Up next, texas senator ted cruz, education secretary betsy devos discussed the future of education and workforce development. We got about 20 minutes here to help a great conversation going about where we are. I indicated this morning some of the earlier comments that you are not able to get on but were at an important entry point for the United States which is the most successful economic democracy yet to have evolved on the planet is sitting with huge opportunity where the competition of the world is now risen beyond our heart is beating harder to do better and compete harder and we are at an educational moment where now we realize 330 Million People weve got this opportunity through the diversity of our population to become something that no one else has ever become before which is this highly educated, highly adaptive, highly creative population coming in from everywhere around the world and now can do things that are off the charts. We have an opportunity to facilitate the birthing of a new economic trajectory but just at the same time as that has happened we run the full course with the old educational design and it was good for what it was for and achieved all kinds of things in the past and it has been adequate for the future but lets start with you, madam secretary, with this notion that ive heard you a few opportunities we had to talk about that youve given you had a thing which is a mantra to me which is that a person educational outcome and opportunities should not be determined based on their zip code. How do we find a way to take every person, young person, emerging adult, aging adults and find a way to educate and how do we do this . How do we make school and education outcomes different . Michael, thank you for the opportunity to be here and thank you all for this opportunity as well. You have expressed it well. We are poised to be able to do something very important and yet very different than how we have been doing it. I just want to reference the most recent nations report ca card, nape scores, or two out of three eighthgraders arent doing reading or math at the levels they should be. Its a wakeup call for all of us. The System Design we continue to muddle along the last couple of decades. The reality is we do need to interject a lot more innovation into our k12 years and the administration and senator cruz in one of his counterparts in the house have collectively introduced a bill that i think will give rocket fuel to sum up what is going on in states today called the educational freedom scholarship initiative. It will ultimately empower families and students to find that right fit for their k12 student and also importantly it will give teachers who are, i think, many of whom are entrepreneurial by nature and innovative by nature the opportunity to do things differently into breakout of that system that we have been stuck in for decades. Using new educational act opportunities emerging. At asu or funding by this foundation to build a Community School which would have highly compensated master teachers and Community Teachers coming in with holy ways of doing things and absolutely. There is no limit to the different types of approaches to doing k12 education that we could introduce or that could be introduced but it needs to be facilitated and this is, i think, an important mechanism to help deduce that. Senator, you come from texas which from its founding forward has always been a unique place, country like place with his own spirit and larger than australia in terms of people one of the largest economies in the world and generally conservative place politically and yet at the same time deeply connected to education and committed to educational success across its population, investing massive investments and what is your general assessment of the nature of what we need to do next . Not so much the problems of the past but what do we need to do next . Listen, all of us need to understand that it is foundational and that it is the gateway to the American Dream and i think everyone of us has seen that in our own families both k12 education and Higher Education. You know, if you look at every other publicpolicy challenge that we face in this country whether it is crime or Substance Abuse or healthcare or poverty everyone of those follows from education. If kids are able to get an education many of the rest of those problems largely take care of themselves, not entirely, but you go a big step towards addressing all of those issues but on the other hand, if kids dont get an education and dropping out of school we know like night follows day, those other challenges are much more likely to occur. And we also know what works. In terms of how you guarantee education right now we tolerate a system. There are vast inequities in the system and you have africanamerican children, far too many trapped in failing schools, far too many hispanic children, low income children and we allow Educational Opportunities to be segregated based on wealth, based on skin color, based on zip code. That is fundamentally unfair and what works is competition. Competition in every front this is all discussing competitiveness. Education is not unique. Competition works whether youre making an automobile or widgets or teaching kids and empowering parents, empowering the students with scholarships to choose the best education outcomes is consistently and out the data is compelling but if you want to improve education outcomes and improve the Public Schools and the best way to do so is to empower parents to make the best choice for the kids and so secretary devos we work very closely on legislation that would provide 10 million a year in federal tax credits that would be allocated to the states where state scholarship granting organizations. Thats one at a billion dollars over ten years which even in washington, 100 billion is a lots of money and those are the resources coming in to half of it k12 education and half of it adult vocational education, apprenticeships, helping adults get new skills and those are dollar for dollar tax credits for programs that are implemented at the state level that are designed in the state level in the response to state needs and you want to talk about powerfully transforming the educational system and increasing the opportunities in the outcomes this legislation, if we can get a pass, would be the part most reaching and most inoffensive legislation since the g. I. Bill. Lets talk about that. Out in arizona we have freedom of movement so in our institutions where more than 100,000 students that now for the first time represent the entire socioeconomic diversity of the country. We also run Charter Schools with thousands of students we have one 100 High School Graduation rate, one 100 post secondary going rate for innovation and innovation is the driver and innovation is every thing. Cultural innovation among the faculty, technological innovation with faculty and all these things we are talking about. We launch the same, 100 billion over ten years and the system that is in place and the existing design feels threatened by that and responds, both practically and politically to that, i dont want to get down into the weeds here but how do we get everyone involved in the innovation process and the existing institutions, some will make it, some wont so theres this notion of competition who are right but competition is the driver of all things that help us to drive the worse is of creative instruction and coming up with new models and new innovative models and making things happen so how do we facilitate competition and then deal with the complexities of that competition being against basically immunity driven boards with taxpaying citizens, governing School Districts in districts they believe that they own. How do we do that . I like to refer to florida which arizona has been a real leader in the area of education, freedom and school of choice but florida has a wider variety of programs and probably more students in total. More insects and bugs. And a lot more humidity. [laughter] but what has been interesting in florida is as more of those opportunities have been introduced the traditional system has continued to improve and in those districts where the largest number of families are making choices other than their assigned schools, all the outcomes for that district have continued to improve, including the Traditional School spirit competition drives up everyone. Because the Traditional Schools are making decisions that they would not have made hereto for absent is something to . Against and compare themselves to. You all are both intimately aware of this and i read the things you have been insane in writing so now as we change the way the world works were education is now no longer something you give to a young person and they go to college and dont go to college but they go to college and they are done unless they go to private school and then you educate yourself after that but we are getting to the point now where we need to think about education as a universal thing. Lifelong thing but a universal, Lifelong Learning and so how do we then facilitate that with the kinds of structurally rigid institutional designs that we often find ourselves with . Senator, ideas about that . I think we need to do so both on addressing the substance and the politics. You talked about the barriers in the institutional inertia and you are right, there have been states that of incredibly innovative and i think arizona and florida are both at the top of the list in terms of being innovative and willing to take on the status quo. One of the advantages of that is that we now have no results. I remember 25 years ago and ive been involved as betsy has in the school of Choice Movement for decades but 25 years ago you had a discussion about School Choice and the argument that was given was wild, if we had choice it will destroy the Public Schools. Listen, if that argument were true that would be a compelling reason not to do it. We now know unequivocally that argument is false because we seem choice programs implemented all over the country and their 18 scholarship tax credit programs in states across the country and as the secretary put out the data is overwhelming that when you introduce competition and choice the kids that exercise choice there educational outcomes go out but the Public Schools improve and that is in the face of competition the educational outcomes are better and i view this as a civil rights issue of the 21st century, that we ought to be horrified at generations of kids, many of them minority kids, being stuck in a system that is not giving them hope and an avenue out. How do you do that . You make the case on merits, another major arguments used against choice is we dont want to take money from the Public Schools. One of the things betsy and i did in designing this is that this is 100 billion that does not take a penny from the Public Schools. None of this is coming from existing educational funds. This is new funds coming in but coming in with the requirements and competition and choice be integral to that. We are also trying and he talked about Lifelong Learning, half of the bill is k12 and the other half is a vocation bid a big part of the reason for that to try to [inaudible conversations] states often, every state can choose whether to opt in but you can often to the k12 person or vocational portion or both and states design the programs which means the needs and arizona will be different than the needs in nebraska and different than the needs in new york state in each state can design programs to meet their needs but part of what we are trained to do with the vocational elements allowing people, adults to get training for new skills, is brought in the coalition behind us and in particular what i hope to do is bring more bluecollar unions to the table. You want to talk about growing the numbers of Union Members working in skilled trade . This is 50 billion in federal tax credit scholarship tax credit to do so and if we can bring those players, look, politically school of choice dynamics are fairly transparent which is that in washington virtually every democrat opposes School Choice program because teacher unions have strongly opposed it. The only way to get Something Like this to move is to change that gridlock and to change that and my hope is if we can bring players who are traditionally political allies of democrats and bluecollar unions and who have been with democrats who suddenly change the cost benefit analysis for a democratic member of congress to say wait a second, i can provide enormous opportunity for africanamerican, kids that are hispanic and grow the number of Union Members and skill workers that starts to become, i hope, a pretty compelling political picture driven by the policy and substantive results behind it. Secretary, would you want to add to that . No, i think ted stated it well. It is time to change the dynamic for most kids k12 experience and by introducing a lot more freedom into that world you will get a lot more innovation and approaches to actually experiencing that education and you have been such a leader at asu and im thrilled to hear about your reaching in to the k12 years but asu does not have the only model for that. There are many models and you want many different approaches. I just think about my experience going back to junior high and high school and the fact that today for most kids that basic experience hasnt changed significantly. How irrelevant it was then and how irrelevant it is now for many students today and how changing that equation for hundreds of thousands and millions of students is meaningful and important for the future of our country. One thing, senator imagine this, this correlation between education, attainment and ultimately social mobility, Educational Attainment and Health Outcomes and whether you will be incarcerated and the probability living below the poverty line there almost oneone correlation and its a strong set of correlations yet in the United States we allow at a state level, state by statebystate people to self select and drop out of high school at age 16. I told the secretary we build this digital Preparatory Academy that gives High School Diplomas as well as College Credit and fantastic robots that we put together to help people to learn across any kind of barrier, possible but were fighting a cultural and theres a thing that somehow the old rules from 1940, most of those bills were passed in the 30s and 40s that everyone did not have to graduate from high school so how do we modernize the legislator process to upgrade this notion that Lifelong Learning and universe we should not have anyone that does not have High School Level of education but no one but we should not have anyone that does not have access to ongoing lifelong education so how do we modernize that legislator process . Of the process itself but the outcomes . We cant totally eliminate people making poor choices but thats part of the human experience. Some of the people but with children its a little different. But some of the people making the choices to drop out and give up they dont have good alternatives. You know, if you are a single mom in the innercity and you are struggling to just even put food on the table your only option may be school down the street that has a 50 dropout rate and that has rampant violence, let me give you a statistic from the cleveland Public Schools. This was one of this steps that went to the Supreme Court was litigated, in cleveland Public Schools and nine greater entering high school, he or she, with statistically more likely to be a victim of Violent Crime at school then he or she was likely to graduate on time in four years. That is a stunning and heartbreaking indictment and i think the key to change is giving those kids another alternative so a lot of kids and tough, tough environments, the beauty of choice and i think the choice im supportive of choice in every manifestation, whether Charter Schools or private schools or scholarships or tax credits and competition between Public Schools and part of what this legislation is designed to do, one of the things that the secretary devos and i worked closely on his want to respec respect so we didnt want a onesizefitsall solution from washington. We wanted instead each state can choose to opt in or not and each state designs a scholarship tax program for their own state to meet their needs and that means all sorts of states can try different models. Some can try distancelearning or tele learning or technology and others can do a into ships so theres a whole range pending on you know, in houston we need oil and gas workers and that may be less relevant in iowa. And so, given the Economic Needs and given the needs of the students you want to have that flexibility and i think if there is a good choice and if there is a good option on awful lot of kids look, in my family i think back to my father came to United States from cuba in 1957. He was an 18 yearold kid, could not speak english, had nothing. He washed dishes making 50 cents an hour fed but he was admitted to the university of texas and able to study and learn english and ended up being going on to eventually get a job as a cook but then as a teaching assistant at ut and then as a Computer Programmer at ibm and is a Small Business owner and today hes a pastor. Getting the beginnings of those educational steps opens up entire frontiers. Im going to ask that last question to the secretary and use your dad as the object. Your dad comes and gets us great education at ut austin is able to move forward with his life and so what happens now in Higher Education is that so many universities have, in a sense, not scaling to the scale of the complexity of the country before we have thousands of institutions and people say we must have enough and im like no, and many kids going to college are not graduating so i met with the assistant secretary bob king for breakfast at 7 00 oclock and im a friend of his and known him for a long time but what you want to see happen at the University Level on the College Level . Just at the top line . At the higher up level there is every opportunity for institutions to look at how they will change how they are delivering their tried and true model today which is becoming less and less relevant. We know that less than or fewer than 30 of higher end students today are what we would consider traditional higher end students. The challenges to connect with the employers in your region and employers to connect with educators and i have said dont call legislators, get together with one another and talk about how you will address the opportunities and how you will adjust what you have traditionally provided and think differently about that. I know that there is a small school in the heart of iowa that had a board member who sunset after two years, mom, i cant stand this. I want to the eight welder. This particular school through its traditions out the window so to speak and has now introduced a number of twoyear programs but in order to be relevant for the future all higher ed ed traditions but that kid may come back later in the mid 30s and thats what we need. We are out of time and i want to thank the secretary and the senator for their interview and energy they put on the table and we need to take a close look at this. Thank you all got mac. [applause] tonight on the communicators, anti party, u. S. Chief Security Officer for chinese tech giant huawei on the companies lawsuits against the fcc over a recent vote to ban u. S. Companies from using federal funds to buy huawei equipment. Guest we had to say sec, what you have done is beyond the pale. It conflicts with the constitutional requirement of due process and conflicts with the statute on which your authorities are based, complex vehement strata procedures act which you are supposed to follow and conflicts with your own resident. That is wrong. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. The impeachment of President Trump. This week the house will vote on impeachment managers, sending the articles of impeachment to the senate. Follow the process live on a cspan, ondemand cspan. Org impeachment, and listen on the free cspan radio app. We take you live to the u. S. Senate. Senators are about to resume debate on President Trump picked to head the federal Emergency Management agency. Vo