Install the right values, ideas and knowledge at age 10 or 11, by the time they are adult they can do wonderful things. Host what did you teach them . Gerald i taught geography and history and math and science who are shared with another teacher. Most of the subjects and had the students. Host where was this . Gerald it was that the Marcus Garvey school and it was located a few blocks away from where i attended elementary school. Host who is Marcus Garvey . Gerald he was a jamaican by birth and he simply believed he wanted to uplift people of african descent and they had to believe in themselves and have a collective economic coach. If you look at what he was able to do in galvanizing millions of black people but also in the caribbean, it probably doesnt get too much attention. Host what was it like growing up in your family . Gerald my father was an entrepreneur. He owned a restaurant and he believed in an honest days work. My mother was also involved with work. They instilled in me the importance of education. Host when did you move to los angeles . Gerald i was born in lake charles that then i went on a but within a month i was on a flight to los angeles were my parents already lived. Host what do you remember about your schooling there . You went to a Community College first step. Gerald i came of age in the 1970s in los angeles. It was the crenshaw district where they were mostly families who were transplants. Many of them were part of the post world war boom. I grew up with my stepdad as well. And in my neighborhood, hardworking people who wanted to see their children do things dramatically different. Host can you member the first time you actually started learning something . Gerald my parents for the first ones who were my teachers. Learning came into different in two different phases. I had a great memory of my fourth grade teacher and she is still alive. And in her legacy i started a scholarship at a School Called st. Marys. She was an art teacher and she used art to change lives. My real learning came at the Community College level. I was a less than stellar student and at the age of 20 i got a grasp on how to read and write. Host el camino Community College located where . Guest it is one of 100 Community Colleges that we have in california. It was a great starting point to me. I did not have the grades or the test score and did not have money. I spent three years at the el camino college. I had wonderful mentors, ranging from elaine moore who was my counselor to raymond roney. They were the ones who said just because you arrived here does not mean that your life will have to be the same. Host why did you think you do not get good grades . Did not get good grades . Gerald i chased women, i drink beer, i smoked marijuana, i avoided homework during football season. A number of my friends received academic scholarships but i was on the athletic track and it out was always that way. As long as i played football well, i was passed along. My senior year i was injured and i was two inches from being crippled for life. I thought wow there must be a different compact and my social compact had ended. Host how did you have the accident . Gerald a 270pound sophomore ran helmet first into my knee. I heard a crack and by the time i opened my eyes and was given the bad news that while i was two inches from being crippled for life i would be able to walk again but my football career was over. Season was over. Host how long did it take you to mend and to change your direction . Gerald it took me about three months. I was willing to go stepbystep. Then i moved towards advanced courses. Host you went to howard here in washington, what did you major in and why . Gerald i arrived to howard and had an associate of arts degree in business. I decided to work for ibm and you know, apple did not exist. After taking one course i decided to change my major. I was interested in how ideas mattered. It was a tool of social science. Host you are naming some of these teachers. What is good in a teacher . What they do . Gerald they actually spoke to the student on where i was at that point. They excited me about learning and they had High Expectations for me. They do not give up on me. Host when you talk to fifthgrade, what techniques did you use . Gerald i let them know i was glad to be there teacher and every day would would try and Say Something good at the end of the day of what we learned in class. We also had field trips whether it was to a museum or going to a conference. There were things inside and outside the classroom. One of my favorite students ryan lawrence. His wife was a howard graduate. Host what year did you teach fifth grade . Gerald i taught 1991 to 1992. Host when did you go to harvard . Gerald i went to cambridge in 1994 and earned a masters degree with a focus on education policy. I was trying to figure out how to use Public Policy to close the achievement gap but also to open doors of opportunity. I enjoyed my time there. Today i am a resident fellow at the American Enterprise institute. They have been committed to freedom and opportunity and free market values in civilized society. I get the chance to talk about education and social entrepreneurship. Host what were the politics of your parents . Gerald they were both democrats and my realization of what it a democrat was was in 1978 when voters passed proposition 13. They changed property taxes and how they were used to fund schools. I remember my parents saying wow, the republicans have passed proposition 13. They support rich people and democrats support poor and working people. Host did you start thinking the same thing . Gerald i was a democrat most of my life, up until 1992. I switched to the republican party. Host what was it that made you switch . Gerald we have had the riots after rodney king. School was closed and i ended up attending a number of meetings to figure out what we wanted to do. We would have to radically change on how we look at the work force. And i didnt see how the role of entrepreneurship free market was going to play. I switched my affiliation and have been a republican since then. My parents were shocked. It is still good fodder for jokes but 20 years later dad passed, moms still alive. I voted for both john mccain and mitt romney. Host did you get slack from kickback from your friends . Gerald absolutely. My wife is a democrat and she had a shirt for our middle daughter that said my mama is for obama. People ask me, what do you tell your children when you had an opportunity to vote for the first black president and you didnt. I said, when i have an opportunity to vote for the first black president , i would like to have someone that i think is qualified for the job and i think president obama is has done a great job in many areas but i think mccain and romney would have done a better job. Host here is president obama using a phrase. Lets watch this. President obama making sure we are giving all of our children the best possible education. It is the single most important factor in determining whether they succeed. The key to opportunity, the civil rights issue of our time. Host do you agree . Gerald i agree that education has civil rights significance. In 2016, we are 62 years removed from brown versus board of education. We are a better nation than we were in 1954 but the challenge is when you make everything a civil rights issue it has remedies. It usually includes more bureaucracy and an influx of cash. There is a big push to compartmentalize how we deliver things. Host you were chief of education in the state of virginia. How did that happen . Gerald i received a phone call from governor mcdonnell who was looking for someone as a nontraditional candidate. Someone that had some experience and that believed Public Schools still mattered. I interviewed for the job and i accepted. Host how long did you stay . Gerald i was there for the 20102011 legislative session. Host what was expected of you in the state . Gerald one was to implement the governors education agenda and to assign the law the top jobs and we had a commission for Higher Education of over 25 people on the commission. We have got to change the delivery of education and so we had people in the Public Schools and historically black colleges and our forprofit colleges that all contributed. At the k12 level we strengthened our Charter Schools and expanded opportunities. One that is often overlooked was a College Laboratory school. It was a bill that allowed schools of education to partner with the local School System and actually introduce their partnering with buford and actually introduced stem courses to middle School Students. In a middle school that had declining enrollment. The big push is we have is inculcation, then matters a lot. We cannot wait until high school to do that. In middle school, that is something that our legislation was able to do. Host stem, who invented that term . Gerald i dont know the person who invented it. You will hear president s and mayors saying that it is important. Steam is equally important to the civil rights era. I would also say that steam is important. It is kind of tough to do that work without having an artistic and creative approach. Host george w. Bush had this to say. Education in america is no longer legally separate. Quality education for everyone of every background remains one of the most urgent civil rights issues of our time. Host again, urgent civil rights issues of our time. Gerald when he signed no child left behind he referred to a soft bigotry of low expectations. When he speaks of civil rights he is speaking in that vein. Education is an important civil right and has an important history but when he made the big push he at least opened up the door for the republicans in particular to see how we can actually use education and data and outcomes to make it better. Schools better. You will hear me say it is important because it is but that was an example of the right using civil rights and the way the left has it. In the way the left has used civil rights. We still have a number of challenges. Host you mentioned no child left behind . What did it do . Gerald it did a few things. If were going to have a competitive nation that we need to make sure students are strong in english and math. They would have to test students and they would actually hold it accountable. And for the first time we were going to disaggregate data to see how children were doing. For decades our School Systems were able to hide how poorly our students were doing. With no child left behind, we got to see it both good bad and ugly. Host you make a speech in 2004, here you are on video. Lets see how much of this you still agree with. Gerald why do i look at School Choice . In 1992, i was at the teacher at the Marcus Garvey school. One my favorite students walked up to me and said i have to leave because my parents can no longer afford tuition. The principal said, we have is a petition and we would like to get enough signatures on a ballot so that we can push the Voucher Initiative so that we can get public money to children who can go to private schools. Using the example that i had, i said this is an option for some students and not all. It is an opportunity that some students would take advantage of. Host where is california on vouchers . Gerald in 1993 i was able to get parents to sign this. The measure was defeated 7030 and in 2000 a similar vote took place. We have seen the same thing happen in michigan. That is from the california perspective. Charter schools have grown but if you look at the voucher movement, it is starting to take place. Host why was it is 7030 vote . Gerald it was marketed as an antipublicschool initiative. People dont want to hear that and it was going to quote on unquote, take money away from public education. People were still remembering those votes that happened with proposition 13. Here is another example of us taking money away. California was part of a very public battle of finance. Between an antipublicschool campaign, its not hard to see where we lost. Here is Hillary Clinton in 2015. Mrs. Clinton the truth is the quality and opportunity and equality, opportunity, civil rights in america are still from far from where they need to be. Our schools are still segregated and they are more segregated than they were in the 1960s. Host is that true . Gerald no. I dont believe we have segregated schools. We have racially identifiable schools. To believe in 2016 that we have the same types of jim crow segregation is a shame. The gao produced a report showing the number of schools with 75 to 100 of schools that qualify for free or reduced price lunch has grown. At the same time you have economist and one of his report he actually identified from 1980s to 2000, racial integration in neighborhoods have gotten much better but that is driven by a number of factors. I would not say we have segregated schools. But to believe we have jim crow today is ludicrous. Host if we are so are worried about segregation in schools, why do we have 100 historically black colleges . Gerald that is to assume they are historically segregated. Take a look at my alma mater Howard University. The first five graduates were white women. We graduated whites long before Public Institutions allowed us in. We graduated a number of africanamericans who were able to integrate professions. Professions other than teaching and nursing. Third, we helped create the black middle class. No more than military institutions are segregated because they work solely with people who want to go into the military. Host when you went to howard didnt enter your mind that most of the students were black, was that your choice . Gerald absolutely. A friend of mine was a howard student at the time. Coming from los angeles and have a reals nice to have conversation about education. Third, i then and now has a very strong track record. For me, i was not investing in a segregated education, i was investing in education that would help me integrate the world you would not hear otherwise. Host here is Condoleezza Rice with a short 20second comment. We need to get parents greater choice, particularly for parents whose kids are trapped in failing neighborhood schools. This is the civil rights issue of our day. Host why are innercity schools failing . Gerald dr. Rice comes from a family where her mother was an educator. She knows firsthand the challenges of attending segregated schools. From Humble Beginnings in stanford. There are a few reasons why they have challenges. We have more underresourced schools. Funding is a challenge. We dont have the best qualified teachers. Third, we need to make sure we have more parental engagement. There are a host of challenges but when we discuss this, we often overlook the role of families. There are ways we can overcome poverty and education. Poverty and the challenges i mentioned. Host we live here in a district area. There is a lot of federal money and it still doesnt work. Why . Gerald in the late 1990s i worked for d. C. Public schools, that was before we moved forward with vouchers and Charter Schools. D. C. Had a few challenges. Number one, there was a list of heavyhanded congress deciding how it should govern schools. There was a federal and local debate that goes back for over a century. While there were high concentrations of poverty you still have pockets of success. High school which then and now are Still Producing students. And then third, challenges that making sure resources went to the right place. It wasnt because d. C. Lacked a lot of money. There were a lot of School Systems that they wish they had the kind of money. Graduation rate was higher in 2016 than it was five years ago. Host if you look at this whole area, there is not a great difference between what teachers are paid in this whole area. There is a difference in what is spent per student. In your experience, how much does the money part of it matter . Matter to get a good education . Gerald i believe Money Matters. Where you invest Money Matters more. There has been a debate on the money matter. Going back to the James Coleman et al. Report in 1966. On one side of the fence you have marty west and dr. Peterson at harvard who would say that Money Matters but if you look at the investments we have made from the 1970s forward while the increase in local money you see a pretty flat test score. On the other side of the fence you have others who have said that while that may be true when you actually take a look at states with increased their spending for students in different states you have seen a higher Graduation Rate and students who will earn more in the workforce. Heather schwartz mentioned this in her report, you are going to see better results. Host if you are asked for advice on affirmative action college entrance, what would you say . Gerald if it means you want to remove the barrier so firstgeneration students are able to get into school, there are two things id recommend. Allow students to matriculate if they have the requisite scores and coursework to do well. We know that while the sat score will predict may be how will you will do your first the that should be in place is if you expect to be in college. To let students have not filled that curriculum is doing a great disservice to them and selling the effort of affirmative action. Daughter is going to graduate from college, 23 yearsold. The middle is it eight years old, and the youngest daughter is five. I was fortunate to be able to be a stayathome dad for a while. I learned the Role Technology has played in expanding what students are exposed to. With my older daughter, cell phones, the computer in its infancy stage. The middle d