Code4Life is an after-school program created by the Economic Growth DC Foundation in partnership with Accenture that teaches basic computer programming skills to middle-school students.

We’ll be teaching Code4Life in about 30 classrooms in DC public and charter schools this semester, and so we need to hire 30 instructors to teach our curriculum. See below for details and instructions on how to sign-up.

Code4Life — Teaching Gig Available

The “Sputnik Crisis” was triggered by the launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957 from what is now known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It stirred within the American people a sense that they had fallen behind the Soviet Union technologically, and in the “race for space.”

But Americans didn’t panic. In short order, they created the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA. Less than a year after the launch of Sputnik, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act. It was a four-year program that poured billions into the U.S. education system.

Within a decade, the U.S. had launched the first human into space. We landed on the moon in 1969. The U.S. has dominated space exploration ever since. Countless technological innovations sprung from that period, from Tang to the World Wide Web.

2017 represents a new Sputnik moment. The American workforce is at risk of being left behind. The next century will be one dominated by information technology.

If American workers are not equipped with the skills required to succeed in our technology-based future, we risk falling permanently behind in a variety of ways. It is time for America to accept the challenge of the next century and put the same level of effort that followed Sputnik into preparing its workforce for the 21st century.

Astronauts will land on Mars, but it is the computer scientists who will get them there.

The most important education policy challenge we face in America today is improving access to computer science education. Only a fraction of our school districts, mainly in Silicon Valley, have integrated full-blown computer science education into their regular for-credit curriculum. Our foundation and many others are actively advocating for the completion of this integration as quickly as possible, but Congress has been slow to act.

Until then, Code4Life is a first of its kind after-school program developed by our charitable arm, the Economic Growth DC Foundation, in partnership with Accenture. It teaches basic computer programming skills to middle-school students. As good as the program may be, it is a crude substitute for the full-scale integration of computer science education into the regular for-credit curriculum. Until national policymakers and our patchwork of local school-districts across the country get serious about the integration, programs like Code4Life will play an important role in experimenting with best practices.

Our program is designed to impart to middle-school students the basic computer programming and development skills that will provide them with the tools and the confidence to pursue a career in computer science.

While many of our participants will pursue undergraduate degrees, there are numerous career paths within computer science that provide an opportunity to earn a middle-class living that do not require a four-year degree. Our program is designed to provide a foundation from which a career in computer science can be built.

The program began in September of 2014 with one classroom and 15 students at KIPP NE Academy in Trinidad. When our Spring 2017 semester begins in March, we will be operating in 14 classrooms in 10 schools with over 200 children participating in the program.

One of the problems with computer science in America today is its lack of diversity. About 90% of all computer scientists are white males. Our program requires that at least 50% of the participants at each of our schools are girls and the vast majority of our participants are African-American or Latino.

Accenture volunteers teach Module One at KIPP NE Academy

How It Works

The class meets for two hours after school, one day per week, for 8 consecutive weeks in each semester.

The program is designed for students to remain with us working on progressively more complex programming throughout their middle school careers.

We teach four different curricula we call Modules each semester. Technical staff at Accenture developed the curriculum for Module One based on a programming language developed at the University of California at Berkeley called SNAP. It’s a visually oriented entry-level programming language designed to introduce students to programming for the first time.

Module Two is an HTML and CSS class that was developed by IT staff at George Washington University that teaches participants how to code basic websites. Module Three is an introduction to big data and data analytics developed by Accenture, and Module Four introduces students to smartphone app development using a language developed at MIT.

A Code4Life student presents her final project

Code4Life is funded by a fee paid by each school per classroom per semester. While these fees cover most of our expenses, we are constantly raising money to support our expansion and curriculum development. To support Code4Life financially, simply click the “Contribute” button at the top of the page. The Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) public charity. Your contribution is fully tax-deductible as a charitable gift. If you like to learn more about the benefits of supporting Code4Life, contact our executive director,  Dave Oberting, at dave.oberting@egdcfoundation.org.

If you’d like to bring Code4Life to your school, email us at code4life@egdcfoundation.org.

Here are some links to recent news coverage of Code4Life:

Natalie Wexler’s Greater Greater Washington article

Opportunity Lives article

Click below to see Code4Life featured on the Harris’ Heroes segment of a recent ABC7 broadcast:

Debate rages in the District of Columbia over the costs and wisdom of a District-wide paid leave program. The point we make on this issue is employers do not pay payroll taxes. They merely pass them along to employees in the form of lower wages, fewer hours, jobs lost, more expensive health coverage, fewer vacation days, etc. This is widely accepted accounting principle from the Congressional Budget Office on down. See the attached document.

Effects of the Payroll Tax

Below are the rules for the types of political activities organizations organized under Chapter 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Act:

501c4-political-activity

Last year, the Seattle city-council voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over several years. It also mandated the creation of a Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team to analyze the results of the increases on wages, employment and local businesses. The study team recently released a report covering the first year of the implementation, when the minimum wage rose to $11 per hour.

It should be mandatory reading for every District policymaker:

Seattle 2015 Minimum Wage Study

By Dave Oberting

To no one’s surprise, poverty is not spread evenly throughout the District of Columbia. Only six percent of the District’s white residents live in poverty. For Hispanics, the rate is 23% and for African-American District residents it’s 36%.

The most important statistic in all of the poverty debate is this one: according to Dr. Harry Holzer of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, of the 88,773 people over the age of 16 living in poverty in DC in 2014, only 1.9% had the opportunity to hold a full-time job at some point throughout the year, while 64% did not have the opportunity to work at all.

The District doesn’t have a “poverty” problem, per se. It has an unemployment and underemployment problem, of which poverty is a symptom.

The elusive “solution” to poverty is actually pretty obvious: work — meaningful, decent, and full-time work to be sure, but work itself is how poverty ends.

Our public discourse tends to trend towards who’s to blame for the existing state of affairs, but the causes are many, varied and ultimately irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how it gets fixed.

Our answer comes in three parts that are not a mystery:

1) The District’s economy grew at a rate of 1.55% in 2014. While better than the 0.61% contraction that took place in 2013, it’s not fast enough to take on the District’s high level of unemployment. The number one task of the new administration, and the thing that most requires their attention is implementing a policy framework that permits the private sector to grow faster. This can and should be fixed in the short-term. Improvements in tax policy, regulatory policy, more flexible labor laws and even the facilitation of the birth of new industries are within reach. Aggressive moves in each area are required to jump-start the creation of jobs at all skill levels.

2) Too many District residents lack the skills required to acquire and maintain a full-time, middle-skill, middle-wage job. This is a medium-term project, but the best tool we have for transmitting the skills that District residents need to command a middle-class job is our long neglected workforce development system. It is frankly the best anti-poverty tool we have.

Some improvements in the system have been made over the last four years, but we need to move farther, faster. Instead of complaining that the workforce is unskilled, the corporate sector needs to drive the design of, supervise, facilitate, and to some degree, fund an improved job training system. As the pace of  job creation increases in the short-term it places a higher premium on residents with competitive skills.

3) As a longer-term proposition, we need a more radical reconstruction of our K-12 education system. Dating back to Mayor Fenty’s takeover of the schools and the tenure of Michelle Rhee, the energy required for dramatic improvement has been there, but the results have not. According to Ken Archer of Greater Greater Washington, if you take a closer look at the city’s test scores, you see, “stagnant or downward trajectory for black, Hispanic, low-income, English language learner, and special education students in the last five years.”

This is a recipe for the perpetuation of inter-generational poverty. Until the city grapples with this reality and commits to more drastic action, the long-term trajectory of poverty will not change. By the time a faster growing economy is producing more jobs,and an improved workforce system is producing higher-skilled District residents, we must graduate 100% of our high school students and they must be ready for post-secondary training/education and a productive career.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We’ve been doing the same things over and over for decades.

Dave Oberting is the executive director at Economic Growth DC, an economic policy organization focused on the District and its economy. You can email Dave at dave.oberting@economicgrowthdc.org.

By Dave Oberting

Proposition

Here is the proposition that underlies all that we do at Economic Growth DC: the right to a decent full-time job is the most basic and fundamental entitlement of them all. It is the cornerstone of social justice. It is the foundation of human dignity.

We often forget that the full name of Dr. King’s pilgrimage to the nation’s capital in 1963 was the “March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom.” Was it simply a typo that Dr. King put jobs before freedom in the title of his speech, or was it a conscious ranking of his priorities?

What would Dr. King think if he found out that 50 years have passed, and in the city where his march was held, 88,773 people (out of a population of 658,000) over the age of 16 still live in poverty? And how would he feel if he heard that only 1.6% of them had the opportunity to hold a full-time job at some point in the last year.

Every day that goes by that a District resident doesn’t have the opportunity to work full-time is another day that our local government has failed that resident.

For it is the District government that bears responsibility when the economy slows, and job growth sputters. Our elected officials hold the keys to the legal and regulatory structures that permit an economy to function. When that architecture fails, it is not the fault of the man on the corner searching for the means to feed his family.

Our Promise

We’ll work every day, with every tool at our disposal, to bring you a faster growing economy capable of creating a full-time job for every working-age District resident.

We’ll work every day to radically improve our job training system so that it imparts the skills that District residents need to command the high-wage jobs of the next generation.

We’ll work every day to urgently and dramatically improve our K-12 education system so that by graduation every District student can think critically, solve problems, communicate effectively, and collaborate as part of a team.

And we’ll work every day to make sure that every 12th-grader is prepared for a four-year college program, a technical training program, an apprenticeship, or in special cases, a good-paying job in the local economy.

Dave Oberting is the executive director at Economic Growth DC, an economic policy organization focused on the District and its economy. You can email Dave at dave.oberting@economicgrowthdc.org.

“The District’s economy needs to grow at a significantly faster rate in order to create the number and kinds of jobs we’ll need over the next generation. Faster growth is required to increase the incomes of District residents, and we need it to produce the amount of tax revenue we’ll need to do the things the District says it wants to do in areas like affordable housing, homelessness and Medicaid. The research, programs, and initiatives we undertake are short, medium, and long term efforts to facilitate faster economic growth and the job creation that comes with it.” — Dave Oberting, Executive Director

Our current priorities are:

Economic Growth DC

1. Regulatory Reform — Reducing the cost and increasing the ease of doing business in the District of Columbia are two of Economic Growth DC’s primary goals. Both the cost and the ease of doing business are products primarily of the regulatory process. Reducing the complexity of our regulatory system and reducing the cost of compliance would provide an immediate boost to economic growth. We will take advantage of every opportunity to move towards a simpler, smarter regulatory architecture.
2. Regulatory Review & Amendment Act — This bill, as proposed by Economic Growth DC, would require the District government to calculate and weigh the costs and benefits of all regulations expected to have an economic impact in excess of a certain amount. It will add much needed transparency to the regulatory process as many regulations act as a hidden tax on consumers who ultimately bear the burden of those regulations.
3. Tax Reform — A Tax Revision Commission organized by Mayor Vincent Gray and led by former Mayor Anthony Williams conducted a comprehensive review of the District’s tax framework over the past 18 months. They recommended a number of changes to the tax code that were subsequently adopted into legislation championed by Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. The most important of these changes lowered income tax rates on moderate to middle income DC residents. We believe this should be the beginning of the tax revision process, not the end. Our basic tax philosophy is we should incentivize work by lowering the tax on it. We will advocate in the coming year for more progress on our tax code.
4. District of Columbia National Disaster Insurance Protection Act — If passed, this federal legislation would empower the District to compete with off-shore jurisdictions to keep insurance company catastrophe reserves in the U.S. by providing tax incentives for such funds to be maintained in the District of Columbia. This legislation would open the door to the creation of thousands of high-paying jobs in the region and billions of dollars in new economic activity.
5. Economic Fact Sheet — Many business owners and managers have made it clear to Economic Growth DC that they often feel misunderstood and unappreciated by the DC government and residents alike. We believe this is because the business community at-large has not done a good job of articulating the contribution that it makes to the the well-being of District residents. Economic Growth DC created an economic fact sheet for the District that details the contributions that are made annually by the District’s 21,592 private businesses. Click here to view: DC Economic Fact Sheet
6. Economic Impact  Analysis — Chairman Phil Mendelson included in the council rules a provision for the conduct of an economic impact analysis on pending legislation. It is to be performed by the Council’s budget office. This is an excellent first step, but this analysis should be codified into law for both legislation and regulations. Having a better understanding of what individual laws and regulations cost the economy in terms of lost economic activity and slower job growth is the foundation of a good legislative and rule making process. We have proposed a Regulatory Review Act that would require the Chief Financial Officer to conduct an economic analysis on any proposed regulation over a certain dollar value that would calculate the cost that a particular regulation would impose on the private economy. It would also allow for a retrospective review and amendment process for older regulations. This law could easily be expanded to include legislation.
7. Labor Law Changes — The District’s labor laws contain perverse incentives that encourage District businesses to relocate to the suburbs upon reaching a certain size and a certain number of employees. We’d like to work with the Council to reform our labor law system to make it more competitive with Virginia and other parts of the country. These reforms will be especially important as the technology start-ups the District has invested so much in begin to mature and start hiring serious numbers of people. These changes can be made at very little cost to the District and without sacrificing important employee protections.
8. Land Transfers — The District should seek out more opportunities to acquire unproductive federal lands, develop them, and reap the tax benefits of increased economic activity.
9. Reforming Telecommunications Regulation — Telcom, IT and the internet industry represent the most dynamic part of our economy, and yet they suffer from some of the most outdated local regulations imaginable. There is more competition in telecommunications than there’s ever been in the District — Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cricket, RCN, AT&T, MagicJack, and Vonage just to name a few — but they are still regulated like a rotary dial monopoly. The Public Service Commission should move to modernize the telecommunications regulatory architecture this year.
10. Fostering Micro-Manufacturing — The District has historically been locked out of the manufacturing industry due to high real estate costs and lack of space. There is a new industry taking shape that would allow the District to become a specialty manufacturing center in its own right. Micro-manufacturing, using 3D printers, is the fastest growing form of manufacturing in the country. They are largely small businesses who’ve used this amazing technology to make a wide variety of products. We’d like to propose legislation that would clear out some of the regulatory and zoning barriers that would enable this industry to take root and prosper in the District. 3D printer technicians do not need a college degree and the jobs generally pay $15-20 per hour. We should be moving quickly to establish a legal and a streamlined regulatory framework for fostering the growth of this industry.
11. Science and Engineering Campus — The District intends to become the premier technology center on the east coast. If you look at the other tech hotbeds around the country — Silicon Valley, Boston, and Austin — the one thing they all have in common is a massive research institution like Stanford, MIT, and the University of Texas.  These institutions produce not just the technology graduates that start companies, but the technology itself that can be commercialized.  The City of New York and Cornell University have partnered to build a massive technology campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it easily the best tool NY will have for accelerating future economic growth. Stanford finished second in the open competition to build the campus on Roosevelt Island. Somewhere in the president’s office at Stanford is a 600 page proposal for a 150-acre, $2 billion campus that would fit perfectly at St. Elizabeth’s. The District government should move heaven and earth to get Stanford to build that campus here.
12. Crowdfunding — This technology provides important access to capital for District start-ups and small businesses. The District has proposed rules to govern crowdsourcing transactions. We’ll work to see these rules implemented as quickly as possible.
13. Attract Venture Capital Firms — Increasing the amount of venture capital funding that flows into the District is key to our long-term growth. The District is actively fostering early stage technology firms with investments in things like 1776. Our startup community is moving towards a critical mass of invest-able companies, but we won’t attract significantly more venture funding if the people who make those investments are not physically in the District. We’ll be proposing an incentive package to entice the largest venture firms like Kleiner Perkins, Andresssen Horiwitz, Sequoia and Graylock to set up shop in the District proper.
14. Anacostia River — We support the efforts of the United for a Healthy Anacostia River Coalition — Lack of development on the banks of the Anacostia is the most visible effect of the deadly chemicals that have been poured into the Anacostia for decades. We consider the cleanup of the Anacostia to be an important economic initiative. We will help the Coalition wherever we can.

Economic Growth DC Foundation

1. Code4Life — Is an after-school program created in partnership with technology giant Accenture that teaches DCPS  and charter school middle-school students basic computer programming. The program is designed to put District students on a pathway to a high-wage occupation that does not necessarily require a college degree. The program launched successfully at KIPP NE Academy this fall. We are currently planning our expansion to three additional schools in February.
2. Re-entry Job Placement Program — The Foundation is working on the development and implementation of an ex-offender job placement program similar to one that was originally developed in Newark, NJ through a partnership between Mayor Corey Boooker and the Manhattan Institute. The Newark program has experienced real success with its rapid attachment to work job placement model designed to get returning citizens into the workforce quickly. They have experienced a much higher employment and retention rate than typical ex-offender efforts, as well as lower rates of recidivism. At his point, it looks like the program will require substantial private funding.
3. Decriminalization — The District decriminalized marijuana in 2014. That action should be the beginning of a sustained campaign to reduce the over-criminalization of DC’s civil society. We will advocate for the formation of a commission which will be responsible for making recommendations for the reduction of certain felonies to misdemeanors, and misdemeanors to civil infractions. Over-criminalization is not unique to the District. At the federal level, there are over 3,000 criminal offenses, and over 300,000 regulations that carry criminal penalties. This is a phenomenon at both the local and national levels that should be rolled back.   
4. Modern Entrepreneurship Program — This program is essentially a venture capital fund for minority micro-entrepreneurs. The twist is experienced business professionals associated with two U.S. AID contractors with considerable development experience overseas will embed with these entrepreneurs for up to a year. The intensive management assistance is designed to lower the risk profile of these investments. This program also requires private funding.
5. Leadership Development Training Class — In partnership with the DC Leadership Development Council, the Foundation seeks to launch a high-school level leadership development training class for high-potential students at DCPS high schools. This class is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2014. The Foundation will administer and underwrite the program. The DC Leadership Devel0pment Council will assemble the curriculum and and provide the instructors.
6. Job Placement Coordinator Training — The District provides the bulk of its job training and youth development programs through non-profit social service providers. Each of those providers has at least one person that is responsible for placing their program’s graduates into jobs upon completion of that training. The Foundation uses its private sector job placement expertise to offer free instruction to any of these placement coordinators interested in professional development. This training helps placement coordinators become more effective at what they do, thereby increasing the number of people who are placed into jobs at the conclusion of their training.
7. Research — We are currently seeking a Director of Education Policy. This individual will be responsible for organizing and analyzing education policy research that is of interest to EGDCF, as well as conducting original research focused on blended learning and improving educational outcomes. If you would be interested in being considered, please forward your resume to resumes@egdcfoundation.org.
8. Apprenticeships — The Foundation is working with several partners, including organized labor, to implement a much broader use of apprenticeships. Germany is an excellent example of how to use apprenticeships aggressively to provide higher levels of skill. Apprenticeships are not just for the construction trades. There are dozens of professions ripe for the use of apprenticeships.
9. Office of Military Preparedness — The military is an excellent career opportunity for District youth. We will be encouraging DCPS to open an Office of Military Preparedness to coordinate the efforts of the various junior ROTC programs, as well as with the various military recruiting commands. The military should be given greater access to students and guidance counselors.

For more information on the Foundation’s activities, visit its website at http://egdcfoundation.org.