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Vol 4 – Can’t Take YES For An Answer
Episode 419th May 2023 • WonkyFolk • CharterFolk
00:00:00 00:40:57

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Shownotes

Can't take yes for an answer: what the teachers' unions and DeSantis have in common.

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

  • Can’t say yes to equity and excellence (00:01:10)
  • Can’t say yes to providing parents with timely access to results or resources and tools to support their kids in mitigating pandemic learning losses (00:08:42)
  • Can’t say yes to improving the way we teach history and civics (00:18:59)
  • Can’t say yes to academic freedom and the full exchange of ideas (00:28:28)
  • Can’t say yes to what is best for kids as a core value of collective bargaining (00:35:28)

Notes:

Transcripts

Jed:

Hey Andy.

Andy:

Hey, Jed.

Andy:

How are you?

Jed:

I'm doing terrific.

Jed:

Great to see you again.

Andy:

It's great to see you.

Andy:

How's it been the last few weeks?

Jed:

Busy, but good.

Jed:

And I have to say, my optimism is actually increasing, I think there's

Jed:

a lot of good stuff going on in ed reform, which I hope we can touch

Jed:

upon some of those things today.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

I think today we might touch on, there's good and bad, but yeah.

Andy:

It's a busy time, there is a lot of stuff going on, particularly some

Andy:

of the work you do is real close to the ground, some of the work we

Andy:

do is real close to the ground, and that's what gives you the energy.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

It's getting close to the operators, getting close to the advocates I think,

Jed:

at least on the charter side, the closer that you get right now, you actually see

Jed:

there's a lot more progress happening than perhaps the general public is aware of.

Andy:

Yeah, totally.

Andy:

And also just like anytime you can get in and around schools and

Andy:

kids, it just gives you energy.

Andy:

That was always my strategy on bad days, just try to find a place you can go read

Andy:

to kids or just hang out at the school.

Andy:

And it kinda makes you feel a little bit better about things.

Andy:

So hey, we've managed to get through I think three episodes of this

Andy:

podcast not ever saying the name, so we should: this is the Wonky Folk

Andy:

Podcast, and I'm Andy Rotherham.

Jed:

And I'm Jed Wallace.

Andy:

Thanks for listening.

Andy:

Jed, on our last one, I think we talked about how the Economist has

Andy:

just been like hitting the cover off the ball on education coverage.

Andy:

Just great stuff.

Andy:

And I have not read the most recent issue, but you said there's an

Andy:

article in there that caught your eye.

Jed:

Yeah, I think The Economist is really interesting for a lot of reasons.

Jed:

I just love the kind of outsider perspective, although, the Economist

Jed:

has gotten so sucked into the American mainstream that they sometimes

Jed:

lose that European orientation on our work, but still, I just

Jed:

find them a very great pressure tester of some assumptions I have.

Jed:

And the last article that they issued around education was around math reform

Jed:

and in San Francisco, and they were really talking about how the quest for

Jed:

equity by getting rid of AP classes and accelerated classes and having everyone

Jed:

come together in the same class is actually not doing anybody any favors.

Jed:

It's not helping the accelerated students, it's not helping those that are far

Jed:

behind, but also just from an equity standpoint, they don't really see that

Jed:

those models of schooling are resulting in kids ending up staying together anyway.

Jed:

So it throws into question the whole math change that we've

Jed:

seen in a lot of different places in the last five or six years.

Jed:

And it also reminds me a lot of my High Tech High days because we had this

Jed:

notion of common intellectual mission.

Jed:

We didn't want to ability track, we didn't want to separate kids

Jed:

into different groups of learners.

Jed:

And so we ended up keeping all kids together and I think in some ways

Jed:

High Tech High really changed the national discussion, or at least

Jed:

influenced the national discussion on common intellectual mission.

Jed:

But the thing that I think was lost in all of that was that while High Tech

Jed:

High kept all the kids together in the same classes, they really specialized in

Jed:

teaching to the individual student and allowing the most accelerated student to

Jed:

get even more accelerated and to obviously remediate for those that needed it.

Jed:

And I just think this is another example of, "is it one thing?, is it equity?

Jed:

Or is it excellence?".

Jed:

You have these binary options that are presented to us and when we

Jed:

choose one or the other, we lose the common sense middle that I think we

Jed:

just have to keep front and center for Ed reformers whenever we can.

Andy:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Andy:

And I think teachers also don't get a lot of support in training

Andy:

and sort of, we talk a lot about differentiated instruction, things

Andy:

like that, they don't actually get training and even having a theory of

Andy:

action around like what level are you going to pitch to in the classroom?

Andy:

How are you going to help struggling kids catch up?

Andy:

This is stuff that teachers generally have to get on the job, you're not getting

Andy:

it in a lot of teacher prep programs.

Andy:

And so your article though reminds me of Ruy Teixeira, he's a

Andy:

democratic, political demographer.

Andy:

He wrote that book the Emerging Democratic Majority a while ago and more recently

Andy:

has been sort of pushing the Democratic party on sort of culture issues and

Andy:

so forth, and he had a piece about this issue in terms of merit and how

Andy:

Democrats are increasingly not perceived as the party of merit, and the political

Andy:

consequences that can flow from that.

Andy:

And I think it that article resonated with me because one of the really interesting

Andy:

things you saw in 2021, in the Glenn Youngkin election, was how many immigrant

Andy:

parents and so forth were very frustrated with efforts to either restrict access to

Andy:

advanced classes, stuff around selective high school, sort of all of this.

Andy:

And to your point a second ago about reformers: I think the same thing's true.

Andy:

Like, often the Democrats get caught up in this "are we for

Andy:

equity, are we for excellence?"

Andy:

And they become kind of all thumbs in ways that really alienate parents.

Andy:

And what the point of Ruy's article, -- and I'Il put in the show notes -- was,

Andy:

across all kinds of lines of difference, this idea of merit and excellence and

Andy:

so forth is actually really popular and that there's an opportunity then to

Andy:

use that as a way to advance education reform, make sure kids are getting

Andy:

what they need to succeed and so forth.

Andy:

But if you are seen as being against that, or if you actually are against that

Andy:

with some of these policies, there's a price you're going to pay with parents.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

I was regretting that our last recording, I forgot the name of Daniel Markovits,

Jed:

who wrote this book, the Meritocracy Trap, and I think it's really an interesting

Jed:

book, not one that I would say I agree with all of its findings, because it

Jed:

basically lurches very far into the anti meritocracy, far left -- almost

Jed:

San Francisco orientation toward things.

Jed:

But the thing I think he does show that's very compelling is that the upper middle

Jed:

class and the wealthy have figured out how important education is and they do

Jed:

an incredibly great job of educating just their own kids and changing the

Jed:

entire public education system such that those that are focused on meritocracy

Jed:

get the great education that they need.

Jed:

And so, it's just something that we have to keep front and center and keep pushing

Jed:

because I think there are ways for us to push for all kids accessing more rigorous

Jed:

instruction without compromising on equity and some of the other things that

Jed:

are front and center for us these days.

Jed:

But San Francisco just provides another just shiny example

Jed:

of things just gone too far.

Jed:

And we'll see what happens to San Francisco itself.

Jed:

But for the rest of the country, I think, as the Economist presents for

Jed:

us, there's a lot for us to learn here.

Andy:

Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading that.

Andy:

And look, we saw this in the election with the school board, right?

Andy:

Like parents, even in San Francisco, parents have their breaking points, and

Andy:

that should have been sort of a wake up call that you need to be careful about how

Andy:

you approach these issues, and you need to remember where people are and not get

Andy:

caught up too much in sort of politics that are really out of the mainstream.

Andy:

The San Francisco experience I thought was just remarkable, in what happened there,

Andy:

and also remarkable and those lessons seem to have still bounced off a lot of places.

Jed:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Jed:

Well, I'll look forward to returning to this issue because I do think

Jed:

that meritocracy and militancy from teachers unions together provide,

Jed:

you know, when the upper middle class liking their separate education co

Jed:

partner with the teacher union to keep a status quo in place, it's

Jed:

very formidable, a political power.

Jed:

And for me, the only way I can see us going forward is not to defeat it

Jed:

outright, but to basically have something that is there for the meritocracy folk

Jed:

and for the militancy folk, right?

Jed:

We show them that ed reform is not actually a zero sum game, but it's

Jed:

something that all boats can rise.

Jed:

But it's also incumbent upon us Ed reformers just to be presenting

Jed:

our work in different terms.

Andy:

Definitely.

Andy:

And there was a time not that long ago where Ed Reform was and was seen as

Andy:

very disruptive around these issues.

Andy:

Ed reformers have sort of allowed themselves to be painted into a corner in

Andy:

terms of what they're about and so forth.

Andy:

And there's probably some pretty serious conversations to be had

Andy:

about getting back to that Ed reform.

Andy:

Back in, in the early aughts for example, was highly disruptive

Andy:

around accountability policies and so forth focused on the kids who were

Andy:

most underserved and sort of really disruptive politics around that and

Andy:

we've kind of gotten away from that.

Jed:

Yeah, I thought on the second article I was thinking about bringing you up

Jed:

today, was this the Kane editorial Op-Ed in the New York Times where he was really

Jed:

talking about the parents not being aware of just how far their kids are behind,

Jed:

and Paul Vallas, his first public gesture after losing the race in Chicago really

Jed:

comes out and advocates for accountability systems and transparency systems so that

Jed:

parents actually have the information.

Jed:

The question I have for you Andy is how much do you think the question is, do

Jed:

parents know how far behind their kids are, or have we gotten to the point where

Jed:

maybe parents actually know but they're being trained not even to care anymore?

Jed:

Do you have any view on that?

Jed:

Because, it's sobering when you start thinking that maybe they

Jed:

don't care as much as they used to.

Andy:

Well, my first view is, you just referred as the Kane Paper,

Andy:

I like that this is Tom Kane.

Andy:

He's an economist at Harvard.

Andy:

I like that he's reached sort of Madonna or Prince like, that's one name Kane.

Andy:

So yeah, Tom Kane, he is a terrific, wonderful person

Andy:

and just a terrific analyst.

Jed:

Great researcher.

Andy:

Yeah, absolutely.

Andy:

I thought that Op-Ed was sobering.

Andy:

I was glad the times ran it, we need to get more attention on this, we

Andy:

still really are having arguments about how much this stuff matters

Andy:

and learning loss and all of that.

Andy:

That's a real reality on the ground, so people need to keep beating that drum.

Andy:

I go back and forth on this.

Andy:

I tend to be in the camp that, to the extent parents don't

Andy:

care, it's cause they're unaware.

Andy:

Most people want good things for their kids and so forth.

Andy:

And then there's obviously some cognitive dissonance.

Andy:

You don't want to think about your own kid being really far behind.

Andy:

I know as a parent, like I think about things, I'm like, "oh man,

Andy:

it's like hard to get my head around like mistakes you made" and so forth.

Andy:

That's real.

Andy:

But I think mostly parents want what's best, they are struggling to get

Andy:

good information on what's going on.

Andy:

There's not a lot of states...

Andy:

are not, we're still fighting, in your state, California, it's still

Andy:

throwing circles around when test results are going to come out and

Andy:

how they're going to be reported.

Andy:

New Jersey sat on results for a long time and there was no sort of outcry that,

Andy:

like why would particularly like, it's a state led by a Democratic governor.

Andy:

The party that reports to be for the little guy, why would

Andy:

they be sitting on this data?

Andy:

And one of the reasons cynically, I think, is it showed the charter schools

Andy:

had really done a particularly good job on average, around some of this.

Andy:

But what, for whatever reason, why is this data not getting out there?

Andy:

And so parents are kind of left confused, and meanwhile they're just

Andy:

trying to live their lives, right?

Andy:

They're not the wonks that are like, "Hey, when's the data is going to be released?

Andy:

What's going on?"

Andy:

But parents, they're not sort of on the edge of their seat about that.

Andy:

Life goes on, they're living their life.

Andy:

And so I think a lot of it is, we just have not communicated very clearly.

Andy:

This is a really serious situation, not for every kid, but for a lot of kids, you

Andy:

need to figure out what's going on and here are resources and tools, and then

Andy:

here are resources and tools for remedies.

Andy:

And I think some states have done a good job with this, but I think just overall,

Andy:

We have not had that kind of attention.

Andy:

And to the extent, like the public debate, you look at the last couple

Andy:

of weeks it's been this like, whatever version this is of the sort of Randi

Andy:

Weingarden School closure debate has been what's consumed everybody's attention.

Andy:

And they dragged her up to the hill for that hearing.

Andy:

There wasn't a whole lot of talk about like, "what do we do now?

Andy:

What does this mean?"

Andy:

It was just like, "let's fight about 2020 again?"

Andy:

And I think we need to figure out how do we sort of bring people together.

Andy:

We should give a shout out to learning heroes who are, you know,

Andy:

they're out there doing, trying to do public awareness work on this.

Andy:

They're doing actually advertising campaigns, billboards, and so forth.

Andy:

There's people trying stuff, but it's just not from our political

Andy:

leadership, we're just not getting the kind of concerted effort that we need.

Andy:

And I can tell you like just in Virginia, one state, every time we bring this

Andy:

up, every time the governor brings it up, and the state board does anything,

Andy:

you get a bunch of pushback about.

Andy:

"t's a manufactured crisis," and so forth.

Andy:

And we have the biggest NAEP drops of any state, that's not Virginia data, that's

Andy:

national data, our own data confirms that.

Andy:

But it turns into this political fight rather than "okay, like what now?"

Andy:

kind of conversation.

Andy:

So anyway, that's my read.

Andy:

I know, I think you think a little...

Andy:

you're starting to worry a little bit more and have some sleepless nights

Andy:

that maybe people actually don't care.

Jed:

I'm saying that a subset of people, the meritocracy folks, they'd

Jed:

care and they know exactly where their kids are and they're in contact with

Jed:

their private schools and maybe, upper middle class public schools that are

Jed:

segregated out from other kids and they know, and they really care, because

Jed:

they know that the wellbeing of their children depends on they are strong

Jed:

in these foundational skill levels.

Jed:

But I think across a growing percentage of the public education establishment,

Jed:

I think there's more and more indifference or, perhaps they've been

Jed:

convinced that these indicators aren't as important as social-emotional

Jed:

health or whatever it may be.

Jed:

And I'm not downplaying how important social-emotional health is.

Jed:

But when you look at the dashboard in California of the garbley gook of whatever

Jed:

it is, 16 indicators multiplied times 6.

Jed:

It's incoherent, no one can know.

Jed:

And in Chicago, they just adopted another one of these multiple measured pieces of

Jed:

garbley gook that mean absolutely nothing.

Jed:

And it could be that they're doing it in the face of parrots

Jed:

that are saying, "oh, no, no, no.

Jed:

You're denying me the access to what I really want to know", but I, we don't

Jed:

see that really emerging anywhere.

Jed:

And so, I feel like we may have to go through this cycle of people seeing

Jed:

the skill levels of their kids get dropped so significantly that we'll

Jed:

start to see the rebound at that point.

Jed:

But at this point, I can't say I see early indications of that rebound.

Jed:

Yeah,

Andy:

the one thing to bear in mind, I guess on this is the public school

Andy:

establishment, I mean, they approach all this stuff as a public relations problem.

Andy:

I remember a superintendent once who, there was a sort of real big

Andy:

reveal in the local paper that they'd basically been lying about

Andy:

their graduation rates and so forth.

Andy:

The superintendent was like, "we have to obviously get on top of this

Andy:

and we're going to make sure there's never a news story like this again."

Andy:

Right?

Andy:

These people are public relationists sort of at heart often, and I get

Andy:

it, because they're like, we have to preserve this institution, we have to

Andy:

keep support for public schools, so you have to tell a good story and so forth.

Andy:

And I've always been much more in the sort of just be a realist about achievement

Andy:

and you can bring people along and you can show them leadership and there's

Andy:

a theory of action there, but, so a lot of this is approached as a public

Andy:

relations exercise and you sort of see that, it's how do we tell the story?

Andy:

How do we point to the good stuff?

Andy:

We don't want people to be demoralized and this kind of thing.

Andy:

And so like that you see that reflected in a lot of the communications.

Andy:

And so it's also, I think it's understandable that parents would

Andy:

not realize the extent of some of the extent of some of these challenges.

Andy:

And it's also, it's a hard problem to think about.

Andy:

There's some stuff coming out of Macke Raymond's been vocal on this.

Andy:

She's out at Stanford has been real vocal on the pace of catch up is not sufficient.

Andy:

So there's also people are worried cause it's not as there is not like an easy

Andy:

vaccine here or something like that.

Jed:

Yeah I, well look, this is where my cynicism comes out and I just feel like

Jed:

there are broad comparison points that can sometimes start to change public

Jed:

opinion when we have some big foreign threat, that relates to education.

Jed:

"Oh, we're following behind the Russians, we're following behind, the

Jed:

Chinese, Japanese," whatever it may be.

Jed:

Oh, okay.

Jed:

We have to get our acts together.

Jed:

I don't really think that we have some international comparison point

Jed:

that's going to change the discussion.

Jed:

I think the one that actually is going to change the discussion is when the

Jed:

affluent and the elite kids, when their separation gets to be so pronounced from

Jed:

what we're seeing in the rest of society, it's going to be a sobering moment.

Jed:

But we've have to figure out a way, how do we make that emerging divergence

Jed:

in skill levels of children and young adults even more apparent to people.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

I don't know if I agree, though.

Andy:

That gap has been there.

Andy:

I think this is part of the problem, right?

Andy:

When you talk to the meritocracy as you described, when you talk to

Andy:

people who they think the kids where the schools aren't doing well, they

Andy:

think they're like a little bit behind, it's probably not as good.

Andy:

People don't realize you're talking about high school students reading at

Andy:

like low elementary school levels and doing math at that level and so forth.

Andy:

And I think that gap is like already there.

Andy:

It's because we're already a fairly just segregated society in terms of where

Andy:

people socialize, recreate, mix, all of that, people just aren't generally

Andy:

aware of the extent of these gaps now.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

But I think the general, I mean, whatever, there's so much variety in public opinion,

Jed:

whatever, but I think there's a vast swath that assumes that all kids, rich and

Jed:

poor, have suffered through this somewhat equally and we've seen a drop across them

Jed:

all, and I don't think that's the case.

Andy:

Right.

Andy:

Yeah, I don't think that the Kane data and some other stuff...

Andy:

and actually we can talk about the, Nate, you saw this on all the NAEP day that

Andy:

keeps coming out --and it's now showing up on the history and civics data that

Andy:

just came out earlier this month-- it's the kids for who are already furthest

Andy:

from opportunity are hardest hit.

Andy:

And I think you're right.

Andy:

People aren't getting their head around that.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

Let's pivot to this NAEP civic stuff.

Jed:

You had talked to me earlier this week about your concerns on this.

Jed:

Get me started.

Jed:

Where are you thinking on this?

Jed:

What's your thinking on this?

Andy:

Well, it turns out we don't know a lot about history and civics.

Andy:

What's interesting, it's a longstanding thing.

Andy:

I found the reaction to it actually more interesting than the results.

Andy:

The results on these tests haven't been good for a long time, and it

Andy:

would've been kind of surprising.

Andy:

The story would've been if they coming out of covid, if like they somehow were really

Andy:

good, that would've been interesting.

Andy:

It was more the reaction and almost like the unseriousness of it.

Andy:

Like immediately, you know, Miguel Cardona, the Secretary of Education,

Andy:

put out a statement where he just lumped in all this culture war stuff and you

Andy:

were like, and then yeah, you had all these people who were tying themselves

Andy:

in knots that he wasn't making causal claims but it's like, well then...

Andy:

I think he missed a real opportunity for leadership.

Andy:

But then like two days later, three days later, whatever, like Betsy

Andy:

DeVos comes out with a statement and she's blaming a set of other things.

Andy:

And the weird thing, these really low and unacceptable results on history and civics

Andy:

predate both of their tenures, right?

Andy:

Nobody has to, from the Trump administration or the Biden

Andy:

administration has to own these things.

Andy:

They're a much more longstanding problem.

Andy:

And so it was just kind of interesting.

Andy:

We have this situation where I think it's fair to say a lot of kids who are

Andy:

graduating from high school couldn't pass the test we require of new citizens.

Andy:

They don't know some basic knowledge.

Andy:

And there was just sort of an unserious response when we know right in front

Andy:

of us some real causes for this.

Andy:

We don't teach this stuff, we don't spend enough time on it

Andy:

and we don't teach the content.

Andy:

And we're still sort of failing to talk about that.

Jed:

I'm a big fan of Jonathan Haidt the guy that wrote, has written several

Jed:

books, but his book, The Righteous Mind from 2015, where he really talks about the

Jed:

metaphor of the elephant and the rider.

Jed:

The elephant is your intuition, the rider is your intellectual ability,

Jed:

and everybody wants to say that they are governed by their rider.

Jed:

They are making their decisions based upon all the new data that's coming in.

Jed:

But really when you unpack it, we're all guided by our intuition.

Jed:

And so we're all guided by our elephants and whenever NAEP comes

Jed:

out, all I see at that moment is all the elephants come together into

Jed:

just a pack of pachyderms, right?

Jed:

And they just run in their direction and say whatever the heck they want,

Jed:

that aligns with their intuition or with their political agenda.

Jed:

And I think it's important that we have NAEP.

Jed:

Absolutely.

Jed:

For Pete's sake, we have to have NAEP.

Jed:

But the fact that we can draw no causal connection to anything, within NAEP

Jed:

just speaks to, it's not sufficient.

Jed:

We have to have more data so that we can start to make causal connections.

Jed:

Otherwise all of our pontificating on these ed reform issues or whatever is just

Jed:

going to end up in cacophony for forever.

Andy:

Well, NAEP's a treasure trove of data.

Andy:

You get all this data, they survey students, you get all this data on

Andy:

what kids are up to and all this.

Andy:

I think it's more like so many things, like the winners always sort

Andy:

of mono causality and it tends to be that cause tends to like curiously

Andy:

completely align with whatever anyone's priors are on anything.

Andy:

NAEP isn't causal and we should be careful, when you look at it in total

Andy:

and contextually you can start like if you look at the way we teach history in

Andy:

civics and then you look at the results, like I think a reasonable person can

Andy:

crosswalk and make some inferences there for perhaps why we're seeing

Andy:

those results, and it's not the kids.

Andy:

The debate becomes highly political.

Andy:

Tom Loveless, who is a longtime analyst of NAEP, you know Tom, he thinks that with

Andy:

the way we're doing the releases now, that this is like the way it's going to be,

Andy:

I sort of hope he is wrong about that.

Andy:

Some folks have sort of pushed back and been like, no, we're

Andy:

going to handle this and make it.

Andy:

But like Tom's kind of thinking that this sort of politicalization of every

Andy:

release is sort of going to be the new normal, which would be unfortunate.

Jed:

One thing about the civics component to NAEP is that I tend to encourage

Jed:

us to focus most of our testing...

Jed:

for me, like I've written that piece around the eight words that

Jed:

define a high quality school.

Jed:

And those are schools that positively affect the rate at which children learn.

Jed:

Positively affect the rate.

Jed:

And when it comes down to that, usually I want to think about

Jed:

basic literacy and basic numeracy.

Jed:

Are you accelerating growth in those two areas?

Jed:

And then what happens is when you start testing all the different curricular

Jed:

areas, now the testing regime gets to be so big, we create the option for the other

Jed:

side to start attacking over- testing.

Jed:

On the other hand, if you only test in basic literacy and numeracy then

Jed:

you're open to the accusation that, "oh, you're narrowing the curriculum

Jed:

to only care about those things".

Jed:

Do you have any idea about what's a good balance here for us to be focusing on?

Andy:

I think this was something the civics and and history results put

Andy:

up, particularly the history results.

Andy:

You have to ask when people are like we're teaching reading and we can't teach

Andy:

history or social studies, you have to ask them, what are these kids reading?

Andy:

And the answer is, honestly, often really low level garbage.

Andy:

Good schools can combine these and we know that like you need a knowledge

Andy:

rich curriculum that the knowledge is a predicate for learning, it's

Andy:

predicate for literacy and reading.

Andy:

And so I think good schools sort of tie this together and don't get

Andy:

caught up in this false choice.

Andy:

The problem is we just don't have as many of them.

Andy:

And I think we talked an episode or two ago about, like this new study on

Andy:

Core Knowledge schools was a lottery study of charters, in the Denver

Andy:

area using core knowledge, and not surprisingly much better results.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

Well, my sense is that, I've been trying to keep track of how

Jed:

many school visits I've made.

Jed:

I'm definitely north of 850 and I'm thinking, well, the next

Jed:

5 to 10 years, but what I make sure I get to a thousand, right?

Jed:

But the reason I made these visits is what you pointed out at the beginning of

Jed:

the episode, which is just, the closer that you get, the more you realize you

Jed:

remember the work and you can just come out with a little spring in your step.

Jed:

But that also, it gives, it gave me a chance to observe a lot of things in

Jed:

charter schools and other schools as well.

Jed:

And there certainly were during the NCLB days a subset, a fairly

Jed:

small subset of charters that really pressure cooked focused on the reading

Jed:

and math that would bump up, their API scores, at least in California.

Jed:

But generally that's not what happened.

Jed:

Generally, the charter schools were standing on their heads and using every

Jed:

everything that the kids were passionate about to increase the basic scores.

Jed:

But in the traditional public school system, in the school

Jed:

districts, that's where we absolutely saw the narrowing happen.

Jed:

And I also think that the teacher unions, they recognize that if they continue to

Jed:

push into that narrowing, they were going to get more allies from parents, so even

Jed:

though it was counterproductive for the kids learning in the short term, they

Jed:

chose that from a political standpoint.

Jed:

And I don't think we've gotten outta that cul-de-sac yet.

Andy:

We could do a whole episode on sort of the passive aggressive

Andy:

responses to policies that people don't like to effectively sabotage them.

Andy:

So like during No Child Left Behind you saw places where canceling field trips

Andy:

and stuff because of budget reasons.

Andy:

But everybody's just like, "oh, it's the testing", and that could

Andy:

be a whole episode that we could do.

Andy:

And we could call it like the passive aggressive episode.

Andy:

We could do like a whole thing.

Andy:

I think you are right about that.

Andy:

I also think it's just, it is a lack of capacity and I think one of the mistakes

Andy:

that was made with no Child Left Behind it, I was certainly guilty of this, was

Andy:

this assumption that if we started to put in place the accountability, it would

Andy:

create the context and conditions where states would invest, you'd build capacity.

Andy:

And instead you did get a little bit of the beatings will

Andy:

continue to morale improves.

Andy:

And so schools were doing unproductive things cuz they

Andy:

just didn't know any better.

Andy:

They didn't have better strategies.

Andy:

And that's a place where I think we do have to think about how

Andy:

do you build that capacity.

Andy:

And that's where some of this more systemic reformers who were the broader

Andy:

standards based reform, they always talked about this, and I think some,

Andy:

it was easy to be dismissive of that.

Andy:

Again, I think that was the thing I was guilty of.

Andy:

And it turns out like, they had a really good point that schools were going

Andy:

to react in counterproductive ways.

Andy:

We've certainly seen that.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

They learned one of the best strategies against all boats

Jed:

rise is sabotage your own ship.

Jed:

And I think we've seen that played out on several fronts.

Jed:

But in terms of like, I don't know, sure if this is passive aggressivity,

Jed:

but it's certainly reactionary.

Jed:

Walk me through what's going on with DeSantis and some of his latest stuff

Jed:

because all this stuff seems like I do something because I've seen the other side

Jed:

do something that's even more ridiculous.

Jed:

Where are we?

Andy:

I don't even know that it's that.

Andy:

I mean, so education has sort of been dragged into this because it's an issue.

Andy:

I'm not actually sure, it's hard to tell with a guy like Ron

Andy:

DeSantis does, how strong his opinions about education even are.

Andy:

But he clearly gets, it's a convenient political cudgel so, higher ed

Andy:

and K12 are getting dragged in.

Andy:

I think it's more, he doesn't seem to have sort of any limiting principle.

Andy:

He just doesn't seem like a guy who will take yes for an answer.

Andy:

And so he's done some stuff that's actually more popular than

Andy:

people realize politically, but then he doesn't stop there and he

Andy:

just goes and takes it further.

Andy:

And you see it on sort of issue after issue.

Andy:

And it's kind of an unattractive way to practice politics.

Andy:

And the week we're recording this, they just passed a whole bunch of new laws,

Andy:

several of which are just clearly not going to pass Constitutional muster.

Andy:

Some of the stuff done it's already in court and DeSantis, he's a lawyer, he

Andy:

is clearly smart enough to know that.

Andy:

And so it's this sort of political theater with no limiting principle and I think

Andy:

it's aimed sometimes less at the Democrats and just how far can I push this stuff

Andy:

with, to make a name for myself within my own party, but it's causing chaos.

Andy:

It's causing you real wreckage in some cases, and it's just turning education

Andy:

into this complete sort of culture war foil for what seems like sort

Andy:

of electoral theater in large part.

Jed:

To what extent do you think that education's challenges long-term are a

Jed:

function of the fact that, from a public policy standpoint, it's just a canvas

Jed:

for people to make their statements and their statements always undermine

Jed:

consistency, coherence, long-term strengthening, whatever it may be.

Jed:

And that as long as we keep our public schools in a circumstance

Jed:

where they are the primary canvas for these kinds of political gestures.

Jed:

We're not long going to, we're not going to see the kind of improvement we want.

Andy:

Well, I think actually at the rate we're going with this stuff,

Andy:

you're going to see more and more people want to just pull out of the

Andy:

public schools, for different reasons.

Andy:

I think that's more the direction that goes.

Andy:

And it will become, because you're seeing like now...

Andy:

and on the pronoun thing is interesting where, I think...

Andy:

a lot of people like you don't want to do coercive things, and so telling

Andy:

people they have to say things that they don't believe and so forth,

Andy:

particularly kids in a public space is a First Amendment issue there.

Andy:

But it's different with employees of the school system.

Andy:

We, teachers engage in coerced speech all the time: it's why you

Andy:

can't teach that the earth is flat.

Andy:

You can't, like we have a curriculum.

Andy:

You can't teach both sides of the Holocaust.

Andy:

We have teachers do this, and now DeSantis is starting to push on this

Andy:

and no teachers have, we're going to say that agents of the state can and

Andy:

can't say certain things and so forth.

Andy:

If that's struck down it's theater, if that's upheld, it will unravel

Andy:

the public schools because the whole enterprise is predicated on this idea.

Andy:

And I think people have been a little dismissive, like," oh, that stuff

Andy:

will never happen" and so forth.

Andy:

But that's where we are, that's where they're pushing down there.

Andy:

So that's the first thing.

Andy:

And then I think the second, that's just interesting to me, Jed, with

Andy:

education, part of the thing that I think is going to run into some trouble

Andy:

in the courts, is they want to out...

Andy:

States have more control over schools than people realize.

Andy:

So they can say, "Hey, we're not going to have degrees in this".

Andy:

That's actually under your purview as a state.

Andy:

But they went much further than that and said, well, also you can't

Andy:

teach certain theories and so forth, and that's going to be contested.

Andy:

And I feel like you have to strike a balance.

Andy:

Academic freedom and inquiry is important in this, and the whole scientific process

Andy:

is different ideas getting tested and accepted and rejected and so forth.

Andy:

And we should be very cautious when we get to the point where we're

Andy:

like, we're not even gonna allow you to engage in certain theories.

Andy:

First of all, it's a little medieval, but it's also just counterproductive, right?

Andy:

It's interesting and we're seeing this where this plays out more substantively,

Andy:

K-12 is we're moving, I think, and this is a good thing to acquire

Andy:

you, teacher prep program science of reading in a way based on the evidence.

Andy:

But you don't want to get into a situation, if you're a professor at an

Andy:

ed school, you can't criticize science of reading, you can't say that you think

Andy:

there's merit, the whole language, there's a distinction between actually training

Andy:

and certifying teachers and sort of the academic freedom to continue to pursue

Andy:

different kinds of theories and so forth.

Andy:

So I think there's a lot happening here around these things and it does,

Andy:

I think, put pressure on some pretty important things, including like just

Andy:

the role of academia as inefficient and everything else as it can be, to have

Andy:

that role of being a place where you still have like real free exchange of ideas.

Andy:

So I think Florida is hopefully not sort of coming attractions on what

Andy:

this is going to look like, but if this style of politics works,

Andy:

politics is a monkey see monkey do business, so we'll see more of it.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

I think we've just had generations of, there's really been no other option

Jed:

and the political wars on the public education canvas have not been as

Jed:

extreme, but you put the two things together, the wars are more extreme,

Jed:

that canvas is as in attractive as it's ever been and parents have options

Jed:

to just like, get out, forget it.

Jed:

This is just completely and utterly dysfunctional, puts the education

Jed:

establishment in a fundamentally different place, I think at risk and

Jed:

we'll see what happens between now and the end of the decade, but we

Jed:

can see a significant increase in the number of parents that choose to

Jed:

educate their kids in private settings.

Andy:

Yeah, and it'll be interesting because my theory on this right

Andy:

now is you've got like 10 to 15% of people on the left and 10 to 15% of

Andy:

people on the right who are going to struggle to be in public schools.

Andy:

They can't be in community with others because of just these

Andy:

strong beliefs that they have.

Andy:

And it will be ironic if instead of those people needing to go to private

Andy:

schools, so they can get the different things that they want, it ends up

Andy:

being this hollowing out of the middle cuz people are sick of the political

Andy:

theater and this kind of thing, would be sort of an ironic turn of events.

Jed:

So let's bounce it back.

Jed:

We've gone left, right.

Jed:

We started in the Bay area.

Jed:

We went to Florida.

Jed:

Now I don't want to bounce back to the Bay Area, into Oakland.

Jed:

Let's wrap it up there.

Andy:

This is your backyard Jed.

Andy:

Tell us, what's the matter with Oakland?

Jed:

Well, the thing is, I wrote about this at CharterFolk for so long that

Jed:

no one wants to hear me start on this.

Jed:

So let's, let me start with you.

Jed:

As a person observing from a distance, what do you make of the strike?

Jed:

What do you make of the resolution?

Jed:

What do you make of the idea that the teachers are advocating on not just

Jed:

their own issues, but on the common good.

Jed:

Any starting point analysis of that?

Andy:

Yeah, look, it told me Ron DeSantis does not have a monopoly

Andy:

on political theater, right?

Andy:

There was no the strike was clearly avoidable.

Andy:

They clearly wanted to strike.

Andy:

It was a membership engagement thing, to make a point.

Andy:

We're seeing more and more strikes like that.

Andy:

Everybody got what they wanted except the kids who lost untold learning and so

Andy:

forth, how their education's disrupted.

Andy:

Kids in Oakland, who can least afford it.

Andy:

And so the whole thing's unfortunate, I thought.

Andy:

And the common good bargaining, it's a fancy way of saying anything goes

Andy:

and it just expands the universe.

Andy:

It's completely preposterous and why people don't just be like,

Andy:

well that seems preposterous.

Andy:

We should be focusing...

Andy:

if you're going to bargain, you should be focusing on these core issues,

Andy:

not this expansive definition of it.

Andy:

And you saw this during the pandemic when the teachers in LA.

Andy:

At one point the union down there was like, we'll go back, one of

Andy:

our conditions for going back is a moratorium on charter schools, which

Andy:

I mean is obviously like you can be for or against a moratorium on charter

Andy:

schools, but as like a covid policy, that's obviously completely absurd.

Andy:

And you know that this sort of expansion, there aren't enough people just to be

Andy:

like, "Hey, this is ridiculous", and we're so sort of hardened as a partisan matter

Andy:

that when you say this is ridiculous, people are like, "oh, then you must be

Andy:

like a union buster Republican", when in fact like the median position is, this

Andy:

is kind of ridiculous, but too few people are willing to sort of get out there

Andy:

and the kids are taking on the chin.

Andy:

So that's my, that's my read that the whole thing was theater and avoidable.

Andy:

And I was stunned that like folks like Lakeisha Young and so forth, who

Andy:

were out there arguing against this, trying to get kids back to school,

Andy:

that there was not more national attention on them and their efforts.

Jed:

Yeah, I thought Lakeisha did an awesome job.

Jed:

And when the Los Angeles Unified Strike was recently resolved, I tried

Jed:

to show how there was virtually no difference substantively between

Jed:

where the parties were before the strike and where they were after.

Jed:

So what was this thing all about?

Jed:

Same thing in Oakland.

Jed:

From a substantive standpoint, there's no difference, and the union

Jed:

was on these common good things.

Jed:

They were negotiating over procedural things, make a committee and it

Jed:

has representatives of the teacher union and certain numbers, and but

Jed:

there's no substance there, right?

Jed:

They have majority control of the board of the whole USD to begin with, right?

Jed:

They're not even getting any substantive progress on there it matters.

Jed:

So I just think these things, they again shake the confidence of parents

Jed:

and the general public that our public schools are on the right track, or

Jed:

are anything other than completely and utterly broken and something that

Jed:

you wanna avoid if at all possible.

Jed:

And they're just folks, whether it's DeSantis, maybe he hears that

Jed:

--he just keeps doing his stuff with impunity-- the teachers union in

Jed:

Oakland and in Chicago and in Los Angeles, they may hear that, but they

Jed:

keep doing their stuff with impunity.

Jed:

And it just it reminds me of Warren Buffett talking about bankruptcies, right?

Jed:

Bankruptcies happen very, very, very slowly and then all at once.

Andy:

I thought that was Hemingway.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

Oh really?

Jed:

It may.

Jed:

Well, I don't know.

Andy:

I think it's on The Sun Aso Rises.

Andy:

We'll put in the show notes.

Jed:

All right.

Jed:

Okay.

Jed:

Good.

Andy:

Well, Buffett probably said it too.

Andy:

So it seems right.

Jed:

All right.

ll, but the overarching point:

just that I think we are making incremental

ll, but the overarching point:

damage to our public education efforts that are really putting us

ll, but the overarching point:

at risk and it's a time for us to be more sober if at all possible,

ll, but the overarching point:

in terms of looking at these things.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

A little less theater and a little more sort of...

Andy:

Again, I think the media has a role to play in that and

Andy:

is falling down on the job.

Andy:

And I think leaders in our sector have a role to play in

Andy:

that and are too frequently...

Andy:

the tribe has allure and the comfort of the tribal politics is real and it's

Andy:

hard for people to step out and say, "now this is nonsense and we can do better".

Andy:

And like Oakland seemed like that seemed like nonsense, and

Andy:

really unfortunate nonsense.

Jed:

Well, on that sobering note we'll have to make a mental note to start off

Jed:

with some positivity on the next call.

Jed:

But always does my heart good to see you, Andy.

Andy:

Yeah, great to see you, Jed.

Jed:

You smartened me up.

Andy:

Likewise.

Jed:

I look forward to talking to you in another couple weeks.

Andy:

Yeah, me too.

Andy:

See you.

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