope to fulfill. For example, universities, by their very nature, have separate undergraduate schools within the whole university. In this thought experiment let’s say the university has a school of arts and sciences, a school of business, and a school of engineering. It may well be that the students who have made a deposit have filled the spaces for engineering and only have a couple for business, but they have 50 spaces in arts and sciences to fill. Virtually every one accepted off the wait list will be in the arts and sciences pool. No one will get in to engineering and perhaps two or three to business.Institutional priorities also come into play in many other ways too. If, for example, the school in question is State Affiliated, then it may be that the number of in state students is low and the number of out of state students is just about right. In this scenario, all the offers from the wait list would go to in state students.Or let’s say a private school, hoping to increase their geographical diversity, notices that there are very few students who have accepted offers live in States west of the Mississippi. They may decide to pull all those students on the waiting list who are residents of those states and offer almost all the spaces to them. Some schools wish to demonstrate on their profile that they enroll students from many places. They want the perspective these students may bring but they also want more applications to come in too. Students who notice that n there is no one in the region enrolled from where they live might not choose to apply.Or it may be that a given school the percentage of women the school would like to enroll is several percentage points higher that would they would like. They may then decide to give almost all the spaces to males. (This is something that schools will not often admit in public for reasons that are pretty clear.)Or it may be that the number of under-represented students is not what they had hoped it would be, so they may try to enroll as many of these students as they can from off the waiting list. For those who think this sounds like schools have quotas, they don’t. There is no fixed number of students that schools establish as that would violate the law, but there are intuitional goals.Trying to increase diversity by gender or race this way may be a bit tricky if the courts looked at the figure closely (most schools do not publish much specific data about the characteristics of wait list acceptances), but this kind of selection of students does go on at some schools hoping to enroll a diverse student body as they have chosen to define it).Given what I have just described about schools, I hope it is now clear why schools rarely rank students on the wait list. The wait list is one way a school gets to shape the class in terms of institutional priorities. If the school tried to rank students it would not be useful as the school does not yet know what groups of students they may be looking for. In other words, the wait list is not so much about individual students, although this is true to some degree, it is more about which groups the school wants to fill in based on what they already know about the incoming class.To give just one more fictional example, let’s say the school does not have any students who have paid a deposit from Montana (for some reason in the world of admission this State is the one that gets picked when talking about geographical diversity). In an effort to try to change this, the school may decide to pull up all the students from the Montana who are on the wait list. Since the State is so small there may only be 2 or 3 of these students. If that is the case, then the chances for them getting in are between 33%-50%. On the other hand, if the school looks to see that they have actually had too many students enroll in their school of architecture, there will be a 0% chance of any students getting into that part of the school as schools need to meet enrolment goals. Bringing in too many students creates all sorts of problems for housing, class size and advising etc. It used to be a nearly impossible job for schools to come in at the exact number they are tasked to enroll. Now, with all the good data these days, most come close to doing so.In addition to the groups I have just mentioned, there are some others kinds of students that may benefit in the selection process due to “institutional priorities”. The number who falls into the following categories on the wait list is often small, but they are often given high priority to come off the wait list. If a coach comes to the admission office and makes a case that an athlete who was recruited and is now on the waiting list has recently improved his or her skills dramatically, then this student may well be given a spot. Most coaches already have their rosters set, so this is not that common but an athlete who suddenly jumps up in talent will be given an edge. Or if it turns out that the coach has come up short of athlete needed for a team then any athlete on the wait list might get an edge as well.The other group of wait list students who often get priority for acceptance from the wait list are those who have ties to the school either because they are a legacy or are development case. Many people do not like the fact that students whose parents went to the school already have an edge and it certainly won’t make them any happier to know that there are some on the waiting list that get special treatment. In addition, an edge will be given at some schools for those students whose parents may have the capacity to give huge sums to the school. There are stories that circulate around the admission world about how parents have bought a place at a school and perhaps some may be true, but I do not think this goes on in quite so direct a way as the consequences are to great for those involved.A number of stories have come out this year about how Board Members and development officers do talk with admission about candidates. In addition, Dan Golden won a Pulitzer prize for documenting how the rich and famous sometimes get their children into certain schools more for who they are rather than what they might have done academically. In some cases these students are offered spots off the wait list. In others they are offered entry into the second semester so they don’t show up on the US News data.Recently, at a number of schools, one particular group of students has increasingly been given priority to get in off the wait list—those who have the means to pay the total cost of attendance. While there are a handful of schools that might look at the accepted student data and then try to take a few more low-income students in order to diversify the class socio-economically, this applies to very few schools as most simply do not have the money to do this. Instead more schools now look at the ability to pay full fees as one of the factors when choosing students.1 Therefore, in the aggregate, low-income students’ chances of coming off the wait list are much slimmer, in most cases, than full payers. In some cases they will have virtually no chance at all. (Schools will not say this in public.)The last topic I that will address about the way schools now evaluate students to accept from the wait list falls under this rubric:Demonstrated InterestI should start by saying that demonstrated interest is now a much larger part of how schools accept students overall. The stats are clear that students who choose to apply early decision, and to a lesser degree, early action increases their chances for admission. In some cases the differences are dramatic.Demonstrated interest, however, is also an increasingly important part of how many schools decide to accept student in regular decision. I mentioned above that deep data is now a vital part of what admission offices use to help them enroll the students that will help them meet their enrollment goals and institutional priorities. I also mentioned that improving yield was an important part of helping schools rise in the rankings. Therefore, schools are now tracking things like whether applicants have visited the school, whether they have opened emails that the school has sent, whether they have contacted the admission etc. Not all schools do this but more and more schools are. Those students who show up in the data at the high end of demonstrated interest pool are more likely to enroll than those who may have great academic numbers but have done nothing to show interest. Some very strong students have been surprised not to receive an offer from some schools where they would seem to have had a great chance to get in. So far as I know, there have been no publicly released studies on how much demonstrated interest gets factored in to admission decisions. Students, families and counselors need to be aware that the difference between getting in and not getting in now includes demonstrating interest at many places.In terms of how demonstrated interest and the wait list works there are two things that students can do. One is what all students should do and the other is for those who are sure that the wait list school is their clear first choice.In the information schools send to students on the wait list they typically include a list of things that students should do. The most important of these is for the students to tell the school they wish to remain of the wait list. Almost all Schools ask this question as some student have not yet heard from other schools when they are places on the wait list at that particular school. These student then get into their first choice school and the chances of them coming are almost non-existent. Schools do not wish to consider student who have little or no interest in being considered for a spot. Once again this would hurt their yield percentages.Colleges and universities also ask students on the wait list to provide them with any significant updates. By this they usually mean academic updates like term grades or in some cases, if the secondary school year ends in May or early June, the final transcript. (Most wait lists selections are finished by June and almost none are still active after that).Most schools are not interested in seeing students take more standardized tests like the SAT or ACT. Most schools are also not interested in getting a flood of new recommendations either. On the other hand, a student who has been recognized for winning a significant award, academic or extracurricular or in some other endeavor, then he or she should send that to the school. A student should not feel at a disadvantage if there are no great new things that have happened. (footnote)Nevertheless there is one particular thing that can be useful to the student trying to get off a wait list that helps the school to determine demonstrated interest of the part of the student. If it is true that a student can put into writing that the school is the his or her first choice and that he or she will enroll if offered, then that should be put in writing and sent off well before May 1. As I have already written, schools don’t like it when people don’t accept an offer made to someone on the wait list. It hurts yield. Having something in writing from a student saying he or she will come is demonstrating interest in ways that the school wants to know. 2In fact, in some cases, schools call the student and ask if a student will accept an offer prior to sending the offer. In other words they want to be sure that if an offer is made it will be accepted. If a student is not sure, then they likely will not receive an offer. Some schools only give the student a day or two to decide (which I think is ethically questionable).I want to add however, that students should think very carefully before submitting such a letter. I always try to give this advice to students: Even if you come off the wait list that is no reason to drop the other school. Look carefully at the options. Being at a school that is a great fit is much more important than the ranking of the school in terms of future success. A student who is swayed by the ranking rather than the atmosphere of the school may end up at a place that does not feel right. A student that thinks that rankings are the be all and end all of what makes a school great does not understand that performance and immersion in the whole experience of a college or university is what will open doors after graduation. Since I have written about this many times I won’t give a long sermon about this here.Finally, There are, many stories of students who have done innovative things to get off the wait list. I have described a few of them here. These approaches are essentially one-offs. They worked once for that particular student but they are not likely to work again. It is the innovative approach that was unique and subsequent students repeating what others have done does not demonstrate much except the ability to copy well and that is not what schools typically look for in high achieving students.One thing, however, there seems to be disagreement about when it comes to demonstrating interest centers around whether a student should make personal contact with someone in the admission office and if they do so how this should happen.I can’t speak for others, but those students who show up on campus and reach out and talk have often helped themselves. Schools don’t encourage this as many schools wait list thousands of students so they say they can’t talk with them in any formal way during April and usually overall too. But students show up anyway and ask to speak to a dean or admission officer. In some cases, the conversations I have had with students like this have been so compelling that I advocated strongly to take them off the wait list. I don’t know how common this might be at most schools, but demonstrating continued interest and strong academic performance are the two big-ticket items for reconsideration of students who are on the wait list.I should also add that I am not the only one who has noticed that personal contact with the admission office can help. A student who was accepted to MIT but wanted Harvard shared his experience in Forbes:But his advice does not always apply. When Shah found out he was wait-listed at Harvard his guidance counselor suggested he contact the admissions officer responsible for his area of the country. He was already heading to Cambridge for MIT’s pre-frosh weekend, so stopping off at Harvard was reasonable. He made an appointment to tell his advisor why he was a good fit for the school. In his case, the quick visit worked. “The important thing was just telling him that I was interested,” Shah says. “Beyond that there’s not much an applicant can do.”While I have tried to be detailed about the many things that go on with the wait list I still need to make one last comment. Each school has its own approach to admission. There is no way to cover all the factors that individual schools use to determine who gets off the wait list. Like everything else in admission, the process of selecting students is a bit too opaque and far more complicated than even a long answer like this could hope to address in a way that covers all the different factors that come into play. Given what I have just said, I would advise students and families to be wary of believing some of the things posted about how to get in off the wait list. Often they are short and have some bullet points that are worth thinking about but they do not take many of the variables into account. I have not been able to address many of the other variables here, but I have tried to give enough detail to let people know the process is detailed and anything but ransom. Schools know what they are looking for and try to make sure that the students who start classes in the fall meet all the most important institutional priorities set forth by the President and the Board.***********************************************************************1. Most schools are becoming more need aware in regular admission and some are definitely need aware during the wait list season. There are simply not enough families who can afford to pa full fees these days so there are tuition discounts and lots of other things that never existed a generation ago. For the wait list specifically, schools have already awarded financial packages to all the students they could. These packages often include significant loans. As many people have written about, student loan debt is one of the largest economic problems in the US today. Since schools have already awarded the limited grants they have, low income student would have loans or nothing to choose from should they picked from the waiting list (or at least this is the case at some schools; others will create a package for low income students).One of the big problems in admission today is how transparent schools are when it comes to aid. More and more counselors who work with low-income student are struck by how some of these students are not getting into some schools in which others with credentials that are lower are getting in. At schools that say at the outset they are need aware in admission, then it is not an ethical issue that anyone can do anything about. On the other hand, there are some schools that post they are need blind (they do not look at income as a part of the evaluations of students for admission) who are taking weaker students who can pay and these students are not hooked to the schools in some way (athlete, legacy, under-represented minority for example). I have pointed out how we are all biased due to the way our brains are wired. One way this happens in admission is how the income information is actually foregrounded on the first "page" of data that comes in from the Common Application. Even if an admission reader thinks this data does not affect they are reading neuroscience demonstrates they are wrong. We are primed by the information we see.2. It is important for those students who are on a wait list to remember than with a few exceptions all of them are more than qualified to attend the schools and do exceptionally well. Some wait-listed students at highly selective schools often ask themselves all too often “What did I do wrong?” The answer in most cases is “Nothing”. Highly selective schools get exceptional students from all over the world to apply. They have limited spaces and they pick students for a lot of reasons, some of which I have already highlighted. If there were any significant problems the admission office noticed in evaluating the application, the student would have simply been denied. I can say that some of the students who have been accepted off of wait lists and the attended that school have done far better than almost all the students on campus at the end of four years. I have described one of those students here. These students often come in with something to prove. They are motivated to show the school that they belong and so they work exceptionally hard and end up doing well. To put it simply, wait listed students should consider themselves ready to do well the second they step on campus. They should not in any way feel they are not as prepared to contribute in and out of the classroom. They should begin their academic career fully confident they have what it takes to be a star.On the other hand, I would not want to leave out something that is also a part of the wait list that not many know much about. There are some students who are placed on the wait list as a “courtesy” (a term used by some in the world of admission). A courtesy wait list can be defined as a student who is placed on the waiting list for reasons that are strategic or political but that the student has virtually no chance of being offered admission. Who are these students? These students tend to be legacies or others tied to the university in some way (perhaps a faculty child for example). The thinking behind placing a student like this on the wait list is that it is not quite as hard a blow as getting a straight out deny. There are some in education that hate this kind of thing and it is pretty easy to understand why. The student has no chance of getting in yet continues to hope that good things might happen. On the other hand, when I worked for a university, I would occasionally receive calls from college counselors who were hoping to find out something about their students. In some cases, the counselors would ask that a student, who might be in the deny group, still be put on the wait list as a courtesy. It isn’t just the colleges and universities that are trying to placate the parents and students and sometimes having students on the wait list makes the student feel better or at least this is the thinking some educators have. For reasons that are obvious no school would ever reveal that a particular student was on the wait list as a courtesy. So while schools do not rank wait list students, there are some on the list that are on there for reasons other than making sure the school enrolls the class it wants. (This should also tell you that there are counselors that reach out to schools to talk about candidates prior to decisions going out. In some cases ,if there is a strong relationship with the counselor and the school, these decisions will be discussed. This kind of special access is described well in Jacques Steinberg’s excellent book The Gatekeepers.)

An Economic Bill of RightsUniversal Social Security: Taxable Basic Income Grants for all, structured into the progressive income tax, that guarantee an adequate income sufficient to maintain a modest standard of living. Start at $500/week ($26,000/year) for a family of four, with $62.50/week ($3,250/year) adjustments for more or fewer household members in 2000 and index to the cost of living.Jobs for All: A guaranteed right to job. Full employment through community-based public works and community service jobs programs, federally financed and community controlled.Living Wages: A family-supporting minimum wage. Start at $12.50 per hour in 2000 and index to the cost of living.30-Hour Work Week: A 6-hour day with no cut in pay for the bottom 80% of the pay scale.Social Dividends: A "second paycheck" for workers enabling them to receive 40 hours pay for 30 hours work. Paid by the government out of progressive taxes so that social productivity gains are shared equitably.Universal Health Care: A single-payer National Health Program to provide free medical and dental care for all, with freedom of choice for consumers among both conventional and alternative health care providers, federally financed and controlled by democratically elected local boards.Free Child Care: Available voluntarily and free for all who need it, modeled after Head Start, federally financed, and community controlled.Lifelong Public Education: Free, quality public education from pre-school through graduate school at public institutions.Affordable Housing: Expand rental and home ownership assistance, fair housing enforcement, public housing, and capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income. Democratic community control of publicly funded housing programs.Grassroots DemocracyCommunity Assemblies: Ground political representation in a foundation of participatory, direct democracy: a Community Assembly in every neighborhood, open to all of its residents, acting as a grassroots legislative body, with its own budget for local administration, and the power (in concert with other Citizens Assemblies who share a representative) to monitor, instruct, and recall representatives elected to municipal, state, and federal office.A Proportional, Single-Chamber US Congress: Abolish the disproportional, aristocratic US Senate. Create a single-chamber US Congress, elected by a system of mixed-member proportional representation that combines district representatives elected by preference voting and party representatives seated in proportion to each party's vote.Environmental Home Rule: Establish the right of every state, county, and municipality to restrict or prohibit the production, sale, distribution, storage, or transportation of any substance it designates as dangerous or toxic.Average Workers' Pay for Elected Officials: Pay elected officials average workers' salaries so that they understand the needs of average people and stop being an elite of professional politicians with separate class interests.DC Statehood: Full self-government and congressional representation for the people of Washington DC.Fair ElectionsProportional Representation: Elect legislative bodies by proportional representation where each party has representation in proportion to its total vote.Preference Voting: Elect single offices by majority preference voting where voters rank candidates in order of preference and votes are distributed according to preferences in instant runoffs until a winner receives a majority of votes.Public Campaign and Party Financing:Equal public campaign financing and free broadcast media time for all candidates who agree not to use private money. Equal free broadcast media time for party broadcasts. Public financing of parties through matching funds for party dues and small donations up to $300 a year.Fair Ballot Access: Federal legislation to require each state to enable a new party or any independent candidate to qualify for the ballot through a petition of no greater than 1/10th of 1% of the total vote cast in the district in the last gubernatorial election, with a 10,000 signature maximum.Eliminate Mandatory Primaries: Allow parties the right to nominate by membership convention instead of state-run primaries.Ecological ConversionEcological Production: Set goals and timetables to phase out and ban the production and release of synthetic chemicals and to convert all production to materials that are bio-degradable, bio-inert, or confined to closed-loop industrial cycles. Use federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to:Phase out most chlorinated and other synthetic petrochemicals and phase in natural, biodegradable substitutes.Phase out synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and phase in organic agriculture.Shut down waste incinerators, phase out landfills, and phase in full recycling.Require manufacturers to be responsible for the whole life cycle of their products by taking back used packaging and products for re-manufacturing, reuse, or recycling.Legalize industrial hemp as an ecological source for wood pulp, paper, cloth, lubricants, fibers, and many other products.Renewable Energy: Invest non-renewable energy sources in the creation of self-reproducing, renewable energy systems. Use federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to:Shut down nuclear power plants.Phase out fossil fuels and phase in clean renewable energy sources.Reduce auto-based transportation and expand pedestrian, bicycle, and rail transportation.Biotechnology-No Patents on Life; No Transgenic Organisms:Ban patents on life forms in order to preserve genetic diversity and common access to our common inheritance of nature, including farmers' access to seeds and breeds.Ban the release into the environment and the use in food production of genetically modified organisms that result from splicing the genes of one species into another.Environmental Defense and Restoration:Full funding for anti-pollution enforcement and toxic sites clean-upPreserve ecosystems and biodiversity by strengthening the Endangered Species Act and expanding areas designated as wildlife refuges and wilderness areas.Ban old-growth logging, clear cutting, and strip mining.End all commercial exploitation of public lands by private timber, mining, and cattle grazing interests.Ban off-road vehicles on federal lands. Decommission National Forest logging roads.Restoration of public lands degraded by commercial interests.Manage federal lands primarily for ecosystem protection and restoration.Support large-scale ecological restoration based on conservation biology.Environmental Justice: Strengthen and enforce laws that prevent toxic industries, toxic dumps and air pollution from targeting ethnic minority communities.A Just Transition: A Superfund for Workers to guarantee full income and benefits for all workers displaced by ecological conversion until they find new jobs with comparable income and benefits.Sustainable AgricultureFair Farm Price Supports: Reform farm price supports to cover the costs of production plus a living income for family farmers and farmworker cooperatives.Subsidize Transition to Organic Agriculture: Subsidize farmers' transition to organic agriculture while natural systems of soil fertility and pest control are being restored.Support Small Farmers: Create family farms and farm worker cooperatives through a homesteading program and land reform based on acreage limitations and residency requirements.Break Up Corporate Agribusiness: Create family farms and farmworker cooperatives through a homesteading program and land reform based on acreage limitations and residency requirements.Economic DemocracyEliminate Corporate Personhood: Legislation or constitutional amendment to end the legal fiction of corporate personhood.End Corporate Limited Liability: Make corporate shareholders bear the same liabilities as other property owners.Federal Chartering of Interstate CorporationsPeriodic Review of Corporate Charters: A public corporate charter review process for each corporation above $20 million in assets every 20 years to see if it is serving the public interest according to social and ecological as well as financial criteria.Strengthen Anti-Trust Enforcement: Require breakup of any firm with more than 10% market share unless it makes a compelling case every five years in a public regulatory proceeding that it serves the public interest to keep the firm intact.Democratic Production: Establish the right of citizens to vote on the expansion or phasing out of products and industries, especially in areas of dangerous or toxic production.Workplace Democracy: Establish the right of workers at every enterprise over 10 employees to elect supervisors and managers and to determine how to organize work.Worker Control of Worker Assets-Pension Funds and ESOP Shares:Pension funds representing over $5 trillion in deferred wages account for nearly one-third of financial assets in the US. 11 million workers participate in employee stock-option plans (ESOPs). Reform ERISA, labor laws, and ESOP tax provisions to enable workers to democratically control their assets.Democratic Conversion of Big Business: Mandatory break-up and conversion to democratic worker, consumer, and/or public ownership on a human scale of the largest 500 US industrial and commercial corporations that account for about 10% of employees, 50% of profits, 70% of sales, and 90% of manufacturing assets.Democratic Conversion of Small and Medium Business: Financial and technical incentives and assistance for voluntary conversion of the 22.5 million small and medium non-farm businesses in the US to worker or consumer cooperatives or democratic public enterprises. Mandate that workers and the community have the first option to buy on preferential terms in cases of plant closures, the sale or merger of significant assets, or the revocation of corporate charters.Democratic Banking: Mandatory conversion of the 200 largest banks with 80% of all bank assets into democratic publicly-owned community banks. Financial and technical incentives and assistance for voluntary conversion of other privately-owned banks into publicly-owned community banks or consumer-owned credit unions.Democratize Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve System: Place a 100% reserve requirement on demand deposits in order to return control of monetary policy from private bankers to elected government. Selection of Federal Reserve officers by our elected representatives, not private bankers. Strengthen the regional development mission of the regional Federal Reserve Banks by directing them to target investments to promote key policy objectives, such as high-wage employment, worker and community ownership, ecological production, and inner city reconstruction.Progressive and Ecological TaxesEcological Taxes: Tax pollution, resource extraction, harmful products, and the use of our common wealth of natural capital (land sites according to land value, timber and grazing lands, ocean and freshwater resources, oil and minerals, electromagnetic spectrum, satellite orbital zones).Simple, Progressive Income Taxes: Enact a no-loopholes, graduated personal income tax with equal taxation of all income, regardless of source. Provide an income tax credit for each dependent to replace and fully compensate for the current exemptions and deductions that benefit to the average taxpayer, such as the home mortgage deduction and medical deductions.Eliminate Regressive Payroll Taxes: Fund Social Security, Health Care, Unemployment Insurance, and Workers Compensation out of progressive income and wealth taxes.Guaranteed Adequate Income: Build taxable Basic Income Grants into the progressive income tax structure to create a Universal Social Security system that ensures everyone has income for at least a modest standard of living above the poverty line.Maximum Income: Build into the progressive income tax a 100% tax on all income over ten times the minimum wage.End Corporate Welfare: Target subsidies for worker- and community-owned enterprises, not absentee-owned corporations. Put subsidies in the public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks in complicated tax codes. Progressively Graduated Corporate Revenue and Asset TaxesWealth Tax: Enact a steeply progressive tax on net wealth over $2.5 million (the top 5% of households).Inheritance Tax: Replace the loophole-ridden estate tax with a no-loopholes, progressive inheritance tax on inheritances over $1 million.Stock and Bond Transfer Tax: Encourage a shift from speculative to productive investments through a federal stock and bond transfer tax on all securities transactions.Currency Speculation Tax: An internationally uniform tax on currency conversion to discourage speculation. Revenues from the currency speculation tax should be channeled through international agencies into ecologically sustainable, democratically controlled development in poor countries.Advertising Tax: A tax on advertising to fund a decentralized, pluralistic media system of real public broadcasting, public service broadcasting on commercial media, and independent nonprofit, noncommercial media.Federal Revenue Sharing: Reduce state and local government dependence on regressive sales and property taxes through federal revenue sharing that combines centralized collection of progressive and ecological taxes with decentralized decisions on spending.Ecological and Feminist Economic Accounting: Expand the Bureau of Labor Statistics into a Bureau of Household, Labor, and Environmental Statistics with revised national economic accounts, statistics, and indicators that include stocks and flows of natural wealth, household production, and labor time values. Existing national income accounts and indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) ignore the ecological foundations of the economy and the value of household production. Ecological accounting will identify the true costs of resource depletion and pollution and hence appropriate eco-taxes to internalize full costs. Social accounting will identify the true value of household production and its contribution to the economy and social well-being. Labor time accounting will record and publish the current and dated labor time for goods and services, establishing the average labor time required for each product. These labor time values will serve as shadow prices against which to judge the fairness of actual market prices.Human Rights and Social JusticeEnd Institutionalized Racism, Sexism, and Oppression of People with Disabilities: Strengthen civil rights, anti-discrimination, and affirmative action laws, programs, and enforcement.African American Reparations: A national commission on reparations for African Americans.Indian Treaty Rights: Honor all treaty obligations with Native Americans and Chicanos.Immigrant Rights: Support the rights of immigrants to housing, education, health care, jobs, and civil, legal, and political rights.Reproductive Freedom: People should be free from government interference in making their reproductive choices, including abortion, which should be covered by all publicly funded medical insurance programs.Comparable Worth: Legislation to enable women and minorities to receive equal pay for work of equal value.End Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered People: Outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, benefits, and child custody.Same-Sex Marriage: Legal recognition of same-sex marriages.Criminal and Civil Justice ReformsAbolish the Death PenaltyProsecute Police Brutality-The Jonny Gammage Law: Require independent federal investigation and prosecution of law enforcement officers charged with violating the civil rights or causing the bodily injury or death of a human being.End Political and Racial Persecution by the Criminal Justice System:Freedom for all political prisoners and prisoners of racial injustice. Clemency for Leonard Peltier. New trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.Restorative Justice: Establish a humane criminal sanction system based on prevention, restitution, rehabilitation, and reconciliation rather than vengeance, forced labor, and profits for the Prison-Industrial Complex. Restore full funding for college degree granting programs in state and federal prisons. Jobs and justice, not more police and prisons.Legal Aid: Expand funding of legal aid and public defender programs so all people can have competent legal representation.Fight Corporate Crime: Strengthen laws and enforcement against corporate crime with penalties that include incarceration of executives and revocation of corporate charters.Oppose Tort Reform that Limits Class Action Lawsuits and Caps Victims' Compensation: The threat of high victim compensation awards by civil juries must be maintained as an important deterrent to corporate crime.Civil Liberties: Support the Bill of Rights. No compromise on civil liberties and due process for "national security," "anti-terrorism," or "the war on drugs." Repeal the 1994 Crime and 1996 Anti-Terrorism bills. End domestic political spying by police, military, and intelligence agencies.End the "War on Drugs:" Decriminalize possession of drugs. Regulate and tax drug distribution. Release nonviolent drug war prisoners. Treat drug abuse as a health problem, not a criminal problem. Drug abuse treatment on demand.Labor Law ReformsRepeal Repressive Labor Laws: Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, the Landrum-Griffin Act, the Hatch Act, and state "Right-To-Work" laws which have crippled labor's ability to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's basic organizing tools: strikes, boycotts, pickets, and political action.A Workers' Bill of Rights: Enact a set of legally enforceable civil rights, independent of collective bargaining, which (1) extends the Bill of Rights protections of free speech, association, and assembly into all workplaces, (2) establishes workers' rights to living wages, portable pensions, information about chemicals used, report labor and environmental violations, refuse unsafe work, and participate in enterprise governance, and (3) establishes workers' rights to freedom from discharge at will, employer search and seizure in the workplace, sexual harassment, and unequal pay for work of comparable worth.Expand Worker' Rights to Organize and Enjoy Free Time:Majority Card-Check Recognition of UnionsStrong and Speedy Penalties for Employers Who Break Labor LawsBan Striker ReplacementsTriple Back Pay for Illegally Locked-Out WorkersUnemployment Compensation for Striking and Locked-Out WorkersBinding Contract Arbitration at Union RequestFull Rights for Farmworkers, Public Employees, and "Workfare" Workers under the Fair Labor Standards ActBan Prison Slave Labor: End the use of US prisoners to produce goods and services for sale to the public.Double-Time Pay for All OvertimeProhibit Mandatory Overtime6 Weeks Paid Vacation Annually in addition to Federal Holidays1 Year Paid Educational Leave for Every 7 Years Worked1 Year Parental Leave for Each Child Born with No Loss of SeniorityRight to Work Short Hours: No discrimination in pay and promotion against workers who choose to work short hours.Revitalize Public EducationEqualize School Funding with Federal Revenue Sharing: Federal financing of all public education (instead of by regressive local property taxes) so that every school has the resources it needs to provide the highest quality education for every child. Use a simple formula based on student population with adjustments based on need to help bring up school quality and student performance in poor communities.Decentralized Administration: Cut through stifling centralized administration with site-based planning, policy-making, and management with participation by parents and teachers with release-time. Maintain central support staff for decentrally administered schools.Class Size Reduction: Federal legislation and financing to reduce student-teacher ratios in classrooms to 15 to 1 in all public schools.Preschool Programs: Federal legislation and financing for public schools to make available Head Start-type programs for pre-Kindergarten children starting at age 3.After School Programs: Federal legislation and financing to make available after-school recreational and educational programs for all school age children.Children's Health: Clinics in all schools to check eyes, teeth, and general health at all grade levels. Healthy food at breakfast, lunch, and after school programs. Birth control information at middle and high schools.Improve Teacher Training and Pay: Improve the quality of teachers with support for career-long training. On-the-jobs apprenticeships for teachers-in-training. Teacher pay scales comparable to other professionals with similar education and responsibilities.Multicultural Teaching Staffs: Strengthen affirmative action programs to recruit and support ethnic minorities to enter teaching at every level: teacher, aide, assistant, apprentice.Tuition-Free Higher Education: Federal legislation and financing for tuition free education at public universities and technical schools for everyone who wants it.Oppose the Privatization of Public Schools: We oppose all schemes for corporations to pursue private profits at the expense of public schools and schoolchildren.No School Vouchers: No school vouchers from public budgets for private schools.No For-Profit or Religious Charter Schools: Stop the diversion of public funds to for-profit corporations or religious organizations running charter schools with unaccountable administrations, uncertified teachers, and segregated student bodies.No Commercialization: Stop turning school children into a captive market for commercial marketing interests with franchises that undermine democratic funding and accountability.No High-Stakes Testing: Stop the curriculum takeover by commercial standardized test and test-prep corporations. Stop linking administrator and teacher pay and student graduation and retention to standardized test performance. Stop reducing education to answering multiple choice questions. Put teachers back in charge of ongoing, genuine assessment in the classroom.Curriculum for a Multicultural Participatory Democracy: We support a democratic public school curriculum that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and free expression, that explicitly promotes democratic and egalitarian anti-racist, anti-sexist, and multicultural values, that replaces Eurocentric with multicultural textbooks and other curriculum materials, that does not sort children into academic and non-academic tracks, and that is academically rigorous with high expectations for all children.Support Bilingual Education: Minority-language children with limited English proficiency must have instructional programs that build on their native language and culture while building English proficiency.Free, Diverse and Uncensored MediaInfodiversity: An uninformed people is not free. Create a vital, democratic, diverse media system, delinked from corporate profit objectives and able to present a wide range of issues and ideas in their full complexity, free from censorship by government or by private corporate power.Support Nonprofit and Noncommercial Media: A decentralized, democratic system of public funding of diverse nonprofit, noncommercial media, including broadcast, print, film, website, and other cultural production. Funding to exceed existing support for for-profit media, including lower mailing rates and tax deductions for donors. Guarantee free, universal Internet access.Real Public Broadcasting: Complete public funding for real public radio and television broadcasting, with no advertising or grants from private corporations or foundations. Support a decentralized, pluralistic system of multiple national networks and local stations, all independently controlled by boards elected by their publics and their workers.Regulate Public Airwaves in the Public Interest: Reassert the public's right as owners of the electromagnetic spectrum used as broadcast airwaves to regulate their use in the public interest. Re-appropriate 6 prime-time hours a day of commercial broadcast time on each station for real public service broadcasting: ad-free children's and news/public affairs programming. Fund this liberated time by charging commercial broadcasters rents for the bandwidths they use, a tax on sales of commercial stations, and a tax on advertising. Program this ad-free time under the control of artists' and educators for the children's programs and journalists for the news and public affairs programs. Restore the Fairness Doctrine. Free time for all candidates for public office. Prohibit paid political ads or require free ads of equal time for opponents. Redistribute substantial bandwidth concessions to public, nonprofit, and locally owned commercial stations, including low-power stations. Increase stakeholder representation on and public accountability of the Federal Communications Commission.Antitrust Actions to Break Up Media Conglomerates: Reform antitrust legislation to require the break up of corporate giants because their concentrated power threatens democracy, not just competitive pricing, especially with regard to media concentration where a few media conglomerates control the public's access to information. Require separate, independent firms for all TV stations, TV networks, TV show producers, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, film producers, music recorders, Internet service providers, cable TV systems, cable TV stations, amusement parks, retail stores, and so forth. Repeal the pro-conglomeration Telecommunications Act of 1996. Subsidize the existence of multiple newspapers and magazines to express a diversity of opinion in all communities.International SolidarityA Global Green Deal: Build world peace and security through a Global Green Deal. First, the US should finance universal access to primary education, adequate food, clean water and sanitation, preventive health care, and family planning services for every human being on Earth. According to the 1999 UN Development Report, it would take only an additional $40 billion to Fund Global Basic Human Needs, an amount that is only 13% of the 2000 US military budget. Second, the US, which now spends half of the world's military expenditures by itself, should demilitarize its economy and reinvest the Peace Dividend in financing and technical assistance for an Ecological Conversion of Human Civilization to Sustainable Systems of Production.Peace Conversion: Cut US military spending unilaterally by 75% in two years to establish a non-interventionist, non-offensive, strictly defensive military posture and save nearly $250 billion a year.Peace Dividend: Dedicate the $250 billion a year Peace Dividend to the Global Green Deal, Ecological Conversion, the Economic Bill of Rights, and providing full income and benefits for all workers and soldiers displaced by demilitarization until they find new jobs at comparable income and benefits.Unilateral Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Disarmament: These weapons of mass destruction have no place in a non-offensive military. The US should set the example and demand that other nations match our lead before the proliferation of weapons to countries around the world leads to mass destruction.Cooperative Security: Pursue a "cooperative security" strategy that seeks mutual arms reductions, progressive elimination of cross-border offensive capabilities, and further cuts in military spending. The goal is to progressively demilitarize down to a non-offensive defense of U.S. national territory using a coast guard, border guard, national guard, and light air defense system, which would cost about $3 billion, or less than 1% of current US military spending.Democratize the United Nations: Cooperative security cannot work as long as the United Nations remains a US puppet. Support reforms to democratize the United Nations, such as more proportionality and power in the General Assembly, an elected Security Council, and the elimination of the Great Power Veto on the Security Council.A Pro-Democracy Foreign Policy: We call for a fundamental shift in US foreign policy, from supporting repressive regimes in the interests global corporations to supporting the pro-democracy labor, social, and environmental movements of the people.Support International, Multilateral Peacekeeping to Stop Aggression and GenocideNo Unilateral US Intervention in the Internal Affairs of Other CountriesClose All Overseas US Military BasesDisband NATO and All Aggressive Military AlliancesBan US Arms ExportsAbolish the CIA, NSA, US Army School of the Americas, and All US Agencies of Covert WarfareEnd the Economic Blockades of Cuba, Iraq, and YugoslaviaCut Off US Military Aid to Counter-Insurgency Wars in Colombia and MexicoFreedom for Lori Berenson and All Political PrisonersRequire a National Referendum to Declare WarEnd Global Financial Exploitation: Cancel the debt owed by poor countries to global banks. End the exploitation of poor countries by IMF "structural adjustment" policies. Abolish the IMF and World Bank and replace them with a democratic international financial institution for balancing international accounts and financing short-term current account balances.Fair Trade: Withdraw from the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and all other corporate-managed trade agreements that are driving down labor and environmental conditions globally. Establish an internationalist social tariff system that equalizes trade by accounting for the differences among countries in wages, social benefits, environmental conditions, and political rights. Tariff revenues to a democratic, international fund for ecological production and democratic development in poor countries in order to level up social and environmental conditions to a high common standard.Taken from: The Greens/Green Party USA