Transcripts For CSPAN3 Brown V. Board Of Education Opportunity And Integration 20170602

Until it gets into our heads. Thank you. So with that, we will wrap up the panel. And thank you to all of our panelists for being here today. [ applause ] so well go ahead and start our next panel. So that we can keep on time. Be as efficient as we can. Welcome to the second panel of the day. This panel is entitled where are we now. A conversation on Educational Opportunity and integration. Our panelest today will be gerard robinson. He has been in the education commissioner of florida. The virginia secretary of education. So gerard has a long history in education. Dr. Greg fors ter is the director of Trinity International university. He is a senior fellow at ed choice and is at the Freedman Foundation for educational choice. And he received his ph. D. With distinction at yale university. Mashea ashton is, just recently given its approval to open up a charter in 2018 in washington, d. C. She served as the ceo of the Network Charter school fund. The Senior Adviser for Charter School policy and director at Charter Schools. And she started as a special ed teacher as well. So the goal of this panel is simple. The stories you heard in the last panel and the discussions you heard in the last panel, we want to discuss and review the data as it related to education, Educational Opportunity and integration since the brown v. Board decision. What are the issues we have to deal with. So our panel will start off like this, gerard will give ten minutes of comments greg will give ten minutes and mashea will respond and give additional comments. And then you the audience will fire good questions. First of all, let me thangt senator for advancing opportunity for extending for me an opportunity to talk about a subject that i think is vitally important. Advancing opportunity, lets put this in context, 63 years ago brown v. Board of education was decided by the supreme court. Now robert mentioned that i was secretary of education in virginia and commissioner in florida. 50 years ago it would have been impossible for me as blake man to serve as a state leader to serve in those states. 50 years ago a number of our students were performing well in what they called segregated schools. They learned, many of them came out literate and went to college. Fast forward today, we have more students African American and otherwise who are graduating from high school. Many going to college. And we have made tremendous advancement. One of the things that i believe chokes an honest conversation about progress is the overreliance on the term segregation. And here is why i say. That we say today that we have segregated schools. I say that what we have are racially identifiable skoolgs. Now i am under no pretense that government policy at the federal level or local levels with the redrawing of lines and zip codes to say they are going to live. We are saying that 63 years worth of progress never happened and that is simply untrue. We have racially identifiable schools that have a number of challenges filled with poverty. We know too many poor people in cities today who are doing well. We know people who have challenges. When we are talking about what brown had a chance to do, it shifted how in the types of schools we could attend. We have got a number of another thing about brown is the advancement of cell phones. We didnt have that a couple of years ago. So a different conversation. But what we have to do are racially identifiable skoolchoo that have a host of challenges and successes. Last year we had two members of Congress Michigan and from Virginia Commission to study. It was released may 2016 and identified that we had a number of schools, nearly threefourths of schools that are either predominantly African American or student of color. Predominantly low one of the things the report didnt spend a lot of time on is the majority for sake of argument, the majority minority schools that won blue ribbons or gold medals because of their academic achievement. They are high schools that are low income, that are doing well academically. What we need to do is to look at the schools that exist. What are they doing differently . Is it resource, educators, Family Involvement . Is it curriculum, or expectations. All of the things we knew made sense but empirically we know it makes sense across the board. To say we have schools that are segregated and are not doing well is simply not true. That is not to let the government off the bowl to be responsible for investing the resources. It is just not revenue, but questions about expenses. Where is the money going. In washington, d. C. You hear a number of numbers. I had a chance to work for d. C. Public schools in the lane 19 nineties and we spent a lot of money. And we did not crack 50 High School Graduation rate. It wasnt because of money. About there were other challenges. Also a rise to special education. If there is something we know more about today 63 years later about brown are the number of special education students we have and special needs students. We had different names for them back in 1954. Not always kind names. We have got to find ways to work. As i close, 63 years from brown, we dont have segregated schools, we have racially identifiable schools. Number two, we have majority minority poor schools that are showing success. Third, we have School Systems run by African Americans, hispanics, asians, we are now in the position of power in ways that we were color code wise back in 1954. But today we manage multibillion dollar school budgets. And we have people in positions of power. I am excited having this conversation because 63 years ago many of you in this room including some of the poor whites would not have been in this room if not for brown v. Education. I am proud to be a part of the conversation. Thank you. I have been asked to speak on what the Research Shows on School Choice. And i am sure you have all heard the old joke about the economist who fell down the well and people run over and say are you all right . Wait there. I will get you a rope. I dont need a rope. Just assume i have a ladder. One of the challenges in my field have said that a lot of studies that are published purported at league at School Choice dont look at data or measurements that have happened in the real world. Instead they take the authors assumptions of what they think should happen. And build a mathematical model and present that as day tachl i shift through the research. And we publish a regularly updated review of the research on School Choice and one of the things that we track and regularly publish updates on is the research on School Choice and ethnic segregation. There have been ten empirical studies to date. And that actually measure what is happening in the programs and that are measuring segregation rather than measuring various other things that are related but not quite the same thing. Of those ten studies, nine studies have a positive finding that is School Choice has some sort of beneficial effect related to ethnic segregation and the tenth study finds it makes to visible difference. What they do is take a snapshot of the ethnic composition of the Public Schools where students are eligible for School Choice and the ethnic composition of the private schools that are participating in the program. And what they ask is which is more segregated, the Public Schools where students are able to leave or the private schools. The private schools are less segregated. Now the other three studies are able to track individual students as they move from school to school. So instead of looking at the School System, we are actually following individual students. And that is a better method. We dont often get to do that, we just dont have the data. So one study like that in milwaukee and one in louisiana. The study . Milwaukee found no visible difference. The study didnt get going until 15 years after the program started. So possible the program had some effect and then reached an equilibrium. Another explanation is that milwaukee is just a really segregated city. And the students may be moving from overwhelming black Public Schools to overwhelming black private schools. The transfers of students are not increasing segregation. The two studies in louisiana have found that the program improves ethnic integration. One of the studies found that there is a small larger decrease in segregation in the Public Schools that the students are transferring out of. So on net, it was a fairly dramatic reduction of segregation as a result of the program. The other study found no change. And large positive effect in Public Schools. Now these results are counter intuitive to many people. Our culture has conditioned us to think that private schools are much more ethnically segregated than Public Schools. Not only the data in School Choice programs but the data doesnt bear that out. Often described as something that will increase segregation. So counter intuitive. So it is important to understand the context for why we find the numbers we find. And i think the main reason is because in the public system, students are assigned what schools they are going to go to based on where they live. And american neighborhoods are seg grated. And there is actually a feedback where those feed off of that. One time my wife and i moved to another city and we found our realtor filtering the housing results. And boy, was he terrified when he realized he was caught because that is very, very illegal. But i dont think that his motivation was invidious discrimination. I dont think he is concerned about the ethnic purity of the neighborhoods in that city. I think he is motivated to make the quickest sale he can and he wants to show us as few houses we are not going to be interested and he just made assumptions. As soon as we took the filter out, we found a Beautiful House that met our needs and it was at the price we wanted and we bought it and lived there for several years. We were much better off. So sometimes my friends on the right will say, they poo poo the idea that there is still discrimination in the housing market, say let me tell you a story. Now i know my personal experience is not a valid empirical study. So we can debate how wide spread this is. So i think that as long as people are sent to schools based on where they live, it is going to be extremely difficult to overcoming ethnic segregation in schools. Private School Choice was not designed for the purpose of reducing segregation. It was designed for various other purposes. But because it disconnected where you live from where you go to school, it does seem to have the effect of reducing ethnic segregation in schools and that is one reason i support it. One reason i support School Choice is because it should be a goal to reduce racially identifiable schools. I think the United States particularly without being jingoistic or nationalistic, we are on the verge where communities are not ethnically exclusive and that is historically new. Not something you find as you look back in history. I am excited about the prospects of School Choice to help position us where communities are not ethnically bounded. I think that is a great thing for School Choice to be doing. Thank you very much. Well, i have got to respond to that. So let me start by first saying thank you for inviting me to this wonderful conversation. As i was thinking about this panel, i just reflected on my own personal trajectory and how i even got there. I have an identical twin sister. We grew up in new jersey, and we both failed kindergarten. But i share that story because we were in new jersey which is a majority of white community. My parents were just had to move out of philadelphia and they wanted a Better School option for us. And when we failed kindergarten, my mother took us out of Public School and into private school and honestly, i think that has made all the difference for us and that is why i am a huge, huge proponent for parental choice. How do you best meet the needs of each individual child. And so fast forward. As i heard gerard talk a little bit, as was previously mentioned, i was a ceo of the newark Charter School fund where i am a new jersey girl born and raised and was excited to be back in newark. And as i moved back to washington, d. C. Where my husband is a sixth generation washingtonian. Believing that all politics are local. The data or the narrative, it really just comes down to what is happening locally. And about two years ago, i went out to the Silicon Valley with all the tech entrepreneurs, they do think differently out there. And the ceo of thumb tack said i hear this debate kb k12, college, but this is the reality, if we are not preparing our students for their academic life, their Economic Life and their life to be citizen in this global world then we are not doing our job. So i think about the purpose of brown v. Education, where we are now, my mission is to make sure that every single child can live a wellrounded life and when i hear data around, you know, majority minority communities, Newark Community is 100 eligible for reduced lunch. I am opening a school which is 100 African American and 100 eligible for free lunch. So if more affluent white parents want to come, great. I dont think they are coming until the school and the neighborhoods are safe and providing high education. It is majority minority, is it segregated. My perspective is that throws false debates. We shouldnt be choosing between charter or district. Every parent wants a great school. I think that is what we heard from the last panel. The other data point that i want to just really reflect on is in the last panel, virginia waldon ford talked about being in the second wave of post brown v. Education. And he described her experience as being invisible. And i thought, geez, that is exactly how the 1. 2 Million Students who are dropping out of school feel. It is how do we meet the individual needs of every single student today because the digital economy, the world is moving fast, we just heard cell phones go off. Our students are Digital Natives and have to prepare them to enter into the digital economy. That is why i am excited to launch a school focused on Computer Science. Can i enroll . Absolutely. Can you teach it, that is the question. Let me add my thanks to johnny and the center. We are going to do a little bit of directed questions. So i am going to ask a question that follows up directly on yours. You said that you are from a district that is 100 in newark. So in a School Choice system if you are meeting the individual needs of every child is it okay to have a school that is o100 minority . To me that is the wrong question. It is how do we meet the needs of individual students. Do we give students real choices. I met todd rose who wrote a book the end of average. There is no average student. There is no one size fits all. The more we treat individual students as an average, we are going to do one, miss their talents or two, bore them death. So we need to make sure that there is innovative options and look at school days, school year. Maybe school is not a place you go to. Maybe it is an online activity. I think it is the wrong question to be thinking about today. So the next question is thinking about that, what is the role of government in this conversation. So is there a situation, there are a lot of friends of mine who argues the Public School stmg, is actually doing what it is intended to do. And what is the proper role of government in this discussion. This is for each of you. Sure. I want to go back to your first question and then go to the second. If you ask gary orfill he will say absolutely not. If you ask richard callenberg, what about bannicer Public High School here in washington, d. C. A racially academic school. What about drew Magnet School in los angeles predominantly black and hispanic. They are racially identifiable schools that are doing well. The question for me isnt segregation, today, tomorrow, forever. It is education today, tomorrow, and forever. That is what matters to me. In terms of the role of government, what it can play is a small key partner. So if you have a group of Community Members who say we want to have an integrated system, let it happen. She worked in came bridge massachusetts, they have a controlled choice program. People decided i am going to move to cambridge and participate in the program. The second oldest voluntary program in the country is the metco program. Who got tired of and so the government was a small partner saying we will give you academic resources, Financial Resources and work with the law to make it happen. So i also think when necessary the government should have a heavy hand when there is discrimination going on. But it can play both discrimination as well as intervention as well as innovation. Here is an experiment you can do on your own to confirm this. Ongoing wi on Google Images bring up a map of color ethnicity and bring up a match school districts. And look at how the district lines do loops and stuff. So partly that is a legacy of history, partly it is an ongoing continuing problem with poirntparents who dont want their kids mixing with other kids. It is a false dichotomy to say do we want a government solution or School Choice. School choice public policy. That is why some people on the libertarian end are against School Choice. I am all for it. As to your other question regarding is it okay, i think is it okay is probably not the right way to frame it, but policy is about tradeoffs, it is not a question of do we want literacy or dual education. We want both. There are for people who literacy and numeracy and then there are other people for whom the priorities are out of wack the other way. The interesting question is should School Desegregation be a priority or should we simply pursue good education and be indifferent to the demographic composition of the student body. And so i wouldnt want to say well lets sacrifice other priorities to desegregation and lets not care whether students learn to read or write. But that having been said while i respect people who they say we just want good education and dont care about the demographics. I think we should want our children to form a common bond with people who are not like them. But i think part of the function of the School System should be to create a common bond among people who are not like one another and that can be challenging but that should be a reason why it should be a goal of our Education System. Could you quickly follow up. Quickly greg, go into that research. There have been a number of studies on tolerance of the rights of others. This is a metric if the education studies that has gone back decades where the instrument they use, they ask a student to identify your most disliked group and people will name everything from republicans or democrats. They will say pro lifers or prochoicers. You get all kinds of stuff. And then you ask a battery of questions, should people in that group be allowed to vote, be allowed to have a demonstration on main street. Be allowed to have a book in the Public Library that is sympathetic to their view. What we sfiefind is that privat School Students score better. It is a moderate difference. But private schools do seem to do a better job to teach students to tolerate the rights of others. Martive matters a lot to the conversation of desegregation. Take the term ethnicity. Today we often mean nonblack. Even though 10 of the people who consider themselves black are from other countries. Well, the white groups have always had ethnicities. The italians were ethnic at one time. So it is very interesting since the Largest Ethnic Group would be people of german decent. So there are interesting nuances because some of them choose. In brown it was the black schools bear the burden. And what do we say about Thomas Jefferson Public High School where the majority of the schools are asian. Is that a segregated school . Just really quick, the idea back then was about resources. So in the black communities you would have delapidated buildings, no books or old books. And fast forward today we have beautiful buildings and all the books but the kids cant read the books. So it is important to put it in the context of what it means and right now, to me, i think education is the civil rights for our generation. We must make sure that every student has access to this quality and that we are meeting the individual needs of students. I am going to say that over and over again i genuinely believe that our students have expertise in brilliance in different areas. And right now we treat brilliance on one thing, a single test score. I couldnt agree with you more. Last question. This is a challenging environment. How do we break through the barrier of nonpartisanship. How can we do this in a nonp nonpartisan or bipartisan way . So i am less interested in nonpartisanship because that is going to be tough to have. I am more willing to accept what i Call Coalition of convenience. Lets find an area where we can coalesce er coalesce around and make it convenient. This is why i am starting a school because i was tired of the intellectual debate. As i said, there are students literally in school who are checked out, dropping out, who need all of us to be doing everything we can every single day to help them move them forward and the intellectual debate is what is stopping them. Finding this common strip of unity. How do we move this forward. And i think of all politics being local. The National Debate can be exhausting and nauseating. So if you are going to involved into that local conversation about finding this common strip of unity is the only way to do it. A lot of the way we accomplish that is by using new language. Because language comes with a lot of baggage. So for example, the School Choice movement is overinvesting in terms like market and competition. And these are, i dont think that we need to unsay anything we have said. I dont think that anything we have said is wrong, per se. But we havent stopped and said when we say that, what we mean is this. And the language is heard differently by people who have a language world where those have a different connotation. Finding new words to describe things will help the coalition of convenience. I think in the real world you do have to work with policy makers and policy makers are who they are. And particularly here in america, we have a long tradition of not reveering our rulers too much. But that having been said it is incumbent on us so prioritize coalitio coalitions across ideological boundaries, across party affiliations, and what we are going to find is that it is going to require us to say uncomfortable things. But if we are willing to do that, that is necessary. If School Choice is going to be the future of American Education and not just another policy fad that is here today and gone tomorrow. Thank you very much. So we want to have lots of questions. Please open it up to the audience. Please ask a question and lets go from there. Start, maam. Good afternoon. My name is pat tyson. And i have three questions that i will ask quickly. Number one, you talked about the districts in manhattan. When i look at the districts in washington, d. C. And birmingham in North Carolina i see the same thing. Has anything been done to look at economic segregation. That is my first question. Second question is what will the impact of the gardendale Alabama Court decision have on Public School. Third question, in light of trumps budget, and assuming, and that is a big assumption because they have said it is dead on arrival. Assuming that it passes, what will the impact of that budget have on Public Education . And the goals of Public Education. I can answer the first one. I am not a lawyer or budget analyst. I dont have the expertise on the other two. But economic segregation is sometimes studies. There is not as large a body of research. If you look at the most resent report, it and there are several other studies as well. Again, it is not so widely studied. And when there are fewer studies, it is harder to generalize. Certainly american schools are heavily segregated by economic factors. That is fairly obvious. Richard epstein who is a scholar has a number of articles focused on economic integration. In terms of the trump budget about 45. 1, 45. 2, and the rest is denied. 2. 1 billion taken away, and that will have a tremendous impact. And also the higher ed level. The third case, the case that you mentioned, i will try to get to later for sake of time. I was going to say all politics are local. So you have to look at the state and local budget. However i am deeply concern about the budget although it supports me who is starting a new Charter School. But also impacting our families and the services they receive. So i think we have to continue to advocate. And this is where locally, the local organizations that have been doing this work for years, i think we have to rally together and leverage all of the resources to make sure our families still get those services. We will try to get to number two, in a little bit. Gardendale. Does anyone know about that . Where the u. S. To allow gardendale to basically set up a segregated School System. And so i know enough about that no to the get into the nuances because i cant speak to exactly what happened. But it is part of a longer tradition of suburban communities connected to urban areas. We see it in atlanta. There is a bigger part going in there too. It is a big issue. Clearly merits more knowledge from our side. My name is jennifer from respectability and the name of your organization is advancing opportunity. And when i hear the term advancing opportunity, i think of education as the means to an end. The end to which is the ability to get a job, keep a job, and advance in a job. And the ability for an individual to be part of a community that is a nothing about us without us community wherever kind of person has a seat at the table in our democracy. So i want to ask you about children of color with disabilities who are, you know, really, really impacted by some of these decisions to see what kind of data that you are seeing. The best private schools in washington will not accept children with significant disabilities and the Charter Schools around the country in many cases are not responsive to the needs of children with more involved disabilities. Many who may have the strongest talents and ablilities of many f the youth in america. So what are your ideas. I have done several studies on School Choice with children of disabilities. And while it is true that School Choice, if you use School Choice you are no longer part of the legal system that allows you to sue your school for services. In fact received Better Services and also better conditions like they are not bullied or attacked at school as often. That is one of the most dramatic differences. The concerns that have been raised about students with disabilities not being able to find slots in different schools do not seem to materialize. I am not aware of cases where people have come forward and said we cant find a school. Who typically serve large populations with special needs it doesnt seem to materialize. I can show you evidence of that and would happy to discuss off line. Of the programs, private School Choice side almost half of them are serving kids with special needs. So a number of growth. I started my career off as a special Education Teacher and i am starting this school and all my work has been led by a simple motto, good teaching is good teaching. I recently joined the board of national Charter School and education. And a lot of schools right now, when it comes to special education, the majority of their time is focused on compliance and not actually services. Training to shift away from compliance and shift to programs, program that allows for more personalization, then i think we will be able to move the ball forward. But right now many schools are inundated with lawsuits and some of them well deserving and some not. A School Leader has to spend more time with dealing with lawyers versus how i appreciate. My name is gregory clay. And my question simply is what do you all think of betsy devos. So i have known for her for ten years. And i worked with her before being a public figure. I know in her heart it is committed to helping all kids. I also know that she wants to make sure that we spread the pot. Now most of the conversation has been about School Choice. I get it. There will be a more conversation that comes to Public Schools. And her intention is not to destroy Public Education. I dont know her but i do know that there are no permanent friends or permanent interest. So we have to find a way to work with whoever is in charge and whoever has the biggest part of resources because our students require it. If the decent people refuse to serve in public office, that leaves the indecent people. I dont want to attack somebody for taking a position. I am also a student at hampton university. What impact does the intent to which schools are segregated or desegregated do they have to do with college enrollment, persistence and completion. Most of my research is on k12 education. So i am hesitant to say too much about a field i know less about. I have looked about College Entrance. And the College Entrance rate today tracks pretty closely to graduation from high school to certain course requirement. So we heard this morning if you want your child to go to college, you need to start taking algebra in eighth grade and do this. And the u. S. Department of education keeps fairly good data from a good sample of high School Students looking at what courses they have taken. It allows us to ask how many students graduate with the courses they would need to go to college and then compare that with how many new freshman Enter College. And i will admit i have not broken that down by ethnicity. That is harder to do. College entrance data by ethnicity are harder to break down and there are specialist in that field, and i dont happen to be one of them. We want more African Americans to go to high performing schools and qualify for scholarships. And a lot of that requires you to take the pre sat which we dont talk about until after the fact. So part two, regardless of race, too many students are entering college and enrolling immediately in noncollege bearing remedial courses. So spending semesters in courses that do not count. We gave you a High School Diploma and said guess what you, you are college and career ready. We can backward map today and figure out what s. A. T. Score, temp score, or other that you need to be successful. While it will not guarantee whether or not you graduate, it will have a score of whether you go into remediation. Children in the program tend to graduate at higher rates than their peers and they tend to Enter College at higher rates. So an important to note thank you so much. Hi. Wanted to ask to your point earlier about having coalescing around convenient points. If we take out the nuance language and those other things, i know if i go to an event, they are going to ask me what are my Food Allergies so you know what the difference of people coming to the table are needing and wanting. If you dont want to have people coalesce around the things of convenience, what are the points that people should be having conversation around. One goes to a fundamental question of whether we should give public money to religious schools. I have a lot of friends who say we like vouchers in the early years because it only went to private nonsectarian schools. Once we added religious schools, separation of church and state. So we have got to be clear, are you for public money going to religious schools, if so, here is your coalition. If it is only independent, here is another. Another question is should it go to schools that have had a history of segregation. Now this gets interesting because after the brown decision of 1954 to 56, they were saying no way in hell we are going to let these other people come to school. So in 1956100 members of congress signed the and the southern private School Movement as we know it today had many of its roots in what i call fear based freedom of choice. Some of those schools are still involved today. So if you are saying you know what, we have prayed, cried, and for given, i am a part of that coalition. There are others who say no, i still believe in segregated minds. So for me that would be two. I say we have to start out from the beginning. And i would add sometimes it is us people on the panel or policy who are framing that question and we should take it to the students and families that we serve. What is most important to you. And one of our core believes for every student and adult to feel known, respected. They dont want to be talked down to. They want to be respected. And for me, i think it is about getting as someone else referred, getting just proximate. In order to help, well be partner with the communities and families we serve, we are going to ask them the question around what is the best solution. You have to ask the question do you believe all parents should have options or only some. This is a huge issue. Right now the system is set up that parents with money can have all the options they want. And parents without money cant. So you can say lets only give money to low income families to equalize it or give it to everyone. Thank you so much. Great question. Hi. My name is cynthia overton. And i was wondering if you can speak to the role of i am interested in terms of how they can make a positive and sustainable change and difference or how they have and then what are some of the things that we need to be concerned about when we think about industry and education. So you have local chamber of commerce members who adopt a School System. This happened back in atlanta. A number of corporate people who are involved. Some also have principal for the day program. The number of executives who have done that for one day and decided huh, i didnt realize principals have it so hard, let me see what i can do. In the private school sector, i am on a board called gold scholarship. British petroleum partnered with us, to get more African Americans and others into stem subjects. So this is a great time for all of the money we pay in buying products and the tax breaks that corporations receive for their work, we should have them become more involved, not dictating but being what i call a big p partner. One of the reasons we are launching the academy, the data says there is 1. 2 million high paying jobs in Computer Science. So we want to close that gap. What typically happens is say, we are going to prepare our students to go into the jobs but we dont talk to the industry. We dont talk to colleges and universities about what is the continuum. So starting at elementary or middle school how do we help our students navigate from k12 to college to career is something that does not happen. So it goes down for me personalization college and to k12. If i could make three quick points to add to that. One more. The Business Needs to be more. One interesting example in indianapolis is where we have a group of Business Leaders that have gotten together as part of our chamber of commerce. Theyre getting the ceos on one hand and theyre bridging the gap between what these folks say they need and what these folks are providing. So theyre actually trying to align it much better. The other example id say is providence crystal ray. I dont know if youve seen these schools. This is an amazing model of schools. The families, all low income. Its only serving low income families. They dont go to school, they work at a business. The business actually supports the school. And by the end of the four years, almost all of them get jobs at the business they entered in. Its an amazing model and works really, really well. So more is the first thing. John wolf, i have two questions. One for miss ashton. Will your Digital Academy prepare students for college as well as the world of work . Because in this technological age, we not only need the double e to cs, all of those College Educated people, but there was something on the news just this past weekend about a turbine Building Company where they send students to technical college. Will you also be focused on that . Or will that be part of your program, not necessarily a focus . Sure. Digital pioneers is an unapologetic prep. This is 76 of the jobs require some college or some post secondary education to say whether youre college prep or not, i think that, again, is a false choice to me. However, i do think that in our school, we will provide students access to internships and experiences so they can be exposed to all of their opportunities. But also have a real skill coming out of were starting off at middle school and will be a high school. But they have a real skill that can help them earn resources. Im working with a group of ninth graders who have Computer Science offering at washington leadership academy. And on the side, theyre developing websites. So thats the type of skill and access to the Economic Opportunities that we want to provide our students. One place i may disagree with my friend on this one is i think we focus too much on telling kids they have to go to college. Its either more house or no house. Thats my point. Its either yale to jail. I would like to change the narrative and say our kids are career and college switching. And if were saying college, its not only four year. Because it does speak to the issue of parental choice. My mother and father say i have to go to school. The state says i have to go to school until 12th grade. What happens to my choice . And nobodys spoken to that issue, really. Your choice of you . As a student. You can emancipate in certain states at certain ages. Thats true. But does the system provide for that in a pervasive way . No. Not yet. Okay. Right. And thats a complicating factor. But my second question is to dr. Forster. Can you direct us to any sources to deal with the analysis of the spectrum of data thats a multivaried analysis that controls with the variables to which you have alluded and expect and provide us with a clear view such as the ethnicity thing that you did with manhattan. Are there other studies like that . Because i think for those of us who are out in the field, we need a clearer picture. We dont need one slanted one way or another. We need to be able to see them in an array and draw from them those inferences that lead us to making the right policy decisions. So youre asking me to advertise my work . I would love to do that. If youre the studies on how School Choice programs and segregation are overviewed in a report we published called a win win solution. If you google my name and win win solution youll find the most recent edition. Those are lihave links to the a studies. Those are multivaried analyses as you were suggesting nep thing i was talking about with manhattan district lines, thats not a study. Its call it up and eyeball it. Im looking at whether it would be possible to do some sort of Statistical Analysis on the way boundary lines go around ethnic neighborhoods. Thats tough. And im not promising that i can pull it off. And that would include economic as well as health . Well, im not sure how health would be involved. But well see what i can come up with. Thank you. Theres a guy named hes from d. C. His name is tom stewart. He works with a gentleman named patrick wolf who works at the university of arkansas. They published a book about choice families in d. C. It was called the School Choice journey. And a lot of good information particularly since this is the most studied program in usdoe according to pat wolf. Tom is important because e he went to d. C. Public schools, graduated from udc and hes the first udc graduate to earn a ph. D. From harvard. Id take a look at his book. Looks like i have another study im going to have to take care of here. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is delores reyes. I am an entrepreneur and i have a Consulting Company called the yellow group and associates. And my specialty is department of defense as it were in consulting. Things are changing here in washington in terms of where moneys going. So the department is scheduled to have 334 ships to be built, more planes, et cetera, to be built in the military. So subsequently there are so many Job Opportunities for people in the trades. For example, if youre in the shipbuilding industry, need a lot of people who are in welding and lelectricians, et cetera, e cetera. So what are we doing for the children who want to be in the trades . What are School Systems doing to put them in the direction . To help the largest shipbuilding industry in the country who need all of these people. They need them now and theyll need them tomorrow. So we need your help. We need too find out what are you doing in the Education System to prepare them for other type of work other than going to a university in the trades. Thank you. In norfolk, virginia, i think its them. They have a program for students who want to go to sake of argument their school to actually learn the different type of jobs you have for that company. And that programs been around for a number of years with some success. I had a chance to go to their graduation. Their young men and women walking away with a High School Diploma and a job offer. At times making more than some of our teachers make coming out first year and they had three years of undergrad, two years of grad school. Thats one program in place in virginia thats having a good impact and theres others. The answer again would be not enough. Two quick stories. One, i was just with an administerer of a Public School district who will remain nameless talking about this issue. They initially called it shop. They called it shop again. So i dont know what that tells you, but it tells you something not good, right . The other thing i do know, theres a Charter School we work with in gary, indiana, thats graduates kids from high school with a certificate and diploma in the workforce at the same time. Theyre graduating at the same time with both of them. So there are some models out there. Theyre not scaleable yet. Can i get in on this . Absolutely. Weve had several questions on how do we connect education better to the jobs that people are going out to after they get education. And we have inherited in the last generation particularly an Education Reform Movement focused on oriented mostly towards college. And even when its not specifically college, its very abstract. Its sort of we want high standards but the high standards are not necessarily to anything. I think part of what that springs from coming back to the topic that brings us together today is that in previous generations, educational systems that connected better to vocation were delegitimatized because they were being used to discriminate against ethnic minorities. You had a vocational track and an academic track. And the academic track was for the lighter skinned people. And this was completely a confidence game. The vocational track did nothing to give you reading and writing and a well balanced education and good citizenship and arts and literature and the other things that all people i mean, you may not be going to college but Everybody Needs a well rounded education. That isnt beholden to some, you know, zponlt bureaucracy thats going to have another agenda. It was under the control of parents. Its going to be much more directed to practical outcomes. Thank you very much. Hi. Greg, im glad you raised that. That was going to be my point and question. We have to be careful not to say or. And remember that we dont just want in the spirit of advancing opportunity, robust system, Vocational Education is part of it. The very people that make those decisions, if you say today that you want career and Technical Education are the people who are not qualified for their job to begin with. And so i think theres a cautionary tale here. All of our students no matter what color they are should be encouraged to aspire to a higher education. And gerard, the career and College Ready piece, i guess my question for all of you is this. How much do we really believe that those career ready standards are actually truly about Exceptional Education . Or have we given the wonderful Business Community who i think we absolutely need the opportunity simply to place jobs . Where do we make those distinctions so that we dont suddenly have this conversation ten years from now where were having another yet School Systems, charters, it doesnt matter and we just basically stockpiled a bunch of jobs and said those kids should go there. I got news for you. I didnt say any of my kids, you should go to a career. Now i do sometimes. But i didnt then. There was no question they were going to college. I suspect for virginia and other people, theres no question they want them to go to college. Dont let them off the hook. How do we square that college versus career with the very important point made which is theres jobs out there that we cant fill . Let me start with the first example. My son who has special needs wants to be a firefighter. Which is a great ultimate well paying job over time. But there was no way in gods green earth he wasnt going to get a fouryear degree before he became a firefighter. Right . So my plan was to get him into the school of Public Safety which hes there and hes doing that. Just so he has greater options at the end of it. Thats the way i looked at college for my son there. Greater options so that at the end of it he could do the firefighting degree which is a year and then could have Something Else to fall back on. So i agree with you. Some businesses come to the table just to fill jobs. I get it. Some of them have moved the needle more than others. I think exceptional work. I use career because im open for another word. If we want to change it, thats fine. 50 of the jobs that will exist 15 years from now dont exist today. And the concept of what work means is going to be radically different. Im open to change career. I just dont want to lead with college. Comes from the french word that means running in circles. I think we have a false choice that were presented with in the current form of the Education Reform Movement. A false choice between Academic Excellence and pragmatic useful education. And the people who want Academic Excellence are phobic of anything that sounds pragmatic because thats an excuse not to teach people. And the pragmatic people are phobic of academics because thats disconnected from the real world and you wont use it. I think what drives this false divide is standardizization nap we needs to have standards. If any were going to have centralized standards for measuring a good education, they have to be reduced to test scores or reduced to 21st century skills or reduced to some other list that we can write up. And the closer we keep education to parents and to local community, the more we can define what is a good education in a way that combines excellence and pragmatic usefulness. Remembering that it is not the same as learning the particular skill of a particular job opening that a particular employer wants you to have. And as long as local is not parochial. Still going to be involved in the global. But im fine with that. The only thing i would add is that i referenced early the end of average. He talks about the 1950 where they were all one size. The punchline is this. The adjustable car seat. Every student has to have the adjustable seat to get them where they want to go. College and or career. If you talk to any student today, they do not want to be told which career path to go to. And i think this is the broader point is that my parent just said go to college. They were i was First Generation College so they didnt care where i went. They just said go. I think our students today have more access to information through technology. They have more big ideas about what they want to achieve. And so our job is to give them the adjustable car seat to get there. Awesome. Were going to give Johnny Taylor the last question here. The only reason im last is because this is a question one of my staff wouldnt step up to ask. I promised to ask if it wasnt earlier. Heres the question. We romanticize and sort of rewrite history often. And i dont know if this is true or not, but the question is we talk about the good old days and how wonderful it was in black america. In our earlier panel, they said things were so great then. Is there research to tell us thats true or not . Because i think we talk about it a lot and people say it was so great. But is there any objective data out there that says we really were performing . When i say segregated, im speaking specifically in africanamerican community. The purposes of looking back to 1954. I dont know. We do have some measurements, but theyre imperfect. The best measurement we have going back that far and it actually goes a lot further back is High School Graduation. High School Graduation is about 2 at the turn of the century and it rises steadily over the course of the 20th century until it reaches the high 70s like 77, 78 in the 1970s and its been plateaued since then. So from the 50s to the 70s we were continuing the progress we had been making for some time on High School Graduation. High School Graduation is really easy to measure. Its great. We researchers love it. Because diplomas we know how many we gave out. Right . The data are solid. After that, it becomes much murkier. The high quality from the 70s its fairly flat for 12th graders. Its fluctuations. But i think those are less important because if you have it up in fourth grade but by 12th grade it disappeared, im not sure what you accomplished. So i look at 12th grade test scores and thats the pretty typical practice. And 12th grade test scores from the 70s on reading and math are flat. I mean, theyre really flat over that period. The other measurement we have that can go back to the 50s but its very controversial is the s. A. T. We have it back to the 50s. There is a fairly significant increase in the 50s. Then its flat from there. But the s. A. T. Is extremely controversial to use as a measurement of academic success. Its generally not used because its too controversial. My father was born in 1913. So he saw real segregation in charleston, west virginia. I would never romanticize what it was like on that other side of the fence. But to get to your point since were in d. C. , take a look at the history of dunbar high school. In this city. Founded in the late 19th century. The number of people that they produced who became cabinet level secretaries, who became principals, dentists, doctors, who went to the Ivy League Schools at rates white schools werent, it was arguably the first black Public High School in the country thats questionable. For sake of argument, lets say thats true. Take a look at what they were doing in the 1890s and early 1900s. Wrote a piece from the ivy league. And what happened with the school before brown and after brown. Hes got a view about brown being radically different. There was a time in each city and a number of those people were not our kind of people. Who did extraordinary things in this city