Andy and Jed are talking about traveling and the fun of summer, their two mystery guests for the next WonkyFolk, and finding educational common ground via the juxtaposition of partisan politics and genuine educational accomplishments in Virginia.

And for those of you who would prefer a video recording, we provide a link to YouTube as well. 

This week some of the topics we discuss include the following:

• The gentrification of college athletics (00.25)
• Traveling, family and summer fun before becoming empty nesters (01.30)
• Two amazing mystery guests, who specialize in educational politics, advocacy, parent organizing and empowerment, and will join us during our next WonkyFolk podcast (09.23)
• Setting the stage for states, like VA, putting the interest of the Commonwealth and the kids of the Commonwealth before political expediency in adopting new K-12 history and social studies standards (14.17)
• The education factor in Virginia elections (16.00)
• School choice and the lack of robust parent groups in Virginia (20.23)
• The political calculus to be made by rural Republicans in various states (22.20)
• The juxtaposition of the two parties on school choice and reproductive choice (24.10)
• Education, culture wars, and universal vouchers (28.00)
• The existential crisis for public school supporters (30.22)
• The juxtapositions of two articles focused on Mom’s for Liberty (36.03)

Notes:

You can use the following link to access 

• Michael B. Horn’s interview of Steve Mesler and Andy Rotherham, Rethinking Sports Education in Schools: https://michaelbhorn.substack.com/p/rethinking-sports-education-in-schools
• Rick Hess’ interview of Andy Rotherham, How One State Found Common Ground to Produce New History Standards: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-how-one-state-found-common-ground-to-produce-new-history-standards/2023/07
• Robert Pondiscio’s article, Who’s Afraid of Moms for Liberty? https://www.thefp.com/p/whos-afraid-of-moms-for-liberty
• Kate Briquelet’s article, DeSantis, Furries and Trump Merch: I Went to the Moms for Liberty Summit: https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-moms-for-liberty-summit-in-philly-we-saw-ron-desantis-furry-panic-and-lots-of-trump-merch

Hey, Jed.

Good to see you.

Hey, Andy.

How you doing?

How's your summer been?

Mine's been good.

I'll tell you about it, but start with you.

How, what have you been up to since we were last together?

It's been a minute.

Well, I haven't had as much summer in terms of vacation.

I'm saving things up.

It's my wife's on my 25th and we're walking the Camino in Spain in the second

half of September and October, so I basically been working straight through

the summer, but most of the other time that I've had has been around my son and

helping him with his college applications and trying to get in front of a college

coach for his soccer team also trying to help a lot of his teammates who are

similarly in the recruiting process.

I know we want to keep it light and talk about the fun of summer, right?

But this soccer recruiting and D3 sports and the gentrification of college

athletics is something I'm experiencing up close and personal right now.

But I guess the positive thing is a lot of Quentin's soccer friends, several of whom

are first generation are actually going to end up going to good schools in the end.

And so we feel terrific about that.

Yeah, that's great.

And they all end up like, you know, going to good schools.

I think athletics can end up taking on like an outsized importance.

We should maybe at some point do a Steve Messler, and I did one with Michael

Horn in a podcast, we talked about that.

We can put that in the show notes.

We were talking about coming back with our daughters.

All of us have, and Steve's daughter is younger.

My daughters have both played competitive sports and just like, it's a lot for sure.

Maybe we could do something on that.

You're going to walk the way, where are you going to start and,

and how far are you going to go?

So we're going to start in Saint Jean in France and we'll go across the French

Pyrenees there and do the entire distance.

So we did a third of it eight years ago, when I was on sabbatical, and

our little ones, our 10 and our 12 year old were with us at the time.

But when we got to the end, Amy and I said, Hey, let's come back for

our 25th and do the entire thing.

So it's been this thing that's been an anchor there for a long time.

We really had a good time.

I don't know if you've done any part of the Camino or know very much about it,

but it's getting to be super popular.

It's overrun with tourists, but it's also quite a cool experience.

And we're really looking forward to it.

Yeah, we have friends have done it.

I mean, a lot of what I know about honestly comes from that fantastic

Emilio Estevez, Mark Sheen film.

But I know a little bit.

I had a little, a similar experience.

I would say sort of a far more perhaps more secular experience.

We were in Rome, we were riding our bikes in a way, and I didn't realize.

You can actually just sort of self deploy and ride the whole thing if

you want with a, you know, mountain bike, suspended kind of bike.

And so now I'm like trying to figure out how far we could

take it and ride into Rome.

So that's now becoming, I have another Europe ride I want to do.

And now that's on, that's on the list.

So was that the first time for the family in Rome?

It was first time as a family for us to be in Italy together.

Yes, we went to, we were in Rome.

Florence and Tuscany.

So, you know, some history, a lot of food and wine and some good time

outside to some good time together.

We're at a similar point.

My kids are 17, so we're trying to remind them that their parents are okay.

So maybe they'll come back one day.

Last summer, we were trying to pitch an idea for a trip together as a family,

and I pitched all these different things.

Let's go camping.

Let's go to Canada.

Let's go...

and everyone was like, Why don't you and mom get some good quality time together?

And then I pitched Rome and they're like, "Oh, let's do a family vacation!"

So, yeah, Rome is great.

It's a fun city.

You can both have fun.

There's the learning opportunities there.

You could spend a decade there and not get through so much.

It's a cool place.

I was intrigued.

Like we went to, we spent a bunch of time in Alaska last summer, which was amazing.

And saw just a terrific education person up there, Jamie Rees.

He's a high school teacher in Seattle.

He used to teach in Baltimore, fantastic.

He was a college athlete, played soccer for Harvard and just one of those really

interesting people in our sector and spend some time with him up around Fairbanks.

It was a great trip.

And I wasn't sure that the kids like really love it or was it like

nice, they're glad to be home, and interestingly, like when we're

starting to work on the Italy trip, one of my daughters is like, "I wish

we could just like go back to Alaska and be outside in Alaska again."

I was kind of like, okay, that's not this summer, but that's cool.

We will definitely, you know, I've been lucky enough to be up there a few times

and we will definitely do that again.

Yeah, so we have we have kindred spirits in all sorts of ways.

We did a trip in Alaska and that is the kids favorite by far.

They would go back to Alaska in a heartbeat.

Yeah, it's an amazing place.

It opens, you know, like Rome opens your, I think for my kids, they'd seen old

stuff, but they hadn't seen, like, they think, like, I mean, they've been, you

know, like, they've been nice and they've seen Viking stuff, things like that.

I think that kind of blew their minds, and I think Alaska blows your

mind, so geographically, just how big country can actually be, and

just how remote and how you can just get out in the bush and be gone.

So I think you need things like that when you're young, it kind of

changes you, it opens your horizons.

Well, what my girls, I'll tell you the truth, what they

really wanted this summer.

Cause you know, they're 17, they thought this was going

to be sort of hot girl summer.

And in fact, what we basically did in addition to dragging Italy, we

dragged them to a lot of concerts.

And so like I I'm telling them what they got was lot, they got lot girl summer.

One of my daughters and I saw a great Neil Young show.

I don't know if you and I talked about that.

It was a fantastic Neil Young show at the Greek, right at the beginning of summer.

And then They saw Dead & Company and which was their first time in that scene.

So that was interesting.

And Julie and I caught Tedeschi trucks and actually, just last night, we're

filming, we're doing this on a Thursday and it'll go up in a day or two.

We saw Bill Kreuzman's doing a tour with his band, just a two show tour,

they're calling it Peer to Peer.

So he's playing, uh, the peer in Baltimore and appear up in New York.

And they were exceptional.

He's got just a really good configuration.

This woman, Kamika Moore came by and was sat in on vocals and she was amazing.

He's got this new guy, Danny Donato's sort of a real creative player.

So that was super fun.

And so that it's been more lot girl summer than anything else.

Well, the amazing thing is you've got your kids willing

to go to concerts with you.

That's a bridge I've never gotten over.

And I don't think I ever will.

We can make this whole episode.

' We can name check interesting people.' A few years ago, Paul Herdman used

to tell me, from Rodel in Delaware and formerly new America schools,

and, it came up an hour bound.

Paul's just a terrific person in the section lives in Delaware.

And Paul used to, Tell me about going to concerts with his daughter.

And I was like, so sort of jealous.

And I was like, "Oh my God, that's so cool."

like not bad jealousy, but just, "Oh my gosh, that sounds so great."

and I was like, I don't know if that'll ever.

And then like, it just sort of started happening and it's been cool.

We're going to go get catch some Bruce shows, hopefully this fall.

It's been interesting, but it just sort of happened.

And it was something I watched other people do and I was like,

"how do you make that happen?"

And I don't think you can, it just has to sort of happen organically.

Well, maybe my kids want to stay separate from me on recreational

time because of things related to charter school obsession.

For example, when we were in Alaska, I found out that there is a charter

school in a place called North Pole.

It's called North Pole Charter School, and so we're driving into North Pole,

and the kids, where do they want to go?

Santa's Workshop.

And I was like, "shut up!

We're going to the charter school first," right?

So they wanted to go in a different direction there as far as charter

schools go, and I think their tastes in music have stayed similarly.

We were going to visit, but COVID got in the way, Laura Marcus, who ran

the ARETE project now runs Tidelines, which is a really cool school in

Gustavus, Alaska for college students.

And there's a school out your way called Deep Springs and she wanted

to start an all female version.

I ended up doing this coed thing in Alaska, just another, we're going to keep

name checking, just a really interesting person in the sector, kind of does things

her own way, actually she just had a baby.

She's just fantastic as an educator.

And I was making my kids like we're in Glacier Bay, and like at the park services

sort of incredible lodge up there on Bartlett Cove and we're hanging out and

dad wants to make us go to a school and so we're looking at whales and they're

like, yeah, we're going to go to a school.

So they get that.

Well, I did enjoy getting a couple of texts from you while you were in Rome.

Thank you for allowing your vacation to be interrupted.

There were several ocasions, over the last month or so, because it's been

a while since we've done a recording.

Where virginia stuff has come up that i've wanted to talk.

Yeah, we should at some point.

We should this isn't just it It wants to listen.

It wants to listen to the podcast Jen and I are going to talk about our

vacations and our families and then get weepy about being empty nesters That'll

be that'll be great for the ratings.

Yes, we should pivot we can talk about that before we do that I do want to...

our next so we've sort of have been bullshitting a little bit but our

next And we'll get into Virginia.

That's just more serious.

But our nextpodcast, at the end of the month, we have two really amazing guests.

It went well with Mackey is one guest.

So we figured why not do two?

I'm not going to say who they are, but I think it's going to be a really

fantastic discussion about sort of education, politics, advocacy,

parent organizing and empowerment, and I'm just super excited about it.

So that one, I would say tune in, but obviously it's a podcast,

you can listen whenever you want, but that'll be the next one.

And I'm just super looking forward to that.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it as well and how

this work is done authentically.

There's times when you see folks bringing interesting efforts and it feels real,

and there are others that it just doesn't, and I think the two people

that we're going to have on in a couple weeks are really among those people that

specialize in the authentic voice, right?

Yeah, two, and we've been name checking people, we'll just name,

there are two, two mystery guests who you will find out about soon.

Hey, this reminds me, one more thing before we get to Virginia, do you

know Steve Reese, School Wise Press, he does school data, journalism?

Yeah, yeah, I know him.

He is another one of these people who I was thinking, I saw

Steve Reese and I was see about him.

He came up in like Palo Alto and if you go to like that, they did that

big Bill Graham, the music producer.

Bill Graham, not Billy Graham, the evangelist, the other Bill

Graham, the music producer.

And like Steve's pictures were in that exhibit.

He's got like, his work was used in like the Grateful Dead movie

and he's got all these pictures.

He gave me some pictures once and they're of like Jerry Garcia

like, in like Palo Alto at these little places in the early 60s.

And one day he sent me a warlocks poster.

He's like one of the, he's another one of these people who like, you

think you sort of know a little bit, and then like underneath there's

like all this other stuff, you know?

And I'm just, I was thinking about that the other day.

It's like, you know, Shivam Shah, like who everybody thinks of education,

education executive, but like she also owns a tequila company, which is not,

Probably what you would necessarily or, you know, Becca Bracy's like,

you know, really serious in the mountains, mountain biker and climber.

Like we get these people who are, it's just interesting.

And we, maybe one day we could do like some sort of thing on that.

Cause you, they're the kind of people that surprise you.

You learn a couple of things about them and you can't predict the other ones.

Cause there's all this stuff out of left field.

I'll leave it to Rotherham to get me to break one of my solemn vows.

Because one has been never to discuss anything that I've done relative to the

Grateful Dead in a professional setting.

Cause believe me what happened at Grateful Dead shows needs to

stay in Greateful Dead concert.

But, I love the tour of all the people and the stuff that you saw this summer.

Well now I'm going to make you break your back.

Did you go to the shows out there with some shows out there this summer?

No, I didn't go this year and I did have a very close friend that

was going to Boulder and for one of the last shows with his daughter,

and really wanted me to be there and I just could not make it happen with

other family stuff that I had going on.

Scheduling's tough.

That does happen.

I'm a little more porous on that role.

I remember I took a couple of people from my team when I'm out in California,

it's unfortunately closed, but Phil Lesh had that great club over in

Marine that was just like, That's such a delightful place to spend time.

And I would drag them over there.

I remember I took a couple of them over there.

One time, Phil was playing and with Phil Lesh's friends like Stu Allen

and like some really good players.

And yeah.

You do have to kind of have the rule.

Hey, you do whatever you do, whatever you want.

And it will stay here.

All right.

Well let's pivot to Virginia.

The way I've been thinking about this is.

We've got a country that is, has about 50 hot steaming messes

from a state policy standpoint.

It just seems like, and they're all crazy for their own unique ways,

but they are crazy at a level of craziness that is pretty unprecedented.

And then you see Rick Hess write an article that quotes you and, you know,

really dives deep into Virginia adopting some state content standards that

seemed genuinely like really great ones.

And so something substantive was able to get done in Virginia.

And then I've done a few other, I just continue to read articles, there are

some that come up that just stress the culture wars and all that stuff.

But there's also this reasonability that's there.

Some of the appointments to the state board, not just yourself,

but Miche and others, suggest that maybe there's something that we

should be learning from in Virginia.

So I wonder if you wouldn't mind just like, setting the stage for us.

Can you?

Sure.

And we'll put that in the show notes.

It was actually an interview.

Rick pulled a little bit of like a Tom Sawyer move.

So it was actually an interview.

So I did all the work, but he gets the byline and you know, but like Rick is

of course prolific, like since then he's probably written like two books

on Virginia since that interview.

So that was back in like April.

So yeah, but that we'll put that in the show notes.

Look I don't know how to set the stage.

I guess the big thing I would say about Virginia, and this has always been true

I think just in public life and politics and so forth, like there's always like

the narrative that people in these days, whatever people are saying on Twitter

or X or whatever the hell we're calling it now, and in social media and even in

some cases, like in the regular legacy media, and then there's, what's actually

happening and what's actually going on.

And those two things are often like, there's some variance.

I think what's really pronounced now is in some cases just how

substantial the variance is.

And I don't think that's unique at all to Virginia.

I think you see that around the country.

And again, you always have, I just think it's a little bit more intense now.

So I don't want to say like everything in Virginia is going swimmingly.

We have intense partisanship.

It's going to heat up.

There's an election coming and all that.

But like the point of Rick's, the interview was We did get

something done on these standards.

Everybody who reads them thinks they're pretty good.

And I think it shows just like you can get things done and the

thing about it, I don't think any one person deserves credit for it.

It was a bunch of people working together and essentially just.

Putting the interest of the Commonwealth and the kids of the Commonwealth ahead

of like all the temporal expediency.

So as far as additional context, I always go back to the election

in 21 and it was seen as really a swing election where education proved

to be the difference maker and the McAuliffe had, Randy Weingarten come

at the last second and the thought was that maybe Weingarten would help.

And the perception of at least pundits in the end was that that

was exactly the wrong thing to do.

Governor talked about that.

We shouldn't be entrusting parents with, I don't remember exactly what

the quote was, but a very radioactive comment about not trusting parents

to operate our school districts or something like that and Youngkin wins.

And when he wins, he makes his, you know, celebratory speech that first night, the

word charter was the 60th word he uttered.

We were going to get a charter school law done in Virginia.

Only you, only you counted that.

I like that.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Well, you know.

We probably tell me how many syllables in it.

What I liked about it was though, that, you know, It

signaled, I think, seriousness.

I was hoping.

And I think there was a very serious effort that was made.

Ultimately, a charter school law was not able to get across the finish line.

This lab school concept was, and I think a lot of drama and conflict happened

those first early months, and then people stopped paying attention as much again.

And I think it was after you know, that happened where perhaps some of these

other substantive progress, examples of progress were able to happen.

Yeah.

Okay.

So a lot there.

I mean, let's start with like the political analysis.

Education was obviously a factor in the race.

So was voters turned out in certain parts of the state who

hadn't turned out and so forth.

I think one way you can see if you look at places like Loudoun County, Fairfax

County, which stayed closed for a long time or sort of ground zero for some of

the culture war stuff and still are, you saw a shift, you saw a distinct move.

Now in terms of the political analysis, the thing, and I don't know if you and

I have talked about in this podcast, I've talked about in some others, like

it's easy to overstate people tend to look at the Biden election in 2020 and

then the Youngkin can election in 2021 and are like, "Oh my gosh, look at

this enormous 10 point kind of swing."

I think the Biden election, Virginia is a state with a lot of military,

a lot of civil servants, and a lot of people take government seriously.

And so Biden performed well, and you had a lot of Republicans who voted

Democratic at the national level in that election because of Donald

Trump was on the ballot, right?

And Youngkin did a masterful job keeping Donald Trump out of the race in 2021.

And so I think the swing you have to look at is the swing from 2017, the

previous gubernatorial election, where Ralph Northam, the Democrat won to 2021.

And what you do see there is young can made inroads again.

You know, substantial ones across the board, so I don't

mean to like take anything away.

He won the election in a state that a lot of people thought was out of reach

for Republicans, and he did it by putting together a pretty interesting coalition.

Much of his coalition was actually much more diverse, I think that

people realize, and so I don't want to take anything away from all that,

but it was not this 10 point swing.

The national election, the state election are different.

You got to look at 2017.

And there you do see movement.

And again, education, I think was a big part of it.

And to your question, like, look, yeah, Randy coming in, it was like a finger

in the eye to people who, and the thing you can't forget about this, is lots of

people were talking in the fall of 2021.

Like the school closure thing was in the past.

Why did anybody care?

Kids have been back in school since late that spring and all that.

First of all, people were still upset about it.

Second, a lot of people were still experiencing it.

If you have a kid, for example, in special ed and there'd been, you know, there

continues to be, you know, one of the school district state is in a compliance

agreement now, around special ed services.

There's a lot of.

You know, other issues happening, other divisions.

It's a big issue, and so people were still like, this was always

talked about in the past tense.

It was present tense for a lot of Virginians and McAuliffe just did not give

voice to that, and again, if anything, it was like a stick in the eye, some

of this stuff, and there was a price, there was a price to be paid for that.

Now, and look on the charters and choice.

Yeah.

Look, Virginia is a tough state on charters.

And I would ask you, like, I think it's a fascinating, you

always, I run into people.

And they talk about these states that still don't have charter laws

or have really weak ones, and I would characterize Virginia's as very weak.

And you hear like, "oh, people there just had a little more ganas, a little

more hustle, worked a little harder."

And they argue that, and that's certainly one line of argument, but I guess another

one you have to ask yourself is maybe the places that don't have charter

school laws that are at all are strong, don't have them for a reason, because

like the politics there are really brutal and the governor cannot just

wave a magic wand and create charter schools and create more school choice.

You have to get through the legislature and this is always in the media like it's

a left right thing, it's not, the politics are much more subtle and complicated.

And so it's really hard.

And so we're doing lab schools, which are these university

affiliated, autonomous schools.

There's some really cool proposals in the pipeline.

I'm excited about that, Machea Ashton was just appointed to the Board of

Education of Virginia, and yeah, so she obviously like she's forgotten more about

charter schools than most of us know.

We're making steps in that direction, but it is slow going and it's going to

continue to be slow going just because the politics and in Virginia, there just

are not robust parent groups organizing.

Parents right now, the politics do sort of break down very much

establishment driven on this stuff and until that changes, I don't see the

choice situation changing, you know, dramatically and I wish I wish it works.

I want to see parents in this commonwealth have more options and choices and

more customization for their kids.

Well, I think a lot of this comes down to in these states that

have weak laws or no laws whatsoever.

There is just a political calculus that needs to be made

on the rural Republican side.

Are we really going to exert pressure on these folks or not?

Is it going to come from within the Republican Party or not?

Or from within a political apparatus that is deeply embedded

or working often with Republicans?

In Texas, the advocates there saw opposition from rural Republicans

on a number of things, everybody thought that they were going to be

supporters of charters and when we got them to vote in the legislature,

25 of them voted with the opposition.

Then the political apparatus was put to work on rural Republicans

in Texas, and they flipped back and we were able to get things passed.

In Iowa, governor had the same thing.

She tried to get an aggressive charter school thing done right away.

Couldn't get it done.

Raised her own money, got her own pack and said, I'm specifically going to be using

this resources to hold accountable my own Republicans who didn't support this thing.

She defeated a couple.

And the next year she got the law passed.

It's really a question of, are people, you know, Republicans

usually in these kinds of contexts, willing to do that kind of thing.

So I'm really fascinated to see what's going to happen with Youngkin now.

I think We were well, we, whatever, I'm not Republican,

but from a charter perspective.

You and me, you and me both.

But unfortunately, they're more vocal on choice these days.

So, but, you know, the Republicans were one vote from having control of

the Senate as well, which people think would have been enough difference for

a charter school bill to get passed.

So now, the question was, how are they going to get control of the Senate?

Now, there was a special election that happened, probably January or

February that was previously held by a Republican senator and that

actually flipped back Democratic.

Yes, I think people think that might have flipped back because of bad

Republican positioning or positioning that is at odds with voters on abortion.

I'm not sure of that.

I'd love to see what your thoughts on.

Abortion.

I think, look, I'm not an expert on that race, but I will say two things.

One, the Democratic candidate had a very attractive profile.

It was just a terrific candidate.

And then the abortion thing.

Yeah.

I mean, we saw, and we just saw again in Ohio, you know, Um, what last

week, you know, the abortion thing.

I mean, I know I thought that issue is more baked into the way

people voted than it clearly is.

And that like that is an albatross on the republicans and it's unclear

what they do about it's kind of an interesting watching them run to the

right in some ways on it, you know, DeSantis that bill he signed and so forth.

I don't know what they're going to do, but it's become clear that the

school of thought that row was lousy constitutional law, but a good rough

approximation of where the country is.

That school of thought seems to be correct.

Like people, you know, people, , they were pretty comfortable with restrictions,

late term, they did not want restrictions in the first trimester, and Dobbs

upended that in a way that's just causing chaos, the republicans, and

I don't know that they have a theory of the case for how they're going

to So they get through that and per your point the elections in virginia.

That'll be a major issue this fall and I asked yes five smart people around

politics in virginia What's going to happen the elections in the fall and

you're going to get five answers.

Status quo seems to be something a lot of people think.

So who knows?

I don't feel like I have a good enough grasp on it to to prognosticate, but

I do think you'll see the choice, the abortion choice issue will be a big

issue, and it is an interesting thing.

You can't miss the juxtaposition of the two parties on abortion and

choice there and school choice.

It is almost like reversed in a very peculiar way.

Yeah, the idea that Dems are out of step with the swing voters on education

issues and republicans are out of step with the swing voters on abortion issues,

and how does this how does this play out?

It's going to be absolutely fascinating.

Well more than that though Jed, right?

You've got and i'll probably get in trouble for like but the reality is

like in this country if you have means Dobbs, you're going to be able to travel

and so forth Like the people who are really now in a bad situation with

Dobbs are like if you live in like rural Texas, you don't make a lot of money.

You can't take time off from work.

You can't travel because you're surrounded by states that have restrictions.

That's where you start to it.

And so, when you look at the data on who's going to be affected by

this and the estimates and so forth, it's poor women disproportionately.

And likewise on school choice, like if you're affluent, you can work around

the dysfunction of the system and you can figure out, you know, people will

figure out workarounds where they live or they send their kids to private school.

Or even in a lot of these cities, you can find there's like, there are past

there's clusters of schools and so forth.

And if you're affluent, you can figure out how to take advantage of that.

If you're poor.

You're you know at the whim of fortune and so school choice becomes like a

just an enormous issue for you, and so that juxtaposition also I just feel

like people have to sit with this and both parties are in weird place, like

the in terms of like their affinity for helping the poor on a particular issue.

Those two issues together are very strange.

Rick Hess could probably write a book about it this week.

Yeah, well I think that in terms of, you know, not being a hot steaming

mess, I'm not sure what exactly is making the ecosystem viable in Virginia,

but we just see in so many other states where either the culture wars

are just completely and utterly out of control, or there are some other things.

I don't know, I mean, I hear that, but then I'm like, okay,

like Tennessee obviously had tons of education culture war stuff.

But they still got a new finance plan through that was really pretty good.

And that happened with Billy and with all the stuff that was

rolling around cultural wise.

Maybe Arkansas will put this to the test cause they seem to be leaning in on

some of the culture war stuff and their last legislative session, they passed

an ambitious basket of education reform.

So maybe they'll put this to the test.

Can you sort of walk and chew gum?

But I don't know that every the culture war stuff in every

state has sort of ground.

I think it's different in different states.

Well, I think it'll be interesting to see, not just specifically on the

culture war stuff, but when some of these breakthroughs have happened, and I don't

think people have necessarily thought them through all in advance very well, and

they don't have the system set up on the other side to take care of these things.

A story that is going to be bigger and bigger is that those

that went to universal vouchers.

have huge challenges with the administration of their programs.

All of the states that estimated how many parents would make use of a

universal voucher, way underestimated.

So Iowa, they have, I don't remember what it is, they have like more

than twice as many people who have actually sought the charter.

Now that's going to have a budgetary challenge for the state for one thing.

But the other thing is just administratively, they don't know how to

take care of the same thing in Arizona.

Huge numbers, right?

And so they're sending out voucher to program.

And I'm not saying, "Oh, stop vouchers for this reason."

I'm just saying that, when you have these kinds of major, major breakthroughs

that happen, if you really, really care about vouchers, you would think

that you also are thinking through, how are we going to make sure that the

administration happens as effectively as possible in the early going?

So we don't lose it because of scandal or some other, you know...

We don't have that existential crisis though.

It's amazing how much people want out and this should be, if you're a

public school supporter and I am a public school sports, why I do a lot

of what I do, like this is a crisis.

And instead it's just all this bullshit about, you know, that we're hearing

about what's going on and so forth.

And like this, if you believe in public education as sort of

a broadly supported cross class institution, this is like a really.

perilous moment.

And you know, everybody's like whistling past the graveyard.

And like you just speak it, so Virginia on that one, I would not say things

are going swimmingly, because like every time the governor points out

that like our Nate, you know, scores plummeted because of pandemic policies,

biggest drops in the nation that we have these huge achievement gaps.

Every time we get a fight over that, is it really that bad or no, you know,

he's ginning up a crisis and all this.

And it's insane.

You look at the data and you're like, this is an enormous problem for kids, but

every time it's a big fight in the media.

"Well, you know, who knows and get these stories.

Well, maybe it's not so bad."

I mean, you know, none of their kids are affected.

And like so that part is not going swimmingly, let me tell you.

And I feel like we need like, where are the groups to like help

reset some of that conversation?

I mean, the conversation we're basically having in Virginia is a conversation

that 15 years ago, the education trust would have been at the vanguard of like

we're talking about achievement gaps.

We're talking about data.

We're talking about how do we redo our accreditation system of schools

so we can start to actually have?

We don't have really have an accountability system in Virginia

so we can start to actually have an accountability system.

I mean, that is the conversation.

And yet the groups, they are nowhere, none of the groups, and I'm not just,

this is not like a critique of the trust in particular, just none of

the groups and the institutions that used to be there anywhere to be found

Moms for liberty..

Driving that vacuum.

And I think that's, and one thing I thought, like, come back to before

we can talk about Moms for liberty, because people always seem to

like, listen to us talk about them.

You talk about rural charter schools, my kingdom for people just to

organize more information about them, take people to them because it is

still, I talk to you all the time.

It is an article of faith.

You cannot have charter schools and rural communities and you try to talk

about like the exciting stuff happening in places like Idaho and so forth.

And it's just.

Like, there, there's just a lack of awareness and that, that complicates

the already complicated rural politics that you gave voice to earlier.

One of the things that we way underappreciate about rural

charter schools is that you need to have different kinds of models

to be able to go into those places.

And often those models require a different regulatory framework.

I would say that one of the strengths of the California charter school law is that

we've always had this misnamed, but from a policy perspective, important status

of non classroom based charter schools, non classroom based charter schools

serve kids, provide less than 80% of their instruction in a classroom setting.

So, a lot of these schools, the kids go to school 4 days a week,

3 days a week, 2 days a week.

There are a lot of classrooms, but they're called non classroom, but a lot

of them end up having these resource centers that serve a relatively small

number of kids, hundreds kids here, 70 kids over there, 75 kids over here,

but they are all in a network, and they're all supported with each other.

And what happens in rural settings when you talk about a non classroom

based school coming and setting up a resource center that might serve 60 kids.

You're not going to kill off the entire school district, and so

there's a receptiveness there.

Even with the models where kids do have to drive, I'm struck how

far, and you see this in urban areas, like you'll talk to kids and they're

like, Oh yeah, I'd have to take the train here and I'm on it for, you

know, an hour and 15 hour and a half.

Their parents though, like, and I think this is where people.

in the system think like a system and they're like, Oh,

no one would want to do that.

It's like, no, if things aren't working well for your kid, you

will put them on a bus for an hour.

You will do anything you can to get your kid into a better situation, whether

that's because they're having issues at the school, you know, socially,

whether that's because they're, you know, they're not being challenged.

The school's not working for them.

They're just not learning anything, whatever it is.

Parents will, like, do a lot.

And if you care about public schools, you should be thinking about, okay, how

do we meet those parents where they are, instead of asking them to take on these

heroic journeys, if you will, um, for their kids every day or five days a week.

And I think that this non classroom based concept, which I

think allows parents to do things.

Without the same degree of driving and heroism, is

missing in most of the country.

And so I'm tipping a hand here.

I've really worked within the non cluster based community in California.

Will someone please write something saying we need something that like

this across the whole country?

It's amazing.

I talked to Oklahoma.

They like, they really want this right now.

They don't have it.

Texas is just getting it.

Louisiana hasn't have it had it.

A lot of other places don't have it.

And then they have these problems with rural schools.

I really think this is a foundational thing.

If we got it into the landscape, if we got it into Virginia, I think it would

change the discussion in rural settings.

Yeah, I like that.

And maybe there is like, that's, I mean we can pretend, we

can play assignment editors.

You can pretend we're not we can we play one on tv.

They're like because that would be a great and just looking at rural

charters in general And I mean, there's just like a lot of myth

busting that can be done there.

But you want to talk about Moms for Liberty, I read two articles since I

last saw you, Robert, like they were, you know, they met up there in Philadelphia

and Robert Pondiscio and all the presidential candidates, real cattle call.

Yeah, great article.

Thank you for sending that to me.

I thought it was interesting.

There was, there's two, two big things that I saw.

I'm sure there was lots of other stuff written about it, but the two that

I saw that came across my desk were.

Pondiscio's piece, which was certainly friendly to them.

And then there was, a Daily Beast piece, we can put both these in the show

notes, that was decidedly less friendly.

And I thought they were kind of an interesting juxtaposition.

Robert's piece, we could talk about his comparison with TFA was interesting, I

think that's what I liked that part of that's worth discussing, but I think

he was exceptionally friendly to them.

The Daily Beast was exceptionally harsh, and I think a lot of people

might think, "wow, the truth probably lies, like, somewhere in between."

I'm not saying Robert was untruthful, I just think his take was very rosier

and more favorable than mine would be.

I just thought it was interesting and it sort of, you know, we got some

feedback last time we talked about Moms for Liberty, you know, some people

were like, thanks for being nuanced, but some people were like, oh my

God, how can you like, say anything, anything at all good about them.

And it struck me that's kind of like the times we're in, right?

Like there's just not that sort of gray is really hard.

It's really hard to get at.

Well, I thought the article was interesting for a lot of reasons

but I particularly focused in on the conflict between the national

parents union and Moms for Liberty and they're supposedly on opposite sides

and they're talking trash about each other and all of that, okay, great.

But if you look at the data that they're getting through their serving.

They are finding that parents in general vote and voters are just completely and

utterly fed up with public education.

It's going back to the point that you just made earlier about the

level of crisis that we have.

NPU, I know they have some new data coming out, it may have come out this

week, I'm not sure, I'm talking about Parents recognize, I don't remember

the exact numbers strikingly high in the high sixties or something

like that, believing that there is a crisis in public education.

And then, interestingly, on the side, they also identified improving

public education as the second most important issue to voters, which is

something we just don't see very often.

So they're coming at it from very different standpoints and there may

be aspects of what both of them are doing that we don't like, but they're

both tapping into something that feels very foundational and very true.

Yeah, I think so, and maybe it's so hot and a lot of that, I watched

a lot of that back and forth and it's like that just strikes me that

that's a lot of that's adult politics.

I have trouble seeing the through line to kids, just in the whole back and forth

with, but there's more agreement out there on a lot of this stuff, and in some ways,

maybe that makes the debate hotter, right?

I mean, you and I talked about this, like, Moms for Liberty, their position,

like, you know, schools shouldn't be concealing transitions of kids from their

parents, like, That's like a very popular position in this country, like 80%.

And I think the Democrats are starting to realize that they're

way over their skis on that one.

But so is treat kids, treat every kid with respect and dignity and

try to have inclusion and tolerance.

That's where people are.

There's a hardcore group that's not there, but they're small.

Thankfully.

We've made a lot of progress in this country.

You can go down the issues, whether it's, you know, sexual content in books,

whether it's just a host of these issues, there's actually, you know, you look,

there's just tons of common ground.

And I will put in the show notes, we wrote a report called common ground that

has lots of this data, but like there really is, you just look like people, you

know, people don't need convincing that there's a problem with race and racism in

America and historically like you get this hardcore group on both sides, like one

side saying nobody actually believes that.

And the other side, you know, saying it's not a thing, but those are the

margins, like most Americans are there and it's issue after issue.

And so a little bit that may add to the heat because there's fundamentally so much

less disagreement there than people would think when you get outside the advocates.

And so they're vying for these different groups are vying for slices

of sort of elite coalitions and elite attention, and it's kind of divorced

from what's actually going on in terms of how people are living their lives.

One thing that we can return to in the future.

I'd really love to pick your brain on this, given that we have this level

of, I've been calling this the great disconnect, I saw this, you know, several

years back, just that the overlap between what public education was offering and

the bare minimum that parents would exist with would accept was becoming

smaller and smaller such that there would be maybe no overlap whatsoever I think

that's what we're, coming into and just many many parents just leaving right?

With the pandemic I think did we can talk about this another time the

pandemic did like, there's a thing that we called like, you know, path dependency,

talking about political science.

So when things are on, basically on a path, they tend to proceed on

that path until they're disrupted and the pandemic disrupts.

There's a lot of path dependency.

People are like, "Oh, it might be nice to have a different school

or do something different."

But like, this is how our life is structured.

This is what we do.

This is the school.

And the pandemic opened up like a lot of possibilities.

For a lot of people, particularly people with means there's a obvious

class overlay this whole thing.

And I think we're seeing the effects of that in people's like,

you can be more dissatisfied now you can actually act on that.

I don't think the public school establishment has come to terms with

that, they're still telling themselves these happy stories, they're picking

these fights on other stuff and I don't think they are, I don't think

they've actually really come to terms with what a perilous moment it is.

And for people like ourselves who have pretty much anchored ourselves

in our entire professional life around the support of public education, and

there's some place beyond publicness that we just don't go, vouchers,

I think, is going to be something we're going to have to revisit

because this is just happening now.

And if we want to say that we're interested in public education, but we

have nothing to say about how vouchers and private quote unquote private

education happens, we're just basically going to write ourselves out of the

conversation for generations to come.

This is the direction that things are going.

And there are ways that these programs can be set up to be more or less public.

The thumb on the scale of the kids who need better education more than others.

And we can either, just wash your hands of it, and if we do, I think

that will mean that these programs will evolve to be less supportive

of kids who need it most, right?

If we involve ourselves, I think, can make sure that these things

actually, become a positive thing.

But our voice is going to be needed for that kind of positive thing to happen.

Yeah, we need, we need pragmatism, right?

You remember when back in like 2000, Al Gore called himself a pragmatic idealist,

and he got a load of crap because that guy could never catch a break, but it's

actually, it's a great formulation.

Like you want to, we should maintain our ideals and our idealism around this

stuff, but you also need to be pragmatic.

And you are totally right.

Like where we are, we need to meet people where they are.

And to the extent we don't.

Public education is going to lose a lot of its supporters and the system still seems,

you know, just really fixed on trying to alienate people and annoy them with

just a host of policies that complicate what people want and how they want to

live their lives and what they expect.

And I just think it's incredibly ill timed right now with everything going on.

And we didn't even get to like learning loss, you've got this like

enormous backdrop of just catastrophe.

For a lot of kids, people are also not sort of squarely looking at it.

For sure.

Well, lots of stuff to keep talking about.

We'll be back together in a couple of weeks for our mystery guests.

And yeah, and there we can really get into our mystery guests are

going to like T us up to really get into some of these questions around

parental empowerment and what's going on in some of these different groups.

So their take on all this will be, I think they will bring interesting

perspectives and it'll be fascinating.

And so then we'll either take a hiatus.

Or I'll join you from halfway through the Camino for one.

Yeah, no, I'm going to want to hear about that.

We may need to just do a special one on that.

What an amazing experience.

I'm so happy that you all can do that in 25 years.

That's great.

That's a huge accomplishment.

Well, we're excited to be doing it.

And I'm just delighted to have this chance to do this stuff with you, Andy.

So I look forward to continuing and look forward to seeing you

again in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, I will too, Jed.

I'll see you in two weeks.

It was great to see you.

Okay.

Take care.