Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Okay. Well i will ask each of you on the panel youve done such an amazing work. And, you know have given us so much to think about. I would like to hear from you in summary what you would like to see as next steps as a result of your work. Been that youve put so much effort into the research and the writing, and not necessarily relating to the piece youve written, but how you would like to see this play out, so jill . As someone academy and immersed in evidence, that is what im hinting at at the moment. And its similar to the comment about the lanset by having these papers in here signaling something in terms of the broader discipline. And ill give you an example. We hosted a conference on the Health Systems conference in cape town and there were 2,000 people there and there were only two faithbased conferences and it is a signal to the fact that these issues come up in conferences, we have separate conversations about faith and faithbased providers but they are rarely intergrated into the broad Health Public Development Agenda and conversations and my hope would be rather than this becoming a standalone conversation, it gets more strongly integrated into the broader Public Health and development conversations. Great. Andrew. Yeah, i see this series and the amazing meeting that has just been on religion and Sustainable Development being a start of a place in which things can have markers. Im just a boring academic but i do get enthusiastic from time to time and the markers should be gained in terms of donors and Health Providers in terms of how aware are you and how much are you being inclusive. Many have been exclusive. And what jill is talking about in the paper, how inclusive are you of faithbased groups in policy and programs and it is possible to look at policy and International Agencies and see how well they are coping with the challenges that this paper puts forward. Similarly i would see that the faith groups have theyve made some wonderful responses in the last 10, 20 years, particularly in the area of hiv care. But there are many other examples. But how do the faith leaders actually become more aware of how their teachings can actually interface most profitably in association to build these partnerships up and they too i dont think theyve ever been subject to peer review and monitoring and evaluation. But the peer review process is a very interesting one with the faith leaders and the theological colleges, all of the colleges that are churning out faith leaders, it is very interesting to see if they could become more faith aware because that does give enormous potential for changing the societies which are hurting at the present time. One of our presenters at the conference yesterday, david sutherland, who is working in the philippines challenged the conference with the notion of how do you measure hope and dignity. I think that our challenge our real opportunity now is to build on the growing interest by virtue of the scale of the ambition of the goals, the develop goals, the growing interest on the part of policymakers for engaging all hands in the development tact and therefore also being very open to engage in faithbased assets. Our opportunity now is to pull together the evidence frame that shows to them that our work and our contribution will help achieve and heff drive help drive development out comes and i think we need to do that in creative ways. A lot of evidence already exists and i think that we need to underscore and get much more creative at communication. And in the end of the day, i think that a lot of our work Going Forward is about building friendship and trust that will allow us to cross the cultural divides that we addressed earlier in the remarks in the paper. Thank you. Thank you, all. And again thank you to the lancet, for publishing this important series and opening the discussion, which will go on. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you all. In the interest of time, were going to dive right into the second panel which will give us an opportunity to look at the u. S. Angle and the u. S. Engagement with faithbased organizations and the genesis of those strategies and what impact and evolution we can see. And we are honored today to be joined by three very respected panelists, we have Sandy Thurman to my left who is the chief Strategy Officer for the office of the global aids coordination and many of you know sandy from her long work in this arena. And in the middle we have mark Frank Mueller the director of the center for faithbased initiatives at usaid and janet kates at the Kaiser Family foundation. You have their full bios in the handout so i wont go into all of the details, but you can see that we have a very a very Important Panel up here and we are eager to dive into some interesting discussion on this. I think we all know in the first panel made very clear the importance of engaging with and understanding the role of the faithbased communities in providing Global Health, in providing information, especially in reaching communities, the poorest of the poor, the hard to reach areas. Im reminded of a time not long ago when i was in it ethiopia and interviewed an orthodox priest and we were talking about Family Planning and i asked him what message he gave to his followers and he said roughly translated, Family Planning isnt a sin. Hungry children is a sin. And it is just a fascinating lense through which we can see again the importance of faith leaders and the information they can transfer to their communities and the importance of engaging them and insuring they have the information and capacity thats necessary to reach their communities with appropriate and accurate information. We have been engaging in some very interesting conversations on this subject. Most recently last week with some faith providers from kenya on the subject of Family Planning. So i think it is true what the first panel really emphasizes, that things are evolving and developing and this is an important moment to be exploring this further. And with this panel were eager to talk about it from the focus of the u. S. Policy perspective. And i think to begin with well turn to Sandy Thurman. Given your long involvement with hiv policy from the u. S. Government, can you describe to us more about how pep far began partners with faithbased organizations and how that has evolved. Sure. Thank you. And thank you all for being here. It is interesting, the Faith Community has been a partner in response to hiv since the beginning of the epidemic, both domestically and globally. So i think pet far was an out growth with faithbased organizations on the domestic side for a number of years. When we really began looking at the disproportionate impact of the epidemic in africa back in the late 1990s and early 2000, it was a lot our interest and a lot of the pressure that was brought to bear on the u. S. Government and policymakers was from faithbased organizations who were on the ground in africa seeing the devastation that was occurring on the continent. So theyve been a natural partner for us, faithbased organizations and faith backers have been a natural partner with those of us working in the hiv and aids response from the beginning. So when we began to expand the global perspective to focus on hiv and to put this in perspective, working in the white house, with the global aids budget had been 125 million a year, for seven years in a row, which now is a rounding error in our pep far program, so when the interest started, faithbased organizations were at the forefront of encouraging us to respond in a very robust way. And that, of course, ultimately led to to the development of pet far. But i would add that the faithbased partnerships were were not based on politics. They were based on pragmatism. People on the ground that had access and trust in the communities, all of the things that we knew we needed and partners in pep far, they were a primary and natural for us. It is so interesting how all of this has evolved and well get into more of the spectrum of groups and the challenges and opportunities that that has presented. But that leads in perhaps in for mark to tell us about your office at u. S. Aid. What is the goal and what is your out reach and your strategy. Sure. So i have the great privilege to head this office at u. S. Aid and its origin is back around 2003 under the Bush Administration and trying to do a more systemic and engagement with the Faith Community. That said weve been working with faith groups since the inception of the agency 52 odd years ago so this wasnt new to the agency it was a new way of looking at it and to reach out to a Broader Group of partners and that is a guiding star for the agency. If you think about buckets of work, certainly to be the ombudsman into the agency, the sherpa, the groups that want to work with u. S. Aid and dont know how to get into the door of bankruptcy, can come to us. Groups can act like an ombudsman, we can help finding facilitations for faithbased and Community Groups and try to do proactive out groups, so around ebola as a recent example. We organized with the white house and the department of state a Conference Call with faithbased actors across the United States and we had 400 people on that call to talk about ebola and the role the Faithbased Community might play and we did smaller groups in d. C. With 30 or 40 organizations. There is a convening role of the organization. And supporting the other parts of u. S. Aid trying to get things done. So we support the missions in their engagement and that is a critical part of aid. For a Big Government agency we are decentralized. Our missions are vital and decisionmaking happens much there and so those are all of the ways this we try to put it in and we try to make it our engagement in the Faith Community as robust as possible especially when there are areas like health in emergencies, when the Faithbased Community have unique things to bring to the table. Thank you. One of the things that came up, in fact, on the last panel, was how much of the share of the u. S. Government support goes through faithbased organizations and so many of us turn to kaiser for that kind of analysis and i wonder, jen, if you could tell us more about how that how much kaiser has approached that and why that is a complicated set of numbers to find . Thanks, janet. And i just want to say that i want to commend the lancet and the authors who put this issue together to start where we pick up and formalize an evidenced based framework that is so critical that i dont think has existed at this level at looking at faithbased organizations and health. And so for this question and what we ask at kaiser, what happens now and what is the scope of the involvement and mark and i were talking in advance of this and clearly money is just one measure of this. There is many more ways to look at involvement. Money is one that we all care about and Pay Attention to and so in preparation for thinking about that question i will share some data that we just looked at and really good work being done now on this. Researchers and others looked e. R. A. Sently at health and there is an article that came out on this roughly estimated that over the last decade or more 30 of all Health System for health has been through faithbased organizations. There is a lot there but i encourage people to look at that article in plus journal, so that is available online. The other piece of work of done is jeans work looking specifically at the share of revenues that faithbased organizations have that are from u. S. Government sources and she found 13 . So i think it is less than people think in their minds. So in preparation for this panel, i took a look at data we recently released around nongovernmental organizations. Another proud area that faithbased groups dont know about, what is the role of ngos and we put out a couple of reports on this and we put out a summary analysis on this and what do we know about faithbased organizations in that framework and we looked at 2013 data, 2014 is just available now. But 2013 data, disbursements by u. S. Aid and there is caveats there and just looking at that year, we were able to identify that faithbased organizations represents about 15 of ngos that receive disbursement of Global Health. So 15 of ngos were faith based. About 14 of the funding went to them. Its less than people think. And it is good to look at historical analysis and see how that has changed. And faithbased organizations within the Ngos Community were working in africa, not a surprise to those of us here but an important data point. And the area they were most likely working in was hiv and malaria was a big one and malaria and hiv than ngos over all, less so than Family Planning. Those were some of the findings week we looked at. We like to look more in depth, but to give you a sense. In africa, and malaria and probably less funding than people think. I will give you the Funding Amount because i can see people wondering what that amount is. It was about 96 million in 2013, for what to give you a sense. That is less than the global fund amount identified in the imhe analysis. Were going to run through a series of questions and come back and give you a sense to interact with each other. Perhaps linked to this, the question of who are who are these organizations and where are they and what are they working on, sandy, you have described from your long years of works the spectrum of the kinds of organizations that helps to under score the opportunities and challenges of working with them. Perhaps you could talk more about what you mean when you talk about different approaches needed for different kinds of faithbased organizations . Sure. Thank you. I think this is this is a genesis of some of the challenges weve had around building these partnerships between faithbased organizations and governments, because it is hard to to if we say faithbased organizations, that means a lot of things. Faithbased organizations can range from anything from the catholic Health System in the United States of america which is still and im using the u. S. As an example, which is still the second Largest Health care system in the country to very small clinics or ngos or orphans orchildren programs on the ground. So there is an incredible broad range. Differences in capacity, very big differences in ability to deliver services. And so i think our challenge, all of our challenges to both donors and to faithbased organizations is to begin to define with greater specificity and communicate what the differences are for people. And it certainly came up a lot in the meeting held at the bank this week and has before. And i think when we look at revamping our mechanisms, in order to be more effective, build more effective partnerships, we have got to be able to name those things so that when we have partnerships and define roles and responsibilities and establish monitoring and evaluation and accountability and mechanisms and so forth, we have to be very clear about what we are doing with and it can be very big or very small. But what you dont want to lose in that is that we know from all of our years in Public Health, that if we want to really look at sustainable change at the end of the day, that and we want to be able to have countries take full responsibility and ownership of the work that is being done in their countries. That that has to be rooted on the ground in grassroots organizations all over the country. So if we want to sustain the impact that weve had in pet far or look at sustainability development, we have to figure this out. So we need to stay at it until we do. It wont be easy. It is like family dynamic, it is not easy, but you dont abandon the family, you stay in there and work at it and that is where we are in this conversation and it is very exciting. It is interesting, because one of the pieces of sustainability, which is of course a big theme here in washington and everywhere, is also the link to the private sector. And the longer term financing issues that link to sustainability. And mark, you have talked about the added financial value of working with faithbased organizations and the outreach. Can you describe a little bit more about your outreach to faithbased groups as a link to the private sector . Sure. I think there are two elements of this. One is that faithbased organizations like most nongovernmental organizations have robust fund raising, largely from the private sector and they have partnerships via boards and other mechanisms in which theyve been engaging the private sector since theyve existed and had to do that. The other is a more directive to say as were looking at the importance of the private sector in development, health care in particular, one way we can think about the Faith Community, the Business People motivated by faith but will never put a religious icon on what they do. For example, there is a project they are working on at u. S. Aid about to be finalized on health, a small Health Experiment to see if business principals can provide sustainability in provision of health care and clean water and others in the eastern democratic republic of congo and a consortium of Business Leaders connected to to National Christian foundation in the United States have put up a Million Dollars of that partnership that were working together. And the National Christian foundation, the philanthropy that flows through every year is hundreds of millions of dollars. Part of that will go to international activities. We havent formalized partnerships with that kind of flow to capital as well as the expertise within that community to bring it to bear and i think that is Fertile Ground to build on. Jen, youve done a lot of work over the years on the u. S. Response to the aids epidemic of course, and as we discussed in the first panel and in the lancet piece, we saw the importance of some of the faithbased organizations roll in that response as well as the Ebola Response that was touched on also in the first panel. Do you want to reflect a little bit more on your view of how that has had an impact in u. S. Response . Sure. To pick up on something sandy said about the role of faithbased organizations and the Faith Community and hiv from day one, that is clear in the u. S. Domestic case as well as globally but i also think it is really important to note that from the case study perspective of pet far, how did pet far come to be when we look back and try to look together what are the elements that went into many of us watching the state of the union speech and hearing 15 billion and wondering how we were able to get there. It is clear without the Faith Community, that wouldnt have happened. So the Faith Community was from a case study the pet far, to making pet far happen. So it is not just on the ground delivering services and being partners but it really is pushing the u. S. Government to go to another level. So i think that is just really important from my perspective, looking at it from the longterm. On the Ebola Response, it is pretty clear that without engaging the Faith Community, the way governments had to do, realizing they had to or we would not have been able to turn around that crisis. And hopefully the lessons from that experience will be evident and ready not just back on a shelf, but the next time a crisis like this occurred, whether it is ebola again or Something Else, it is at the forefront of this approaching communities with cultural understanding and engaging the leaders in the community that understand them and can speak to them is the only way we can really get ahead of this. It is quite clear there has been huge, huge impact and benefit and also very big challenges that have been presented by the engagement, particularly from the pet far perspective. Sandy, could you talk about some of the hardest parts of pet fars history in dealing with the Faith Community and what lessons have been learned and how has that impacted the current pet far strategy . Sure. I think that and again it was not new with pet far. Weve had challenged and in hiv and aids with the faithbased communities and incredible opportunities from the beginning. But it was certainly true. And pet far, i think that weve had to a couple of things. I think it has been very hard for a mechanism as big as pet far to find a way to operationalize our partnerships with faithbased organizations on the ground. And so that has been one. And then weve had stumbles around and challenges around issues of Reproductive Health, around the Lgbt Community and weve seen that play out in recent days. But i think where we hang on this, interestingly, it more in places like washington, d. C. And in our big institutions rather than on the ground. What i have found always so inspiring is the way that people who are actually on the ground doing this work figure out a way to work together. And oftentimes we at headquarters and policy making bodies we try to make it better, but sometimes i think we make it worse. Because people are so people are creative, especially people who are working on the ground in very hard to serve populations in the far reaching places in the world. The people figure this out. I think this is the place where we need to learn from colleagues on the ground and bring those Lessons Learned up to the top. There is something that dr. Blevins mentioned, that we have to be careful in wanting to be so politically correct and in the way we engage as policymakers that we dont put people at risk. So we want to tell the story about the nuns who are buying Office Supplies for an ngo that is secular so they can trade and get condoms and not get caught by the bishop, in the old days and people figuring it out on their own, i think we need to take lessons from our colleagues on the ground. It continues to be a challenge for us. But the other thing that we talked about is finding Common Ground. And again, when we define with specificity what our roles and responsibilities are when we engage in a partnership, like a pre i dont know why im using marriage metaphors, but a prenup, but we know this is what we are bringing and you cant touch this and im not going to touch all of that, and we have to define with greater specificity how we engage and i think it takes mystery out of this if you have secular institutions and faithbased institutions. If you really dig down up front and define with greater specificity you can find the Common Ground and not put each other at risk any in way. And to be specific, we have some real controversies that have emerged, most recently in uganda. And would you like to hear from mark about that episode, putting the Lgbt Community at such risk, the funding for the Interreligious Council being withdrawn because of that. And what lessons were learned because of that and what new practices or mechanisms arose from that . I think i should summarize first just quickly, legislators within uganda proposed an antihome sexuality act that was draconian at best in terms of the treatment of lbgt people and the description of who they were in terms of the people was beyond the pale. And the members of the religious council campaigned positively for that legislation and vocally took out ads in the paper, spoke at a huge rally and i was in uganda when this rally went on and youre listening to this and thinking this is just such a horrible situation and i think the u. S. Government lost confidence in the Interreligious Council to carry out the mandate and serve people without bias. It was so beyond the pale of what we normally saw in terms of active campaigning, the public among all the Interreligious Council members. There are nuances between them all of them were for it. So funding was withdrawn from that institution and mechanisms were put in place to meet the need of people in uganda so they werent left without treatment. In terms of lesson learned, i think that situation has become polarized. I come out of a community organizationing background. When you polarize, you need to depolarize. Dont know that weve done that successfully yet. How do we depolarize. And the other thing i think we need to learn more about what the actual discrimination is on the ground so we have the evidence that said yes this rhetoric links to a set of behaviors happening that are impacting people negatively. We dont know that right now. We make assumptions that are reasonable but in other cases there have been religious leaders at the top saying bad things but providers on the ground continuing to do good work. So we need to figure that out. There was a study that u. S. Aid did about bias, and i think that is a model for what we want to do in other places and replicate that and what people are experiencing and what they perceive to be experiencing and what can we witness they are experiencing. Certainly another area of challenge involving Family Planning and Reproductive Health and jen i wondered if you wanted to talk about what you have seen in terms of how that has played out. And to pick up where mark left off around lbgt rights and the issues that happened. There is a good new study looking at nigeria and the perceptions of gay men on the ground and their ability to get services and what they needed, finding a link between the rhetoric and their own fears about seeking services, but i agree, getting that evidence and summarizing it for policy makers and Program Managers can understand is really very, very critical. And something that goes to the Family Planning issue that actually i want to paraphrase that professor burk said, that overriding issue for policymakers is really about Public Health. So it is the Public Health approach. What works for Public Health. As she said much more eloquently, and ill paraphrase. Stigma, discrimination in any form is not what Public Health and human right is about and cannot help us in response to hiv. That plays out in the Family Planning discussion. And stepping back, i think the polarization is around Family Planning is very clear in washington. And i think what happens is that people dont realize or make assumptions that faithbased communities are not champions of Family Planning when many, many are, in fact, leading on providing Family Services on the ground. That is the evidence for that is there. So there is a sort of mischaracterization often of the community and it is a Diverse Community so that also doesnt work as a characterization. I think where the challenges arise is that when there are Effective Services such as modern contraception being most effective in terms of women who want Family Planning methods should get according to Public Health evidence and if there are faithbased organizations and others who cant or wont provide that service, it is incumbent upon the u. S. To look and do an assessment and say how do we reach those who need the services the most and what is the best way to do that and that is where the emphasis needs to be, from the Public Health perspective and reaching the goals and how do we reach those who need the services most and put that together from a government perspective. I know were going to have a lot of questions from the audience, but i wonder, sandy, if you could talk for a minute about how does all of this fit into pet far 3. 0. I think it fits squarely into pet far 3. 0. And we know were going to have to Going Forward take a very strong Public Health approach to containing and eliminating the epidemic in ways that not that we didnt do before but now that we have limited resources, more people on treatment, weve got to continue to move forward, and were really going to have to focus more and more as time goes on. That is very important. Our best partners some of our best partners and doing that work are the faithbased partners because we have to get into communities and access those relationships of trust to get people into treatment to keep them on treatment, all of the things that we know that we have to do that it often takes time to do in developing relationships and getting into communities and getting people who Needs Services and getting them into treatment and keeping them in treatment, we cant do that on our own. So we have to find the partners already in the community to help us do that. So expanding our partnerships with faithbased organizations is a critical part of that. And it comes down to it is very pragmatic from a Public Health perspective. We have to identify folks and get them in treatment and keep them in treatment and the programs have to be rooted in communities and on the ground. And this has to be sustainability. It is the primary partner and a big piece of our work Going Forward. Mark, youve talked about exactly that issue, the sort of cultural literacy, i think i call you called it, training for u. S. Government agencies to work better with fbos if were allowed to use the term for now, including new training for how to work with religious groups. Can you just say a word about what that entails . Sure. So general frame is that the various agencies of the u. S. Government came together in the past few years and there is an interagency strategy on global religious leader and political engagement. Part of that strategy calls for more training within our agencies across government on how to work with faithbased organizations. At u. S. Aid weve received money from the u. S. Capitol team, basically our h. R. Department, to begin to do that within our missions and things and so that is really going on for us very strongly. So i have a team, a member of my team, who has worked with many of you, pamela staples who is leading the effort, to do more training and sensitivity. I would say also, if the other side of the coin is how do the faith based organizations provide the lit raegeracy training toward work ing with government 102 and 201 and 301 which we all know is a challenge of its own. Thank you all. I have a lot of questions but i think you do too. So lets open it up. And again well take three at a time. And please identify yourself and your brief question. And then well do another round after that. So please wait for the mic so that our online viewers can hear you as well. So first question. Hi, thank you. Im john blevens from emery university. Jonathanman put forth the perspective that human rights have to ground the moral perspective and the work of a lot of what were talking about here and that has been an important concept and an important kind of grounding for a lot of our work. But in our work, at least in kenya, with faithbased organizations that work with member who have sex with men, work in lbgt communities and with men who use drugs and they almost never use the term. And they talk with us and a lot of us know this, that around contentious issues the term invoking human rights has an effect of being seen as the west trying to impose Cultural Values on another part of the world. But our faithbased partners invoke their own similar kind of work. One of the things i found powerful at the World Bank Meeting is dr. Kim out of the poor and roman catholicism it feels to me around finding a common moral space on contentious issues that there are intersections we havent explosised very much. And i know faithbased leaders are working to do that in various parts in the world. I wonder if you have any thoughts as to how we might understand those kind of moral grounds that give us new language beyond just the language of the human right. Not abandoning it, but expanding it. And we have a question in the back corner. [ inaudible ] open house systems. How much when a us aid, or whoever funds these programs, are they also attaching to it the sufficient funds to do the evidence based analysis of the intervention as well and are they making that it seems to me like in the first part, we were talking about evidence based interventions and faith based. And, obviously funding for that kind of analysis is also important. And how much is that attached in the packages . One more question for this round. All right, lets turn back to the panel. We have two very interesting questions. One, first lets take the human rights question and then going beyond extending excluding human rights but going beyond that term. Sandy, do you want to start off . Sure. Again, there has been some really interesting work done over on this, better language and better words and defining the way that we that we talk to each other about these kinds of issues. But its limited. And i think coming out of the conference, and weve had a lot of dialogue about this coming out of conference yesterday, i think it is clear that we need to spend some time looking at expanded kinds of language that works for everyone and that is not polarizing in and of itself. We all respect and im sure jonathan man who was just an extraordinary visionary in our field, but understanding that we have to our language has to change as time changes. Were not still we have to keep moving on and finding common language as more partners come to the table. I think it is something we need to invest in and we really and a conversation i would love to have with colleagues Going Forward. And for us in pet far and for others. Because again if the partnerships are going to work like we need to work we have to invest in figuring out what the what the foundation of that looks like and then come to some agreement on that. Jen, maybe you want to come in on this issue of universality of human rights and the impact of language here. Language is critical. If you dont speak the same language as somebody, you have to work on understanding. So how are people people speak about a situation or a group is clearly there has been a lot of work done on that. I completely agree that figuring out the right way to frame these discussions with different communities is we have not done a good job of it. I do wonder though about the human rights using that language. Because when the uganda and nigeria situations were at their height, i was involved in a lot of conversations with people in as well as in africa d. C. As well as in africa about how to approach it that these were harmful law and one of the discussions that came up were lbgt rights or human rights and some said you have to focus on human rights and that will speak to a sector of societies that will not necessarily be part of an lbgt rights discussion. So i dont think it is clear. It depends on communities and there are religious leader wheres human rights language is the language they use. But to your point, we have not cracked this nut at all. Can i say, on this a resource i dont think we have used enough were or a place to turn is our Foreign Service nationals which are people from the countries in which were working who work for the u. S. A. I. D. For a long period of time. Decades often. And they are rooted in their own communities and they are from the religion we are talking about and they have the set of relationships and when Foreign Service officers rotate after a short number of years and ive come to appreciate in my three years my role and how to work with the Foreign Service nationals to address the question of language, perspectives and relationships. And mark, maybe you want to take the first crack at the question about funding for the evidence. Where you get into that is difference between evidence and valuation. And we are there on evaluation. That is built into the requirements of our funding. We dont tend to fund a lot of evidence. And that is a gap. And i dont know where were going to solve that. We talk to kenya our budgets are largely dictated by capitol hill and so maybe it is a conversation there as well. But were good on the evaluation, not so good on evidence. Sandy . I think this is really a place where we as government donors are slightly schizophrenic because we keep asking for evidence and demanding evidence and talking about data and then we box ourselves in to only having monitoring the evaluation that mark talks about. I think that is a conversation we really need to have and it is not an easy one because again we are all funded by the u. S. Congress and we have our own sort of challenges around that. It is also a place where i think that advocacy on the part of our faithbased partners could be very helpful for us, to say that there is we have all of this anecdotal data, but were ham strung by the fact that you are asking for evidence that we cant pay to get and see if we cant be a little bit more creative in these conversations with our colleagues down the street to see if we cant find a way to do that, or external partners that appreciate the need for evidence, foundations and other donors who might not be as restricted as we are. And i neglected to give a positive story. U. S. Aid has funded the Reproductive Health at georgetown millions of dollars to look at the efficacy of fertility beads for Family Planning purposes and there has been evidence now that those do work, they are efficacious and we can fund those as a tool to use to reach our goals in Family Planning. Obviously were going to have a whole lot of other tools. But that particular tool is acceptable by many religious groups opposed to the other tools. And so i think that is one positive story that we might look at replicating. Do we have other questions from the audience . Right here in the middle. Hi. My my name is jenna carp, im here from the state department. And it has come up a couple of times in terms of the ebola crisis in west africa but i was wondering if you could speak more generally about the role that faithbased groups could play in pandemic preparedness and response and sort of Lessons Learned from ebola in the past year, two years. Other questions . Again, my name is rosemary, i just go back to the cooperation, how do we cooperate and i met president bush before he left office in the faithbased initiative in 2008 and we talked about the same thing. How do we come up with this collaboration of out reach, advocacy in the rural areas there in africa and as you say, Lessons Learned on ebola because there was no outreach or education to people. So local people feels do so much work on the ground but nobody gives them credit and nobody funds them so we should look at the cpos and the local faithbased organizations in the rural areas, the small organizations do a lot, so u. S. Aid, pet fund, and look into that and work up from the ground and we do collaborate. Again, thank you. If there are no other questions well turn to the panel for these two. Again, the question of the role of the faith groups in pandemic preparedness. I think that its well engaging faithbased organizations and Emergency Preparedness and pandemic preparedness is critical. Again, weve done that domestically and as we look at system strengthening, it is difficult for us to do it on a global with global reach as it is than it is to do at home with domestic reach. But certainly faithbased organizations and other private actors have to be partners in any kind of Emergency Preparedness or pandemic preparedness and i think people are very aware of that, certainly in the aftermath of the ebola epidemic and the faithbased organizations were on the ground responding to the epidemic before anybody could figure out what to do. One of the things that came up in our conversations about Emergency Preparedness is training our First Responders on how to engage with people who are already doing the work on the ground when they arrive. And so that the transfer of and the partnership and the integration of already on the ground Indigenous Services is done in a way that honors the people who are responding first and engages the people who are our First Responders coming from big organizations and multi laterals and donors and others. So we have a lot to learn but there is no doubt, i think from cdc perspective or others, that faithbased partners have to be a big part of that process. I totally agree. The preparedness side of the equation, which has been harder for policymakers to focus on, the response is much easier. But that is a whole different event. But Going Forward, looking at to what extent are faithbased leaders and organizations involved now because there is so much attention paid to needing better preparedness because of ebola and there is now money available for that. And looking back, there is a funding line that u. S. Aid has to look at emerging threats and preparedness. Very few ngos get money in that regard and no faithbased organizations got disbursements for that in 2013. One story on small you think whether you work with small groups or not, former administrator sherrill went to liberia and went to a small orphanage and school and that shut down and needed food to feed other students and this was a small operation and it turned out that the pastor that ran this had a National Radio show that covered the country so what at first glance was small became very big because he was able to send messages out and was respective. And so i think we have to be open to be surprised and careful when we think something is small and it is not so small and the influence that can go out. And i think we are in terms of the second phase of Ebola Response and we want to build back better, u. S. Is in conversation with the International Part of the Catholic Health association and seeing if we can partner on Health System strengthening about ebola and preventible deaths. I think that is a key to try to reach the organizations sandy mentions Catholic Health, in terms of Health Strengthening with faith and nonfaithbased organizations to build in the resiliency to take the shocks and respond appropriately and not get setback so far. Any thoughts on the collaboration piece . We talked about that up until now. But any thoughts on collaborating with Community Based organizations, that last question . I think again that we have to continue to expand our capacity. And that really has to be done the Big Governments will never have the capacity to directly fund very small organizations, it is just not i mean we dont have the bandwidth to be able to do that. As much as we would like to, because we recognize that is where we often get the best return on our investment, but well continue to rely on robust coordinating mechanisms and organizations that comprise many different faithbased groups so that we can get the money to the ground. I think that is certainly the way that usaid does their funding. And it is the best of what weve got at the moment. I think there is always room for improvement and again part of what were talking about Going Forward is how do we improve these mechanisms and increase our capacity to get closer to the ground. I think just in the last couple of minutes that we have, i would love to give you all a chance for some final comments and ask you to reflect on precisely that, what are the next steps, including to address some of the hard issues. The paper in the lancet that talked about the challenges, about child marriage, about gender based violence, about gender, about Family Planning and Reproductive Health, there are very big issues that the u. S. Government is focused on in its own strategies and sometimes the Faith Community can help in those strategies and at times they are a barrier to implementing u. S. Goals in that area. So when you are thinking about next steps, please include how do address these big challenges. Jen, do you want to start us off. Sure. I think this echoes a lot of what the authors and others have said, but looking at the next phase of the u. S. Health Global Policy and Global Health more generally and srgs that we have a better articulation is that we have to reach the poorest of the poor we cant have the world we want if we dont, faithbased organizations and religious communities have all done that in a way that other groups havent is always been able to. So i think we cant reach those goals without their without their involvement. I think that is clear from the evidence and the paper shows that. So that is one. And two, on the challenges, we have to name them an the article does that. I think naming them and talking about to understand where there is Common Ground and difficulties in figuring out where ultimately the goal of Getting Services to people who need them from a Public Health evidence based services of people who need them is the end game that we want. And lastly, data. We need it. We just took a cursory look for today, but i would like to do more on that. I think kaiser, and all of us who can should. I think that is really critical. Mark. Where you live, often shapes how you think. So where im located within u. S. Aide, we are flooded with great opportunities with how to engage. We get frustrated we cant take all of them. But to be honest, to see the partnership going on are just really terrific. And so im very positive on this. I think in terms of addressing the challenges, the faith communities can be the trip wires for the challenge and the solution at the same time to the challenges. So on gender based violence for example, weve had conversations with the chair of the north American Council of somalia imams. And he is very interested in working with us and taking the efforts that they hear, in kenya and ethiopia and other places and hes reached out to the head imam in somalia saying will you work with me and there is a an agreement there. And we are working on how to make that happen and there are private foundations that will work together. And the imam came out to meet with us and im going out to minneapolis to speak with him directly and so we can take our partnerships and work with facebook groups and use the religious leaders to answer the challenges that may come out of this community. I just want to agree with what the other panelists have said and just add a couple of things. One, is we certainly need to reach the poorest of the poor but i want to not leave the marginalized for other reasons behind. Which makes it a much more difficult conversation for us. But that is a very certainly hiv and aids and other issues as well. The other is to focus on the importance of literacy and cross training the Public Health practitioners and the faithbased practitioners. And weve had some great pie onners like jonathan man and bill taggy, and jimmy carter and others who recognize the importance of this 30 years ago and started work on this. So there is a very robust and small body of work on cross training. Our practitioners and people on the ground need to talk with each other and find the common language that john was talking about so that helps us we have to have the same language to have a conversation about particularly sensitive issues, it is always a challenge. But just to end on something that a trend that i see in academia and elsewhere that i think speaks to the future in a very important way and that is this incredible growth that weve seen on faculty with john at emory and we have seen and on interdsciplinary approaches to Public Health and theology that include all of our schools and also a real growth and in dual degree programs in Public Health and development and theology and all of this cross training that i think makes me very hopeful about what the leadership will look like ten years from now and 15 years from now. On these kinds of issues that we all hold so dear. So i think theres a lot of bright light on the horizon when it comes to new leadership. Well i think this has been such an interesting panel. And i think it opens the door for, as the first panel said, so many more conversations, so much more happening in the field right now. And great thanks to all of you for the work youre all doing in this area and for sharing your insights with us. Because i think this has been very enlightening me. Please joining me in thank our panel. [ applause ]. This weekend on the cspan networks politics books and american history. Saturday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Netroots nation hosts a discussion on Illegal Immigrants and the enforcement of arizonas immigration laws. Sunday even at 6 30 residential president ial candidate Chris Christie on national security. He speaks at the university of New Hampshire, manchester. On cspan2 saturday night at 10 00 eastern on book tvs after words, Michael Tanner talks about the growing National Debt and looking at restructuring entitlement programs. And glenn beck on islamic extremist. And sunday morning starting at 10 00 eastern on cspan3, we commemorate the 50th anvers of the 1965 Voting Rights act. It includes white house phone conversations between johnson and adrian s. And dr. Martin luther king jr. And lbjs 1965 speech at the u. S. Capitol and the signing of the bill. Also this weekend, saturday night at 7 10 university of california at berkeley history professor, brian delay, looks at the history of gun production in europe and how arms trading contributed to american victory during the revolution. Get our complete schedule at cspan. Org. Coming up tonight on cspan3, a look at School Choice and other education issues. Then defense secretary Ashton Carter on Educational Opportunities for children of military families. And later, secretary of state john kerry, joined by Energy Secretary ernest moniz, and treasury secretary jack lew, for a hearing on the iran nuclear agreement. Next, a look at the future of School Choice including concerns about funding and other challenges and changing current education policy. From the heritage foundation, this is an hour. [ applause ]. Thank you, john. And thank you, everyone for being here today, which today would have been friedmans 103rd birthday. The university of chicago nobel prizewinning economist is of course considered the father of the modern day School Choice movement. 59 programs operate in 28 states and here in the district of columbia. These options whether vouchers, tuition tax credit Scholarship Programs, or Education Savings Accounts, which were here to discuss today, provide families the opportunity to choose schools and learning options that meet their childs individual and unique learning needs. Instead of being assigned to a school based on where their parents live these models of School Choice and free people free children from assignment by zip code residential policies that bound them to a school in their neighborhood. Milton friedman says School Choice ensures children are free to choose and free to learn. It was in 1955 that friedman first outlined this concept of School Vouchers. Government administration of schools is neither required by the financing of education neuer justifiable in its own right in a pro dominantly Free Enterprise society. In other words friedman argued we should separate the financing of education from the delivery of services. That is apparently choose where a child attends school. He operationalized this idea of financing the education from delivery of services through School Vouchers. A set amount of dollars to School Families instead of School Districts. Milwaukee, wisconsin became the first city to implement friedmans idea. And in 1991 established the milwaukee Parental Choice program. It was the first large scale k12 Championship Program in the country. But friedman didnt stop thinking or tinkering with this idea of School Vouchers when that happened. In an interview with the journal education next in 2003, when friedman was 93 years old, he first professored up this idea. He said why not voucher for math in one place, english or science somewhere else. Why should schooling be in one building. Why cant children take some lessons at home with the ability of the internet. He was very forward thinking. That brings us to esas. It brought friedmans idea of the partial vouch tore life. We will hear a lot today about how they work. But Education Savings Accounts, which allow parents to direct every single dollar of their childs education thats in their account to not just a single private School Choice but to multiple services and products and providers represent the next generation of School Choice. Esas are a refinement of that voucher model that friedman put forward back in 1955 and are one of the most promising ways forward for School Choice. Before i introduce our panelists, i should note it is ironic that after todays event to honor milton freed maam who popularized theres no such thing as a free lunch, there will be a free lunch in the lobby. The center for educational freedom. He served as legislator in the New Hampshire house of representatives and Education Policy Research fellow at the Josiah Center for Public Policy. He published numerous studies on Education Choice programs with organizations such as the Friedman Foundation for educational choice pioneer institute, show me institute, and widely published in print and online media. He received his masters in Public Policy from the john f. Kennedy school of government at harvard university. And education director for the gold Water Institute. His work appeared in education next and georgetown journal of law and Public Policy. And real clear policy, national journal, along with newspapers across the country. Jonathan is a member of the Arizona Department of Education Steering Committee for the Empowerment Scholarship Program the nations First Education Savings Account Program. And hes also a senior fellow at the Beacon Center of tennessee. Jonathan previously studied education policy at the department of education reform at the university of arkansas and worked with a School Choice demonstration project. The Research Team that evaluated the Voucher Program in washington, d. C. And in milwaukee, wisconsin. And prior to that, studied education and family policy here at the heritage found aation. Jonathan holds a b. A. From Furman University and m a a in economics from the university of arkansas. Last well hear from tim keller who serves as institute for justices Arizona Office managing attorney. He joins the institute as a staff attorney in 2001 is and litigates School Choice, economic liberty and other constitutional cases in state and federal court. Tim led the institutes defense of the tax Scholarship Program and Tuition Organization v. Wen which culminated in a United States Supreme Court victory. Tim successfully defended arizonas esa program. And perhaps the most interesting part of his bio, in addition to defending educational choice programs in arizona and nationwide, tim has helped knock down barriers to entrepreneurship on behalf of many hardworking individuals, including eyebrow fretters in arizona, african hair braiders florists in louisiana. Among these victories was his work on behalf of christian elf, a teenager from testimonympe, arizona to put steel mesh around senior houses. Very interesting bio. He has a degree in economics from asu. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [ applause ]. That you can very much is lindsey. That you know, heritage, for putting this event together. As i was driving over here in my uber, i was speaking with the driver. He asked what i was doing. I said we were having a panel on the future of education. He said, well, you know, theres two ways to solve the problem with education in this country. So of course i was very interested to hear what he had to say. He said theres the natural way and the miraculous way. I said whats the natural way . He said the natural way is if a an angel of the lord were to come down and to teach us exactly how we should create a quality learning environment for every student at a reasonable cost. And i said well, thats the natural way. Whats the miraculous way. He said the miraculous way is youll figure out yourself. I first heard from from Professor Jay green from the university of arkansas. It heights the challenges before us. One of the first places we will look at is the incentive structure. Milton friedman and other economists talked about four different ways we can spend money. He pointed out you can spend your money or somebody elses money. And you can spend that money either on yourself or on someone else. So when youre spending your own money, you have an incentive very strong incentive to economize. When you spend money on yourself, you have a way to maximize the value for what you get. The best structure is where youre spending your own money on yourself. Thats where you will maximize the value and youre going to economize. Unfortunately, our Public School system in this country is category four spending. Theres other people spending other peoples money on other people. So you have a weak incentive either to economize or maximize value. We have seen the last four decades, the cost of k 12 education this chart shows the total cost of k12 education, kindergarten through high school over the years has tripled. Inflation adjusted dollars. And yet we see that test scores have been absolutely flat over the same period. So were spending three times as well and not getting any more bang for our buck. Part of this has to do with how much more we are spending on teachers and other staff. Theres been a staffing surge here this chart for the National Center for education statistic shows that weve had about a doubling in the student population since 1950. And yet the number of total School Personnel has gone up by 400 . Teachers, only 250 . But the number of nonteaching staff has increased by 700 over that same period. When the number of students has only just about doubled. And parents arent getting what they want. The Public School system is actually crowding out other alternatives. So when this is a poll from the Friedman Foundation last year. They found 40 of parents, if they had the ability, would send their children to a private school. Another 11 would home school and the rest to charter. 83 are going to the Public School system. So thats where friedman as idea that he discussed about 60 years ago comes in. The School Vouchers. As lindsey explained, the idea that we would separate the financing from the actual provision of education. To ensure every child had access to a quality education but wouldnt necessarily be the ones running the system. So going back to the fourways of spending money. That is a significant improvement. Now we have parents spending money on their own children, maximizing the value they are going to get. But still using other peoples money. They dont have a very strong incentive to economize. And we see this with higher ed vouchers, also known as pell grants. That the tuition and fees have far outpaced the inflation over that period. This is called the bennett hypothesis. So School Choice, you see here in this little cartoon theres the Public Education system which is one size fits all. And then School Choice, you get ava right of options of different schools. But just as a shirt is not the sum total of ones wardrobe, schooling is not the sum total of education. And a voucher can only be used at another school. And so thats where Milton Friedman said, how do we know how education will develop why is it sensible for a child to his or her school in one building. Why not spend math in one place and english or science somewhere else. Why cant they take classes at home with the availability of the internet. So Education Savings Accounts are Bank Accounts parents can use for a wide variety of expenses and save for future expenses. So this doesnt get us quite all the way. And you see the arrow doesnt go all the way into the green box. Because the government is still putting a portion of the funds they would have spent on that student in a Public School into the account. So the parents are still spending other peoples money to an extent. But now they are able to spend it in one place and able to save. With a voucher, if you get a 5,000 voucher, you can only spend it at a school and you must spend the entire amount. A school would be foolish to charge less than 5,000 f. Theyre getting a 5000 voucher, theyre leaving money on the table. Here, though theres downward pressure on price because there is no forward. They can save it and use it in multiple places. This allows for the unbundling of the education system. So what is it that is killing the newspaper stokes. Its not just the Huffington Post providing the news sources. There is google yahoo people are turning to. But things like match. Com and e harmony are taking a bite out of their section. Craigslist and ebay are taking a bite out of classified ads. Urban spoon, cars. Com, the automotive section the culture and food section. So you have all these different players coming in and unbundling this whole bundle of services that the newspapers were providing. Likewise, we have the same thing happening in education. So john butcher and i did a study a couple years ago on the Education Savings Account in arizona to see how are they using this program. 65 of the people in our survey were using the funds the esa funds, for Traditional Private School education. Although a good number of them were also buying things like Educational Therapy. And the first year these were all families with students with special needs. But they were also we just lost power on that. But they were using a whole bunch of services. Educational therapy. They were using can i get that back. Were going to need some of this. They were able to completely customize a la carte for their kids. Some were home schooling some online learning. But they were able to figure out what worked best for their kids. We now have a question how should we regulate this system. We have some people that believe, well, were going to let them have is choices. But essentially youre going to have to choose, you know, among you can choose any car you want as long as its yellow and follows these guidelines. Uber says we will give more freedom to the drivers and we are going to allow the customer to have the ultimate say. Accountability is going to rest with the customer. Likewise, rather than having a system of common core in standardized testing where everybody has to meet the same standard, we should be moving in the direction where there are actually different forms of accountability. There are competing standards. There are competing school models. Parents have the ability to choose among these different models and see what works best for them. Its a process of experimentation, evaluation, and evolution. So experimentation meaning that the schools are going to try different things. We dont know the one best way to provide an education. Assuming there is such a thing. So we should have a system that allows a great amount of innovation and diversity. And then we allow parents and the end user, parents and students, to evaluate what works best for them. And then the evolution comes when there is a market response to that. Where the schools see where the parents are going what theyre looking for. And if theyre successful, they expand their model f. Theyre not very successful they change what theyre doing based on what is working and what parents and students are looking for. So thats the direction we should be going. And thats what educationsavings accounts are all about. [ applause ]. They are working on a backup. No problem. Thank you. Thank you, lindsey. Thank you, jason. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is jonathan butcher. Im the education director at the gold Water Institute headquartered in phoenix, arizona. Its a pleasure to be here in washington with you today. The First Educational savings plans in arizona in 2011. It was right about that time that i got to know a couple of families. I got to know the family of cathy and jordan visser. Lynn mcmurray and her children. And i got to know a amanda and Michael Howard and their son nathan. I would like to introduce you to them for just a moment. So cathy and her husband christo moved from one part of the valley, as we call phoenix, to a different section, up to the northeast corner. And as they looked to move and find a new school for jordan, they saw they were going to have to negotiate with their School District to find the best services for jordan. Jordan has mild Cerebral Palsy and other learning delays. The school he was attending on the other side of phoenix, they had a preschool and Kindergarten Program that worked with his unique needs and were able to provide services to help jordan make it through each day. When they moved into the scottsdale area, the School District wasnt prepared and wasnt interested in providing the services that jordan needed every day to make it through the school day. So cathy and christo tried to negotiate and discuss with the district what jordan needed. But they could not come to an agreement on how to provide a great education for jordan. So fortunately for the vissers this was about the time arizona lawmakers enacted Education Savings Accounts. Cathy and christo applied for jordan. They used their account first to accepted jordan to a private school that had a focus on helping children with special needs like jordan. As jason was describing just a moment ago, many of the families in that first year used their educational save savings account for those needs. What happened next is an interesting part of the story. It was after that first year cathy and christo decided they wanted Something Else for jordan. They took him out of school and began paying for personal tutors, Educational Therapy that he was already receiving outside the classroom, as well as Additional Services in the home for jordan. So his school day looks like a combination of providers coming to the home to help him each day. And this was the idea. This separates Education Savings Account from the other options available today either in the traditional School System for outside the School System for children in arizona and nevada, tennessee, and mississippi and florida. And this is why we are so excited about the potential that the accounts have for families across the United States. There is a video of cathy and jordan going to an educational therapist and paying for that service by taking out their educational savings account card which looks much like a visa card that i know many of you have your n your wallets right now. And they swipe it across the square on the providers iphone. And thats how they pay for it. So with the complicated paying we have in the state and the federal government today, if our students anywhere could go and pay for a service unique to their needs with something as simple as that. Let me talk for a moment about amanda. Amanda and her husband michael tried early on as any parent would to help their son nathan learn,000 speak. So they worked with the preschool program. They worked with the Kindergarten Program. And they tried to help get nape than to come out of his shell. Eventually they took him to a specialist who found he was on the autism spectrum. So they found specialists outside the classroom to help nathan day to day. Still they were not able to get nathan to reach this important milestone that so many families look for to with a child. In the first year of the Education Savings Account program amanda and michael were some of the first to apply for their son. And it was after about six months of finding a school unique for children that were on the autism spectrum. And some Additional Services outside of the home for nathan that amanda was sitting on the couch reading a book to nathan when he pointed to a picture on the page and said whats that . And now it was amandas turn to be speechless. And these are the kinds of life changes that we see in families using the accounts that separates it from Everything Else that we have tried in the traditional system or otherwise to help every child have the chance at a great education. So finally, the last thing i would like to talk to you about is Lynn Mcmurray and her adopted children alicia, uriaih and valerie. They used savings account after arizonas law expanded beyond just children with special needs. And lynns children were eligible because they were adopted from the States Foster care system, which shows how the law has evolved over time. I will speak to that in just a moment. Lynn and her family used it to pay for Extracurricular Activities at the school as well as tutoring. So what is unique about lynn and her familys situation so lynn is . My left, the top left corner up there. That is lynn and alicia in that picture. And then you have cathy visser and jordan on the tire swing there. So what is unique about their situation is they are using the accounts for Public School services. So they stretch beyond even what is offered in the private tech sore. And so weve talked about okay. Thats fair. Anyway. Im not sure which. Which button is it . Theres no button. You have to tell it. So on the next slide we have the Howard Family which i talked about just a moment ago. So on the next slide, please. You can go to the next slide. As jason was talking about the amount of money that we spend on education across the United States is staggering. And he gave some numbers about how much we spend at large. We spend about 13,000 per student across the u. S. But taken on the big scale like jason was talking about just a moment ago, we were right around 600 billion in state local, and federal dollars around the u. S. Thats such a big number. Its hard to visualize what that means. So lets look at it like this. How high would a pile of 1 million a make in thousand dollar bills. If you were to stack them up. Seven inches. Now high would a pile of one billion dollars be in 1,000 bills. Higher than the national monument. It takes on a whole new meaning. Next slide, please. The graphs that were up just a moment ago thank you with the map of the United States the short stories that we dont compare well internationally. When you put the United States, were right down there about number 27. Compared to when you look at 15yearold math scores around the country. Next slide, please. If you look at children from highly educated families families where at least one of the parents has a college degree, that figure is right about the same. So what that means is we dont really have two systems where our highly educationed students are somehow over here and the rest of the nation is over here. We have a system when compared to other nations regardless of where on the scale you look right, the United States is still right there at about the bottom. Next slide please. So what is the future of education look like . Clearlieer here to talk about Education Savings Accounts. The state deposits public money in a private bank account that parents use to buy educational products and services for our children, as we have been describing. Next slide, please. As i was explaining educational savings account cards look like the visas you have in your wallet right now. There are five important issues when we explain how this works state to state. We talk about eligibility, who is eligible. How to apply for an Education Savings Account. What the award is the amount of each award. How the accounts can be used. And we talk about what the audit process is to make sure families are using the accounts for their intended purpose. Next slide please. I know you cant see whats on this chart. I have copies i can provide. And i will email them to lindsey. The point of the chart is to explain five laws across the states. Arizona in 2011. Florida in 2014. And this year three states, mississippi, tennessee, and nevada enacted educational savings account. What is important to note in the different areas i was listing for you, audits awards, are all slightly different from state to state. What that means is these states have taken an excellent idea about how to give every child the chance at a flexible education and adjusted it for the laws and regulations and the way they do opinions in their state. Is and they have taken the time to make it something that will fit for the way that they have done Education Funding and even School Choice programs in their state. Next slide please. In 2013, i did a focus group study of families using educational savings account in arizona. What we found were the two bars on the left that are taller than the others. When parents went to look for ways and ideas for how to use their empowerment scholarship account as its called in arizona, many of them went to yahoo message board created by parents already in the program. There was no government rule. There was no prodding from the state department that pushed parents a to create this online message board. It was something they created because they knew parent to parent, mom to mom in most cases that that is the best place to find ideas for how to use the new cards. As many families were talking amongst themselves how to use Education Savings Account as they are we are going to the state department of education. Next slide, please. The next thing we asked is how satisfied they were. This was early on in arizonas program. The satisfaction levels were very high both in this focus group and next slide please a larger survey of families using the accounts in arizona. What is critical about this chart right here is that the top bar was asking them how many had some level of satisfaction with their previous Public School before they moved to an Education Savings Account. Then we asked the same families how satisfied they were with app Education Savings Account after they had left the traditional School System. And you find that there was unequivocably some level of satisfaction without exception there among families, when they talked about Education Savings Accounts. Even though in the prior question who said they were satisfied with their Public School. Which for a new program is a very good sign. Next slide, please. So what comes next . Now that we have five states using Education Savings Accounts, two of them now have at least one year of implementing these accounts among thousands of families. The next thing comes how are state governments going to regulate the it . What are the rules going to be and how are they going to intervene . What i would urge state is lawmakers to do is go to australia just briefly. The reason is years and years ago, decades ago, the government of australia thought it would be a good idea to introduce king toads because they eight beatles. They rid of the beetles and now they have a problem with cane toads. Oddly enough a couple months ago there was a news report that came out and said they found a humane way to kill cane toads, catching them, putting them in your freezer and freeze them. Probably the same thing should be done with the heavy hand of rules and regulations that are going to be applied to Education Savings Accounts. We should put them on ice. Both arizona and florida lawmakers have written guide books for families and vendors who are active in the Education Savings Account programs in those states about the rules that work for families and keeping track of how they spend their money, tracking to make sure they follow the guidelines and the law. Same thing with the vendors, right. So we have states that have begun implementing these cards and awarding them to families. Those are the places we should be looking to guide us as we make new rules and regulations. In fact, nevada just in the past couple of months just in the past six weeks, they have begun Holding Public hearings about what rules and regulations they are going to implement. And nevadas laws is significant among all the laws because nevadas law is the only one that is available to every Public School student in the state. So is its going to be critical that they do in fact get the rules and regulations right for their program so as to provide great opportunities for all kids in that state. The last thing i would like to leave you with is also a coat from Milton Friedman. And from his book capitalism and freedom. I know many of those in this odd yes or no sure have read. Its so important and is shaping the way we have thought about not just the free market but also about education. He said our problem today, and hes talking about education e. Our problem today is not to enforce conformity. Sit rather we are threatened with an excess of conformity. Our problem is to foster diversity. And the alternative would do this and the alternative he is talk building is School Choice. Would do this far more effectively than a nationalized School System. That is what Education Savings Accounts bring to the United States. Now we can talk about education. What is more a learning experience as unique as the children that is using their account. Thank you. [ applause ]. In the opening scene of the avengers, the villain lokey arrives on earth and he declares that he has come with glad tidings of a world made free. To which shields director nick asks free from what . Lokeys oneword response, freedom. The opponents of educational choice are trying to keep parents free from freedom. And unfortunately the opponents of educational choice programs have been at this for years. We opened our doors in 1991. And since then there hasnt been a single day that we havent been in court someplace in this country defending an educational choice program. And today im going to give you a little bit of a preview of what is our most likely next School Choice case. Defending the program just passed in nevada. So we are expecting the usual suspects to bring a constitutional challenge to nevadas educational Savings Account Program in state court. Who are the usual suspects . Well, the individuals making the most statements are the local aclu, the national aclu, the americans united for separation of church and state, and of course the teachers unions. So some combination of these groups are likely to join together to file the litigation challenging nevadas esa program. They will do so in state court not federal court. Why . Because in 2002 the u. S. Supreme Court Essentially took away all of the federal constitutional claims from those who oppose educational choice programs. And zelman v. Simmons, United States Supreme Court, said a program that is neutral with regard to religion in which the government does nothing to favor one religiousn over another and decides which school to choose in the hands of parents so parents exercise a genuine private school will pass constitutional muster. So there is no federal constitutional claim we expect to see challenging nevadas program. However, we expect to see them invoke two claims. One of the claims i believe is a serious claim. The other claim i believe is frivolous. So im going to spend a little bit of time talking about the serious constitutional claim first. And then well wrap up with the frivolous constitutional claim. What is the serious constitutional claim . Well nevada is a state that has in its constitution what is called a blain amendments. We find them in 37 states. What is a blain amendment . They are typically phrased to Say Something like there should be no state appropriations in aid of or for the benefit of sectarian schools or sectarian institutions. Ill read you nevadas blain amendment here. It says no public funds of any kind or character whatever state county or municipal, shall used for sectarian purpose. Thats nevada constitution article 11 section 10. Thats the provision we expect to be invoked to challenge nevadas esa program. So what does the term come from . It is named after a former maine u. S. House of representative, speaker of the house and United States senator james g. Blain. Mr. Blain served in the congress in the late 1800s at a time when we saw a huge influx of immigrants. Many of these immigrants were catholic. These individuals is were not warmly received by the protestant majority. We saw in state after state numerous clashes between the protestant majority and new immigrants, over primarily, though not exclusively, the common School System. You see the Common Schools of that are what we would refer to as Public Schools. Were not always the thoroughly secular schools were familiar with. In the late 1800s, they were primarily protestant in orientation. In fact, one of the goals of the early School System was to take children of catholic immigrants and essentially protestantize them or americanize them. There was real concern that somehow the catholics would take their direction from rome and upset our wonderful democratic republic. And so when our new found immigrants started enrolling their kids in Common Schools, they found a very hostile environment for their children. What they did is started agitating for their own system of publicly funded catholic education. If the protestants have their School System, why dont we have our School System as well. There was a tremendous backlash. A handful of states adopted blain amendments prohibiting funding of sectarian schools. And as the u. S. Supreme court itself has recognized, that word sectarian was code for catholic. It was an open secret. Everybody knew exactly what they meant. And so mr. Blain who wanted to ride this wave of anticatholic bigotry into the white house introduced an amendment to the u. S. Constitution, which would have prohibited funding for sectarian schools. In 1876, the provision passed the United States house of representatives with the required twothirds majority to send it to states for ratification. However, in 1877 the amendment failed in the u. S. Senate. However, it did garner a majority vote, just not the requisite twothirds to send it to the states. But because there was still a majority of senators and congressmen in the u. S. Congress they were able to force or require new states entering the unit to include in their state institutions blain amendments dripping with anticatholic animus. That is interesting. Because the history there is slightly different. They voluntarily chose to amend their state constitution in 1877, the same year that the blain amendment failed at the congressional level, u. S. Congressional level. And the reason they did so was because the state assembly had been making appropriations to a catholic orphanage. There was a large Mining Operation in nevada. And unfortunately it was a very dangerous occupation. It still is. Even more so back in the late 1800s. And there were many orphans in the state. And the Catholic Church operated orphanages to take care of them. And the state had made a number of appropriations over the years to help control those costs. This was a huge source of controversy, primarily because the orphanages were themselves catholic. So an assemblyman named boxford introduced legislation that would ultimately became article 11, section 10 which i read to you a moment ago. And whats interesting is as the amendment was coming up for a vote the nevada daily tribune praised assembly man boxman and and said this. This is a move in the right direction and will trust meet with the hardy approval of every citizen of nevada for this is a steppingstone to the final breaking up of a power that has long cursed the world. And it is obtaining too much of a foot hold in these United States. So you can see that nevadas blain amendment is also dripping with the same anticatholic as the blain amendment. So what does this mean for the challenge . It means, number one, we know exactly what the nevada blain amendment was intended to do. It was invented to prevent funding state institutions directly. It has nothing to do about programs who provide parents with benefits in a completely religiously neutral manner in which the state does not put its thumb on the scale in an effort to coerce parents to choose one option over another. In fact, it gives them free choice to choose the same schools they could choose without Financial Assistance to satisfy their childrens compulsary education requirement. So we dont think the blain amendment itself, based on its historical purpose applies at all to this program. Moreover if you just look at the plain language of the provision and ignore its ugly history, the provision itself is designed to constrain the actions of government officials not private citizens as to where they use their own praoeufplt benefit private benefits. Medicaid is both federal and state dollars. But individuals are permitted to use those benefits at religious hospital, religious health care providers. Wife . Because the government itself is not making the decision as to whether to use those benefits. The government makes these appropriations for the purpose of providing health care. And they allow the recipient to obtain the health care wherever they would like. The esa serves the same purpose. The purpose underlying the nevada esa and all the es a as adopted recently around the country is to improve education, to give parents control over their childrens education. To allow parents to uniquely tailor their childs Educational Program to meet that childs unique educational needs. From the state as perspective, the only purpose that it served is education. No sectarian purpose is served. In fact, i think if you ask the parents their perspective on this, their perspective would also be that they are using these funds to obtain an education regardless whether they choose a Religious School or nonReligious School. If you ask any parent why they are using a Religious School they would say they want their child to get a better education. So i think we will be able to successfully defend the program from the attack under the states blain amendment as we have in other states. So what is the frivolous challenge . Well shortly after we won our case in the u. S. Supreme court, the nea, National Education associations chief lawyer, was debating the issue of School Choice in new york. And he said weve lost the federal constitutional issues. We will now abandon the federal establishment laws. And we will turn to state constitutions. And we will grab on to any provision we can there from lofty principles such as church and state to mickey mouse. Procedural issues. These are his words. Robert shannon. Now retired lawyer from the nea. He said we will pick and choose lofty principles and mickey mouse procedural tactics. Well the other issue is you didnt expect that, did you . The other issue that our opponents have been talk building quite publicly is the provision of the constitution that requires the state to establish and maintain a Public School system. That provision says this. The legislature shall provide for a uniform system of Common Schools. And then goes on to say it shall be open six months a year and open to all students in the state. Opponents often grasp on to these union formity clauses and make an argument that these clauses require the legislature to fund education, exclusively through the Public School system. The argument changes the meaning from one of uniformity to one of exclusivity. Now, theres only been one state that accepted this argument. That was florida in 2004. Since that time, every corp. To consider it rejected it and has found these provisions establish a floor not a ceiling. A floor upon which state legislativers are free to build other Educational Options for their students. And i think we will be able to easily defend this program or defend the nevadas esa program from this constitutional claim in large part because one of the the interpreting state constitution is to interpret the provisions of the constitution together so they dont conflict. And nevadas education article actually begins with this statement. It says, the legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of interlekt youll literary scientific, mining agriculture and moral improvements. When read in conjunction of a system of Public Schools, i believe its very clear that Public School system is the minimum requirement put on the Nevada Legislature and theyre free to establish other options such as Charter Schools magnet schools and the educational Savings Account Program to provide their citizens with the most robust Educational Options for their kids. Why is all of this important . Jonathan told Great Stories and im going to conclude with a story myself. Because School Choice is impacting real people. I want to talk about a client from arizona whose name is austin fox. Austin has a disability. He was in a Public School where he had a 2. 0 gpa. The reason he was struggling as his mom described it was that he experiences sensory overload in a large environment. For you sitting here this morning, its relatively quiet in here. But for every tapping of a pencil every rustle of a seat it would be like vegas casino for austin. They just couldnt provide him the quiet learning environment he needed. He was desperate to get out of school. He couldnt stand being there. They really did try hard. They did try to accommodate austin. They just couldnt based on the way the school is set up. He was about to drop out when the esa program was enacted. His mom begged him to give a shot. They found a small private school that actually functioned and operated very similar to a home school environment. Instead of sitting in a class, they sat on their own and had a master teach wrer they could master each individual subject and as soon as they mastered the subject, they could progress. Austin spent two years at this school. He started as a junior. He went from a 2. 0 gpa to a 4. 0 gpa. And he scored in the 98 on the sats and he got a full ride scholarship to asus polytechnic campus. Pretty cool. Thats really incredible. So with that, i turn it over to lindsey. Thank you. We have ten minutes for q a. Yes, sir in the back . There is a general question. The use of educational savings accounts are interesting. Instead of a School Voucher parents get to choose various aspects of their kids education. But my question is regarding the university of michigan. University of administrations are based on High School Transcripts and standardized test scores. If theyre experiencing a diversity of aspects getting from different sources, how do you think university of missions will change in the long run . I think for students using Education Savings Account to attend a private school theyll have a private School Transcript just like any other private School Student would. If theyre using it to home school, all states have home school laws that have within them ways to get a high School Transcript. So nothing change theres either. I think if a child is spending time buying individual online classes or you know paying for personal constitutors to come to the home, that would qualify probably under the home school laws so they would go through the same procedures. I dont think there was enough in the saving account that woint fear with the way students complete high school and prepare for college. How will that change how colleges handle their own admissions . I think that is a larger question. Lindsey knows more about Higher Education than i do. I think Education Savings Accounts moves closer to is finishing school based on proficiency and not just based on how much time you spent in a seat. Arizona has a program called the grand canyon diploma which allows students to test out of various requirements after even as early as ninth or tenth grade. And so i think arizona at least, i think there are other states doing something similar, theyre moving in this direction right . Theyre beginning to see that seat time requirements are a thing of the past. I think both Education Savings Accounts and on line education are moving towards that. This allows parents to basically categorize all the different places their child is receiving an education. If theyre obtaining classes from a well known school it sort of rank thats higher than as you suggest on your own. I havent investigated it tremendously. I dont have the name unfortunately of the app. But i expect the things will develop over time so that students who are getting the sort of education will be able to collect all that data in one place. Theyll be age to demonstrate the mastery of specialties. I think were starting to see universities reconfigure how they think about, admit students as well. And you think about just the fact that in general were starting to embrace competency based learning models a little more. You havent had a chance to read south hans pool house, hes a great example of how folks are starting to think about learning and education and how we measure that. Youre probably familiar with that great line in the book where he says right now the learning that occurs that a child whatever a child learns in school is variable when it should be fixed. And to competency based, we flip that model to make sure that learning is fixed and the time it takes to get there is what is variable. So as soon as youre ready to move on, can you move on. If you need more time, take more time. So were seeing that at the university level. I think University Administrators need to recognize that theyre doing it and that it also applies to k12. Yes maam . Mr. Keller, can you explain why the groups like aclu and the teachers unions are opposing this in nevada . I try never to presume motive that is actually a lesson i learned from the goldWater Institute. So, you know, better for them to address why theyre opposing it. But again, theyve been opposing the programs for over 20 years. Theyre always leading the charges. The challenge they place to the first esa program in arizona, they called it a voucher. They said this is still a voucher. Were going rule it was found unconstitutional. The court didnt. They said, no, this is fundamentally different than a voucher. So that was a significant finding. Along with the other states that passed the law. Please tell me that arizona legislatures are listening to so many pleased constituents about these educational savings accounts that they have had little light bulb go off in their head and say how about Health Saving accounts . They have originally the program was only for students with special needs. They have since then expanded it to a number of different categories. Foster children children living on nativeamerican reservations children attending low performing Public Schools. So they are listening to the constituents. And jonathan mentioned the Student Satisfaction survey. One thing that is really important about that is we also broke down the questions on satisfaction by income. And the families that were the least well off financially earning 27,000 a year or less were the least satisfied with their previous Public School experience. Marne half of them distressed dissatisfaction. Just over one in five were satisfied. They were the most satisfied with the Education Savings Account program. 89 said that they were very satisfied. So the low income families have the most to gain. And i think that a lot of politicians are recognizing it. It works for everybody. And especially those would are least well off now. What kind of safeguards are being used to protect the interest of young people that dont have responsible adults to advocate for them . In terms of how they use their cards you mean . Tha