CHAPTER SIX

SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY

THE CENTERS “are the engines that help drive the school’s success and enable it to more effectively integrate education, research, and public service.”¹ That was the conclusion of a 2014 external program review of the School of Public Policy and Administration.² The external review team’s report declared that public service, the scholarship of engagement, was “the very essence of SPPA’s identity.” Because of that identity, SPPA was an important component of the University of Delaware’s mission and priorities and a “remarkable asset to the State and its people.”³

Through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the school’s centers significantly influenced public policy and the delivery of government and nonprofit programs and services. This influence continued despite declining university funding for public service and reductions in some direct state line-item support. To compensate for these lost resources, the centers and institutes generated more external contracts and grants.⁴ Funding from external contracts and grants remained relatively stable between FY 2009 and FY 2014 at nearly $4 million annually, then increased steadily for the remainder of the decade, reaching $6.7 million by FY 2020.⁵ The number of research and public service professionals on the school’s staff also increased from thirty-three in 2014 to forty-eight in 2020,⁶ and the centers and institutes continued to provide significant levels of graduate student support.⁷

The established recognition of these centers as community resources and the experience and skill of their leaders enabled them to navigate the changing fiscal environment. The three programs established in the 1960s and 1970s by the Division of Urban Affairs—the Institute for Public Administration, the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, and the Center for Community Research and Service (CCRS)—remained central components of the school. Jerome Lewis had served as the head of IPA since its inception in 1973, and Ed Ratledge had been director of CADSR since 1974. Lewis and Ratledge had statewide recognition, with established networks of government leaders and agencies that regularly relied on their expertise. Other center leaders also held lengthy tenures. Steven Peuquet had been with the Urban Agent Division that became CCRS since 1983, became director of the center in 2005, and served in this capacity until his retirement in 2018. David Ames served as director of the Center for Historic Architecture and Design from its inception in 1983 until he retired in 2015. John Byrne was director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, a position which he held since 1983.⁸

Another key to the resilience of the centers was the professionals who staffed them. They were mainly funded from external sources, including contracts, grants, and direct state allocations. They assumed more responsibilities as fewer faculty had defined workload assignments in the centers and institutes. The contributions of the centers were also strengthened through better coordination and collaboration. The school hired Nicole Quinn (MPA 2007) as Senior Business Administrator in 2012. She began to develop more collaborative practices across SPPA and its centers, taking advantage of shared resources in processing grants and contracts, managing publications and website development, and other administrative functions. When state and local government resources shrank in the years after the Great Recession, national and state agencies, local governments, and nonprofits could not fill the staff positions needed to carry out required services. They contracted out for services and often turned to those with whom they had worked in the past, such as the SPPA centers.

BUILDING CAPACITY

In 2012, a report prepared for the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences documented the school’s public service and community engagement activities for the previous twelve months. It described nearly a hundred separate externally sponsored projects carried out across the state, region, and, in some cases, far beyond.⁹ While the specific number and size of projects varied each year, the overall pattern was one of growth throughout the rest of the decade. Beyond the benefits of the particular projects, the contributions of the school’s centers fulfilled a vital part of the original mandate of the Division of Urban Affairs: building government and community capacity to make better-informed decisions on policies and services.

The Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research has become the central source for demographic data and projections for state institutions. The Delaware Department of Education and school districts have relied on the center to project changing school enrollments and health care providers have depended on it to advise on the location and effectiveness of services and facilities. State agencies and local governments look to CADSR to inform decisions about fiscal and tax policies, economic and employment options, and transportation system performance. The center also has worked in the Delaware justice system to analyze the processing of cases and study the system’s performance. In addition to providing direct services, CADSR has also been an incubator for statewide programs, such as the Delaware Population Consortium, which coordinates demographic information and analysis, and has served as a resource for the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, authorized by law to project state revenue levels.

Since its creation, CADSR’s programs have generated and analyzed data from multiple sources. The center has been a clearinghouse for large data sets supplied by local state, regional, and federal agencies. The center has maintained an active survey research capacity, with the ability to focus surveys on key policy priorities. It also has developed and applied an array of information system technologies, including through the early adoption and use of geographic information system (GIS) tools. These capacities have established CADSR as an essential data resource for the state.

Capacity building for nonprofits and community organizations has been a primary focus of the Center for Community Research and Service. The Nonprofit Leadership Training Certificate Program offered by the center since 1990 has provided professional development for nonprofit staff and leaders. By 2020, the program had more than five hundred graduates, and Delaware nonprofits frequently used the program to prepare younger staff for more senior positions.¹⁰ CCRS has worked to build the capacity of neighborhood and community organizations in Wilmington, an effort that began with the original Urban Agent Division in the 1970s. In 2007, with sponsorship from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, the Jessie Ball du Pont Fund, and the Delaware Community Investment Corporation, CCRS led the Blueprint Communities program, which engaged residents from selected neighborhoods in making and implementing revitalization plans.¹¹ The Blueprint Communities program expanded in 2011 and grew over the next decade to include nine Delaware communities, modeling best practices for locally guided development.

CCRS has served as the host for two community-focused programs that celebrated twenty-five-year anniversaries in 2020. Public Allies Delaware (PAD), an AmeriCorps program co-founded by Biden School alumnus Tony Allen (Phd, UAPP 2001), provides leadership training and internship experiences to prepare young adults for public and nonprofit sector positions. The program assigns its allies to work for a year with partner organizations, most of which are nonprofit institutions, while participating in a leadership training program. In 1995, PAD joined CCRS and became one of the few Public Allies programs in the nation hosted by a university. In 2015, PAD received the Impact Award from the national Public Allies organization. As of 2021, more than 650 Public Allies Delaware graduates have contributed over 1.1 million service hours to over 250 nonprofit and government agencies.¹² Delaware State Senator Elizabeth (Tizzy) Lockman, who graduated from the PAD class of 2005 and later earned an MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the School for Public Policy and Administration in 2015, sums up the program’s impact: “Public Allies was a turning point for me. My experience as an Ally was eye-opening, giving substance to what I already believed that everyone had value, that we are stronger when we figure out how to work in concert, and that we each have the capacity for leadership. Leadership became a habit, then a lifestyle. I truly believe it does this for every Ally who embraces the program’s values!”¹³

CCRS also hosts Kids Count, a program supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has provided data and reports on the needs of and conditions affecting Delaware’s children and families for twenty-five years. The products of Kids Count are frequently cited by advocacy groups and government officials and often serve as the foundation for specific policy proposals, particularly related to education and social services reforms. The location of Kids Count in CCRS also offers easy access to the data on children and families from other units of SPPA, most notably CADSR.

In 2004, an informal health services policy research group led by SPPA faculty members Robert Wilson and Paul Solano and professional staff member Mary Joan McDuffie (MA, UAPP 1988) merged into CCRS. The group focused on evaluating the availability of affordable community-based health care and how to improve that care, applying expertise and experience in health economics, public finance, cost-benefit analysis, and evaluation studies.¹⁴ In 2016, CCRS’s role in health policy and analysis greatly expanded. A partnership with the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services supported research to help improve the health of low-income Delawareans and address issues of cost and quality in the healthcare system. Under the agreement, the center be came the federally recognized locus for Medicaid research and analysis for the State of Delaware. Stephen Groff, director of Delaware’s Medicaid program, wrote that the research carried out under the agreement “enhances our capacity to monitor changes in the Medicaid system, evaluate the effectiveness of various program innovations on the quality and cost of the Medicaid program, and implement effective strategies to improve the overall health of Medicaid beneficiaries.”¹⁵ The partnership has also provided opportunities for doctoral students to access data for their dissertations and has supported research that connects health care with other areas of community need.¹⁶ Stephen Metraux, who joined the school’s faculty and succeeded Steve Peuquet as director of CCRS in 2018, has used the Medicaid database to document the relationship between housing and healthcare needs. He has also extended the center’s research on homelessness, including studies that evaluated the impact of evictions on both the health and needs of vulnerable populations.

The Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research has also contributed significantly to healthcare policy. It has conducted behavioral health analyses for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for decades and has provided demographic data for Delaware’s health information system since 2007. The center has also analyzed health and transportation data for health agencies, hospitals, and health professionals, and conducted assessments of the supply and distribution of health professionals, including doctors, nurses, and dentists.

Capacity building in historic preservation planning and practice has been a focal point for the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD), renamed from the Center for Historic Architecture and Engineering in 1997. CHAD has focused on the documentation and analysis of historic resources, the use of computer applications in preservation documentation, and the use of material culture research and scholarship to provide a context for the interpretation of historic properties. In an important sense, the SPPA’s move to the College of Arts and Sciences greatly benefited CHAD. It fits well with college programs and faculty in such areas as Art History and Art Conservation.¹⁷

CHAD has worked locally and globally. Its collaboration with the Delaware Department of Transportation on the Delaware Byways Program has focused on identifying, promoting, and preserving Delaware roadways that tell important stories about the state’s history and scenic qualities.¹⁸ Meanwhile, CHAD has also worked on preserving cultural artifacts in China, building on the work of Chandra Reedy on the preservation of traditional technologies and materials and their cultural heritage in Asia. The center launched one project with Chinese preservation scholars in Sichuan Province to document historic Tibetan buildings, and another with scholars of the Palace Museum to examine the artifacts of the Forbidden City, Beijing.

When the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy rejoined the School of Public Policy and Administration, it was heavily engaged in supporting a new model to promote solar energy adoption, the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU). The SEU developed directly from CEEP research identifying financing as a critical obstacle to fostering energy efficiency and adopting renewable energy options. Conceived by the center’s director John Byrne, the SEU involved a novel financing approach adopted first in Delaware. Kenneth Becker (MA, UAPP 1976) collaborated with Byrne in developing the financial structure supporting the SEU. He describes the SEU as a “one-stop shop.” It provides incentives to use less energy and creates revenue sources to pay for the incentives. It encourages cleaner, more efficient energy options and educates the public about the global effects of carbon-based energy usage.¹⁹

Implementing the SEU model has been a significant step in building capacity for green energy investment. The SEU received White House recognition in December 2011 as part of the country’s Better Buildings Challenge, was recommended by the Asia Development Bank to its members for affordable green energy development, and was recognized for its innovation in green energy investment by the International Energy Agency.²⁰ The SEU model was adopted by other states and cities across the United States and by other nations. The Solar City Seoul, Korea initiative, for example, resulted in a $500 million municipal financing program for solar and energy savings projects. CEEP director Byrne served on the international advisory council for the project.

INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The Institute for Public Administration has been the largest of the School of Public Policy and Administration’s centers and institutes in terms of programs, staff, and student support. By the time SPPA joined the College of Arts and Sciences, IPA had twenty-three affiliated faculty and full-time professional staff. The institute has provided state and local governments with a wide range of services and research findings in land-use planning, local government training and technical assistance, public leadership development, telecommunications, transportation, and public infrastructure. Of particular significance has been its long-term partnership with the Delaware General Assembly, which includes the Legislative Fellows program and ongoing contracts for staff support and technical assistance in assessing policy and service options. IPA developed a comparable partnership with Delaware’s local governments through its long-term collaboration with the Delaware League of Local Governments. For more than three decades, this collaboration has resulted in the creation of programs serving municipalities of all sizes across the state. These programs range from certifying municipal clerks to informing local officials about emerging issues in local planning, land use, technology (such as community broadband access), and service-delivery models.²¹ Another alliance with the Delaware Public Policy Institute, a think tank sponsored by the State Chamber of Commerce, led to the development of an ongoing series of public forums on key policy challenges such as improving public education, enhancing economic development, increasing energy choices, and maintaining environmental quality. The forums often highlighted key University of Delaware initiatives in each of these areas, including the launch of new partnerships and new university units to address critical policy issues.²²

IPA has housed and supported units that might otherwise have been independent centers. For example, IPA’s Conflict Resolution Program, led by Kathleen Murphy, focused initially on the mediation of disputes in schools as an alternative to court proceedings and provided mediation training to teachers and other educators.²³ The program expanded to provide nonprofit organizations and local and state governments with meeting facilitation, strategic planning, and team-building services.

One of IPA’s most important long-term contributions has been in water resource planning and management, leading it to house Delaware’s Water Resource Agency and later the federally designated Water Resource Center. Since 1977, the institute has worked with an alliance of local and county governments on water resource issues in New Castle County. That role grew in 1998 when Delaware’s Water Resource Agency (WRA), which evolved from the alliance, became a part of IPA. WRA engaged in research and technical assistance to enhance the quality of water resources through out Delaware and the surrounding region, which provides 10 percent of the water supply for the U.S. In 2016, WRA’s responsibilities expanded when it merged with the Water Resources Center (WRC), designated as part of UD’s land-grant responsibilities. The recently merged WRC has received federal and state funds to provide ongoing research and technical assistance to local and state governments.

Gerald Kaufman, the director of WRC since 2016 and previously director of WRA, has held faculty appointments in the Biden School, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Department of Geography. He pursues a distinctively regional approach to water management and policy since the watersheds and aquifers that provide drinking water to Delaware cross many political jurisdictions. Most water resource policies and practices in Delaware and the surrounding region reflect the influence of WRC and WRA research and technical assistance. Kaufman calls Delaware the “First State in Water,” proposing that the conservation of its water resources is a product of decades of bipartisan policy collaborations at the state and regional levels, all of which have actively engaged the expertise of WRC and WRA.²⁴

IMPROVING EQUITY IN DELAWARE PUBLIC EDUCATION

The School of Public Policy and Administration influenced Delaware public policy in many domains, but in none more consistently and consequentially in the second decade of the twenty-first century than the promotion of educational equity.²⁵ Since the 1990s, the Institute for Public Administration has made significant contributions to improving public education by providing professional development programs for school and district leaders, civics education for social sciences teachers, analysis to aid in improving school finances and facilities, and technical assistance to support the Delaware Department of Education’s efforts to increase college application rates.

IPA’s work on educational equity began in 2009 with significant contributions to early childhood education policy in Delaware, particularly focused on supporting the Delaware Early Childhood Council (DECC), appointed by the governor and mandated by state law to recommend improvements in early childhood policies, programs, and practices.²⁶ Dan Rich became chair of the DECC in 2009, and IPA systematically supported the council’s initiatives, with leadership being provided by the institute’s Ed Freel and Kelly Sherretz. Sherretz (MPA 2004) coordinated all of IPA’s education programs.

A comprehensive inventory sponsored by DECC identified nearly one hundred different state policies affecting early childhood services. Some were at cross-purposes and administered and financed by different state agencies with little coordination. DECC had earlier developed a quality rating improvement system, Delaware Stars for Early Success (Stars), based on national best practices for delivering early childhood services. However, there was no incentive for providers of those services to participate in Stars.²⁷ In 2010, the council proposed the implementation of such incentives along with an increase in the state’s funding of early childhood program expenses for low-income families. Despite cuts in many areas of the proposed 2011 state budget, Governor Jack Markell recommended and the Delaware General Assembly approved an investment of $22 million in new recurrent funding for high-quality early childhood initiatives aligned with the Stars standards. This funding was the largest new ongoing spending priority in the state, providing low-income families access to higher-quality programs.

Researchers from IPA and CADSR provided ongoing analysis of early childhood service issues and options for DECC. With funding obtained from a federal planning grant, Sherretz led a statewide needs assessment to determine the availability of quality early childhood services, prepared policy briefs on state policy choices regarding early childhood services, and helped develop the DECC website as a resource for parents, providers, and advocates.²⁸ With federal and state funding, CADSR’s Tibor Toth conducted a 2012 study of the Delaware early childhood services workforce that highlighted education levels, benefits provided, and professional development. All of these projects engaged a range of Toth’s colleagues in IPA and CADSR, as well as graduate and undergraduate researchers.

As a product of these efforts, in 2012, Delaware was a recipient of a $50 million federal Early Learning Challenge Grant to accelerate the improvement of its early childhood services system, building on the designs developed within the state and incorporating national best practices into all facets of these services. With the additional state and federal funding, the participation of providers in the Stars program grew significantly. The technical support for improvements in service delivery was provided by the state-funded Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood, located at and operated by the University of Delaware’s Department of Human Development and Family Services.²⁹

In 2013, the State of Delaware officially adopted a new strategic plan for early childhood services developed by DECC with ongoing support from IPA.³⁰ Kelly Sherretz led the drafting of the document. The plan proposed a comprehensive public/private system that addressed the needs of all children from birth to third grade, with a particular focus on the needs of children from low-income families. On April 15, 2013, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan traveled to Wilmington to visit early childhood programs and speak about the plan. The plan was presented by Governor Markell and became the framework for policy and practice for the next five years. Some facets of the plan continued to guide policy after the change in gubernatorial administrations. John Carney, who succeeded Markell as Delaware governor, maintained the priority of improving early childhood policy and funding. In 2020, he approved the consolidation of state early childhood programs under the Department of Education, a key recommendation of the Delaware Early Childhood Council since 2013.

In 2014, IPA undertook another major responsibility to support educational equity in Delaware public education, backing the work of the Wilmington Education Advisory Committee, which Governor Markell charged with recommending policies to improve Wilmington public education. In 2015, that group’s recommendations led to legislation creating the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission. The legislation designated IPA to provide operational and technical support for the commission. The key priorities of the commission were to streamline the governance of Wilmington public education, provide targeted funds to schools with high concentrations of low-income students and other students at risk, and support programs that offered both in-school and out-of-school services.

The commission’s chair was Biden School alumnus Tony Allen.³¹ Another alumnus, Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman, served as vice chair. The IPA support team included Dan Rich, who served as policy director, and Kelly Sherretz, as well as graduate and undergraduate students.³² The team produced reports on the state of public education for City of Wilmington students, researched education equity issues, including evaluations of the relationship between poverty and education, and created an inventory of community assets to support Wilmington schools.³³ Most of the commission’s educational equity proposals after 2015 cited the research and analysis conducted by IPA, as did plaintiffs in court cases who sought to enhance public education funding for low-income students, English learners, and other students at risk.³⁴ The resolution of these court cases in 2020 achieved two of the recommendations of the Wilmington Education Advisory Committee. In one case, the court ordered the Delaware counties to undertake property reassessments needed to achieve greater equity in the local tax share of education funding, and the other case resulted in a settlement with the State of Delaware that included $60 million in recurrent state funding for schools with low-income students, English learners, and other students at risk.

IPA’s work on education equity continued through its support for the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity, created by the State of Delaware in 2019 and mandated to address issues in Wilmington and New Castle County. Lockman, recently elected a state senator, was appointed co-chair. In collaboration with the School of Graduate Studies at Delaware State University, IPA was designated as the support unit for the consortium’s work.³⁵ Haley Qaissaunee (MPA 2017) and Kelly Sherretz coordinated the support work for the consortium even during the COVID-19 crisis. In June 2021, the Delaware General Assembly allocated $10 million in the FY2022 state budget to support the consortium’s proposals for enhancing educational equity.

POLICY IMPACTS OF A COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL

The School of Public Policy and Administration centers’ contributions were evident when the school underwent an Academic Program Review in 2014. The self-study portion of the review affirmed SPPA’s emergence as a comprehensive school.

Today, SPPA is a globally recognized, comprehensive school of public affairs. SPPA has six graduate degree programs, two undergraduate majors, three undergraduate minors, four research and public service centers, and another affiliated research center. SPPA engages in sponsored and unsponsored research and policy analysis, and provides technical assistance to a wide range of governmental, nonprofit, and community institutions. SPPA’s reach and influence are greater now than ever. The ongoing accomplishments of our faculty, professionals, and students have been amplified by an extensive range of partnerships with institutions in all sectors, as well as by the contributions of SPPA alumni who are working in communities across the globe.³⁶

The school’s growing national recognition supported this self-assessment. At this time, U.S. News & World Report ranked SPPA thirty-seventh among 280 NASPAA-accredited programs, and a study conducted by the National Research Council ranked it twenty-third.³⁷

In September 2014, an external review team³⁸ visited the school to complete the academic review process that had been commissioned by the University Faculty Senate. The review team’s report described SPPA as being both in the top tier of public affairs schools and an important element of a first-tier research university. The team pointed especially to the role of the centers as the engines of the school’s success, highlighting their contributions to the scholarship of engagement and the Delaware Model of public affairs education. The report also offered recommendations for strengthening the school’s graduate and undergraduate programs and improving the integration of the programs. Overall, the team concluded that “the unit is resilient, and has done quite well under severe budgetary constraints. But further cuts to resources will likely mean changes to the core of the school’s mission and programs.” Their report called upon the university to better recognize that “nearly all the scholarly and research activity of a university has some reference in public policy, public management, and the broader public interest.”³⁹ Within this context, the team endorsed the school’s plan for hiring additional faculty to sustain and enhance its contributions as a comprehensive school of public affairs.

The external review team’s report confirmed the value and importance of the school to the University of Delaware, and its recommendations laid out critical steps for the SPPA’s future. The school concurred with the review team’s overall assessment and committed to implementing its recommendations to strengthen integration across academic programs, adopt policies that clarified the roles of the centers, and infuse more content on American government institutions in the undergraduate programs.⁴⁰ However, neither the College of Arts and Sciences leadership nor the university administration formally responded to the external review team’s report. The faculty hiring plan proposed by the school and supported by the external review team was not acted upon. As of the end of 2014, the School of Public Policy and Administration was a nationally ranked, comprehensive school of public affairs with more program responsibilities than ever before but without the faculty resources to sustain its development.