[ applause ] good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am alexi mccammond, opinion editor with the washington post. I am so happy to be joined today by becky and randi for a wide ranging as wide ranging as we can fit in 25 minutes, conversation about education. Not necessarily where we have been. I do not want to rehash the past. I think we all know how the pandemic and partisanship have changed the state of education, both tangibly and as a political issue. I want to focus on the future and the solutions, what is working and not and not all the scary things. That said, if you listen to republicans, i am sitting with two of the most dangerous women in the country right now. There is this idea that a very select few, including both of you, are making all the decisions and pulling the strings about what is happening with education in america. Polls show that americans are supportive of teachers and trust them but they are divided on who should be primarily responsible for deciding what is taught in schools. I would love to know how you both think about the Decision Making room, in theory, is it better to have more and more people involved or should we keep it to teachers, School Officials and the parents out . A first of all, it is wonderful to be in this historic theater. I feel like there should be a jazz set coming on. Let me begin by saying this you know, i taught middle level learners the wonders of science for 31 years. As a teacher, i understood the importance of ensuring that i had my parents as partners and i knew and understood my community. That the engagement of them, knowing how to mind the assets of that community so that when i did my job, as a teacher, it was from a place that i was inviting really, not just inviting but, honestly, demanding, the shared responsibility that is required to educate our students so that when we say every student, we actually mean every student. It takes all of us together the reality of what is happening right now is that far extremists , we will call them, are trying to divide us in ways that are centered on the culture wars. And all of the attempts to diminish and destroy Public Education as a foundation of our democracy. Those of you im pretty sure in this room understand it is the foundation of that democracy, the cornerstone. It is an institution that we know that for those who want to destroy or diminish our democracy, that is where they go. They go to Public Education. We know an and educated citizenry is what they want because they do not know what critical favors. They do not want us to work on Building Leaders of society. When you asked the questions, should everyone be involved, as an educator, that is always been true. That has always been true. As a professional, i know that it it is my job, not only to learn my craft with both the science and art of teaching, but i understand that it is my responsibility as a professional continue to do that and that is part of the challenge that we are seeing right now. The lack of respect of educators as the professionals that they are. As part of my training, i understood the Important Role that parents and the community play, collectively, in educating our students. Those are false narratives that have been propagated and spread around news in a way that it does not reflect the reality of teachers, parents and communities around this country. When we talk about how we are changing that, both randi and i will talk about the power of community schools, where we are collectively the school is the hub and we are collectively sharing that responsibility for educating our students. You mentioned there is a lack of respect for teachers among some parents. Randi, how do you think about including everyone when that is the reality . First off, i concur with everything becky has said it. But we need parents to be involved, period. What happens in schooling is, you know, no one has the power that they wish they had in schooling. Parents need to be much more involved in the i think parents have to be involved in curriculum decisions and parents need to be involved in schooling teachers need to have more of a voice. I often think about how what happens you say this a lot, becky that collaborative work that has to happen. We are constantly put into different tribes that are poised as adversarial to each other. One of the first things we did at the uft when i became president of the Teachers Union in new york city last century, 1998, we actually started parent coordinators in each of our boroughs. To create the practice of bringing people together and people talking to each other. Community schools are about that practice of people talking to each other and working with each other and it is really too easy to try to have people pit against each other. Even with all of that, what happens is, overwhelmingly, parents do not want their kids to be teachers. Parents love their teachers their kids teachers. If you listen to parents and teachers and you take hold of them separately, they are pretty consistent. The key is to get to the solutions that both parents and Teachers Want and to try and get through the noise that we see in the division. There is certainly a vocal minority when it comes to education, the moms for liberty groups and others are talk about vertical race theory, limiting discussions around gender and orientation. I know that you have done focus groups with parents and on parents alike. You were referencing some polling. I want to just say, the one thing about this issue. It is intentional. Meaning there is lots of issues that everybody has an school is the great mediator of all of this. Becky was an eighth grade teacher. I was 11 and 12th grade social studies teacher in brooklyn. What has happened, look at what Christopher Rufo said. He is one of the architects of toxic find the term critical race theory. What he said a couple years ago if you do not remove or anything else i say remember this he said, the way you get to universal choice, meaning vouchers, is that you grade universal Public School distressed. Sometimes, in a different part of that lecture, he said you have to be ruthless and brutal. I think what has happened is that just threw spaghetti on the wall and it is what is stuck . Mass versus no mass. Vaccine versus no vaccines. Critical race theory, which no one knew what it meant, book bans and all of this other stuff. And that became the divide, divide, divide. It raises the issue that there is a lot of things that people are fearful about. We have to get to the underlying fear but they have been intentional about trying to create the divides that becky and my members, for so many years, are really trying to figure out how to help children learn. I would love if you could tell us more about what you have learned from the focus groups with parents, and on parents alike, but especially parents. What do they want from what their kids are learning in classrooms, from teachers, from their education experience . I am the mother of two. And the grandmother of two. If i had known what it was to be a grandmother, i would have done that first grade [ laughter ] it is very personal for me. Like it is with so many others. You know, i am also a science teacher. I want to have evidence. As we reached out and did Research Among a really broad swath of parents but we broke it down to understand what people thought and their opinions on things, based on suburban and urban, based on latino and African American and based on income groups as well. So we could get a deeper dive. I will tell you, parents, no matter how you say it, they want the same thing. They want safe, just, equitable schools that are well resourced and actually have a teacher who is certified in Science Teaching science. That if the student has special needs, they have a teacher that has a degree in special education. They want to make sure, right now, you have covered this a lot. You want to make sure the Mental Health needs of their students are being met. They want more counselors and more psychiatrist and psychologist that are directly that are based in the schools , schoolbased. They want to make sure that their students have all of the opportunities, whether they are going on to college or whether they want to go with other things. They want to make sure that the joy of learning is in their classroom and that they it is u. Thats what they want, and i will tell you, we were able to, actually, get people, who cared about kids and get them in schools, and cared about communities in positions where they were making decisions because we were able to talk about what the parents cared about that directly ties to supporting your Public Schools, not diverging dollars into vouchers and voucher schemes. By any other name, its a voucher. Privatizing schools, privatizing the support staffing in the schools. Parents dont want any of that. They want joyous places for their students to learn. They want the complete, true, honest history of this country. They want their kids to feel included. They want their kids to see themselves, and a chance to learn about and see others. It was consistent across the board. Thats what they want, what every parent wants for their kids. How do we make all of this happened . I would love to know. I wish we were in charge. You have one idea that comes to mind, since the pandemic, something to address the Mental Health aspects that should be replicated or could be replicated. So, that is why actually, some of you probably got this little card. What i have learned over these years is that since there is so much distressed, you have to be really specific and intentional. Even though you are going to get there, what we have tried to do off of all of the things that becky just said is that we are thinking about and pursuing three specific strategies right now that we believe will help schools become places where parents want to send their kids, Educators Want to work, and kids thrive. We have given out 9 million books of diverse titles over the last few years, and by 2024, we want to get to 10 million, so you can see the joy in peoples faces, on kids faces and family spaces, when they go to one of these book tours, but its not just that. Its also helping teachers figure out what they should be teaching in the science of reading. All of these teachers get all sorts of curriculum all the time, and they dont sometimes know what to do, so we have invested in something called reading universe to make sure teachers, at 11 00 at night, can figure out how to help a dyslexic kid the next day. Number two, the wraparound services, how to deal with loneliness. Also, how to fight the social media companies, who are fixated on addicting our kids to devices. Number three, and this is the one that im most excited about, how do we make that joyful environment for kids in schools . How do we make kids want to be in school . This is why we are on this kick for experiential learning and handson learning, of which Tech Education is one of the major ways we have seen it. How do we make sure kids have that kind of experience at school . So that they enjoy it and they love it and they want to be there and they work with each other and they apply knowledge . How do we create that kind of experience for every single child . And so, what we have done this year is, between two sets of grants, we have given out to 100 locals, with parent participation and others, grants to try to do this work and to lift this workup, so these solutions, academically, socially, emotionally, and literacy, to really address this. Im sorry, how many states did you say . We have 100 locals in about 25 states. And, because we are trying there are places that do becky and i go to great places. There is a Healthcare Career tech program on a hospital campus. Its the first of its kind in the nation. Its amazing. Why can we do that other places . We see great places. How come we cannot cede and sustain at scale . Our intentionality here is to try to take these solutions and seed, and sustain at scale. Thats why we have given out about 2 million to these 100 places to try to cede this work. I would like to talk more about career Tech Education. It, certainly, was not available when i was going to Public Education, but what does that look like . Who is it available for . How young do you offer Something Like that . This is something that randi said earlier. Its like the poster child for experiential learning. Handson. We, of course, have certified teachers in schools, but we intentionally invite in those partners, and then we dont just do that. We actually partner with them to either place students on the premises while they are not in school, which is amazing. They have to start that journey while they are in high school, and then, we get the students who have gone through to come back and help the other students. The other thing the best career Technical Education programs do not attract the children, because we have a lot of students that go into career technical high schools and schools, where they decide they want to go to college, and so they offer all of those college prep courses, and they make that decision, that they have that opportunity to do that as well. Spoiler alert. I was in ap government teacher in a tech ed school in brooklyn. And, that should debunk every myth. 94 of kids in career tech ed graduate from high school on time, and 70 go to college. That is compared to if you look at high school graduates, around, just writ large, 60 of them dont go to college. What if we created these kinds of opportunities . Where kids could have what becky just said. Its not just the trades. Its advanced manufacturing. Its healthcare. Its culinary. Its cybersecurity. Its transportation, and lots of kids go to college regardless. We are just creating opportunities for kids if we start in high school and do this work. And, it is a whole of government approach, but lets be real. When i was teaching, we had to fight like hell to keep our program at claiborne high school. We had to fight to keep it. We are going to have to rebuild them, and we have to rebuild them so that kids have lots of choices, but im going to say one more thing, which is in the ai world, we have to do application of knowledge and handson learning is a way of doing that. Relational learning. What career tech ed does is it gives kids the practical skills that they need for life, just like science did. You, as an eighth grade science teacher, thats what lab work does. Thats why we should be giving these opportunities to all kids. Thank you for that. Im so glad you brought up ai, because i think there is obviously a huge thing now about whether its in schools, whether students will stop writing their papers, and i would love to know examples you have seen with ai, and how it can help children, not just improve academically, but with the Mental Health, the social Emotional Intelligence that we know ai can help with too. Im often in conversations where people are saying, oh, ai is scary. You know, it is a little scary, but the reality is, its just like the internet and television and computers and all of that, but technology is only growing exponentially now, of course. For us, and randi and i are working together on this, not only through our international union, education international, so countries are coming together and sharing knowledge and information. Some are ahead of us, some are not, so we are sharing that as well, and both of us are putting together groups to do a deeper dive to make sure that we are centering the voice of educators, and thats what i will start with. When we are making decisions about the role of ai in schools, educators should be at the center of that conversation, which is true of everything. The other thing is that we want to make sure that as a union we play a role in a large role in the professional development. As this technology evolves, that we are making sure that students are prepared for it, and they are teaching each other. As i visit schools around the country, i hear them talking excitedly about how they are using ai in the classrooms, and its really pretty cool, what they are doing with it. What they shared with me, and i share this too. One, of course, which is always a concern is equity. Equity and access, the algorithms being used, and who is developing them, people of color, are they prominently behind that technology . As well as access. We always know the inequities that dont allow that access, and lastly, of course, privacy. Thats a huge issue for our kids, and we want to make sure we are addressing that, but we want to be leaving in making sure that this technology, which is here right now and will grow into the future, that educators are the ones that are driving what happens in our classrooms. We could talk about ai forever. We are running out of time, but i would love to know from both of you, if folks want to get involved, should they be running for school boards, attending meetings . What is the best way for people here to get involved in recovery efforts, and the innovations that we are seeing happening every day . The most important way is, 90 of kids in america still go to Public Schools. Public schools, whether you have kids or whether you are grandma like we are and have grandkids, there is a center of a community, and theres a center of democracy. Ways that are centered in Public Schools in helping children are the best ways to get involved. Schoolboard, yes, but all sorts of other ways of just getting involved at a local level. We need you. Lift up your voice. Lift up educators. Thank them. Make sure that you know they are appreciated. We are not just talking about respect for them, we are talking about professional pay. We dont have a shortage of educators in this country, we have a shortage of educational respect in this country. And, there are ways that you can be involved directly with the work that we are doing. We put together a Collaborative Group across the country that is working together the way i described it on accelerated learning, because we know that students have academic, social and emotional gaps, and we are using the science of learning, that talks very clearly about learning in a way where you have to connect, and if you understand that, thats how you accelerated. You take our babies from where they are, and make sure they are learning on grade level, so they arent falling further behind, and we put teams in place across the country, and those teams would include teachers, support staff, and administrators, superintendents, parents, community members, and guess what . The students, themselves, to accelerate their learning. Thank you all for being here. Cspan has provided complete coverage to the halls of congress, to the house and senate floors, party briefings, and committee meetings. 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