Greetings, CharterFolk!

This week, Andy and I are focused on a Thanksgiving theme. We are talking about what we are thankful for over the last year, personally and professionally, as well as traditions and new results.

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

This week some of the topics include:

• Welcome back and tales from the trail (00:04)
• Thanksgiving plans, traditions, and WKRP in Cincinnati’s 1978 Thanksgiving classic episode, “Turkeys Away” (05:58)
• One positive thing we are each inarguably happy about that happened in charters and/or ed reform over the last year (08:01)
• CMO leadership transition: promote from within or hire externally (17:15)
• Virginia election results (30:30)
• Public school satisfaction polling results: parent, non-parent, and pundit opinions (38:39)

Notes:

You can use the following links to access:

·      WKRP in Cincinnati’s 1978 Thanksgiving episode, “Turkeys Away”: https://www.pjstar.com/story/entertainment/television/2023/11/20/wkrp-turkey-drop-cincinnati-thanksgiving-episode-turkeys-away-les-nessman-streaming/71652621007/

·      Andy Rotherham’s Eduwonk article regarding Virginia’s recent elections, “Vibes And Narratives Are No Way To Go Through Ed Policy Son…Plus Fish!”: https://eduwonk.substack.com/p/vibes-and-narratives-are-no-way-to

·      Matt Barnum’s Chalkbeat article, “The public is souring on American education, but parents still give own child’s school high marks”: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/9/5/23859890/parents-polling-surveys-schools-american-education-pandemic/

Previous volumes of WonkyFolk can be accessed here.

Hey, Jed.

Hey, Andy.

I'm good.

You told me you're going to dress like a pilgrim and look at you.

I know.

Well, you know, you've got your good Thanksgiving themed

t shirt on here from WKRP.

So at least you are representing us well.

Iconic turkey drop.

We'll put a link to it in the show notes so we can find a copy of the episode.

Well, welcome back, Jeff.

This is like a true first our thing.

Our special, Wonky Folk Thanksgiving episode and also you're welcome back.

It's great to see you.

Well, it's great to be back.

And I did write a post on the trip and it was just an incredible one.

And I do genuinely feel great gratitude for all the people that contributed in

my absence to keep Charter Folk going.

And, you know, it's interesting.

There were a lot of moments when frankly, education policy was not at

the top of my mind as we were walking.

And then it's just striking, Andy.

Conversation after conversation tends to migrate toward

conversations about education.

And I've written a lot about education in Spain.

And it was striking to me like how much has changed in Spain

since 2015, in public education.

And I just feel like, and some of these things are foundational pieces, like

what's going on with a concertata schools in general, they're the charter schools in

Spain, but what's going on with religious education in general in Spain, and the

Bifurcation of policy proposals coming from the left and coming from the right.

It's happening, of course, in our country.

We talk about it all the time, but it's striking to see that it's happening in

Spain and in many of the other countries where I had pilgrims who are walking

besides me for some sections of this trip.

Well, I don't have the ability to bring any

conversation around to education.

So I sort of feel as if the pilgrimage, is it hard enough?

I'm sure it was really rough on a few of them who are like, we have

to talk more about charter schools.

But, talk about, say a little bit more about Spain.

That bifurcation, that's interesting.

What are you seeing there?

Well, I remember at one point that like Darrell Bradford and I were talking

about the issue of, hey, charter schools need to build more middle class schools

in order to build our political strength.

And it reminded me of being in Spain in 2015, where I went to visit

a lot of the concertata schools.

And the concertata schools They are like charter schools, but there are

some very important differences.

But just for shorthand, let's call them charters or something similar to,

and I remember at the end of one of my visits, I said to the lead of the school.

So what do you guys do around advocacy?

What do you do to make sure that your funding isn't cut and that they don't

take away your facilities and what's going on with all of the other regulatory

matters as they relate to charter schools.

And the guy was just puzzled.

He was just, what are you talking about?

Wait, like, advocacy, like, like somebody would go after us?

I mean, we got all sorts of middle class parents in our schools, and no

one would dare go after our schools, so we don't even need any advocacy, right?

Now, the interesting thing is, if you look at, like, 2019, The concertata

schools really became a target from the left and starting in 2019, there

is a big push now to try and defund a lot of the concertata schools,

or to keep new regulation on them.

And now you have a bunch of people writing about the need for the concertata

schools to get their acts together.

And then, of course, people want to label the concert out of schools as

all religious schools are not all about religious schools, depending on

whatever their political agenda is.

But it just you know, spoke to me that you got to stay on top of these

conditions in these different countries.

I've continued to tell the story about middle class concert out

of schools in Spain being safer than schools in the United States.

But actually what we're seeing is the story has evolved and unless

you stay on top of these things, you find that you're spending

resources that are no longer acurate.

I used to spend some time in Spain, but it's been a while.

So I'm not up to speed on any of that, but that is like a little bit.

I'd be interested in how that's playing out elsewhere because you do.

American politics often end up following a little bit European politics.

You see sort of, you know, rises of different kinds of

political factions and so forth.

And I mean, you obviously saw that.

So there was hints all across Europe that sort of presage what happened

here with, with Donald Trump.

Okay.

So what's a non education charter school memory just quickly about the trip?

Like what's, you're just back from such an amazing experience.

What's like something that just like really stays with you or stands out?

Well, I talked about this in the post that I wrote, my favorite moments

were the people that we met new and the people that were walking for just

profoundly personal deep reasons, and when you have a chance to walk with

people who have recently lost children.

or they've lost their parents, or they've lost their spouses.

There was one story too about a person who started the trip

having recently just broken up with their longtime relationship.

And then that person, you know, that person's partner was waiting for her.

You know, at the, at the Cathedral in Leon and they reunited there just, and, and

it's just so striking how on the Camino, you just start talking with people about

deep and important things so much faster than you do in most other social contexts.

And it's amazing.

Amy and I are still swapping texts with people, whatever.

At some point it'll dissipate, I'm sure, but you make relationships

that are important ones.

And I know I'll be thinking about that for somany years to come.

That's amazing.

That's really amazing.

So you're back.

What are the plans for Thanksgiving In your house?

What's the traditional charter school dish that you guys cook?

Well, I'm in Chicago and my wife's family is here and we have a

longstanding fight about cranberries.

I personally believe that, you know, Canned cranberries or even cranberries

that are just textureless where they get the skin out of it all that

stuff I'm sorry, but you know those people have some kind of very serious

psychological deficit or something that they even put that on the table.

And I continue to insist that you got to have cranberries with the skins on.

And every year it seems like it's on the verge of like literal, you

know, civil war within the family breaking out over cranberries.

But thus far we've been able to keep our differences.

Do you make them from scratch?

We'll see what happens this year.

Absolutely.

There's no other way to do it.

I don't think people who take them from the can or psychos like you do,

but we definitely, yeah, we make them.

It's one of those things.

I think that people like, until I watched my wife do it, I just sort of

thought that must be kind of an elaborate thing to make homemade cranberries.

That's really not.

Um, it's one of those things once you learn how to do it, you're

like, Oh, this is actually really straightforward to make it really,

you know, fresh and homemade and good.

So what...

Any other special, any other special food?

We did different things.

My wife's family has some long time traditions that we've sort of adopted.

We've got a big group coming in.

And so our big tradition is we were cooking for, I think, 16 or 17.

It's going to be really eclectic.

Group with family and my sister in law is coming in and with her family.

So it's going to be great.

And you know, my girls are seniors, so we're also like.

This is, you know, it's a nice one to have at home, have everybody here.

Um, so that's what we're looking forward to in a couple of a

couple of quiet days with family.

One of our traditions, we don't do it every year, but most

years we do it, go around the table.

What's one thing that you're most grateful for this year.

Maybe to extend, maybe, and to tie it into education policy

or education developments.

Is there one development this year, Andy, you would say you are most grateful for?

Hey, this is something inarguably positive.

That's happening.

Oh, my gosh, that's such a good question.

I think there's a lot.

At the national level, you're not seeing a lot.

That's inarguably positive.

I think we all see that and there's a lot of confusion and we can talk about that.

I continue just though when you get down and you just get back out into schools.

I mean, there's so much positive stuff happening and people are working

hard and that's across the sectors.

You're going to find that you're going to find that in public schools

and charters, public charter schools.

You're going to find that in private schools.

And that's what kind of keeps me like it.

Yeah.

If you only, if an alien landed here and you only got the atmospherics

of the national stuff, you would be neither like very thankful or very

optimistic, but like it, thankfully that's not like the sum total.

And so I'm just thankful for just like people are out there just every

day trying to do really interesting stuff for kids, it isn't always,

you know, the really fancy stuff, but it's blocking and tackling to,

to make things better for kids.

So that, that, that would be mine.

What about you?

We should rehearse this too, so I, I could give you like my compelling, but

you know, getting to spend time in schools, you see it, so that is mine.

Well, what are the routines that you use personally just to get

into schools as much as you can?

I'm now trying to make it a point, every time I visited a new state.

I was in Idaho and saw two extraordinarily great schools in Idaho.

I was blown away by them.

But the week before I had been in Colorado and again, saw two great charter

schools right in the Denver metro area.

I asked, look, it's harder now, you know, when my kids were younger, I didn't

want to, I didn't want to be traveling so much, so building that extra day and,

staying over coming in early, wasn't.

You know, something I want to do as much now that that's an easier thing to do.

So yeah, I just ask and I think there's two kinds of schools that

are it's interesting to visit schools where you've spent time and you

sort of seen an evolution and then it's always fun to visit new schools

and see different kinds of things.

And, you know, I mean, the only school I've ever been like, Hey, can I walk

around and if they know you and schools you visit and they trust, you can just

kind of go around, if not, they're going to send somebody with you, which

is the responsible thing to do if they don't know you, but the only school

that's ever been like, Oh, you can't just kind of, you have to do our tour.

You can't just like go and like, check out what's going on was a school.

We were considering sending my kids to a public school and that was enough.

I was like, yeah, no.

Like that lack of transparency and lack of, and they had all these excuses

and none of them were good excuses.

And so I just ask if I'm most place or I mean, look, if you've done this

kind of work, like you and I have, there's ways you can visit schools and

classrooms without being disruptive and making yourself, you know, the

focal point of attention and so forth.

And so.

I find places that know that you're going to be able to conduct yourself

appropriately or like more than happy to have you and then you can really

just sit in and watch what's going on.

What about you?

What tricks do you have up your sleeve?

Well, school visits, look, I just can't keep leverage on myself unless

I'm going there, and it was great.

I had a goal to visit all charter schools in California by the time I ended my

service at CCSA, but we grew so many, I actually had, I visited almost 700,

but by the end of my time there, I had more schools to visit than I had seen

already, that's how fast we had grown.

But I just came away from those visits just full of energy and

also just full of motivation.

If there was anything from an advocacy perspective that was not

being done well for these schools.

Oh my gosh, I would just be ready to like run through fire for these places.

But in terms of like being thankful for something in the landscape.

I'm, you know, I'm kind of like you, I think that there are many things

that I could point to, but there is one, I believe it's above all others,

and it's something that we focused on here during our Wonky Folk recordings.

I do think that the third study from Credo showing the academic strengthening

of a sector that's now grown to serve almost 4 million students, I think that

is just a huge, huge accomplishment, and I know there are some that are quibbling

with the data, and they say, Oh, the amount of positive benefit isn't that

great statistically, but I also feel like there are a lot of responses to

that because these are data that show that every year,that a student is in a

charter school, they have this incremental additional learning, and almost all

of them are spending more than many more than one year, sometimes they're

spending their entire 13 years within a charter school context, and you add up

over that period of time, you know, that incremental increase in support it's just.

It's, I think, an amazing thing for our, for our world to have accomplished, and

I think it brings more oxygen into our room and makes us feel a greater sense

of moxie to just keep going, but then also to have had Mackie here, first of

all, for Mackey to have been able to do the study and to find enough access to

enough data to get it done, and then to be such a great evangelist going around

and talking about it in very compelling terms, as she did here at Wonky Folk,

you know, you wrap that all together, and I consider that a really big thing

on the Thanksgiving table for the Charter School community to feel part of.

That's a really good one.

That's a really good one.

And I guess something else is on the theme of being thankful, like, that's

a remarkable thing you just said, 700 schools, and like, I think I'm very

thankful when you get out and you talk to people, you realize in jobs like you and

I have had you, you get to see a lot of stuff and you get a nice field of view.

And so you can sort of see where things fit together and where they're divergent.

And like, it's very frustrating to me that is not the experience for the

average teacher, average teacher leader.

They get like a very completely different, sort of myopic training and then basically

depending where you student teach and then where you end up teaching often

like very similar in homogenous kinds of experiences and they don't get to

see this range of things, which I think just as a professional, then you start

to see, you know, different, first of all, things can be done different ways,

but then also develop whatever your own preferences are about things that you

think, you know, Worker don't work in different situations and the way we sort

of, we treat teachers like almost like the DMV clerks or something, and that's

really unfortunate and so, like, I think we should do something about that, but

I'm also just thankful that I've had, like, those kinds of opportunities to

hear you be like, yeah, I couldn't get to all of them by visit 700 schools.

And that's like a phenomenal.

That's a phenomenal experience.

Well, it was just a privilege, and the privilege that I have right now

is, it seems as though you have this as well, when you call, people are like,

yes, come by, come on by, and I mean, I don't think it's wise to get anchored

to a number, but I do confess every once in a while I think about has anybody

been in a thousand charter schools yet?

No.

I don't know.

And if you add up my CCSA time and what's happened since, but the most

important thing is you've been in, I've been in over, well over 800 charter

schools now over 850 probably, but then to go to Idaho and to see across the

entire state, they decided to make this residential facility where the kids with

the most severe mental health challenges, that need around the clock assistance.

They tried to do it within the context of a traditional public school, and

they were just being frustrated.

And finally, they just said, wait a second, we have this charter school

law in the state, and it clicks, it clicks, and they got something

really neat happening there.

And when you go and see that, and you say, hey, the charter school

context, Is providing creative ways for us to solve problems within,

you know, public schooling that we just weren't able to do before.

That's the kind of stuff that just puts the additional spring in my step and says,

okay, whatever we got to do to make sure that more schools, you know, like Idaho,

Idaho youth ranch are able to flourish.

I'm going to do.

I don't know that people listen to this podcast to hear

us talk about our numbers.

So we probably ought to, we probably ought to transition towards.

Well, that'll be a different podcast.

Talk about, um, transition towards education policy, at some point, I

mean, the thankful thing is, it's just after you said that I was thinking

I also like some people popped into my mind, who I think are doing cool.

There is a lot, despite like the gloomy and some of the stuff we're

probably going to talk about today.

Like, there is, there's definitely a lot to be thankful for.

And there's just some great people in the sectors kind of just putting

their shoulder to it, quietly and really creative and intentional ways.

Well, one of, just, you know, making the transition further to just,

you know, policy and education stuff.

You and I had swapped some texts and, and emails about what's going on with,

with CMO transition and leadership.

I want to return, Andy, by the way, to the superintendent leadership

challenge, because there was a new article that was out, that was

published while I was gone that showed.

a group has really been deep and looked at the total number of superintendents

in the country and was able to show what the turnover is there.

And I think it might be something.

Yeah, we should talk about that.

We should.

And we can even get into that.

I mean, what I was the note I sent to you is a conversation I was having with

a friend where We were talking about how like you're seeing a fair number of

successful leadership transitions just around the sector in different kinds of

organizations and things going pretty well And also there's some you know some sort

of merger and acquisition activity and we see a lot of that because that's some of

that stuff that we work on at bellwether, but we were saying like, you know a

lot of the CMO Leadership transitions don't seem to have gone that well.

And I think people can pretty quickly can think of, you can think of a few.

And so that's why I sent you that note was like, Hey, what's your take on this?

And then, you know, it seems like something we should

probably just talk about here.

So I'll ask you the same.

What is your take on what's happening with CMO leadership transition is sort

of, either the first generation or places you've had a Leader in place for

a long time and they're transitioning?

So let me see.

I just had a, can you still hear me with with this?

Can you hear me now?

Okay, good.

I'm sorry.

I had a little tech problem there.

So I think that the CMO leaderships, I think 1st of all, we've had

significant turnover in our leadership.

I don't think it's been nearly.

as disruptive as we've seen in many traditional public schools.

But we have had some that have worked out well, and we've had others that

haven't and I'm really starting to think about what is it that has worked and

not worked and the generalization I wanted to pressure test with you Andy

is whether you are seeing that those organizations that prioritize voting for

within are actually having more success than those that are doing the search

and bringing in people from from outside because it certainly is my observation.

This is anecdotal, I got no data, but observationally, those that are promoting

from within are having greater success and mitigating leadership transition

risk in ways that the others...

Anecdotally that's what I see, but I don't I'm not confident in that, because

this whole thing is impressionistic.

So I would love to see some actual data on that question.

I mean, look, it stands to reason if, you know, you'd understand how schools

operate, which It stands to reason and also that makes me want to check my

own bias, because it just seems like that's the intuitive thing, so to make

sure we're not just getting a lot of confirmation bias, because every time

you see the promotion from within, you notice it, but that if I'm an

impressionistic standpoint that that seems, but why do you think, I mean, In

terms of some of the external ones that haven't gone well, is it the wrong people?

Is it the wrong transition model?

Is it the wrong time?

I mean, what do you, are boards dropping the ball?

What do you, what do you infer as to, as to why we are seeing a lot of that?

I think it's just a disconnect in strategy and understanding

of their own organizations.

We have these organizations that worked years to distinguish themselves from

other traditional public school offerings.

And they build whole cultures around this, and they have operational aspects that are

just consciously trying to be different.

That often requires it's been quite a few years to really understand what the

different practice is like on school visits, going back to that for one, I

mean, one thing that is an indicator of success, you've often talked about

charter schools being places where we can be more intentional, we see intention

play at play out in ways that we can't within traditional public schools.

And what I'm always looking for in my first 60 seconds in the school

is, do I see something that is most likely intentional that I don't

understand that all of them do?

Right.

And then I asked the question and then they're boom.

Oh, I see.

I see.

It's like going into the school elevate and I know they have a

big purple curly slide coming right into the commons area,right.

And of course, that's my first question.

Why the heck do people have a purple slide coming into your commons area?

Just a small example.

But what happens is I think the the charter schools that really become

unique really become intentional, they don't even appreciate how different they

have become from the public education mainstream, such that then when you want

to get your leader, and you go back into the education mainstream, or even if you

recruited from another charter school, but one that's very different from your own,

that new leader coming in is just set up to not succeed from the very beginning.

And my own sense is that we should continue to encourage our charter schools

to be as innovative and different from other schools as possible, but also make

them recognize that from a leadership challenge perspective, that means makes it

almost necessary that they're going to...

Do you think our boards paying enough attention to these questions

of succession and thinking about who is the The leader or with everything

going on is that like, is it more just sort of hoping and praying?

I don't really know, and I also don't really want to get overly down

on those that are doing search and all that kind of stuff, some of these

people are my close friends and heck Molly, she writes Charter Folk On the

Run, Charter Folk on the Move, right?

And, of course, I value these people immensely and the

contributions that they make.

But I also feel like sometimes boards just haven't thought

about this enough proactively.

And so then the leadership challenge happens, and the only

way succession really works out is if people have done it far in

advance, the planning far in advance.

And I also feel like leadership transition requires real resources.

Cause I think the right way for most organizations to go through something

like this is when the person, the current leader leaves, can they not fully leave?

Can they lead?

Can they take an emeritus position?

Can they do it?

Like a lot of law firms do, right?

Where the partner emeritus stays there and watches whether or not

the new partners can handle it.

If so, then they leave, right?

But what you have is this period then where you're basically

double paying on leadership.

For some period and and that could be really tone wrong and off putting

to teachers or others that see the administrative burden cost being too high.

But I think that if the organization can talk about it enough in advance, 5,6,7

years, we're pulling the resources, so that transition will happen in a

way such that we have no drama and no trauma and you will have an easy

handoff and everybody continues to love their jobs around this place.

I think that we could TV's things up, but we're just not proactively.

Yeah, it's interesting.I am not as sold as you are on that model.

Just, I feel like when you have a new leader, you have to

actually give them room to lead.

And I think one of the things we've seen in, in, in, in just some non profit

and other transitions else for profit sector, like if, if, if it's not clear

who's in charge or like you, you don't have somebody who's in charge, it can

get pretty, um, The new person, like they don't actually have the latitude to make

the decisions and then be accountable for those decisions that they want to be.

And it becomes sort of a shadow and depending on sort of how like effective

the board is and what kind of governance, um, sort of norms and culture you

have that can get really messy fast.

And so I'm more like, like, I think one of the best transitions we

saw, I'll name somebody who's just terrific was like Katie Haycock.

When she left the education trust, she didn't like hang around

looking over people's shoulders.

She like left.

And so, um, and you see that with like good superintendent transitions where they

don't like linger around and sharpshoot the next person or, you know, talk to

reporters, you know, anything like that.

I think those, like you need to have a good, I think you often good clean.

Um, transition, but that requires really effective governance to be in place and

wrapped around requires a whole bunch of things that are not, um, uh, that are

not always, um, they're not always there.

Well, and I should also caveat what I'm saying here.

Yeah, I'm talking about only works under a permit from within.

Context where the trust is there and the organization actually wants the leader

to be around, you know, half time to kind of help the person who's coming from

within be ready to fully take the reins.

You have an emeritus sticking around to, like, oversee the inside

of that's always depends on the person how close they've worked together

with the what the trust looks like.

I think it's very situational.

Um, and maybe that's one of the takeaways is people don't always You know, I

haven't asked you earlier, like, to look for patterns, but like, these are very

situational, um, uh, kinds of transitions.

Well, I think it points to, and there could very well be a lot of people.

Well, there's good,

I certainly think of some good examples.

There's definitely some bigger networks in California where you've seen, like, good

examples of that, where people are able to kind of work themselves out of a job.

Sure.

So, maybe we can find the people that are most obsessing on this particular.

Topic and learn from them sometime in 2024, because it seems like

it's a, it's a point of risk that we probably, yeah, definitely.

There's just a

lot of, you know, there's just a lot of sort of generational

leadership transition happening.

So, yeah, we should, we should definitely, um, come back before

we transition out for this one.

Your own transition, like, were there any big ahas there that you came

away with or things you would have done differently or big, like, big

lessons when you reflect on that?

Um, I

think that Well, I don't want to pat myself on the back or what.

Um, but Myrna has taken CCSA after I left.

And, um, she had gone to great public schools now in Los Angeles, but she was

also the person that, that took the reins of CCSA when I went on my sabbatical.

So I was constantly having that conversation with my board.

Hey, if you get hit by a bus, uh, who is it?

But not only do I have a conversation with the board.

I mean, I had the conversation with Mirna.

I had the conversation with our senior leadership team.

Um, and uh, I think, yeah, IM modestly it, it turned out to be, um, pretty good.

Um, but there also were some other things about that particular transition.

They could have been done better if I had been even.

It's fun to go

though.

That was a good one.

I was thinking, I was thinking, uh, San Diego.

Yeah.

Um.

Well, um, within, well, that's a, that's a different piece

and the leadership transition there was, was different because

I was in a different role.

I was, um, and so it was somewhat natural to hand off to people

within the organization as well.

But no, I was saying that because

I feel like that you had the charismatic founder, um,

you know, Larry's amazing guy.

And, and, and then, but like you guys, it seemed like managed that

it built out a team that was, yeah.

The school is not Larry dependent and has sort of been able to persist.

Uh, that's what it looks like from the chief seats.

Well, they've, um, had their challenges since Larry formally left.

Um, but I think they now are in a good place and it's taken a couple of years

to get there, but they've, they've made that transition successfully now.

And it's a very difficult one.

There's all the other leadership transitions you have to think about

as an organization gets more mature, but the, but the transition away

from founder is perhaps, you know, the most difficult at all of all.

Um, but, um.

You know, hopefully he's firmly on his feet now, you know, and we'll see, but,

uh, but I wanted to, you know, in terms of like putting people on the spot

about their, you know, specific context, let's, let's come back to Virginia here.

And, um, you and I were talking about the Virginia elections and we

did some, uh, you know, I did some pontificating on, on what I thought

that election trends were going to be.

Um, and now we've seen what these results have turned out to be.

What's your short hand on what we have to learn from the Virginia results?

There's there's your word.

Um, I mean, I think that's the big like, I'm actually a little bit.

I think you mean elections always matter, but I think people can overread

what's happening with special elections.

I think you can overread what's happening in Virginia because it's

not we're always off year, you know, um, people can overread the signals.

But I think like this, that's a pretty clear signal like, because we were seeing

it elsewhere and you saw it in Virginia.

Um, and a bunch of the voting behavior, like abortion is a really salient issue.

Um, uh, people don't trust the Republicans and they're not going

to be able to win competitive races.

They actually, the Republicans didn't do the coverage was pretty bad.

Um, less the coverage in the state, but the coverage nationally where it's

like, Oh, this big landslide and stuff like the legislature, there's 140 seats.

They would split 70, 70.

Before the election now, it's, you know, 68 72.

So the, the Democrats now have a one vote majority in both

chambers and they flip the Senate.

They were the Senate.

They didn't have control going into the election.

Um, so, I mean, those are not those are not small things.

On the other hand, those are not landslides.

And when you look at how the votes were distributed around the state and so

forth, like, you know, redistricting plays a really big role and anywhere

where you have competitive races.

Uh, abortion is going to be the salient, uh, issue until the Republicans figure

out how to do something on that.

And you saw that and you saw, I mean, you saw like, you know, fairly substantially

flawed candidates perform pretty well.

Um, uh, and, and that's, you know, that, that all owes to abortion.

All the ads were about abortion and like, you know, afterwards the Democrats

were like, yeah, the issue was abortion.

And yet the national, you know.

Chattering class wanted to make it about this, that, or the, or the other thing.

Um, uh, and like, there's just no evidence.

It was, it was, it was, uh, about, uh, at the, at the state level.

I mean, there was some local school board races and stuff that obviously

turned on education, but at the, at the, uh, at the, so at the state level,

it was, it was all about abortion and I don't know what the Republican

plan to get out from under that, uh.

You know, get that millstone off of them is, but it is, uh, they have a,

they have, they just have an enormous, they have an enormous problem, um,

of their own creation, but a, but a real, a real political problem.

So that's the, you know,

well, when we.

Yeah, when we talked about it before, um, we were, I was commenting on,

hey, people believe that the Dems are out of step with voters on school

choice and people believe that the Republicans are out of step on abortion.

We'll see which out of step.

I think this is such a

salient issue.

People just, and people, what you can see, people just did

not trust the Republicans on it.

And, and cause there was no clear bottom line.

I think this is part of the Republican's problem.

No one knows what the bottom line is.

And as you know, I mean, when you look at the polling on abortion, like.

People are very skeptical of third trimester, uh, and are open to regulations

there and we were, that was the regime we were sort of living in under row

anyway, um, uh, second trimester, the public's pretty split and first trimester,

the public's pretty strongly in favor of, you know, women should be able to

make her own reproductive decisions.

And the politics are sort of going in such a way that the Republicans

cannot even like draw a firm line around that first trimester issue.

You're seeing Nikki Haley try to do it.

Um, and until they do that and figure something out there, they

will continue to lose elections.

And it's a little like people in education want to like, everything's about it.

It's not, this is a, this is a political fight that's happening elsewhere.

It has big implications for governmental politics.

And so it's, it's, it's important in that way to what we do in our sector.

But like the idea that education is driving any of this, it's, it's.

It's not.

Um, and, and you saw that.

Interestingly, in some polling, there was a New York Times column.

I forget who wrote it.

It was like, this is a huge repudiation of, you know, of a bunch of things.

Um, you know, the Glenn Young is doing or whatever.

In fact, if you look inside the polls, the public's like, you know, he's

actually closer to the public on a bunch of stuff than the Democratic position,

but it doesn't matter because abortion, um, and, and, and it's, it's, it's

obscuring abortions, obscuring everything.

Um, Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, you know, until they until they figure that one out.

Um, you know, we'll see at the national level.

Does that translate to presidential?

I don't know.

But like in consequential races.

Uh, at the state level where this thing is, is any kind of a

jump ball, uh, it seems to really

matter.

Well, to wrap things up, I want to pivot back to a polling question as it relates

to education because there was one article that came out while I was on the Camino

that if I had been home, I definitely would have just dove right into.

But before I get to that.

I.

Um, what, how do you explain the problem, quote unquote, in polling that seemed

to be demonstrated in the November elections in that people just didn't

see this result coming and people aren't saying to the pollsters, um, what.

They are actually, I

disagree.

I actually think the polling, it was close and people knew it would be pretty close,

but like there wasn't a ton of surprise.

Um, and I actually think the last couple of elections, the polls

actually been better than people.

think.

Um, I think part of our problem is this vibes driven, um, uh, approach to things.

I wrote about that with the guy and the coverage on Virginia were like it

was just divorced from the actual data.

But you saw that, like even back in 2016, like the polls were not.

I mean, there was definitely there was a hidden trump vote

and people were surprised.

But, you know, Going into the election, like, polls were indicating it was

potentially going to be a close election and, you know, that there was at least,

you know, at least a one in three chance that Donald Trump was going to win.

The thing was, nobody could believe that they couldn't get themselves.

Um, and so the data, uh, on that kind of polling, I think people are actually in,

you know, in Virginia, the polls, you know, and, and same thing with, which

has happened in, um, uh, uh, in 2022, like the Republican vibes were that they

were going to pick up all these seats.

But if you looked at the data, the races looked reasonably close and,

you know, and ended up breaking their way again, abortion being a, uh,

So my, my shorthand that generally there was some polling that

was coming out that was favorable to Republicans and Trump's beating

Biden and all the, uh, swing states.

And then Democrats had a, you know, compared to that, had

a surprisingly good turnout.

No,

Trump wasn't on the ballot in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin

wasn't on the ballot in Virginia.

People want to make this about all these other things.

Biden wasn't on the ballot in Virginia.

This was about who was going to control.

The legislature when abortion was, it was a huge issue.

I feel like that's, I guess that may be part of the problem.

We tend to overread it's entirely possible that like two things can be true.

Joe Biden has a political problem in 2024 and Democrats did well.

Um, uh, in Virginia in 2020.

Three, those, those things that doesn't have to be to be one or the other.

And as I said a minute ago, how the abortion thing translates at the national

level will be interesting, uh, will be interesting, will be interesting to watch.

I think I don't think I think it's more, um, uh, cool, you know, you always get

like outlier polls and so forth, but in general, um, I think you get, you

get good directional stuff and you can start to see things kind of converge.

Now, the flip side of that is this interesting dynamic

that we see in education.

I know you're very interested in, which is like, parents tell

everybody that they're, you know, reasonably happy with schools overall.

But then there's two other data points that are very interesting.

One is when you focus group, you get an earful.

Um, and as soon as there's like a safe permission structure,

then people are like, Oh, here's all these things I don't like.

And then also, um, uh, revealed.

It's just sort of preference through behavior.

Like, people are, when they're offered options, they take them.

Um, they're, you know, um, not everybody, like, you know, ESAs are not going to

sort of evacuate the public schools, but, but, you know, some set segment

of people, charter schools continue to be, you know, popular and, um, you

know, voucher programs and so forth.

And, So I don't go to that Uh, and so, like, squaring that

circle is kind of interesting.

I mean, some of it's the basic thing we have where people say, like, I love,

I hate Congress, but I like my member.

And, you know, they say that they don't like schools, but they like, although

that Congress one we all use as a cliche.

I just did it.

That number's actually changing.

People are pretty appalled.

Yeah, people are pretty frustrated with Congress.

I mean, like, I mean, come on.

How could it not be?

But you still see that thing where you'll give your own schools a pretty high grade.

You know, the traditional way to ask is the school your oldest kid attends.

And then, um, but you give them overall.

Um, but I think that may be masking, uh, some stuff because we're seeing in reveal

we're seeing with revealed behavior.

People are looking for options.

They're looking for other things.

Now, the one thing last thing, and then I want to hear you keep in mind on this.

These things always conflate.

And this is the problem in politics is like, we always use the wrong track,

right track numbers, you know, and like, Like it's entirely possible.

Like you go ask voters right now, is the country on the

right track or the wrong track?

You are going to get voters in that wrong track number who think it's on

the wrong track because Joe Biden's not able to do all the things he wants to

do and the Republicans are stopping him.

And you're going to get people who are like the country's on the

wrong track because of Joe Biden.

And I don't like that.

And you know, all those people are mashed into those numbers and

it's the same thing with schools.

And so you're getting people who are.

That, you know, to the extent people are frustrated, they're not all

frustrated about the same stuff.

Some think the schools need to go further right.

Some people think they need to go further left.

They need to change this and that.

It's a, it's a, you know, all that gets, all that gets

bundled up in that, like, level.

They're not all dissatisfied about the same stuff.

Well, that article I was referring to was one that Matt

Barnum at Chalkbeat wrote.

It was around September 15th.

It was right when I was leaving, and it showed that from a polling

perspective, the public's satisfaction with public schools Has degraded

significantly, but parents report in the same numbers satisfaction with

public schools as they ever have.

And from that, then Matt suggests that the only people that are talking

about parents being unhappy about things are, you know, pundits like me.

And, um, and so I mean, Matt's an incredibly smart guy, and I

really appreciate his reporting.

He's just so consistently thoughtful.

I don't agree with every article by any means, but this is one

where I just feel like there is a disconnect between not only what

we're getting in this last round, but what we get in general from parents.

And like you're talking about, what are the observed behaviors?

When we see Iowa, Project what the number of parents would be who would have taken

advantage of a voucher and they build their state budget around that number.

And then the numbers are just way, way larger than they projected and and

they cut it off if they had actually let it go for another few weeks.

Goodness knows what the numbers would have been.

So it seems to me.

That we're seeing some once in a generation, very big changes in policies

that are happening, especially in these red states where they're now doing ESAs

and vouchers for large numbers of parents.

And it seems to me as though this is a place where pollsters

should really be diving in.

Okay.

In Iowa, where were public, what were people saying, what were parents saying

about their options at that point?

Which ones actually chose to try to make use of the voucher and what does

that reflect about what they really believed about their own schools?

And then can we extrapolate anything out from these experiences, um,

where we're seeing the big shift in policy to other contexts where we

really more deeply need to understand what, what parents are thinking

about public education these days.

I think, um,

uh,

I think you've got, um, I think you're on to something and there

is, if the preferences are muddled, um, and I do think we need to

figure out some other ways, other ways to be asking these questions.

I mean, there are some polls that do a nice job with like a B testing

and ask and give parents different information or do ask some, but.

Um, uh, I think there's work, I think there's work to be done there.

I'm still continually struck between the difference with interviews, focus

groups and, and, and, and polls when there's a permission structure for

people to actually really be candid.

And it may also be, look, you know, people often, when they're being polled

in my experience, they also, sometimes they know what they're being asked.

And like, are you being asked?

Like, do you support the public schools and people do?

It doesn't mean you're happy with them and so forth.

Um, but if you're being asked to grade them, do you support

your local public schools?

And people are like, yeah, the last few years have been rough and I support them.

I mean, you saw this like, um, I think this was like one of the most

pronounced things that you saw.

This was a while ago now, but when Clinton was impeached, you saw nobody

gonna say why his approval ratings were going up, but they were probably

going up because voters knew when you're being asked, about job approval.

What they're really asking is, do you think the president should be impeached?

And people didn't, they weren't, they weren't.

And then you'd ask a bunch of sub questions that people

weren't happy with his conduct.

They weren't happy with what he'd done.

Um, and they would give him terrible marks on all that kind of stuff, but

they give him high on job approval.

Cause it was like, yeah, they knew what they were really being asked is, do

you think he should still be president?

And their answer was yes, I do.

Um, I don't think you should be.

I don't think you should be removed from office.

And I think the republicans are overreaching.

That's what they were basically saying.

And I think I think you have some of the same.

I think you have some of the same, um, same thing going on here.

And then you also have a layer of cognitive dissonance, which

is like, it's hard to like.

You're really going to say, yeah, no, my kids schools, you

know, not working and so forth.

Um, uh, you're starting to see, I mean, there are some shifts that that one thing

and giving your kids school higher grades.

We saw some shifts, um, took among African Americans that number started to drop.

So people are people are aware of some of the challenges, but

I still think that that that's a hard thing and that shows up.

And so I don't think it's any 1 thing, but some different things show up in that, um.

Uh, show up in that polling and how we should think about it.

But the biggest one being what you said.

Revealed preference.

What should, what should terrify people who support public schools, who I

count myself as one, is just that issue of when people are offered options,

even in some case where those options aren't as quality as what they're

getting, they take them, like, Any other industry you'd be, you know, that,

that's what would keep you up at night.

And we just sort of, you know, we just sort of whistle past

the graveyard on that stuff.

Yeah.

And I think the subtext of the questions for parents, if this is

cognitive distance, but just put a little bit more specificity into it,

it's really a difficult thing for a parent to continue to, to report that

I'm doing a good job of parenting.

And at the same time say, I have my child in an educational setting that's

not optimal or not good for them.

Right.

And so it seems to me as though we should find some better way to be able

to ask that question or those questions.

Maybe focus groups are the only way we're ever really going to be able to

elicit the kind of vulnerability and honesty that we need from parents.

Um, maybe over time, what we can do is just get to a place where people actually

have enough choices and the cognitive distance doesn't matter anymore because

there's enough behaviors to measure.

And

these are local things.

I just did a linkedin thing yesterday with Christine pits, Andy Jacob,

who are both education experts in the Portland public school parents.

And 1 thing they were both sort of saying, both as we're

getting ready for beforehand.

And I think.

You know, they, they, they gave some voices is during the

linkedin is, it's also hard.

Like there's, there's social pressure and so forth.

And so people, and they're like, there's this, and, you know, Chris, Christine

was saying, you know, she gets lots of communication from people who are

really frustrated with the strike, but they're not going to say that.

Um, cause they can't for, for professional or social reasons.

And, and that, you know, that's.

Um, tying this back to Virginia, the big thing we saw in Virginia, I think when

I look at the results of like the school board races was like a clear message.

What voters want is they want you to be normal.

Like the most bombastic characters on both sides.

We're getting white.

We're getting wiped out.

Um, people like, I think people like, you know, the, the fringe of both

parties is, is, are, you know, they're totally addicted to drama around the

schools, but the average, I Parent they that is not what they want.

They want their schools.

They want people to act normally and run good schools, and they're not

they're not on board with this stuff.

Well, maybe the polling that you know, I'm most interested in

right now as we wrap this thing up.

We have to

find we can put that on the show.

That the classic, uh, I mean, every, every WKRP episode is a, is a gem,

but that was, you know, the, the, the Thanksgiving turkey drop, uh,

one is, is absolutely legendary.

That's like, I'm pretty sure that's in E.

D.

Hersh's.

I think that's in the, the, I think that's.

in the cultural literacy book.

If it's not, it was, it was not as clearly just an oversight.

Um, I'll send it to Don and ask him.

Um, yes, I hope you have a great

Thanksgiving.

Hey, you know, we're, we're going to wrap up 12, uh, recordings this year.

And, uh, I will say there are many times where I was walking.

And since then, I, I consider wonky folk and having a chance to talk to you once a

month, uh, quite a thing to be grounded.

And I'm thankful for

that.

And we get, we get good feedback or listenership.

We have a small, but mighty listenership that does, uh, appreciate, just

appreciates listening to these things, get talked about without people yelling

at each other and ripping their faces off.

We should, I'm thankful for all the guests we have that came on that helped

with that, and I'm looking forward to more, more of, uh, more of them for sure.

You as

well.

All right, great.

We'll see you.

Have a great all day.

I look forward to seeing you next month.

Bye.

Bye.

Okay.

See you.

Bye.

Bye.