[applause] it will include a question and answer session there will be written on the note cards as you enter the auditorium this evening so you can get a note card from them the questions will be collected later in the program in the lobby at the door to the of auditorium. So now then with the interview. On august 21st, 2006 and to serve 165 scholars. And to start a revolution. And weld telesco belongs to 36 schools serving over 40 those callers from kindergarten she would say that is no cause for celebration and it is worth celebrating. Her schools rank first in math and english of all Public Schools in new york and head of the schools get into a block and i should add the average Family Income of students is 32,000 compared to 300,000. Having a b. A. From university of pennsylvania from Johns Hopkins in American History and mother of three children and a longtime resident with the of the more is the focus of my question tonight one of the schools very recently i may occasionally stretch my boundaries a little bit. Said to have a lot to teach of those complexities as you note doing this work feels like the bottom of the ocean with your feet tied together with your hands and cuffs to figure that out so this is how she figured it out. So semantics right away what exactly is a Charter School how does that differ from a Traditional Public School . Charter school is a Public School that is free from the bureaucracy and labor contracts on the other. And with teaching and learning in district schools are subject to twenties 25 regulations and to order schools are regulated at about 10. So it is regulated to health and safety but otherwise you have freedom to innovate. Just to go back in time a little bit how you embark on a political career and to his chair the Education Committee and essentially that the point that you decided Charter Schools were the future. So lets begin in the instance. It is great to be here this great New York Institution people ask me have you ever been here before . I remember the old the York Historical society with a terrific institution it is great to be here her cry very much enjoyed teaching at the College Level and teaching history even space enjoy the life of the mind cater 12 education was the key to opportunity. Socalled be chauvinistic in this regard the public case through 12 education was not the of model of the world and i wanted to do something about the problem i used to say to via has been to is here tonight that you look like an audience and i used to say that problems indy a section were hard to solve and the problem with the of the section were solvable to me but with those b section problems make it very hard so i thought kate through 12 education had a significant reform in the year City School System and where every day there was a story about kids not getting the education they deserve and are entitled to. So i decided to run for office as a crazy idea at the time and there lost my first election 1997 although it was the closest race in the city of new york that year than in 1999 i won and i benefited from some good timing with the speakers race bin chair of the Education Committee and it was an incredible honor and i didnt realize it was such a sleepy institution i remember joel klein asking me where did i a note learn to read a hearing . Is that a group of the watergates and the irancontra hearing about that is how youre supposed to run the hearing. [laughter] so that is how iran the Education Committee hearing. So i would say you were a mix of lightning rod and a voice of reason as that committee tried to work through public education. So to talk about how you came to be the Education Committee was on male control that was the Public Policy issue now we are used to live at the time it was fairly controversial that education would be administration for services or the environmental corps protection so i held hearings on marital control that i went through every conceivable topic with literacy hearings of math and science and hearings on arts and music and i tried to effectuate change and it started to become clear to me that this was really are the department of education could not tell you how many art teachers there were. You have to pay them . Can you work backwards from payroll . Science education i was told you cannot do Science Education before you teach kids to read. That is strange. I have kids of my own better constantly asking scientific questions. So i got more and morihiro one of my last hearings was on twitter the paper. That sounds toilet paper and i am the leading experts still to this day on toilet paper in the new york City School System. Spending one month trying to understand how at the time of the 15 billion operation that it now with his 31 billion by the way, how come there was no toilet paper in the the york City School System . Where did they purchase it in and what happened to which and how was it distributed . I discovered that affluent district schools parents purchased the to the paper at a the pour schools kids went without that seems unacceptaunaccepta ble and irresponsible. So i kept have the here is on topics i have to say even the way worked incredibly hard as a Public Servant even with the power of subpoena it was hard to move the bureaucracy. Wasnt that there were not talented people there but there was fingerpointing and costly trying to cover your tracks and the end user kids and families get what they needed and deserved and even then i thought there has got to be way to fix this. And then i got very pessimistic to fundamentally fix this broken system. Talk about Charter School pioneers were you already thinking about Charter Schools . I came out for Charter Schools in 1997 with a very cheap pamphlet when i was running and the Teachers Union came raining down applied me so that was the indication that things were challenging but i was supportive of charters and remember in 1999 the lawless fasted 1898 so that was very new at the tight and it seemed to give cents to get parents a choice. I thought that i wanted choices for my own kids why do only the affluent get choices for their kids . Charter schools were Public Schools after all sori do we get choices to those who couldnt move to westchester or new jersey or could not send their kids to parochial schools . And Charter Schools seem to do that. And i cannot in favor of them in 1999 then i supported them when i was on the city council. Then i had thoughts of opening my own schools with help and support. So you bring up the point that all parents should have choices and then to have the of Better School . And a lot of conceptions of how students are chosen are selected. So what involvement day have been the selection and with the process looks like . Charter schools admit by random lottery. A slight preference for those who live in the district that the charter is in but it is a random lottery selection. Students to have learning disabilities, english language and lerner, home school, and a wide range of students. This year we have 70,000 parents apply for their children and unfortunately we only had 3,000 spots. 14,000 parents really 28,000 parents were turned away of course, they love their children just as much as the parents of the 3,000 that body and. So as a remarkably painful experience which is why we keep opening schools as fast as we can to satisfy this need for go there is no way in which you can forget if you dont think about it of profound and equality that we offer we have deeply segregated schools where if you live in one neighborhood you are sent by government to go to a school not just feeling this year or last year but feeling half a century. And then you can send your kid to a school where 90 percent or more are reading on grade level. It is that opportunity. So just to rehash best there is no particular testing of applicants for Charter Schools so there is no other admission . And there is no opportunity to pull the usual strings that parents try. Total lottery with the exception of a slight preference for children living in that district. Director. So those that were selected and are in and the school maybe you can talk a little bit and the tremendously impressed beautiful and clean and orderly the students are well behaved and totally alert so with your approach to learning how has that been with standardized testing you seem to believe in them and teaching to the test . Take us through that evolution. I was one of the first charter leaders in founders to have three kids of my own many were not in that situation and i had a sense of what i wanted for my kids to go to a school that was warm and joyous to play but also rigorous academic expectations i of a tremendous believer in science as discovery is side and so all kids can experiment in kindergarten they do 135 experiments per year. When i started looking at Science Curriculum my said momentum for kindergarten they said we dont have that. So we teach momentum and a catered redo aerodynamics to be simplified to be brought down to those elemental aspects. We are a school that believes in games that have been the underestimated in American Education my kids play a number of games. I watching and facilitate. So for 90 minutes which by the way the kids complain about all the time because it is hard to finish monopoly in 90 minutes so we try to save them and put it in a ziploc bag with 150 students is second grade. With backgammon and first grade and then the settler is in third and fourth they all play chess and that kind of thinking and development that occurs is as important with academic warning that can go one with these outstanding results we dont see a blocky in kindergarten we have a block where we have lagos but the pedagogy is very, very progressive and many people cheer is the uniform and we dont think that is contradictory that we think having a uniform but yet it engaged in the progressive pedagogy so we have these magical houses of learning the highschool is nine per 12 inquiry based learning was throughout the cater 12 curriculum talk about the of model developed around joyful rigor. And to think critically and creatively. Sova to come back to the testing but even shed uniforms and so talkedabout why they wear uniforms . There are a few reasons but first it is easier for parents if you have arguments with your kids about what color tights she will wear this morning in the color she once is in the laundry then you also may wish you didnt have to have that discussion. From a school in perspective the mescaline perspective you find it decreases the of competition over who has the nicest clothes and allows everyone to focus with the development of moral character and growth and to emphasize. Students are focusing on learning and that is a joyful type of learning. The test taking is important in those skills are well toned at your school i assume we would not have such Great Results so lets talk first about and what they can take these days than i would say over the last decade as a crescendo certainly in your state and even more so. So this idea around testing and the role of testing i think there is a sense of filling all bubbles endlessly is not productive and and i would agree filling all those bubbles is not productive but just because a test is multiple choice does not mean it doesnt count. You can have high quality or pour multiple trace up for a short response test or interesting and in gauging platforms. Is the quality of the question they were asked to ponder so those are relatively good test with the Language Arts and mathematics and not sufficiently difficult the only person in new York State Police the math test is not hard enough but i fame they are not and the testing anxiety is mr. We dont get those outstanding results for the test grab but because our kids are reading but and then the instruction every hour of every day is strong. You also cannot get the outstanding results as was mentioned with the seventh largest district inside the state of new york and number one in terms of student achievement we took the top 25 spots in math with the whole state of new york and outperformed the gifted and talented program which is highly selective even though we are randomly selected watery school. You cannot get those results unless you are not tice of them well and also you cannot get those results if kids have a negative experience with testing. Because end their mind when they can show and how much they have and then to approach the test to be very enthusiastic and self confident all love of hullabaloo and who are so worried and with the fragility of children abc an ad in the news with radio city hall treaty that like an athletic sporting event they are ready to take the test we feel the kids cannot be taking the test with their sats to navigate the test very confidently and they are prepared for the world we at the historical societys stated in your state we are a small number of states that requires with a High School Graduation the new york is almost virtually alone in the crowd that that will allow them to master but also to think critically with that history curriculum as a professional historian with project based learning which is exploratory and by middle school they are organized by discipline so then redo World History and then the first half of america in history and world war ii then in a trade lead to post 1945 American History course. Most never get past world war ii so the kids, what happened after World War Two . Something must of happened and post 1945 then going to highschool with World History and two years of american with a tremendous reading reading a primary documents in second grade reading primary documents. It is a very rich and robust curriculum and we really think our kids love history as a result and hope they will become permanent consumers of these great institutions to be learned and enthusiastic about the discipline. So what you raised and discussed in the book is your aberration for mayor koch and to underpin that by talking about your respect for quality of life issues that he grapples with. Obviously the york was at a point there was graffiti all over when he became mayor and loud music with a boom boxes. And during the height of crime was bad. And dangerous and i still remember the height of the heroin epidemic with those social problems also a more basic problem my parents were getting annoyed for me stepping space dog poop those that on a crack because it could break your back it was challenging to navigate that Sexual Assault sidewalk as a sick sure all the remember the cooper ladas seem to sensible and controversial for and against and he prevailed and it seemed like a commonsense a call to clean up after your dog and made it a york more livable and as a Council Member check my constituent services very seriously and that youre supposed to send a letter i fact you were supposed to solve every single problem and i learned an awful lot but in the early days that there was a policy had fallen now of fell into and hurt herself in sydney a picture writing to the department of transportation she said it was fixed and i wrote a fait que letter. That is great. So i happened to be walking by. This is exactly where she said it was and there it was. There was no way it was fixed i took the picture and i learned to that when they say is you have to check on everything so i ran around my district trying to fix these quality of life issues working on the newspaper boxes there are a lot of issues and into Government Service very seriously and i tried to fix whenever i could end i do think with the bloomberg what i thought was really great to call and a problem and we did take that approach so when the light goes out or the airconditioner was broken to have the attitude that is the way it is the fact is eyes and ears to can maintain a facility so we take an attitude. So going to that space between your school that was not the case that occupies so maybe you can talk about location and what that means and the various struggles . If you walk through the Districts School one of those conclusions is the Charter School must have more money because it looks nicer and you would be wrong. That is thousands of dollars more but the reason is that they have to go through the incredible bureaucracy to order or fix and Public Employees start of talented and wellmeaning and to get run down over time in a thing i see that is broken and then scrappy to go do costco to buy supplies instead of the soviet style procurement system of the the eric City Department of education. It doesnt take 80 months to get supplies if youre operating in that way it will be hard to have the facility the way you want it to. location is a policy that is associated with the Charter Schools even though the of faster majority of colocation most of those our district you only heard of it those that our controversial. And to like the arabia underutilized space. And the author of that policy and to utilize and realize crow so those debtor over crowded and those that are underutilized literally the rate is between 40 and 70 so what the taxpayers have paid for are empty and i proposed an bloomberg did not take live on this idea but why not allow those underutilized seats, let Charter Schools use them. Let them open up in the underutilized district buildings. That is now the policy of new york city of the 46 schools, almost all of them are located in the district schools. So we can open schools much faster than he had to build the building, raise the money, take the time to build the building, which takes tremendous expertise with the schooling and programming is hearty laugh right now if you can find a building that is half empty then you can open up in the space and begin to serve children to do to tackle that inequality i was speaking about earlier so does the our colocation was sevener eight schools there are nine schools in the building but realestate is very precious so talk about teachers with 165 students and having over 14,000 where you get the teachers to teach those and the principles was one of the Biggest Challenges that debt was very important event with a National Recruitment effort and we recruit all over a the country in the tristate area and to do a tremendous amount of teacher training from the founding of success academy, we do 13 weeks of training every year for new and returning teachers. Selenide did you are a Science Teacher coming at the academy may be doing science today is the weakest fourth grade but we do have five days a week starting in kindergarten and it is experiments. You have to learn how you manage 32 kids with ramps . That is a little scary as a Kindergarten Teacher and they get notebooks that have to be managed that is a lot to manage so saudi do physics since kindergarten with 32 kids in a class . There is robust training and just to understand with a standard curriculum to do a unit of the Brooklyn Bridge projects based learning so we can trade the second grade teachers together on how to manage and to show the principles and the teachers what that looks like for this part of the Brooklyn Bridge unit. That is a tremendous to have a standardized curriculum and design that allows you to train people that would be difficult if they did their own favor every Elementary School had their own design. So as a spokesperson for the Charter School academy as i understand it they did have the ability so those reading about this many times over to say before we go to the question is what that will mean for the Charter Schools generally . And justin the state of new york here where people going into teaching in with the stem field and so that Teacher Shortage overall but there is a training deficit and to train teachers phenomenally well something that has not been done as well as it leads to we certainly see math teachers who are not trade on conceptual labs for english teachers who have not mastered the art so very recently a set of regulations was voted on for higher performing charters to trade officially their own teachers this will contribute to our ability to do this work effort also to understand also the teachers that are the best trained in the most affluent neighborhood in those that are poorly trained go into the least affluent areas were teaching our kids physics in ninth grade and World History. In two years using primary documents to have highly qualified this will allow us to trade our own teachers to help those kids from new york state. So this year teaching and a Charter School in new orleans what is one piece of advice what would you tell her . And i have so many pieces but i will try to limit myself to one. Firstyear teacher it can be unbelievably stressful and difficult and remember every day what you wanted to teach in the first place and presumably it is a love of kids and i hope it should be love of ideas there are a lot of important techniques to becoming a great teacher but at the end of the date if you love your kids and content you can have the joy of teaching. So what amount of effort so what about this question of regular Public Schools . Are we sharing your findings and techniques and materials what type of sharing outside of your own networks . With the institute we put all of the cater for literacy curriculum online for anywhere in the world to use. Understand their Publishing Companies that make hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on their intellectual property and we put it out there for all kids of all educators to use with our intention over time to plug all curriculum out there for any educator of to use to look at the First Physical manifestation of of the institute that is really a school for schoolers as we call it. With telesco and the Trading Center this will allow us to take it be entirely new level to train superintendents and principals and then go from the last with a firstrate teaching in action and history teaching in action and to watch the video and understand how to move teacher and leader practice. With Higher Education had you feel . And what do you think it should be what of americans do for the degree . Should there be some more emphasis on vocational schools . Coming from the world of Higher Education with a slightly different perspective having spent all this time in cater golf k12 plane that had vyshinsky men as his mother now we have aspirations to try to get at 100 schools then educating 50,000 kids per year and graduating 3,000 students every year from highschool but we have to get them into college. What is most distressing is the of funding available for poor kids. To look at the effort and trouble to make sure they are College Ready but yet the number of places that fully fund kids is a very small number of the most highly selective schools. All of those combined could not take our kids. And learn how to democratize Higher Education and with that training side that is the problem and then to have access to resources and afford to go to college now that we have a path forward. To questions. Is there a whole School System anywhere in the country that you admirer you think is exemplary and why . There are other countries around the world that have a way of instructing young people. So as much time to see the schools internationally i was not impressed with the teaching but there was impressed with level of our work as the parents talk about how heavy the backpack is a want to rule my eyes because they are working hours upon hours so there is no waiting about hardworking in china they just expect that they have to work very hard sir the teaching is formulaic. So i havent had enough time to travel to see internationally i know the International Data fairly well and the best kids are not competitive with many places around the world so this is a pretty serious crisis that this country is facing with the quality of the education that we are offering but in terms of the u. S. That has been to many schools around the country and the district education suffers and york was better than many urban areas. And to have some pockets of flirting going on. With 90 percent of the schools do not work at the most recent level. Theyre not teaching the kids how to read your account data basic level. The 10 percent that are are in the affluent neighborhoods. And this was a profound problem that we have to morally grapple with none of us one day permanent underclass if we cannot turn the school into centers of opportunity and those that are the opposite of that. So talk about a highly positive and what the question asks what can parents be doing . So the most important thing one can do for the parents is read to ones children and if you cannot read with the literacy or language with the audio books the bonded with your children over books is the most important but the most important state we do not matter the age level is to instill a love of reading to go to enormous lengths with the kerry did pass through libraries so we have books that matched the interest and go book shopping several times a week for gulf we read a tremendous amount for its school and back home theres seldom lead the league into a school we could not play monopoly or project based learning or science would break our hearts but if there is only one paying it would be to you teach our kids to be great readers because then they can teach themselves in a thing to. So i will ask question people have talked about you becoming mayor of new york city thinking up next wet you should do is it more education . And powering yourself in another way . What is it . I care deeply about the city and publicservice is incredibly important to have strong Public Servants and i would like to do that at some point but right now i really focused on real imagining public education, cater 12 with a push point of what is possible. Id we have settled the so much more is possible and to inspire all of you and all five boroughs to be engaged in this issue. We must have a system, for social justice with this city and state and country so i am just truly focused on and we imagining what cater 12 could be and i feet we can do a Tremendous Service to our kids and they will be better prepared to go through the complex world that we livein. It also is a book that underscores this passion about education and standards which i think has drawn the people to let say temper her enthusiasm. [applause] book signing is right outside of the auditorium. Thank you for coming tonight. The committee spent most of last week going through the tax reform bill. Wednesday we will show you the key moments from the hearing including the exchange and the democratic pitch. Wednesday at 1 30 on cspan2