Basically reinventing the system. Not just more Charter Schools. Talk a bit about the difference between Charter Schools, lots of them, and reinventing the system. Guest well, you know, for the audience we probably should be clear about what a Charter School is first. Because it turns out the poll say half of america doesnt know what they are. I Charter Schools just a Public School that is run independently of the district usually by a nonprofit organization, and is usually a school of choice, but it doesnt have to follow all of the district rules and state rules. It has to follow us on they cant discriminate. It has give equal opportunity to get. It cant select children, et cetera, but it basically is outside the bureaucracy and they can rent own show. They have autonomy but there held accountable if they are done right. If you dont perform well, then they are replaced or closed. Thats what a Charter School is. My argument in the book is the places around the country that have embraced charters the most systematically also the fastest improving cities in the country. So im not saying treat, im not saying make every Public School a charter. I am saying if we look at the data and we want to do what works for kids, lets treat every Public School like a charter. We can call it Something Else. We can call it a district school, an innovation school, a renaissance school, a pilot school, whatever but lets give it the autonomous of people run the school can really make the decisions and create a school model that will work for the kids that they have to teach. Lets hold them accountable for the performance. If they do a great job lets let the open another school. If they do a terrible job lets replace it with a stronger operator. And lets let the parents choose, which also allows the nonprofits to diversify their School Models because they dont have to, nobody is assigned to their school. Host surely resonate with me. Im a fan of Charter Schools and all the rise of Charter Schools in ohio. The places you cite most often in the book are d. C. And denver and new orleans. Are you also saying those are among the fastest improving . Guest yes. New orleans which is Something Like 93 charters, students in charters of this year, and has the plan to convert its last four schools to charters for the next school year. It will be 100 if all goes well. They are clearly the fastest improving in the country. If not in american history. Its stunning. They were one of the worst. They were at the bottom. Famously bad, corrupt, awful. You had valedictorians not able to pass a seventh grade level test to graduate from high school. But by any measure, whether you want use test scores, graduation rates, College Going rates, rental demand, whatever measure you like, new orleans is just off the charts. Washington, d. C. , which last year at 46 of the kids in charters and this year might have more, we dont know yet, is, of the 21 large cities that take, where all the kids take the National Assessment of education progress, the nate test, they are the fastest improving over the last decade. Dcs. Thats charters and districts. Host about half and half . Guest yes. They are also improving faster than any state. So Rapid Improvement that charge perform better i would argue but the district has embraced profound reforms in part because they lost so much of the kids to the charter. The competition has spurred innovation on both sides. And in denver, interesting because the other two were not done by elected school board. In d. C. Congress critter a public Charter School board host and the mayor is ultimately in charge. Guest exactly, the mayor appoints that board. Into new orleans, the state at a Recovery School district and basically the legislature was so fed up with the district in new orleans that they took all those performing below the state line average and they put that in the Recovery School district which graduate in the over to charter operators. So in the sense of the state it in new orleans, and congress at least created the possibility of this in d. C. But in denver a decade ago they elected school board and the superintendent who is now a yes, senator, michael bennet, decided, this district is so bureaucratic, so messed up, it is charters, there so few of them that are knocking the ball out of the park. So the fastest route for us toward improving is to embrace these charters and expansive and replicate them, and lets do it as fast as we can. They gave in school buildings. They try to equalize the funding. Didnt quite get there but close, and the strong charters have basically replicated quite rapidly. So you now 21 in charters last year, and they also said that a state law passed that allowed them to give their own schools more autonomy supportive to imitate charters to call the innovation schools. And they got about 20 of the kids in the schools also. Host back to the imitation charters in a few minutes because its an interesting sideline but lets first understand, help viewers understand your sort of prescription, which revolves around what you talk about as the seven seas for the seven key strategies for this reinvention process that you are suggesting sort of take root all over the place. Want to reserve you what the seven key strategies are . Guest see if i can remember them. Host i can probably remember for them. Guest my analysis going back four years, argues these are the keys to really boosting performance, doubling the effectiveness of School Systems. So lets start with autonomy which Everybody Knows about with the charters here control, decentralizing control to the School Levels so that the principal or the School Leaders often in the charter world, there are more than one, the group of teachers who runs the school because that happens as well. Host including the first Charter School in minnesota, a teacher started a guest exactly. They have the power to say heres our school model. We are going to hire people to give this person doesnt work that we will let them go. This is what we will pay. They get to make those decisions. In traditional Public Schools downtown, central headquarters makes those decisions and principles have just shockingly little authority over him, how the schools run and what it looks like. Thats the first one. The second one never knows about is accountability. I call, the c is consequences, that there are actually consequences for the provence. Doing a great job, maybe you can expand. Maybe even start another school or more. Do a terrible job, youll probably be replaced by a better operator. Not all charter authorizes to this. We have some bad practice in the charter sector, too but im talking about what really works. The next one is a choice. Choice for the families to pick the school that fits the child the best tip when you do that you cannot the schools to diversify their models. Traditionally we have the same cookiecutter education for everybody and we thought that was fair. Kids dont learn the same and they dont come from the same background. Its not a big its unfair for 80 of them and it does work for a lot of them. We need different kinds of schools, different kinds of kids. The next one is clarity. Clarity of purpose. When you are operating schools and running a School District and even with all the systemwide issues, its very hard to do both well. When you separate those roles as in the charter sector, and an authorizer like a public Charter School board in d. C. Steers the system but lets the schools what are independent to the operational stuff, do the rowing, each one has clarity of purpose and is able to do what it does well, seems to work a lot better. Not just an education but in a lot of other arenas. Host the distinction between you, between steering and rowing. You want it all the rights and the School People to grow. Guest exactly. Along with that is his idea of contest ability. If you separate those roles then the people steering are no longer captive politically of their employees. If youre a superintendent or an elected school board and just thousands of employees and you start making reforms, changing things and start inconveniencing some of those adults, you are going to get a reaction. If theres a strong union, it will be a strong reaction and t will be systemwide. You may lose your next election or either superintendent you make it fired, which is why so many superintendents are only other job for three years. Guest exactly. But if you like the d. C. Public Charter School board, you dont operate schools. You dont, theyll have 32 or 36 employees. None of them operate schools. Other nonprofits operate the schools. Host its not a 900 person bureaucracy. Guest yeah, 900 would be small. So lets say they decide to school is failing, we want to replace it with this other operator. Every other operating systems look at that and thinking a be we can get that building. The politics are entirely different. Its that easy to close schools. Its easier, much easier that in a traditional district. I call that contest ability the idea that if im running a school, rather than assuming as people have been able to for decades, the school will be here forever. And i will probably be here until i retire. My right to run the school or our right collectively to run the school is contestable. If other people are doing a much better job we might lose our right to run the school to them. The next one is i think weve done five. Host keep going. You are on a roll. Guest culture. This is really, goes with the autonomy. People who runs the school have to be able to create a positive School Culture. Thats kind of the first thing that charters do successful charters do when they start a school here they are very deliberate about a culture. The autonomy gives them the ability to do that, and if they dont take it up they will not succeed. If they dont deliberately create a culture that really sustains a learning, and creates motivation among the students. Remember we are talking urban schools. A lot of the students in urban schools arrive not terribly motivated. They didnt grow up in a bridge where people went to college. They dont think theyre going to college, so why should they learn geometry . I mean, really. The schools job is to motivate them and as part of the culture. I forgotten the seventh. Capacity. Capacity. In most of the Public Sector, average people can perform well if the system is designed well. But urban education is tougher than the typical Public Sector job. Educating these poor minority kids is really hard. We need really great School Leaders and we need really great teachers. Anza places like new orleans in d. C. And denver and other cities invest in recruiting and training and developing those leaders and those teachers. If you dont have a strategy to do that, to build capacity, you are not to get nearly as far. Host lets pause on the urban play for a second because you emphasize it in those charters are urban today. Would you be recommending the same thing for Fairfax County virginia and brookline massachusetts and scarsdale new york . Guest i would but its not going to happen soon. I understand that. I think that those districts will get better results using this model. But im not spending a lot of time trying to convince them at this point, what we need to do is get people to understand that this model is producing the most Rapid Improvement in the country, get other cities to try it out and gradually, because thisll be be a gradual process, embrace it and then this urban schools, some of them will start to look at but is going to take a while. Host you are focusing on the neediest kids in the most broken School Situation . Guest right. Host not the complacent suburbs . Guest right. But parents in the suburbs understand that cookiecutter schools dont do it for all the kids either. And, i mean, i have four children, all grown now, but 1. They were in four different schools. Part of that was age and part of that was just they are different kids. We went nuts driving them around but we ended up pretty soon. They needed different things, different kinds of learning environments, different kind of schools. They thrived, my son was Given Technology and he was just off to the moon. But not the girls. They were interested in other things. Host i can see the diversity and choice coming faster you suburbs than i can the devolution of control and the contest ability and some of the parts of the format. Like anyway, okay. In the realm of school choice, a lot of people are for charters and a lot of people are for vouchers. You are not much for vouchers. Why dont you say a little bit about why . Guest i dont have any problem with small voucher programs for innercity kids. They spent opportunities for those kids. It would be nice if we could hold the schools are get that money accountable for educating the kids, which in a few places do but not most. But those programs dont upset me. What worries me is what Republican Leaders actually want, which is vouchers for everybody. Now, it sounds good. We would have choice, competition, the market, but just think about it would actually work in practice. So lets say a middle School Voucher is worth 10,000 a year, okay . So i love my children, and i make a pretty good living, its on going to take that 10,000 and then going to add to it. I might buy my children a 30,000 a year education. Some people might buy 40,000 a year education. There. There are schools out there that charge 40,000 a year tuition. Other people 20,000. Other people 15,000. And then somewhere between a half and threequarters of the population will buy 10,000 school. A lot of them public, some of them private. And it will be like any other market. Think of the auto market on the market for homes, the auto market we got mercedes and bmw and cadillacs on down to used cars. We would have a market in education eventually, this would take a while, in which a lot of folks ended up in the equivalent of used cars. And i think that would be so destructive. I think that part of the role of Public Education in a multiracial multicultural democracy is to get kids from different walks of life together to rub elbows and to get to know each other. And to understand that beneath our skin we are all pretty much the same. And we would lose so much of that if it was an all voucher system. Host id love to argue that more but its talk about the point you just made about the diversity in the student body, in the moment of the school. One of the objectives critics makexpect to Charter Schools its alleged they are resegregating america as people flock into Charter Schools that are full of all the kids like themselves, and that theyre not getting much diversity, theyre getting choice but not diversity because they choose not to go for diversity. How do you deal with that one . Guest i dont think its true. The data says, if you look at all schools in the country, yes. Since charters are created mostly by people who are absolutely committed to helping poor and minority kids succeed, they tend to be in the cities, right . So if you look at all the charters versus all of the district Public Schools, the charters are more heavily minority and, therefore, more segregated. But if you compare the charters to the traditional Public Schools around them in that same part of the city, they are not more segregated. Thats what the data sister so a fair comparison, they are not. Now, are there examples where charters have been created by people who want to pull their white kids out of minority dominates schools . Im sure there are. And i think thats wrong then thats why we need strong authorizers to prevent that kind of thing. What i would advocate is something that would come some places do, denver for example, does this with about 15 charters and about 15 district schools. In their lotteries come in their involvement in their computerized enrollment system the algorithm says okay, this school has got to be at least 40 or 50 low income. So that you will deliberately create diversity by income levels. You cant legally do it by race. The courts wont let us anymore. But you can by income levels and that usually gets you race in a multiracial city. Racial diversity in the schools. Now, part of what im arguing is we need strong systems, not just more Charter Schools. And these systems can make those decisions. They can say were going to deliberately go for more economically integrated schools and so we will use our enrollment system to make that happen. And i would support that. Host i see how that works in the cities youre talking about where theres a single author writes for its either the district for the state or the separate charter board. There are a lot of places in touch with multiple authorizers going on simultaneously, including ohio where the Fordham Foundation im involved with is an authorizer, one of 60 in the state incidentally. 60 . We do a pretty good job with it for the dozen or so schools we are responsible for. In many cities, their scattered around the state, in any given city in columbus or cincinnati or dayton or cleveland theres no one authorizer. So the charters are, its messy and some of the kind of steering that you are recommending for the reinvented system is really hard to pull off in that perhaps impossible. Guest its a big flaw. I may, those of us who believe in charge for a long time, theres been different schools of thought and there was a Strong School of thought that multiple cs was better. Were trying to get away from monopolies can from digits having monopolies. We want lots of competition. Lets have lots of authorizers. Big mistake. Because steering is so important. That our system like issues. Transportation. Do kids have equal access to all these schools . To their transportation or is it only the kids whose parents have enough money and time to try them with equal access . Special ed, the kids with disabilities, to the equal access for some schools trying to prevent or get rid of them . You can go down the line, all of these issues, somebodys got to be up to say okay, this is going to be how we handle that and we will enforce it. In cleveland, in detroit, in other cities in those two states where we have so many authorizers host a number plates with multiple authorizer. Guest guest no one can do that. In both cleveland and detroit there were big pushes supported by the governor and by legislators, and by Community Organizations and Community Leaders in the cities to create essentially whats called the detroit education system. And in cleveland it was called the cleveland transformational. But it was an organization that could in essence act as a super authorizer. And it could close schools for poor performance. It could override some authorizer decisions. I think of them cases that could actually authorize schools. It was an attempt to get more power to steer and to deal with some of these issues, particularly lowquality in some of the charters because somebody authorizers had done a terrible job in the cities. Host and then what happened . Guest but neither of those, well, in ohio the legislation passed but without power. And in detroit, some legislation passed but certainly they didnt create a detroit education system. Now, the mayo mayor is thinkingt creating one anyway, appointing highly respected people to it and using the power to shame the bad authorizers into doing whats right. But its an issue we have to solve. Host to be clear you actually do want there to be a system. You just wanted to be a steering system rather than a steering and rowing system . Guest exactly, exactly there are things in our Public Schools that we dont want to happen we dont want more segregation. We dont want special ed kids pushed out. We dont want kids whose parents cant drive in to not have equal access to we want to create equal opportunity as much as possible, the other recent vouchers are a problem because they undermined. They create inequality of opportunity. And you can do that if no one is giving. Someone has to set the rules of the game. Host but someone has to want to do the other things that are part of your package of strategies. Historically, in some places in america where there was a single authorizer, it was the local School District. It did want anything to do with anything but what itd always done. Guest we know that doesnt work because weve been trying it for 25 years, right . Lets ask the monopoly to authorize competition. Host doesnt work well. So the steerer in your model needs to be not always but usually something other than the local district. Your denver example it is the district. Guest you know, the truth is there is probably cities that are pretty far down this path. The three weve talked about, plus indianapolis, memphis and camden new jersey. Six different paths pics of this is going to happen in different ways in different places. Sometimes it will be sort of a charter sector recited district. Sometimes a district will, as in denver and indianapolis kind of get enthusiastic a start treating school this way. They will be all kinds of paths. Ideally, in the end we really should have one body with an appointed or elected school board that steers the system. And then there should be someone that Charter Schools can appeal to if they feel they are being denied something host as in colorado. Guest yes. These things do exist. Because if that board is captured by a particular political faction or set of Interest Groups host and says the heck with a choice. Guest or that with these kind of schools, we want those kind of schools, they should be some way to appeal that. Host okay. You talk a lot about, well, the show on the tables what to do about failing or that are unsatisfactory schools guest can i add one thing . Unsorted. I believe were going to approach it in all kinds of different ways, many paths. This is not about everybody suddenly deciding one day to love this model pickets and evolution. Its an evolution driven by necessity, by desperation. Our urban Public Schools are not very good. And we are going to be driven in this direction in lots of cities i think in the future and it will take a lot of shapes. It wont all the idea because its democracy and its messy. Host and its messy. Speaking of messy, bad schools and what to do about them, you and i both know most treatment efforts to take a bad school and to tweak its formula so that it gets better, most of those dont work very well. You talk a lot about replacing unsuccessful schools. A lot of of the people in the charter world talk about closing bad schools. As an authorizer ive experienced a difficult it is to close a bad school. It, too, has Politics Around to get it, too, has parents that love it and it, too, poses for the authorizer in our case often a moral dilemma. What are the alternative schools curtly available to those children in that mediocre Charter School, what if the alternatives are worse than this mediocre Charter School . Do you still close even though you know it is mediocre and you havent been able to persuade the people to do a better job. You talk about replace rather than close. Say a little bit about how that actually works. Guest first of all it so much better for the kids because closing a school is very disruptive for the children and their families. As you said, often there other options are either no better or worse. So often we hesitate to close those bad schools for very good reasons. But if you have a system with a strong authorizer and a lot of charters, then youve always got operators ready to take another school. You make sure you have operators ready to take another school. As you see, charters are typically for five years, sometimes others but theres a time and their performance is measured and as the authorizer sees this charter is headed towards a bad place, they can begin to talk with other operators. Thats whats happening in new orleans and washington, d. C. , and denver. They dont just close schools and distraught lives. They have another operator take over the school, replace. Theres different ways to do that, right . If the school is really bad and the coulter is just chaotic and the kids have learned that they dont have to do anything any teachers is and is than half the day running through the halls, and that does happen in american Public Education, then taking all those kids and starting over is really hard. Because youve got a culture in place that is fundamentally host which includes the kids at that point. Guest right. Thats why a lot of charters like to start a year at a time to great a culture very carefully. Host begin with kindergarten Something Like that. Guest or if its a middle school, fifth grade, high school, nice great. So some places when the replace, in some cases they will say okay, you only have to take, lets see if its ayes, youll have to take ninthgrade issue, the old operator will have the other three, at the next year, ninth and tenth, and then finally you have the whole school. The other option is you just take the whole thing lock, stock, and barrel. That the decision that authorizers and operators should make based on their local circumstance, based on the school, based on the culture of the school and what they think is going to work. Theres no right answer but those are two options for replacement. Host a lot of very good charter operators dont want to do that. I dont want to take over a bad school and try to reboot it. Probably because of the culture they think they are not going to be able to root out and start afresh. So you got to have an operator that up to it and knows how to do it, willing to do it, maybe does it graduate in the phasein like you which is describing. Guest in cities which develop a vibrant charter sector, that exists, those operators do exist, or least they do in new orleans, d. C. , in denver. Host but if the chester finn is operator should find a way to let the Osborne School network take over the chester finn School Operation . Guest if the chester finn school is bad enough. Host it would be, it would be. Lets talk about accountability theres a schism emerging in the charter row between people who want to let the parent marketplace do the whole job of accountability, people that want hard evidence of kids learning, usually in the form of test scores a as a metric by which te School Success is judged. Where do you come down on this one . Guest im on your side you guess i know where you stand on it. We have learned, i thought, 25 years ago i thought we could leave it up to the parents. I was surprised to discover that in something i wrote 25 years ago recently. But experience has taught us otherwise. Experience has taught us that a, not all parents have enough education themselves or speak english well enough to know that their school, their Childrens School is really bad and that there are options. Not all parents are going to make a decision to move the school for academic reasons. For some poor, that is povertystricken parents, if a school is warm and nurturing and safe, much better than the school they went to, then thats enough and they will stay with it. But thats not good enough for the kids and these are taxpayers dollars, and we have a responsibility at taxpayers to produce an educated society, and educated workforce. There are reasons we all spend money, gift tax dollars to pay for Public Education. Its not just for kids to be safe and nurtured, right . So i believe that we have to have strong authorizers who will replace failing, weak schools. I dont believe it should be 90 on the basis of test scores. Host talk about metrics a little bit. What else . Guest well, i spent a whole chapter on this. I thought about it for years and years and years, and theres no right answer. In the book you have my answer, which is test scores are important. We have to know if kids can read and do math, and reason and so on so lets get 50 of the weight in our accountability system test scores. But one of the rules Performance Measurement is, in my book, books, is that you should mother both quantitatively and qualitatively. Theres a lot of things you cant get. You cant learn just to data so the english, for example, and the scottish, every few years they sent a team of maybe three or four people into a school. They spent several days. They look at parent surveys. They meet with parents. They talk with teachers, the principles, the students. And these are typically people who have been principles or teachers, a lot of experience in education, and a rate that school on for key variables. The write a report that explains the ratings. Its a subject of evaluation by experts, then the report goes to every parent. Its a wonderful model. Its been going for 25 years, and host they call it the expectorant, dont they . Guest they do in which is a weird name. I never use it. I call it a qualitative assessment or qualitative evaluation. And i think thats worth 20, 25 of the weight in an accountability system. We should survey parents and get their opinion. And i think we should figure out how to survey students in a way that doesnt allow the adults in the building to affect how the students fill out the survey. We havent solved that yet. Host give me a good rating and i will give you an a period. Guest i hope they can solve that we havent yet. We should look at, for high schools, like 25 of of the weight should be outcomes which are graduation rates, College Going rates, for those not going to college, employment rates or counting going into the military as employment, and College Persistence rates. And if they went to a community college, what percent are getting certificates and degrees. Those kinds of outcomes because they are the most important outcomes. So there may be a few other things but thats the rough picture. Host where do you come down on the softer measures that all the vogue in education these days, social, emotional learning, 21st century skills, whatever sort of vogue phrase you want to use . Guest 21st century skills to me implies can you reason . Can you analyze . Can you learn new things . And we should be teaching that, not his sake that. But social and emotional skills issues usually to describe do you work well with others . Are you able to set a goal and then work toward achieving it . Do you have persistence, grit, to use the catchphrase . Host are you compassionate . A whole variety of things in that realm. Guest i dont see how anyone could say those things are not afford. Host they are all desirable. Guest the Research Says if you like selfcontrol and the ability to set goals and go after them you will be much more successful in life. So schools should be trying to impart them and have been for generations, the problem was we dont know yet how to measure them. We are working on a pickup places measuring but its a work in progress, and the only way affordable way to measure right now is to ask the kids on surveys. And the runs into the problem of what is the kids get coached . Theres another problem, what are the kids are added really do any that has High Expectations and duties of the kids are at a school that has low expectations . These kids going to much Higher Standards for what selfcontrol and persistent its been these kids so theyre not going to be answering the questions that the same way. Its not parallel. Host not a good search design. Guest what a advocate in the book is we need to Fund Research on this at the god to do it but we dont know yet. Host more research is needed. Lets talk about the bachelor between kids in schools. You devote almost tw two full ps in the book, more than two, two describing the different kinds of right schools. Listing the 57 flavors. And i was impressed and agree, but some of them are like schools for the gifted and residential high schools are very needy innercity kids at International Baccalaureate schools. They apply some kind of screening mechanism before the kids go. Its not just a random matchup. That leads onto the question that is a huge hot button in this world which is selectivity. Can there, injure reinvent system, be screening by schools by kids who want to come there . Guest yes. And the degree to which a community would want to do that is up to that community. This is the kind of decision a steering body makes. Ill give you a reallife example of the city that are struggling with this, new orleans. So in new orleans when they find integrated schools and 70s, all but 5 of the whites left. No, 3 , 3 . When Hurricane Katrina hit and 2005, 3 of the kids in the schools were white. The way they kept some of them was in selected magnet schools which actually worked pretty integrated, but they were schools that were good enough that some of the white parents would send their kids there. Now, today there up to, lasted there up to come with you before theyre up to 8 white. White parents are gradually trickling back as this miracle happens in new orleans. But theres 282 africanamerican of the rest are mostly latino, a few asian. So you still have the selected schools. They are now charters, but the used to be selected magnet schools. Because there selected the refused to join the common enrollment system. There authorizes this next time their charter comes up to have to join the common enrollment system, which immediately leads people to fear okay, we will draw all the whites out of the system again. So this isnt their dilemma. What they decided is that in the common enrollment system, they can have some selectivity. The arson schools that can set standards for the kids. You would do the same sort of on the other end of functionality, if you will, for kids like you mentioned that the seed school in d. C. Which is a boarding school during the week for kids his own lives are just really chaotic and dysfunctional. So the rest to be some selectivity to get you dont kid into that school who doesnt need it. Host especially 30,000 the gipper your, whatever the residential schools cost which is very expensive. You need to target it on the kids who need it. Its got to be a mechanism for targeting. I agree, but a lot of people in the Charter Movement are just horrified at the notion that any kind of screening, other than randomness in the matching process. Guest i think theyre coming from a paradigm of some charters in a city which is mostly just six schools. These are talking about a School System, you have to grapple with these issues. Host yes, you do. Guest in d. C. , people have created Charter Schools for emotionally disturbed kids. And then over time they migrate to Something Else because parents like them and send the kids there and they are no longer really targeting those kids. It evolve involves not just bect chose to but because of who chose it, which parent chose it. Thats a loss because we need schools that are really good at dealing with kids with emotional problems. We need a lot more of them. I think if people really think it through they will realize that we need to do some selecting of all kinds, different kinds, and that the body that is elected or appointed by an elected official to steer the system, its their responsibility. Its going to be given in every community. They will make different decisions. Some will make decisions that the courts will overturn because they will be motivated by prejudice, for example. Nothing is perfect. Host whenever there selectivity theres got to be a default for kids who dont match in one way or another, dont match the profiles of the schools that they want to go to or dont get into in the schools, the lottery doesnt let them in the schools or whatever. Is it the authorizer, who manages the default problem . Guest thats a really good question, which i dont think anyone has really discussed. Im sure new orleans and the charter board in d. C. Have struggled with the issue in tripoli, but ive never read anything, for example, about that question. So its a great question. Its a very real question, or maybe the next article. Im kind of tired of writing books. Host right. Guest i would say that, first of all, you need to set up, to get parents real choices, you need good information about each school and then you need essentially counselors who can help parents who need help in their language, interpret that information to figure how to use it to choose the best match for the child. Now, if you do that and new orleans has done this, probably not enough but have done some of it, whats the next up for the kids whose parents dont choose . I think, i can imagine the next step would be that you build in a function where some counsel goes and contacts that family and tries to help them make a decision that is best for the kid. And then the default after that if the family is so checked out for the dont even respond and wont do it, then the default is usually the local school. That has room. Host the nearest school with room. In new york city where every high school is now, you have to list you can go to high school and less you list six preferences. And then you get matched by some computer in the sky, separate and apart from the highly selective Public Schools in europe but you get a lot of kids who default to a school they didnt choose or didnt know they were choosing because they were not good at using. Related question then, theres got to be, especially in a big city is got to be some limit on the extent of choice that you are allowed to make simply for reasons of practicality. If you living on one side of los angeles or chicago, you cant just arbitrary say i want to go to school 30 miles i set up that and expect to be transported every day. Is it reasonable for the steer to put some limits in the enterprise . Guest absolutely. Thats their job. You have to make tradeoffs. There isnt an infinite amount of money, so youre trying to maximize the outcomes for the kids. Theres always tradeoffs and thats a good example. Lets go back to your previous question, which is a really good one. So you can imagine some of these kids whose parents are checked out are going to end up in not the greatest school, right . But that happens today, massively. And if you got a system with a strong authorizer who was weeding out the worst schools and replacing them with school operated by the best operators and is bringing in new blood to create new schools and is watching these numbers, that kid is going to have a much better chance of being in a decent school. In new orleans, 60 of the kids at the time of katrina went to schools in the bottom 10 statewide. On performance. Mostly test scores. Now 10 do, just like the rest of the state. The point is that there are not too many bad schools left in new orleans because they have a system that weeds them out. There are some and they need to keep weeding them out, here its not perfect, but far better for the kids to have that. Host and a constantly improving system. Guest a sort of static neighborhoodbased School System in which most of the schools are bad. Host so we are sitting in washington, d. C. , and weve got to deal with politics. Lets deal with two political question. First is the federal role. Is there a federal role in bringing about the reinvented system that you outline . And if so, what is it . I guess also add the trump era. Guest as long as you divide at those two, the answer is probably no for practical reasons. With essa, the new education bill, congress clearly chose to step back from the activism of the no child left behind era. I dont see that choice changi changing. Host anytime soon. Guest right. Trump wants a big voucher program. Congress is going to give them wonder i have no interest in that so far. Historically, the federal government hasnt had a lot to do with Public Education. The constitution left it to the states. The states right the rules of the Public Education system. They define what kind of system we have. Starting with Lyndon Johnson in the mid60s, the federal government stepped in and put some money in to help orchids. And no child left behind was a huge leap forward in trying to be prescriptive and force the states and districts to look out for the poor kids and provide better schools for them. Host a mixed blessing. Guest it was a mixed blessing. It was leaked down legislation in a lot of ways. The way they measured success was all wrong. Then the Obama Administration kind of overstepped with race to the top. Host i agree with all that but look ahead. Hypothetically, what would it do . Guest i would do another race to the top competition in which you encouraged the kinds of behaviors im talking about. Host okay traded weakly defined and specifically. Host you would use a structured incentive funding system aimed at states or districts or both may be . Guest both her and want to encourage this behavior, incentivize this behavior. Guest and i would also, there are how many federal categorical Grant Program for education . 100 . Ive lost track. It used to be about 100. I would simply by those and have much broader grants, because they tie states and districts hands, and you know, denver has been trying to have a weighted student funding system where, when a student chooses school x, all the money goes to school x, but they can only get twothirds of the way there. Host the federal part wont move. Guest and the state park. So much of it is tied up in these categorical grants. The fed feds could do a lot mysf find that, and the states could, too. Host lets talk about the of the politics that mostly plays out at the state and local level. Since im on the maryland state board of education were i watch this up close and vividly and painful, theres a lot of pushback against almost under one of the seven strategies that you outlined. Not against School Culture and a few, and capacity, a few known good things which were equally to any good school in whatever sector. Theres an awful lot pushback against the other ones. It succeeds in some places, in capping or limiting or constrain in various ways that kinds of strategies that you are recommending. Much of it is led by the adult vested interest in the oldfashioned Public Education system. So whats the political path from where we sit debate in 2017 to the reinvented arrangement that you and i would like to see happen . Guest well, its that there is from state to state. I live in massachusetts, which is probably even more liberal than maryland. Host and what they just didnt vote to raise the cap. Guest boss as a best charge in the country according to the studies. Kids of their burn twice as every year as a kid in the boston Public Schools, and we have a cap of 18 . Cant spend more than 18 of the money on charters, and the voters turned down by 6040 an initiative to allow a dozen more charters statewide per year. Incredible. But half the voters also did know what a Charter School was, and the teachers unions who lead the vets vested interest told him all kinds of untruths about Charter Schools. Host and prevailed. Guest right. A similar thing happened in georgia around a different issue, but it kind of proved to us at the state level with trouble winning those battles. Because i think because suburban folks dont know what a Charter School is. But in cities where there are enough charters and politics are different, in denver they had four years of a four to three majority for reform, bitter bitter battles. School board meetings elastin to one or two at him. All they had was a seven to zero majority for reform because it works and because the reformers got smart about running good people and raising money and they been winning the last elections. Same in indianapolis. In los angeles there was a huge battle, most expensive fight probably ever for a School Board Seat recently and they rode charter candidate one. All that says in urban areas with a lot of charters, you can win political battles. Because you have parents whose kids go to charters and you can organize them, get them to vote. And you have Business Community that now understands that charters produce better results and begins to weigh in and you have other interests in the community that white income often commuted organizations that represent poor people you can denver there were two Community Organizations that were quite critical in supporting reform because they knew the kids were getting a raw deal and they wanted more charters and they wanted more choice for their kids. So it comes down to politics. We are a democracy. These decisions are made in democratidemocratic arenas, wheo School Board Election or a mayoral election, and we have to win those battles. We had to get organized and when those battles. I think its going to be tough. I think the unions are really on the warpath and really effective. Host and persistent. Some of these reform arrangements you sketched are unstable. They work until the next election. At which point the reformers have eased back or somebody has moved to another city. Guest although that is less true with charters. More true with innovation schools. Once it is a chart isnt it independent and is as a authorizer and its much harder to roll that stuff back. Host hard to take it away. Trekkie people value it. Host people value it. Well, we are coming to the end of a really good discussion which could continue, and i hope over the next 25 years as we wait for the next major anniversary of the Charter Movement that we are a lot closer to the reinvented arrangement that you described and that i heartily endorse. Pleasure talking with your congratulations on a terrific book. Guest thank you so much. Its been a pleasure for me as well and i look forward to continuing the conversation. Host all the best, david. Guest thank you. Host joining us on book tv is author, christina sandefur. The book is called
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