Well go ahead and start our next panel so that we can keep on time and 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 panelist today will be girouard robinson, a resident scholar at the institution, the virginia secretary of education and the president of the black alliance for Educational Options. Girard has a long history in education. Dr. Greg forcester is the director of the oikonia network at Trinity International university, a senior fellow at ed choice and currently at the Freedman Foundation for educational choice. He is the author of six books and coauthor of additional three books and his ph. D. At yale. Michas is the founder and ceo recently given p up the approva to open up a charter. She served as the ceo of the Network Charter school fund and the Senior Adviser at new leaders for new skeels achools 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 discuss you heard, we want to discuss and review the data as it relates to education, Educational Opportunity and integration since the brown v. Board decision, where are we . What are the issues we have to deal with . Our panel will start off with this. Ju we will have some additional comments and directed questions and you, the audience will fire some good questions like johnny did last time. Without further ado, girard, please. First of all, let me change the center for advancing opportunity and extending to 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, fast forward. Rock bert m robert mentioned i was secretary of education in virginia and commissioner in florida. 50 years ago, it would have been impossible for me as a black man to souf erve as a state leader i either of the two states. It was the work of brown and the ncaap that made this possible. Our students were in segregated schools. They learned. Many came out very literate. They went to college. There were a lot of resource challenges. Fastforward today. We have more africanamerican students and otherwise who are graduating from high school. Many more africanamericans that are going to college, whether they are hbcus or nonhbcus. We have made tremendous advancement. One of the things i believe chokes an honest conversation about progress is an overreliance on the conversation about segregation. You say we have racially identifiable schools. I am under no pretense that government policy at the federal and local level and redrawing lines and deciding zip code, i get it. To say in 2017, my oldest daughter, who went to Public Schools, in her generation, went to a segregated school. We are saying 63 years worth of progress never happened. Thats simply untrue. We have racially identifiable schools that have a number of challenge filled with poverty. Poverty is not a proxy for destiny. We know too many poor people in cities that are doing well. We also know people that have challenges. When we are talking about what brown had a chance to do, it shifted how in the type of schools we could attend. Weve got another thing about brown is the advancement of cell phones. It has been a different conversation. What we have today are racially identifiable schools. We have a new set that fall into the Public School option model and greg will talk more about that. Last year, we had two members of congress, john conyers from michigan and we had bobby scott from virginia commissioned a study. It was released may 17th, 2016. It identified that we had a number of schools, nearly 3 4 of the schools that africanamericans attend are either predominantly africanamerican or student of color or predominantly free reduced priced lunch and predominantly underresourced. Those challenges that still exist. One part of the report that we didnt sfendpend a lot of time the number of majority or minority, a number are nonwhite now. There are majority minority schools that won blue ribbons or in fact won gold medals because of their academic achievement. High schools that are predominantly low income that are doing well academically. What we need to do is to look at the schools that exist. What are they doing is it resources . Educators . Family involvement . Is it the curriculum . Is it expectations . All the things we knew 50 years ago make sense . But we know how to make sure it makes sense across the board. To say that we have schools that are segregated and not doing well simply isnt true. That isnt left the government off the bull for being responsible for investing the resources. When we talk about resources, its not just revenues. Wheres the money going . You know, weve gotten in washington, d. C. , we hear a number of numbers. It could be 22,000. Had a chance to work with d. C. Public schools in the late 1990s for dr. Arlene ackerman. And we spent a lot of money. And we did not crack a 50 High School Graduation rate. Wasnt because of money. We had money in place. But there were some other challenges. There was also a rise of special education. If theres 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 have different names for them back in 1954. They werent ualways kind names. Weve got to find ways to work. For me as i close, 63 years from brown, we dont have segregated schools. Number two, we have majority minority poor schools that are showing success and we need to figure out what are they doing and actually have that go across the board. Third, we have School Systems run by africanamericans, hispanics, and number of teachers. We are now in positions of power. In ways that we were color codewise back in 1954 but today we actually manage multimilliondollar School Budgets and we have state superintendents in chiefs who are in positions of power. For me im excited to be in washington, d. C. 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 it were not for brown v. Board of education. For me were all browns great grandchildren and im glad to be part of the conversation. Well said. Thank you. Ive been asked to speak about what the Research Shows on School Choice and ethnic segregation. Im sure you all heard about the economist who fell down the well. And people he falls down the well and people say are you all right . Just assume i have a ladder. Its an old joke but a good one because it describes how a lot of economic studies are done and other social studies are done as well. One of the challenges in my field is a lot that are published looking at ethnic segregation dont look at data. They dont look at what has happened in the real world. Instead they take the authors assumptions about what they think should happen and build a mathematical model and present it as if it were data. I go through and look at data from the real world. To accomplish a regularly updated review of the research on School Choice. And one of the things that we track and publish updates on is the research on ethnic segregation. There have been ten to look at how choice programs intersect with ethnic segregation and measure what happens in the programs. Nine studies have a positive finding that School Choice has some sort of beneficial effect. And the tenth study finds it makes no visible difference. Seven of these ten studies, what they do is take a snapshot of the ethnic composition of the Public Schools. And the composition of the private schools where that are participating in the program. And what they ask is which is more segregated. The Public Schools that students are able to leave or the private schools theyre transferring into. And what all seven of those find is that the private schools are less segregated. While thats a snapshot, it does tell us that the School Choice programs are moving students from more segregated schools into less segregated schools. The other three studies are able to track individual students as they move from school to school. So instead of looking at the School Systems, were actually following individual students. And thats a better method. We dont often get to do that. We just dont have the data. So thered been one study like that in milwaukee and two in louisiana. The study in milwaukee is the one that found no visible difference. There are a couple of theories about why that is. One is the study didnt get going until 15 years after the program started. So its possible the program had some effect on ethnic segregation but then it reached an equilibrium. Another plausible explanation is milwaukee is just a really, really segregated city. Its more segregated even than the average American City of that size. And so the students may simply be moving from overwhelmingly black Public Schools to overwhelmingly black private schools that are created to serve that population. Without better data we cant really know. At least we can know its not doing any harm. The transfers of students are not increasing segregation. The two studies in louisiana found that the Program Includes ethnic segregation. One found that there was a small increase in segregation in the private schools participating as a result of the transfers, but a much larger decrease in segregation in the Public Schools that the students are transferring out of. So on net it was a dramatic difference. The other study found no change in private schools. And the same or very similar large positive effect in Public Schools. Now, these results are counterintuitive to many people. Our culture has sort of conditioned us to think that private schools are much more ethnically segregated than Public Schools. But actually, not only the data in School Choice programs but on schools dont bear that out. And School Choice programs are often describe d as something that will increase it. I think its important to understand. I think the main reason is because in the public system, students are assigned what schools theyre going to based on where they live. American neighborhoods are residentially very segregated. Thats a combination of ethnic discrimination in the housing market. And people selfselecting because they want to live near other people who look like them. And theres actually a feedback where those feed off each other. I encountered that myself. One time my wife and i moved to a new city and caught our Real Estate Agent red handed filtering the results showing us only ethnic composition they assumed we would want. Boy, was he terrified when he realized he was caught because thats very, very illegal. I dont think his motivation was to be concerned about the ethnic parity of the vp ethnic in that neighborhood. I think he is motivated to make the quickest sale he can. He wants to show us as few houses were not going to be interested in. And he made assumptions about what we would want. And actually we were frustrated. We couldnt find a house we wanted. As soon as we took that filter off, we found a Beautiful House that met our needs at the price we wanted and we bought it and lived there for several years. It was an enriching experience. Sometimes my friends poohpooh it. Say let me tell you a story. So we can debate how widespread this is. But we cant debate whether it happens. We have eyewitness accounts. So i think as long as people are sent to schools based on where they live, its going to be extremely difficult to overcome ethnic segregation in schools. Private School Choice was not designed for the purpose of designing segregation. But because it disconnects where you live from where you go to school, it does seem to have the effect of reducing ethnic segregation in schools. I support it for a lot of reasons but one reason i support School Choice is because i think it should be a goal of our system to reduce ethnic isolation without being nationalistic were positioned to be on cuttings edge of the new kind of human community. Where communities are not ethnically exclusive. Thats historically new. Its not something you find when you look back at history. Where communities are not ethic any bounded. You kcant get in because of that. Its a great thing for School Choice to be doing. Well, ive got to respond to that. Let me start by 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 on how i even got here. I have an identical twin sister we grew up in new jersey. Neither of our parents went to college and we both failed kindergarten. Yes. We both failed kindergarten. Apparently we colored outside the lines or didnt follow direction. I share that story because we were in a majority white community. My parents were just moved out of philadelphia and they wanted a better School Option for us. When we failed kindergarten, my mother took us out of Public School and put us into private school. Honestly, i think that has made all the difference for us. And so it was why im a huge, huge proponent of parental choice. I really genuinely believe that every parent should be able to choose what school or what environment and take away even the construction of school. How do you best meet the needs of each individual child . Fast forward, as was previously mentioned, i was the ceo of the newark Charter School fund where im a new jersey girl, born and raised, and was excited to be back in newark. And now as ive moved back to washington, d. C. , where my husband is a sixth generation washingtonian. The way i come at this is really believing that all politics are local. Whether it is the local city, local state, the data or narrative, it really comes down to whats happening locally. About two years ago i went out to Silicon Valley with all of the entrepreneurs. They do things differently out there. The ceo of thumb tack said i hear this debate about k12, about college, but this is the reality. If we are not preparing every single one of our students for their academic life, Economic Life and their life to be citizens in this global world then we are not doing our job. As i think about the purpose where we are now, my mission is to make sure every children can have a well rounded life. When i hear data around majority minority communities, look. Newark, new jersey, is 100 minority and almost 100 eligible for reduced lunch. Im opening a school in ward seven in d. C. Which is almost 100 africanamerican. So if we want to talk about data in terms of if more fluent and white parents want to come to southeast d. C. , great. But i dont think theyre coming until the schools and the neighborhoods are safe. And are providing high quality innovative options. Until that happens, i think this is a false debate around, you know, is it majority minority, is it segregated. Then again to be in two cities, newark new jersey and in washington, d. C. Where we have a thriving traditional Public School sector as well as a thriving charter sector. Again, my perspective is that those are false debates we shouldnt be choosing between charter or district. They dont care if we have a charter name on it or traditional Public School. Thats what we heard from the last panel. The other data point that i want to just really reflect on is in the last panel, talked about being in the second wave of students. She described her experience as being invisible. I thought thats exactly how the 1. 2 Million Students dropping out of schools today feel. Invisible. So the answer isnt more money or more schools. 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 dijal natives and weve got to prepare them to go into the Digital Economy of the future. Thats why im excited to launch a school focused on Computer Science. I think thats a skill that every one of us should have in order to be prepared for the Digital Economy. Can i enroll . Absolutely. Can you teach it, thats the question. Good point. So thank you very much. I appreciate those responses. Were going to do a bit of directed questions here. We want you to get engaged. So im going to ask a question that follows up on yours. You said that you were from a district 100 . In a School Choice system, if you were meeting the needs of every child, is it okay to have a school that is 100 racially isolated or minority. Is that okay . To me thats the wrong question. How do we meet the needs of individual students . And when we look at the portfolio of schools are they all the same model or do we give students real choices. I met an author saying there is no average student. There is no one size fits all. And the more we treat individual students as an average, were going to do one of two things. One, were going to miss their talents. Two, were going to bore them to death. For me when we look at their schools, we need to look another school day and school year. Maybe school is not a p