Profit from the selling of education all in the name of rectifying the gross injustices meted out to poor boys and girls joining me in the studio to discuss our system of educational apartheid and the corporations who have found a way to profit from it is no leeway roques professor at Cornell University and the author of Cutting School privatization segregation and the end of Public Education. Very important book thank you so minutes and from the start you lay out that we do know how to educate but there is fierce resistance. Not only among the ruling elites but among the liberal class i think at one point you quote a poll about how liberal whites in theory would like quality education for all children but they dont want busing right so lets just begin there we know what works. We do and one of the things i think ive discovered reading this book because youre to research the book to write it and it wasnt that i knew all of this before i started to research the book how well we know how to educate kids who are poor kids who are black kids who are let next how many teachers experiments pools superintendents weve head who have done it well and so looking over time again of the book is actually goes back to reconstruction post reconstruction and makes this argument from post reconstruction up to the 21st century and and what i found is that there is generally support for. Educational experimentation for idiosyncratic forms of education for things that sound right to people who are not in those schools not in those communities that make sense to them but the actual things that we know building up selfesteem having black teachers you know the less data that we have one black teacher before the 3rd grade for a black child increases the likelihood of College Graduation by 20 percent lets talk about the industry thats been built up to profit off of educational inequality yet. You know you mention that we never educate poor kids or kids of color in the same way that we do the wealthy i think actually grappling with how different. Those forms of education are in private schools versus Public Schools in highly resourced districts versus struggling districts and. Would you start to say well why why why are what why does testing look the way that it does and why does it impact poor kids Certain School districts or because i know this from the book in fact when these kids are in good schools there isnt a disparity rest we know that we know that the issue really is for me the issue began with why do we seen so committed to segregated schools. Segregated education why the resistance from the 1954 on preventing 50 for the 1st lawsuit arguing for a black parent arguing for equal education for their child is 848 in boston where so its not just a sudden thing but why why is that happening and the thing that you consistently see is you want a different kind in quality of education for some kids in the question really is what one of the answers i think that there are number of answers we tend to do sort of say racism we tend to say we just dont know each other well enough but one of the things that i consistently found is there are businesses that profit from segregation that need high levels of segregation some in the Charter School industry the publicly funded privately run schools that are expanding in some urban and rural areas you know what theyre really going for is what they call in 1990 schools like their their profit plays based on 1990 schools those are 90 percent children of color. 90 percent poor kids and 90 percent of kids who are performing below grade level and want to point i want to look at exactly what they do but you make a point in the book that the wealthy schools like in princeton theyre not doing this. Theyre not doing destroying brick and mortar for online classes and statistics you out in your a staggering in terms of the utter failure this is not a divorce of course. But lets talk about how this has become an amazingly profitable industry under the guise of. Socially culturally. Bettering the lives of the poor reminds me of King Leopolds go. By Adam Hochschild where king leopold is going down there and commits genocide against congolese on a rubber plantation. Its all in the name of fighting slavery its exactly the same kind of hypocrisy but this is a Huge Industry i just have to point out because in the book which i did not know that Michael Milken the junk bond felon was just pardoned by trump is deep into this stuff and i think you from your book are still worth 3000000000 dollars but it is a Huge Industry and its very cynical and very manipulative because it in the name of confronting these injustices it perpetuates them. Yet. One of the things that really led me to start looking in trying to understand this was i was teaching at princeton. And around 2009 i had all these students who were white who were wealthy who by their own admission said they just didnt know a lot about poor communities that their schools they were you dont come to princeton by and large from struggling schools you yourself maybe from a lower socioeconomic level you just dont get there from poor schools very often so you know all of these you know white wealthy students were like yeah we know how to solve whats wrong in struggling communities we get it we we have seen the like and i was trying to understand you know for a literally at 1st i was a little bit charmed in was thinking 964 freedom summer so at least initially i was kind of like this is kind of like that you dont think you know. I had a moment you know i have hope im a prisoner so im kind of like this group is new is a little bit different but what they kept telling me is this is the civil rights issue for our generation this is the unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement they had slogans like a child zip code not determine the quality education all true all in arguably you know true. But up underneath it what i consistently found was because they didnt know it like they just did know poor people. They would say things like well the fault of under education lies in those communities lives with those parents lives with those guardians because if they valued education of those communities in those individuals well valued education the system would look like that so you see the reason i was doing it. Its this is i mean they were constantly and its not a systemic issue its an individual issue but the person issues thing for me is that again they were speaking not from even experience which brooks is good for ray hes all like lets let you generalize my experience that they didnt have any experience and yet they were going to indict entire communities and never poles the kind of education that they had is the way to expect from your book i mean however revolting and it is revolting this kind of. You know its basically racial supremacy White Supremacy but there are power figures bill gates. Who have billions of dollars and the same attitude but the ability to do a lot of down Michael Bloomberg my kid leave the city schools i dont actually talk about him much in the book but he his administration really did take a lot of these experiments that we have seen. Spirit and try them out here 1st cyber education didnt start in Silicon Valley the most success or supposed successful examples are out in Silicon Valley have are they really start in new york city billionaires and Diane Ravitch a education researcher yeah so she calls them the Billionaire Boys Club we now have women who are among. The billionaire class. Steve jobss widow is with the Emerson Collective funding many of these kinds of experiments will think so its my students at princeton on steroids because unlike my students who were kind of like i get it i see the whats wrong they need more of what i have what i know what i would do these billionaires have the money to to have their experiment. Try it out and expand it all across the country so from bloomberg to Mark Zuckerberg came into newark and pledged 100000000. 00 and like a business person said you know ok 5 years you got 5 years ill give you 100000000. 00 theres actually some mention grants there but when theyre all done you know we will have turned things around and we have demonstrably. Things to show and well be able to. Scale this up everywhere and everyone then when they announce this he and cory booker the mayor Chris Christie governor Chris Christie at the time on the oprah show that everyone was just as clearly clearly you have figured out how to do this and at the end of the 5 years everyone pretty much acknowledged that this was the most expensive educational failure that anyone had ever seen because they kept trying to do things that dont something i want to come back to that. When we come back well continue our conversation about segregation in education with professor no we were. The world is driven by dreamers shaped by one person with those great. Thinks. We dare to ask. Americans got 20 or 30000000 people unemployed down the question why have they no savings why dont they have a state thats a very important question that we need to look at it. Has changed. Lives the pharmaceutical companies have a miraculous solution. Based drugs talk to people who are chronic pain patients believed. Their ok prescription is working for them on the remedy. To the price at the. Lesser dependency and addiction to opiates to long term use that really isnt scientifically just now study actually suggest that. The long term effects may not just be the absence of benefit but actually that they might be causing long term. Welcome back on contact we continue our conversation about our segregated educational system with professor no leeway works so before the break were talking about or. Explain the disaster that it was well a big the 3 big things that they managed to do with this one over 60 percent of the money went to hire consultants to tell them what to do now the reason that i 100000000. 00 yeah yeah 60000000. 00 went to console 60000000. 00 what 62000000. 00 i believe it is went to consultants to come in and tell them look at the district give them advice i tell them what should happen the thing is you know i mean its a little horrifying to me about that about that figure was supposedly this money was being give me given because they knew what to do because they had it all figured out because they had a plan of action so you have to spend 60000000. 00 now to have other people come in and tell you what exactly they also had to spend about 30 something 1000000. 02 pay past teachers contracts so teachers have been working without a contract because the district was saying we have no money like what was soon as we get some money though you know were going to. The live up to our obligations so big chunk of money went to that the rest of it went to expand Charter Schools. Which call those all manner of issues in the district where the majority of kids dont attend Charter Schools. How it was drawing money from traditional Public Schools how kids were supposed to get to school there were all kinds of parents are like you want my child youre not providing transportation here you want my child i want my child to attend this this Charter School they have to cross over literal gang territory is kids pass through 2 different hostile kinds of territory to get there and youre saying that this is a good thing and no i cant just pick up and move closer to the schools so what is suppose apathy the consultants that they paid the 60000000. 00 to apparently didnt tell them statistically i mean just let me ask you 1st there is a huge attempt to assault against Public Education theres a Charter School in princeton which no one wants and whos at the Charter School well no one who needs english as a 2nd language no one with learning disabilities the only quote unquote minorities are asian. The black and latino those are negligible as a presence theyre all left because theyre more expensive to educate in you know at the Public School and youre training money into the Charter Schools and this is replicated theres also that whole militarization of education you know they put them in uniforms and then theres the whole vocational aspect but before we get into the motive of the people who push it and often profit from it wire Charter Schools so. Pernicious in terms of educating young boys and girls. Well the reason what. The issues with them have to do with these experimental take. Practices that they often engage in however the reason that they tend to come about i remember when the princeton Charter Schools open is a bunch of princeton professors who did not think the Public Schools where highly ranked Public Schools in princeton were doing good in the teaching math and science to their kids so they were looking at how their kids were coming home like oh we should be able to do much better lets start our own school with you know kind of background in education of this or that note that theyd let start is a Blue Ribbon School one that one awards they took very highly educated kids and had smaller classrooms more more rigorous curriculum and so the test scores went up which thats how you determine if if people are doing well in Charter School but in general what happens is given that Tax Dollars Fund the majority of Public Education in in our communities and there are thousands of good the number now is less i was like 17000 Public School districts. Across the country in the majority of that money is coming from property tax people pay to live in those communities. What you have are community and then text dollars follow the child so if they go to a public Charter School the money whatever it is d in princeton when i was there is about 20000. 00 in trenton which is not not far down the road is like 7000. 00 per child whatever the amount is pretrial follows the child to the Charter School what that means is if you have 10 kids who are taking their 20000. 00 from point a to point b. You quickly. Start coming up with a budget gap with a shortfall in a district that head had 200000. 00 more. The season before all of a sudden is plugging holes is trying to figure out well where would a way to have to take that from 4 districts that are poor already they dont have a big tech space that dont have property only interest in 90 percent of the property is rental property theres not a b. Tax base there to support the Public Schools what you end up is a hole that gets bigger and deeper and wider so you end up having to increase class sizes for the kids who are left behind you have to cut College Counselors you have to cut social workers cut our classes cut p. Cut dancin in richmond you have to cut what people consider the fluff rate because we have to of course you know keep teaching math and keep teaching science so its not its not value neutral money goes from point a to point b. And these billionaires who really could if they were of a mind to if they wanted to take their money and say we want to experiment we want Charter Schools we want this experiment but were going to actually pay for students who want to go we will reimburse the district while were doing our experiment over here and the things that are successful then maybe we can talk about having them work but no the money is almost like trumps walwyn is going to mexico is going to going to pay for what the money for this is coming from the traditional Public Schools and weakening them while enriching a small group of kids you know i mean i think its the last thing i saw was about 15 percent of kids in the country all over the country atin Charter Schools of some sort that is 85 percent good shouldnt we at least the. Some point in focusing on where the 85 percent are going but you have betsy divorce the secretary of education and huge proponent of Charter Schools and i just want to because its in the book we know statistically that these schools in fact. They may an individual ready do not majority to not raise test scores and then this whole online which is a very lucrative business you know putting kids in front of a screen as if thats going to somehow replicate right a classroom experience you write about a gora cyber Charter School you know only 60 percent of the students were behind the grade level in math this is from a New York Times report 50 percent trailed in reading a 3rd did not graduate on time hundreds of children from kindergarten to seniors with true within months after they enrolled by wall street standards the recording again from this New York Times story by wall street standards though adorers a remarkable success that has helped enrich k. 12 inc a publicly traded company that manages the school and the entire enterprise is paid for by the taxpayers right so its lucrative in terms of its ability to generate profit but a disaster gene