city. this is one hour and 25 minutes. >> thank you for joining us for what i hope will be a fun our. you know, i had intended this to be a love fest because you are a great hero of mine. but then paul said that i have to ask tough questions, so i want to make it clear whenever i see something that is supportive and warm that's me and whenever i say something that is critical that is me just channelling paul. [laughter] so, to get that of the way. i wanted to start by -- you are in a very unusual position. you're going to have this big conference in washington this coming weekend were there will be 10,000 people. you have this enormous falling and you are a kind of figure and i was trying to figure out is there any recent historical figure that you think you are analogous to? [laughter] people for what the restaurants of modesty. just like you. >> to be clear the 10,000 people are coming together because they want to -- i mean because they are drawn to the same vision as each other and they want to spend a day just thinking about and reflecting on the incredible progress that we have made in the last 20 years against what is a true crisis in the country this issue of educational and equity and what we need to do individually. >> guest: but you will be treated as a kind of rock star. [laughter] >> the sad reality is maybe we would all wish, but there will be my critics and friends but it's not all a love fest. >> the closest analogy i could come up with was the marine corps. it's tough to get in and then they send you to really nasty places. [laughter] i was wondering how in the movies there's always the moment in that kind of movie where the one tough guy meets the other and they are staring each other down about to get enough light and the other says were u.n. nam? yeah i was in nam. wheelan the marine corps? of and the 29th infantry something or something and then they go semper fi! [laughter] was wondering if there's an end to economic for the to teach for america alums' get together and the producer of? south bronx. south bronx. [laughter] [applause] and then the show each other there should teach for america tattoo. [laughter] and joking, but there is a kind of -- you are creating a kind of movement. the marine corps alumni represents a kind of movement representing a certain attitude towards the world, you know -- >> this is the big idea. and teach for america really isn't about -- we are about teachers are critical but teach for america is about building a movement among the country's future leaders to say we've got to change the way our education system is fundamentally. and i think your article in the new yorker about the formation of movements captured the change for teach for america. this is about the foundation of experience of teaching successfully in ways we are creating a corps of people that were absolutely determined to expand the opportunities facing kids in the most absolutely economically disadvantaged communities, you know, who are pouring themselves into their work and trying to put themselves in a different trajectory and having varying levels of success and taking from that experience. incredible lessons. they realize through firsthand experience the challenge their kids face, the potential they have. they realize that it's ultimately possible to solve the problem, and that experience is not only important for their kids but it's completely transformational for them and i think of course they are all going through this together and i think that we will leave with a common set of convictions and insights and just a common level of commitment to ultimately go out and affect the fundamental changes we need to solve the problem. >> you've got how many alumni now? >> 20,000. >> and so you considered your alumni to be as important as your active teachers if you're thinking of it in movie terms. how many alumni do you need before you think you have a kind of critical mass? >> well, you know, i guess you never know what would lead us to the tipping point. laughter [laughter] >> you just bought yourself five more hardball questions with that. [laughter] >> i think, you don't know, this is growing exponentially at this point. you know, five years ago we had 8800 alums and today we have 20,000 if we can continue the growth trajectory we will have more than 40,000 by five years from now. and i guess i look at what is happening in some communities where we have the critical mass of teach for america alum. communities we have been placing people for in some cases 20 years, new orleans and washington, d.c. and oakland california, houston texas and any number of other places and newark new jersey where very different things are happening for many reasons, but if you to call of the teach for america alum out of the picture to take away a lot of the energy and the leadership in the pictures. >> as the teach for america movement have an ideological person of the? >> i think that people come out of this and we probably have a bunch -- we have a diverse community and people come into it reviewing the issue we are taking on in different ways and from different sides of the political spectrum. i think people come out of it sharing, largely sharing a few views. one, i think people come out of it knowing we can solve the problem. it's not that the kids don't have the potential and the parents don't care. i mean, if you look at the gallup polls, and i would be interested in seeing another one now i think the prevailing ideologies navy started to shift a bit. but as of about three or four years ago most people in our country thought that the reason that we have low educational outcome is because kids were not motivated in the communities and parents don't care we know for a fact that isn't true. they see their kids working harder than any kids work and they see that their parents to care when they are brought into the process. so, they come out of that thinking when the kids are met with high expectations, given extra support they do well and they also come out of it realizing that there is no silver bullet. meeting -- >> we are going to get to that but still want you to answer the question. i only ask because whenever i see teach for america spoken of in a derogatory manner it is invariably by someone on the right which confuses me because i would have thought that it -- i would have thought it would be the other way around. do you have a sense of this? am i wrong in thinking this? >> i doubt it. you're saying folks are largely from the left? we have a diverse group of people. >> the alumni voted republican in the last election. [laughter] >> i don't know, i can't answer that. it's probably -- it's maybe not that high of a percentage but i'm not sure. >> quite apart from the value of the observation isn't that weird to you? why would it have an ideological dimension? why wouldn't you expect kids to be signing up for this who were diehard right wing as everything is consistent with all? >> what is the profile of graduating college seniors today in terms of their ideological perspective? i mean like what percentage of them vote republican? i don't know and they would be interesting to look. i don't want to say. i mean, we get republican folks, too. i wonder what college students -- i'm not sure, i don't know if we are out of line with that or not. i've sort of media living in a bubble, but -- i don't know. i think that we are drawing people -- would be interesting to look at that i guess. >> this is your 20 the anniversary. so, when you reflect on the differences between -- and to reflect on the differences between 1990 and now. we were chatting earlier and you mentioned how the was hilarious how the movie lean on me could never have been made today. what is it about lean on me to would be unthinkable today? >> we put the movie and the school of in life as a success story and the principle was kind of a super hero with some level, there was the point of the movie, and he really changed the culture of the school but it's still number 317 out of 326 in terms of educational outcomes in the state of new jersey. the kids are on the path -- we are not giving the kids enough school real-life options and we couldn't make that movie today. we couldn't hold it as a success because today we know what's possible. we know what is possible to give kids who face all the challenges that are facing the kids to go to that school in paterson, new jersey who the school that actually sets them up to graduate from college, not just a few kids to beat the odds with a whole buildings full of kids to actually get on the same trajectory as kids and much more privileged community and i just think it shows. >> it's about somebody that imposes order on the school, it is about discipline. >> but it's also holding up the school as a success story, and i just think we would never do that today. i mean hollywood would never hear the end of it. we would say this isn't a success. it tells me how far we have come. >> it was low enough you could describe the school where kids were not getting killed. in that sense we have made progress, right? [laughter] >> its huge and dramatic not to underestimate how significant that is. we didn't know that was possible to provide kids with a truly transformational the education, kids growing up in poverty. the assumption was and all the research backed up the fact the socioeconomic background determined the educational outcomes and we knew a few kids the were beating the odds and if you charismatic teachers and another hit movie my senior year stand and deliver who could do extraordinary things the we viewed them as out layers. [laughter] go on. [laughter] >> but today we don't just have a few -- first i think it's fascinating to think about not only lean on me but stand and deliver, and i have thought a lot about the fact that why didn't i go out and think let me find out how he did what he did so we could teach them the same way. it took many years to figure out to spend a lot of time with our outliers like every truly exceptional teachers putting kids in a different trajectory to try to understand what were they doing differently and it turned out the point is now we know. we know what the teachers to teach and otherwise not very successful schools and low-income communities to to produce incredible results with their kids so we know so much for the classroom level, but at the school level with the one thing you really is is it takes a total superhero to do that classroom by classroom but it's possible to create whole schools that foster good teaching and enable teachers to sustain that kind of work and hundreds of the schools it is dramatic progress in the question used to be can education overcome poverty and we know it can the question is how we do it at scale and cradle systems will transformational schools. >> you are applying something interesting which is you think that the task of providing quality education can be decoupled from the broad kind of macroconditions of the society. in other words, 20 years ago we would have said you've got poverty and dysfunction and the educational task is impossible but what you're saying is -- >> i think what we have learned is that it's not. we can i mean we should solve poverty. it's just that while we try to do that we don't need to wait. in the meantime we can provide kids the kind of education that breaks the cycle of poverty and maybe we will realize that is the answer to poverty actually. >> it's interesting because this is the same transformation that took place in our thinking about crime 25 years ago if you ask people what would it take to bring down the crime rate of new york and they would say you have to solve poverty, drug abuse, discrimination, we solve one of those problems. the crime rate came down by 75% which is both very good news and also kind of disturbing disturbing in the little sense that it says that you can actually break off these pieces of the pathological puzzle and solve them without ever getting the core problem. is the paradox? >> i guess i believe that education is different. i feel like i meet in my work everyday people who -- honestly i meet them because some of them are joining teach for america today. people who were not on a path to graduate from high school love alone college who end up going to college and graduate from college and be able to choose what do they want to do? to they want to teach, do they want to work for a big company? do they want to go into the law and that's how you treat the cycle of poverty. >> but let's just for a moment dwell on this point which is i think it's an important one that for the longest time a central tennant in the liberal ideology was that the reason we need to solve the fundamental questions of the social and economic injustice is without doing that, problems like educational equity and crime will be beyond our reach. the experience of the cause that you have been part of, and the experience of the crime fighting the last 15 years has been that that ideology -- that fundamental tendencies totally false. economic and social inequality in this country has soared in the last 15 years and simultaneously, we have made extraordinary inroads against crime and the beginning of extraordinary inroad against education. what does that mean for the liberal ideology? was it wrong? is there no reason? >> i would hate to conclude that there's no reason to solve the fundamental challenges of poverty. i mean, one of the quickest ways to make the job -- as we will discover if it is possible in an enormous amount of hard work and we can make it easier by taking the pressure off of schools and absolutely we should take on the fundamental with improve the economy in the urban rural areas and improve the stealth services and to all of that. we don't need to wait and maybe we will discover that freakin' the cycle of poverty for kids some of whom will come back and improve their own communities. let's pretend that you were in education czar and i gave you more power than we normally give czars. very often we give people the title czars but they are not czars, not classic czars. [laughter] it's just a word we use to pick on somebody in washington that has a large office. he wasn't any czar. [laughter] you are a real czar and you got to start over. can you describe your perfect educational system? >> i think that we would first of all be very clear about the standards we are trying to reach one quick start with a clear understanding of here's what we think kids should people to master and we have to develop a great assessments so that we understand whether or not kids have mastered at and we would put an enormous amount into attracting a tremendous school leaders, educators in general and then we would freeze them out to obtain those results. isn't that what you would have funded organizations and the sectors where management does its job. >> i don't know, are you asking me? [laughter] >> i thought maybe would bring in a kind of analogy. it's a different sector. >> so you wouldn't in a perfect world? >> you wouldn't need them because he would have school principals and district superintendents and everyone else who would know that the most voluble assets or the teachers and people and they would be making them happy and the -- they would be listened to etc. >> we sort of had an example about this and you talk about this in your book in new orleans. it was kind of after katrina the sort of blow up the school system and start over. can you talk about what happened there and what we learned from that example? i thought was one of the most fascinating parts of the book. >> so, teach for america start replacing teachers in new orleans 20 years ago, and you know, i personally spent a lot of time walking around the new orleans public schools and you could call it a crime scene at some level before hurricane katrina. it was just tragic what was happening to the kids. after the hurricane you may remember many of the kids were displaced to houston. they were living in the astrodome with their parents and some of the folks in the up recruiting the kids and basically running the school for them in houston. the did the diagnostics and discovered that the eighth graders were on the second grade level and that is pretty much what we knew to be the case in new orleans. and you know, so of course post-hurricane katrina, talk about a place where we can see the incredible burden of poverty , but the storm basically created a window of opportunity for some people who had been working for a long time to try to improve the schools without gaining much traction to actually just love the system. i think after the school board announced they were going to open schools for a year they decided no more. and they basically created the new system where -- >> could you mean in this instance? >> i'm thinking about into real advocate for change comes word from the business community named paul pasternak who ended up being the school superintendent of the state level, and there was the state legislative change, but essentially they created a system of charter's. this is a slight oversimplification, but they create a world where and they slowly shut down the schools still under the management of the central department and anyone could appoint to run a charter school. they created a very rigorous accountability system so that very few of the applications to run the schools were approved and if they didn't work would be shut down. but the people in that puzzle knew that it wasn't as easy as that. they knew that the charter laws don't create transformational schools that put kids who are starting we behind facing lots of different challenges on a different trajectory in order to do that we would need extraordinary leadership, and they went about finding it. they went outside of new orleans and looked inside of new orleans and hugely scale that teach for america and brought the new teachers project to help recruit people from all of the local community. >> how many people did they bring before katrina, do you remember? >> we have about 600 people now. from -- we were placing about 120 probably total of any given time. >> is that as many as you have in any city? >> the core members alone in the first and second years are reaching one out of every three students in the new orleans public schools right now. but there are -- >> and sorry. you said they start looking for -- when you see looking for, are you talking about looking for principals, looking for -- >> they did everything. they went about the different pipeline to read a skill that teach for america and they brought in a different group that sets up local teacher recruitment of michigan's so they tried to recruit people who didn't have teaching backgrounds like the new york city teaching fellows in new orleans. new orleans, teach new orleans or whatever it's called and then the leaders to recruit nontraditional folks to become principles and they recruited the operators of the high performing schools and said come to new orleans like we are going to create a model school district and they set up this organization for the purpose of recruiting people to run the charter schools and making it easier to find buildings etc., etc.. and, you know, as i write about in the the chance to make history, i spent two days and new orleans last spring and i was just in shock when place all. i had heard what i was going to see and have been talking to everyone and assumed that it would be great but it was shocking given the comparison that i had. >> what do we know, what kind of statistical measures of improved performance to we have? how the is the job? >> the jumps are completely dramatic. they are making in some cases depending on the grade levels between six to ten times th