Standards. This is about an hour. Good morning, everyone. Takes for coming to this panel. M the Deputy Director at today we will discuss an issue that has been getting a little bit of attention these days, School Choice, and especially private School Choice. I know there is all sorts of forms of School Choice in this country, a conversation about charters. But given so much of the recent conversation and the president ial election, this is where we will do our primary focus, but we will allow time for other issues if you have questions. School vouchers and other voucherlike programs, cousins, if you will, have been growing in number. The cousins would be tax credits, scholarships, and education accounts. The latter of which one proponent called yesterday the cool new kid on the block. President trump and his secretary of education are big fans of School Choice, and betsy devos loves to talk about choice and has made it the centerpiece of her education agenda. Said, these are complicated times in washington, and so the president s plans are no means certain to become law even in a gopled congress. We had a panel yesterday where that was one of the points made. It is good to keep that in mind, that for all the talk, it is not at all clear what we might see at the federal level. There is still good reason to be here because as i think the panelists would tell you, most of the action is at the state level on this anyway and will continue to be so. A busy legislative session in states this year. One of our cap lists, robert ellen know and low, or even enlowrecently recently . I was. There have been efforts needed to create new programs or expand existing ones. Keep in mind that the 2000 bring indid not just donald trump. The gop made gains in states and thehold what is called political trifecta with 25 states where the republic of Party Controls the governorship as well as both chambers of the legislature. That is likely to give further momentum to some of these, even though this is not clearly a partisan issue, we are not. Someis going to build momentum. Our goals are to help you understand the current landscape of private School Choice and what is on the horizon. And how journalists can do a better job to keep the public informed on these initiatives and their impact. Questions such as who needs programs served . How do policymakers judge their success or failure . Keep inuld journalists mind as they cover proposals and explain existing programs in their states and communities. Theyof these are new or have changed. Maybe they have expanded in one way or another, and it can be complicated to keep track of. Easy too evs carve out time. That can be a challenge for local reporters. Remember the details matter a lot, who is eligible to receive a voucher, who is eligible to work, which schools participate and which do not, to what extent families use the funds on things beside education. With Education Savings Accounts, there are a whole lot of things you can use it for. Are there many schools that do not participate and why, and what kind of Accountability Measures are included, and one that is near and youre to the hearts of journalists, transparency, what his record of schools and programs so people can understand what is going on. Littlele i want to say a about Charter Schools, because in light of the election i want to point to two outcomes of note. One was in massachusetts where voters rejected a plan to raise the charter cap. In a counter narrative, there was a School Runoff election in l. A. That just finished up that tipped the balance toward a coalition of Board Members who support Charter Schools. Newhat may well bring momentum to charters in l. A. , which is already the city with more kids in charles in Charter Schools than anywhere also in that country. I gave the political reality check before about the Trump Administration agenda and how that will be complicated to get through congress. Another piece of this that is important to remember is the number of students we are talking about, at least in the current situation, and i want to , the researchice and advocacy group, for helping to collect these numbers, and it is a great place to get that kind of information. But currently, when you look at vouchers and voucherstyle programs across states, you might get one million, 2 million, 3 million participate. It is about 450,000, and that compares to 50 million kids in Public Schools today. It is a very small piece of the pie. Currently, a lot of the work underway is looking to expand that. Lineupined by a terrific of people today to help us talk through and think through these issues more, including immediately to my left, maggie cochair ofo is the the National Coalition for Public Education, which is an Umbrella Group for more than 30 National Organizations that have then fighting against voucher programs, both in the political arena and in the legal arena. Teachersrepresent unions, school Board Members, school administrators, the aclu, and others. Maggie is also the legislative director of the separation of church and state, so she keeps a close eye on what is happening across the country, and her group has been involved in legalcal advocacy and efforts to overturn vouchers. Deryl bradford, the executive director of new york cam. Busy guy. Dont let that get out. These are both organizations promoting School Choice among other issues and his Network Works on the ground to monitor and influence state local decisions and work with families and others. Next we have Samuel Abrams who directs National Center of the study a privatization at Columbia University where he studies School Choice and hes also keeping an eye on the developments, you may often find him quoted in the news on the subject in recent times. Finally, we have robert enlow. Hes the president and ceo of this National Nonprofit advocacy group, tracking voucher and voucherstyle programs closely and as i mentioned they have helpful resources that kind of describe the landscape in a nonpartisan way you know, heres the program, heres what they do and so forth. With that, one other thing before we jump in is that we have another conversation later today at 3 30 where we will turn the table and let journalists who will talk about their coverage of School Choice especially private School Choice choice, so if you want to dive in and hear their perspective on what to watch for, tips for getting information, questions to ask, that would be a nice complement to what we have here. Despite what i said at the beginning about the trump agenda having a tough time, i want to start is a little bit about that and im not going to do this for each question, but im just going to ask each of you to spend a minute or two getting your quick view of trumps plan, what you make of it and what you think will happen. Hi. Thank you for having me. So, i represent the National Coalition of Public Education and americans united, so clearly i am disappointed in the trump devos plan for education and what i think is particularly troubling is that instead of spending time on figuring out how to support Public Schools and improve Public Schools and work with the kids with 90 of the students in Public Schools, so instead of having a plan that works with those students, instead they are solely focused on how to spend taxpayer dollars to send to private schools that dont have the same accountability, do not serve all students that can reject students based on characteristics, so i would be more pleased if the focus was on Public Schools and the most kids and schools that have to accept all students, but instead they have been using the pulpit to talk about vouchers around the country. Tuition tax credits. We have a budget that is decreasing funds for Public Schools, increasing funds for private schools. One of the programs would give millions of dollars to study and expand private School Vouchers. I think that is particularly troubling especially when you look at what they just did with the d. C. Voucher. For those of you that have been following that with only fully funded voucher in the country and they just renewed that again. And one of the things that is interesting is they instead of saying that its been studied for years, the studies are showing these are actually performing worse academically than the other students. And instead of when they renewed that saying they would keep studying they said i know you are using the golden standard now. My thinking is its not working out because the studies show is on improving academically, and now they say instead of using the Gold Standard youre not allowed to use it and have to use experimental studies for your voucher program, so i think looking at that and you can no longer use the Gold Standard for the d. C. Voucher and look at the budget saying we want to expand and study vouchers, knowing that they want to use they want to use quasiexperimental studies makes me suspicious, one, they are trying to further at number two what will those studies look like under the administration . I went to clarify that this this is not a law yet, it just past the house. The budget . D. C. Vouchers. The d. C. Voucher was put in the spending bill. So its a done deal. The first thing i would like to do is think the reporters that have covered me in a balanced way in this room and the second thing i would like to do is think Georgetown University for the Outstanding Institution of Higher Learning run by religious order that lots of people attend with public should, and the irony not be lost. As far as the budget is a sprinkle ofis things i like at an ocean of things i do not like. I for one have approached this entire episode said since it started in november as an a comfortable safe harbor role in which to make progress for kids who are really getting the short end of the stick based on zip code, color skin, or amount of money that parents make. So i think we will have an actual discussion. I would also like to point out the majority of the money in the choice portion of the wedding budget is actually to promote public choice. I do not know if i feel like you are against that if thats cool. Private schools have an Important Role to play in helping us faced problems. Help you get to a great school instead of being conscripted or sign one that does not work for you, that is something we should be supporting. Thanks, and on that point, to build on your observation about the contents of what the president has actually proposed, i think it is a 250 million or 300 million . 250 million. There is auchers piece where they want to ramp up charters will funding which already gives a pretty good chunk of change, 300 million, and they want to take it up to 500 million, and they are talking about carving out a billion dollars to the Title One Program for disadvantaged students to create incentives for some sort of public School Choice. There is a lot of questions around that, and political feasibility for all sorts of reasons, including the way the money is distributed and so forth. So it will be interesting to see how that discussion will what happens with that discussion. For having me here. It is an honor. I would like to build on what durell that the billion dollars in this proposal is for public School Choice. It is title i money that is of his follow the students from Public School to the other. What did surprise me was that there was only 250 million set aside in this Education Research s andam to fund voucher research in vouchers. I expected a lot more. That was my gut response. I was thinking more along the lines of race to the top, where billion inated 4. 35 2009. 19 states took slices of that with the provision that state list the cap on Charter Schools and determine teacher pay according to performance. I thought and perhaps this is where trump and thes will go, and it is something we need to focus on, is that they will allocate more than 200 million 250 million to state with conditions that states come up with some kind of educations savings account programs or tuition tax credit program. That may be down the road or too early for them to propose more than 250 million for them. So that was my gut response. Iq. Robert . Mr. M low thank you for having us and thank you to georgetown for hosting. Budget,e talk about the a reality check. Federal spending on education is up to 11 of the total. The majority of funds is at the stake and local level. Spend roughly 750 million billion in america, and the billion dollar proposed in the budget is higher for public School Choice than for private School Choice. So i look at the budget this way. There is good stuff and there is a lot of stuff that makes me worried. In reality, once it goes to the congress it is not going to withstand the pressure. I do not think any of the president ial budgets have withstood the pressure. Lets keep that in mind. No budget from the president ever goes over unscathed. So we will see a lot of challenges. We have a lot of questions to answer about the budget. What do these proposals look like in detail . We are spending time arguing about ideology rather than the proposals. So as we see them we can have some nonpartisan dialogue about this as opposed to the ideological dialogue we are having now. And talk about what might be good and whatnot good. Be good. Ight not there are those of us who think that growth in the title i and a good idea. So it is a bit of a mixture, but the reality is it is only a small portion of what he spent on k12 and it will not withstand congressional oversight. With d. C. , it was approved for three years. If you look at the program done by the former administrations research department, you have positive facts, particularly when showing children graduating at higher rates. Ae most recent study is firstyear study, and we will see what happens in the third year. When you look at d. C. Scholarship program that has been renewed for three years, and we should look at the bulk of the studies before we say it is good or bad. Would you like to respond . I do. There have been five studies on the d. C. Vouchers. It has not been around for one year. The last study was a oneyear study, so it is not like the program just started. The prior studies showed no statistically significant improvement in reading and math. People point to the fact in the third year there was an improvement in reading, though not found specifically significant. If you look atsignificant, so it it says thereer, is no statistically significant improvement in reading and math. In the latest study looking at one year of the students show they performed worse in math and reading and there was a statistically significant decrease in achievement in reading, so i just want to make clear that the prior study did not show any statistically significant in reading or math. Graduation rates, it did show a higher rate but its important look at that portion of the study where that was not based on actual student records, it was based on calling parents who parents whose students should have graduated and they called them and said, did your Student Graduate from high school . And it was a very small number like 400 some parents who responded. That is the graduation rate. Everyone is hooking into for the prior five years of study is that the parents who answered the phone, 450 of them approximately said their students graduated from college. I just wanted to point that out. We will talk a bit later about the research, but try not to get too deep in the weeds of it, but to give people a sense of what is going on. The one piece of the trump agenda that has been sort of unspoken by the administration itself at least publicly that we have heard a lot about, is somehow the idea of building in tuition tax credits into a tax system overhaul, if that happens. On,ne want to comment whether that is feasible, will that happen . It could happen. Its possible to amend the federal tax code to actually make this happen. I do think in this is sort of the challenge. If you suffer in a blue state one, like i do and have one of the challenges to what samuel was saying earlier is that the administration would not do this in a fashion that sort of had every state automatically opt in. States would have to opt in. From my perspective, the kids of the states i work closely with our likely left out, which is why a race to the top. The democrats and republicans are split on choice, which is to say like how much, where, for whom. Teachers like andrew cuomo will tell you that in new york state the Teachers Union came to , democrats in the city and republicans upstate, so lots of hand to beng their what i think i