Amnesia about A Nation at Risk. Amnesia about Covid responses. And Jed wishing he could have amnesia about the King’s game on April 30, 2023.

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

The 40th Anniversary of report, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” (00:01:59)

Why the American economy has been able to persist despite the problems in education (00:04:59)

The equity shift to ensure the hyper-talented kids in the lowest quintile get the opportunity to go to college (00:10:05)

Why we think the Economist ‘s coverage of education lately has been really good (00:11:43)

A recognition of Marshall (Mike) Smith’s impact and role in A Nation at Risk (00:12:07)

The historical amnesia during last week’s Congressional committee hearing framed in terms of good guys versus bad guys (00:13:12)

Randi Weingarten’s modus operandi or MO and lack of responsibility (00:15:19)

The impacts of the pandemic in 2020-2023 (00:17:20)

Politics in Urban Settings and 50-50% Red State Politics (00.22.13)

New York realities and ironies (00:23:23)

The Post Janus Poker Game (00:25:29)

Virginia’s new content standards (00:28:17)

The need to help students learn how to grapple with a spectrum of ideas (00:30:55)

The materials, tools, and training teachers need for this content (00:35:33)

The value adds of the Core Knowledge Approach (00:36:57)

The link to the show notes referenced today. At the end of this description.

As ever, I’m eager to hear feedback and suggestions from CharterFolk. So, if you have a chance to listen to the discussion and want to drop me a line with some thoughts, feel free to reach me at jed@charterfolk.org .

If you haven’t yet heard or seen the first and second volumes of WonkyFolk, you can access them here.

Meanwhile, I thank you once again for being part of the CharterFolk community and for the efforts you are making to improve educational opportunity in our country.

Show Notes:

Economist article about the surprising strength of the American economy over the past several decades. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/04/13/from-strength-to-strength

The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits, https://www.amazon.com/The-Meritocracy-Trap-audiobook/dp/B07V5KBLGT/ref=sr_1_1?crid=KCE4CF53LE13&keywords=meritocracy+trap&qid=1683056414&sprefix=meritocracy+trap%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-1

Nation at Risk Story in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/04/26/how-nationatrisk-report-hurt-public-schools/

Recognition of passing of Marshal (Mike) Smith https://twitter.com/arotherham/status/1653062577872576516

New York Times Article about Randi Weingarten https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/magazine/randi-weingarten-teachers-unions.html

C-Span entire Covid 19 hearing featuring testimony of Randi Weingarten https://www.c-span.org/video/?527655-1/teachers-union-president-testifies-covid-19-school-closures

C-Span coverage of Marjorie Taylor Greene stating that Randi Weingarten is not a mother https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5068192/rep-taylor-greene-aft-president-mother

C-Span Coverage of Terrell Bell Confirmation Hearings https://www.c-span.org/video/?88265-1/education-secretary-nomination-confirmation

2020 article showing Weingarten Calling for teacher strikes if schools re-open. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/strikes-are-an-option-to-force-schools-to-reopen-safely-aft-president-says/2020/07

Story on Weingarten and the AFT exerting influence on the CDC regarding Covid guidance. https://undark.org/2021/06/10/teachers-union-shaped-cdc-school-guidance/

Hochul offers a single word in support of lifting the charter school cap in NYC https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2022/10/wait-did-hochul-just-say-she-wants-lift-nyc-charter-school-cap/378967/

Differing views of education reformers regarding Hochul’s compromise to lift the cap by 14 schools in NYC https://www.amny.com/news/hochul-deal-zombie-charter-schools-2023/

Declining numbers of teachers are members of CTA https://www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-california-teachers-union-numbers-show-declining-membership-at-587-of-995-affiliates-since-2019/

Virginia adopts new state content standards https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/04/20/after-months-of-debate-virginia-board-of-education-adopts-history-standards/

Anne Holton Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Holton

New Yorker profile of Zora Neale Hurston https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-zora-neale-hurston-we-dont-talk-about

Recent study showing benefits of Core Knowledge curriculum https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/long-last-ed-hirsch-jr-gets-his-due-new-research-shows-big-benefits-core

Hey Andy.

Hey Jed.

How are you?

I'm doing really well.

It was great to see a fish pic at the top of EduWonk here last week.

I've been missing those.

Thanks.

Yeah, I've got a backlog of them.

And so I need to continue to get them out.

I really have a lot of them piled up and I'm also dealing

with problems with spam filters.

So I'm trying to sort out how to actually get the ones out, the ones

that are appropriately fish porn, get them out, but without having them

always get caught in people's spam filters and teachers complain they can't

access them from school and so forth.

But enough about that.

I've been concerned about you.

Do we need to have a moment of silence for the Kings or are you really doing okay?

Are you in denial?

What's going on?

The beam was extinguished this week and yeah, we are still regretting that.

it was my birthday and so we ended up going to the game.

But the only reason we went to the game was because the first birthday

plan we had was to be in Yosemite.

And we were all set for an incredible weekend there, but you probably heard

Yosemite closed because of the excess melt and the flooding and all that.

So, it was a complicated weekend here and all I know is that when I saw

your fish pic I just, we've talked a lot about, hey, we have a shared

love of the American West, right?

And we've talked about going to the Bob Marshall a lot.

So we have to figure out a way to record a WonkyFolk in the Bob Marshall someday.

We could, and there's some education folks, Terry Ryan's out there.

I know Steve Farcus likes to go out there and go backpacking.

There's some good education folks around.

So we could actually, we could do, we could probably get some good guest folks.

And some of the folks in Idaho education are super interesting.

There's some, some really great folks out there.

I agree with you.

Terry had me up there for an event a couple years ago, and I was really

very impressed by the breadth of reform efforts that were going there.

Hey, as far as developments this week goes, I am going to maybe lead

off with just some thoughts about, Nation At Risk, its 40th anniversary.

MInd if I riff on that to start off?

Yeah.

Go.

I know you've got some thoughts and I think we both read some of

the same articles this past week.

Yeah, Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post comes out with a just

complete hit piece, just trying to recast the entire history Nation At

Risk as having been huge mistake.

And in fact, the frame for that was somebody looking at some of the greatest

historical mistakes have ever happened, including, Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

And somehow or another that gets to be the frame for considering

what the impact Nation At Risk was.

Of course we see, Diane Ravich the very next day, saying similar things.

My own sense is that, look, attack it for being too political, we can attack

it for various procedural challenges, but I think it is just a milestone where

like Sputnik, Sputnik was, okay, we have to get our acts together on math and

science instruction during Cold War.

And then Coleman report was really like, "Hey, we gotta understand just how big the

gap is between black students and white students and what is really causing that."

But I think that Nation At Risk was this moment where just like across the entire

range of educational activity for the first time we saw that the wellbeing

of the country is dependent upon how good our public education efforts are.

And I thought it was really interesting.

The Economist came out with this very unexpected publication about a

week ago or two weeks ago, about the success of the American economy and

how it's really actually done very well over the last 25 or 30 years.

And one of the things that it cites there is our higher ed excellence.

But they continue to cite our K through 12 problems as being something that's a drag.

And I think that, Nation At Risk was probably the first place that really

made us focus on the fact that overall, our K-12 efforts are in fact a drag.

Yeah, and what you raise there, one of the critiques you often

hear about Nation At Risk is this idea that the schools are actually

pretty good, except they're just not good for certain groups of kids.

And you hear that a lot and, weirdly, you hear it a lot from self-identified

progressives who are basically saying the schools are actually pretty

good if you don't count the poor kids, or you don't count the black

kids, you don't count the Hispanic kids, which is a crazy thing to say.

It's racist and yet it's a sentiment you hear from the left sometimes and it ties

to this idea about the American economy.

The American economy has been able to persist despite problems in education

and not just recent, problems in the Nation Risk era, but even longer because

for a while we had a strong back economy and so not a strong mind economy.

And so if you had a good work ethic and you could do work, you

could have a middle class lifestyle and educational achievement,

didn't have to be part of that.

That is changed.

And then second, it's just a numbers' game.

People used to talk about sure, "German engineers are better than

American engineers, but we can put four engineers on the same problem."

And that really was, we won a numbers game during the 20th century.

You can't beat China and India and countries like that

economically with numbers.

We've got to beat them with educational quality.

And so that, that critique I've heard for a long time and it

has never sat right with me.

Not only just ethically and from an equity standpoint, but just

practically, it's it doesn't matter.

And my own view, and I've written about this as is that our future talent is all

these kids who are underserving right now.

If you want more engineers, some of those kids are your future

engineers, but you have to put them in a position to be able to do that

and have those kinds of choices.

And I agree with you, it was seminal in terms of the

moment and what it kicked off.

And I think you can quibble with aspects of it, it was a political

document, interestingly, there's this whole view of it is like this gigantic

conspiracy, but I would highly recommend Luke Cannon's biography of Reagan.

He wrote about Reagan when he was a governor and then covered him at the

White House, and they talk about Nation.

There's a couple pages in there about Nation At Risk and it talks about how

this was a throwaway thing for them.

They didn't expect this to take on the life it did and so forth.

They fell into it less than it was this elaborate, orchestrated effort

and as in general, most people who have conspiracy theories, but all

these things government is doing have never actually worked in government.

It's on a good day, it's a lot.

And anyway he talks about it.

He just fell into this.

I think it's good reading in these sort of sinister things.

The one thing with that article though that Strauss republished, and look,

if I suspect the Venn diagram between people who get their education news

from Valerie Strauss and people who listen to our podcast, I don't think

there's a whole lot of overlap there.

That's just not a particularly good place to get your news.

But it made a really good point though.

I think the standards movement, it's been a big push.

It's had, it's actually accomplished a lot of good things.

We need to figure out, you know what now, and you and I talk about that some,

but it did result in the minimizing of career and technical education.

And I think there is a place for that.

And we need to think about what does CTE look like.

I think a lot of CTE advocates and a lot of people, there's a lot to

answer for there in terms of tracking and there's some reasons that people

are skeptical of CTE, but we do have to have a conversation there.

And I thought that was a point the article made as a potential downside

that was worth engaging with it.

And charter schools, there's some of them that are trying to focus

on that and people are trying to figure out what are ways to do CTE

that don't just become tracking.

Yeah, I think also like overlay of the Nation at Risk timeframe and

the broader changes in the economy, really been looking at some of this.

Is it called the Meritocracy trap?

Is that the book from a couple years ago that really went after

the notion of American meritocracy?

And really talking about how the affluent got so great at educating their own

kids to perpetuate their special benefit that, it has created a very compelling

argument against meritocracy broadly.

And are we as a society getting to the point where we're going to focus

so much of our collective investment in a very narrow slice of kids,

and feel like the economy is going to be able to be okay for that?

Or, are we going to finally figure out a broader investment in all kids?

And those that attack a Nation At Risk I think risk undercutting an

argument that even more investment, that's broad, for the 99% is central to

what we should all be thinking about.

Yeah.

A few years ago the EDTrust had some data out and it basically shown-- I'm

going to get this a little wrong-- but directionally, that basically kids who

got As and Bs in the lowest quintile, lowest two quintiles were going to

college at the same rate as kids in the upper income quintile who got As and Bs.

And that was one way you see systemic problems in the American

education system, in the data.

And so to your point, one thing you, you look at that and you say, okay, then this

is all bullshit and we should get rid of it, but another thing you could look at

that and say, and this is obviously how I look at it, is there's a real return

to college, especially for poor kids, so what do we need to do to make sure those

kids in the lowest quintile, particularly those really hyper talented kids are

getting the opportunities they need?

That's the thing we need to fix.

But and we have had this push in the last few years at our college, it's

all a waste and so forth, and the data don't show that for starters.

And second, it's weird because it's pretty much everybody's saying it are

people who went to higher ed and have benefited from that and are now running

around saying, "oh no there's something there that's a little un unsettling."

But the equity push on how do we get those students, those lower income students,

like that seems like that's the work that, I think that's the reason a lot

of people come to work, because they do think that's our future talent pipeline.

That's our future talent pool that's not engaged as fully as it could be right now.

And as far as education policy goes, I think we suffer from societal amnesia.

And so when something like education, when Nation At Risk comes up,

we're talking about four decades ago and the opportunities to write

whatever the heck you want to, because of our amnesia, are ripe.

But if we look just at what happened two or three years ago we really saw

this come out with Randy Winegarten and being put under the microscope right now

for what was her role in during Covid and opening and keeping things closed.

I have some thoughts about that as well.

But where do you get us started on this topic?

No, we can do it.

I know you have some thoughts and I've got some thoughts.

something you said that was just embedded in there, we

should surface The Economists' coverage of education lately has been really good.

I agree.

Totally agree with you.

Yeah, really strong mainstream coverage and not just like this recent

stuff, but just, over the last year or so, they've just been like doing some

really smart stuff that's worth reading.

Yeah, I think we can, I think we can tie off the Nation At Risk.

I do.

It's appropriate.

I just heard the news this morning.

I suspect by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be more widely around, Marshall

Smith, Mike Smith, who was under Secretary of Education, the Clinton Administration,

Dean of Stanford out your way among a number of other roles at Hewlett in

California as well, passed away this morning, and just you think about the

standards movement, you think about the progress that's been made since Nation At

Risk, like Mike was pretty instrumental in some of that work was super thoughtful,

a real big thinker but a real big thinker who was open to other ideas.

One of the things that impressed me about him a lot when I first got to

know him is how willing he was to engage with perspectives he didn't agree with.

He wasn't a tribalist.

And and so we should as we talk about, so the Nation At Risk and

that progress, we should certainly call attention to that because he

certainly made his contribution.

I thank you for recognizing him because that is a big moment.

He was definitely a pivotal figure.

But tell me what do you make of this...

I mean, well It's interesting because like Nation At Risk, I went back

and I looked at Terrell Bell when he was being interviewed by the

Senate Education Committee before his appointments were approved because he

was Secretary of Education under Reagan.

It was just such a deep and thoughtful discussion.

And Oren Hatch and Kennedy are there and they were respectful of each

other and they actually talked about some depth of issues and I think

Mike Smith was there at a moment when that kind of depth was possible.

And then you contrast that against, Winegarden, in Congress

last week with Green Taylor.

Oh my gosh.

It's just a completely different environment.

Yeah, I mean that, I didn't watch a lot of that hearing because it was

just a circus and I thought what Marjorie Taylor Green said was way over the line.

And which would it see if she wasn't clearly insinuating something she

should have made that clear or apologized for it so way over the line.

But at the same time, like everyone wants to talk about that and not talk about

there's a lot of historically amnesia, and this was only a couple of years ago.

We're not talking about Nation At Risk, we're talking about 2021 and 2022.

And so it was it was one of these things, and I find so many of these things these

days, everybody wants to find good guys and bad guys, and you're just, instead

you're like, yeah, I don't like any of this like your answer's rather than a

rooting interest your answer's just, yeah.

No, thanks.

I've started investing more at charter folk in some of the

archival newspapers so that we can see what were people saying about

New Jersey charter schools in 1997?

What were they saying about public schools in general in 1993?

What were they saying in Washington DC before charter schools came along?

Just to try and set the record straight.

Cause I think it's really very important and when we have an amnesia from a

societal standpoint on education issues.

When people can't remember, they don't want to remember the past, then

people can just say charter schools are actually, creators of problems

that we're actually responses to.

But that's broader.

That's over a 30 year timeframe.

But I think you're putting your finger on the problem that Randy's

running into her ammo over the years has always been just say whatever

you need to say in the moment.

And that worked for a long time longer than I think a lot of people

thought it was going to work.

The problem she's bumping into now is everything's recorded.

Everything's digitized, and people can reach out.

And so you saw like her account, like Terry McCullough, like that New York Times

article, Terry McCullough wouldn't even confirm some of the stuff she was saying.

So yeah, no, that didn't happen.

And then Lori Lightfoot on the closing stuff came out today and was like,

yeah, no, that's not how it went down.

I think that there's a increasingly short half-life to that strategy and

it's catching up with Randy on this issue cuz you don't need to do archival

deep digs or go to dusty libraries.

Anyone with Google can do it.

And the other thing that she really tries to, just attach herself

to for justification is, "oh, the polling said, and all the parents

in our schools said at some moment."

Now, first of all, I don't think she's crisp on what polling there existed when.

And so she's really able to like, try and have some more

flexibility along those lines.

But the other thing she just absolutely does not take responsibility for is

in terms of forming public opinion and forming parental opinion.

What your union and your teachers are saying over and over again is

changing the views of the electorate.

And when you have clear stories in country, after country in Europe,

where they were able to open up the schools in that following spring and

had virtually no health problems.

It just goes to show that, a set of organizations like Randy's on top of

just pushing out some stuff that's just fundamentally not accurate, actually

does in fact sway opinion in very big ways that I think she ultimately

should take much more responsibility for than she's willing to do right now.

For sure.

Yeah, look, I think my general thing, you have to get

the spring of 2020 was crazy.

Nobody knew.

We didn't know how this thing was spread.

I was actually moonlighting as an EMT during that time and like we were

getting, nobody knew what was going on.

We're getting conflicting guidance on how this thing was trans...

I mean, that was a confusing time.

And it was, so it was confusing for everybody, whatever

your distance from it was.

But to me, the problem became like when you started to like, I remember I wrote a

piece later in the spring saying we need to have open air summer schools and we

need to start thinking creatively about this, and I got attacked for like that I

wanted teachers to die and all this stuff.

And and that's when you could start to see, okay, this is getting away

from us, it's getting tribal and we're going to need some leadership, and

obviously the White House was no help.

And you cannot help but run the counterfactual here of, if we had

actually had steady leadership at the White House instead of just that circus

show we had, if you'd actually had steady leadership, would that have helped lower

the temperature on some of this stuff?

Not that you could have solved this from Washington, but you would've

just had clearer direction so forth.

That's unknowable, but that's something I wonder about.

But the interesting thing with the polling that you raised Jed, one

of the things we saw, as soon as schools would open in communities,

the polling would start to shift about whether or not they should be open.

And I think there's no way to know for sure, but my sense on that is partly what

we are seeing was despite everything, people still trusted their health

officials, their local health authorities, their schools, and so they figured if the

schools were closed, there was probably a good reason that the schools were closed,

so they supported keeping them closed.

And then when they opened, they conversely assumed well that they're

saying it's okay to go back to school, it's probably okay to go back to school.

And you saw public opinion change.

It was very hinged on this question of whether or not the

schools actually were open or not.

And I think that..

so I do think you can point to the polling and say some parents didn't want to, and

I think some parents clearly did not want to, even when schools were open, and one

of the things that states, some states did a good job, some states did a lousy

job, is what kind of virtual options and other options were you continuing

to provide for families who weren't comfortable or who couldn't be comfortable

because of medical conditions, either with kids or in their household or whatever.

And then that, again, that was a very mixed job, but I think the polling, it's

a misreading that it was just nobody wanted this to happen, it was done against

their will, it was more fluid than that.

And because, again, people were looking for leadership, they were

looking for guidance, and despite all the missteps, they still hope they

trusted public health authorities to try to tell them what to do.

It's why one of the most damning moments from the testimony, or at

least from the articles I've seen characterizing, because I didn't watch

the whole thing myself either, was the focus on whether Winegarten was

using her influence to push the CDC to change what it was recommending.

That is really a foundational issue and she should really be held accountable

for trying to behind close doors.

Yeah.

And how they were using like different language so it wouldn't look like

they were doing that cause they were focusing on certain teachers.

There's a lot of slight at hand here.

But again, there's a record and I think people are super frustrated.

And you're starting to see that come up and you're seeing more and more and not

just in conservative media, you're seeing more and more just questioning about this.

But we do have to sound, I don't know if you want to move on from it.

I'm not the only one who's thought this, I think a lot of people thought this and

I've seen a few people, it does take, just, we should pause and just honor.

It takes a certain kind of I don't know what you would even call it.

Not political skill, something to make Randy look sympathetic

in this whole thing.

It takes a certain kind of something that apparently only Marjorie Taylor Green

can muster and has, that you were, wow.

You can make her, you make her look completely sympathetic

cuz you're over the line.

And I just don't think we can leave without just pausing on

that superpower that Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently has.

Yeah, that was a very unfortunate part of this whole thing, for all sorts

of reasons, I think where I would, go next or where I would extend it as it

relates to like topics we want to get to, is this recurring question of did

Weingarten and did the unions in general, quote unquote overplay their hands?

And we saw a lot of people that were saying that they overplayed their hands.

And I basically argued against that.

I did not see any evidence that the unions themselves believed that they

were overplaying their hands, if anything, they were just doubling down.

But I do think it's, as I think more about it, it depends on which

poker game you're talking about.

If you're talking about politics in urban settings and deep blue, there's

no there's no overplaying there.

They can do whatever they want to do.

The only place you can really overplay it is if you're basically in a 50/50

red/blue political context where the union can be so extreme that they

actually will take some of those blue or they'll influence the independence.

And so I think that like the place I would well, Virginia's certainly one

of these places, but New York was one as well, where I think like Hochul

felt as though this race turned out to be way closer than she was thinking.

And so she made a commitment during the campaign that she would

lift the cap on charter schools.

I don't think she really wanted to do that.

She uttered one single word saying that she supported lifting the cap.

But now everyone after the fact has been holding her to the fact that

she needs to deliver on her promise.

And this week we see that there's going to be some number of schools

that are going to be able to open.

For me the irony I wrote about this week at CharterFolk was that the one place in

New York that would not be allowed for a new charter school is Harlem because

they have more than 55% of their kids in public schools already attending charters.

But just the irony of all the places, of all the places where charter

schools have done incredibly great work and we would want more, and where

historical inequity, and just system dysfunction has been more pronounced

than anywhere, that is the one place in the state of New York where apparently

we're not going to be able to open up charter for the next couple of years.

Yeah, I know you follow that more closely.

The New York stuff to me is always slightly impenetrable, just the

politics up there are like, it's checkers, chess, and like five other

games going on at the same time.

I actually just have a few people I call when I actually need

someone to explain it to me.

And I used to be on the board of the New York State Charter Association.

I should know this more, but it is like, pick your various metaphors.

It is complicated.

Can I ask you, Andy, just from a blue perspective, what we find that

democratic governors in purplely states, they can't stand on a straight support or

defense of the public education system.

Murphy in New Jersey, he waffles and there's going to be a

lot of charter school growth.

And we see, that Hochul had to do this.

We see that in Rhode Island.

We got new supports in Pennsylvania.

We got a governor that's that Democratic, but these tend to be in these places

where it's red or blue or where there's a mix of red and blue, do you think in

places like Chicago and in San Francisco and in Los Angeles where it's just

absolute blue, are politicians going to be able to stand on a defense of the

public education system, or are they too ultimately gonna waffle and say some

kind of reform needs to happen here too?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Look, they're, everyone's cross pressured right now.

I think one piece of context, we don't talk about the unions and what poker game

they're in, the big poker game they're in is the post Janus poker game where

their membership is declining and so they need to figure out ways to engage their

members and this seems weird to talk about in these terms, but strikes and all

this stuff, they are member engagement strategies, they get people fired up and

to some extent, They don't, you don't necessarily the merits of it matter less

and you'll talk to people, they'll be like, "yeah, but this isn't really about

the merits this is about activating the membership, activating the base."

And so they're trying to figure out like how do they survive in a

world where people thought, Janice I think like you, you talked a lot.

People they thought The unions will go out of business in a year because of it.

And so it is, it must have had no effect, but it's not like that.

It's a slow glide.

It's going to take some time, but you're really starting to see the impact on them.

And so they, they understand and that's why they're so like invested

in who the next labor secretary is and who the next administration is.

They're facing an existential threat, and that's the poker game

that they are really playing.

I've thought for a long time, "yes, they're going to overplay their hand.

Yes, they're going to overplay their hand" and people have

short memories and it comes back.

And I think to your point on Glenn Youngkin, it depends what's on offer.

Youngkin was able to win because he was reasonable, he was

appealing to people and so forth.

And If you think of like, if you look at like 2022 and you look at a lot of

the candidates that the Republicans put on the ballot, they wouldn't have been

able to succeed in that environment.

So Youngkin was a perfect storm of a ripe electoral environment and the right

candidate that the Republicans ran.

So I don't think it's as straightforward as that, that they're going to

overplay their, that they're going to overplay their hand.

And what that means in these cities is I think people will get dragged

kicking and screaming to this.

But it's going to take a while.

And there's going to be a lot of collateral damage in the interim, but

if there's nothing good on offer, you're not, the Democratic coalition will

not split over questions like this.

Like you, you need an environment of real political competitiveness,

both inside the Democratic Party and across across party lines.

And we just, in this climate room, we, you don't have that

competitiveness in a lot of places.

Glenn Youngkin's at 58% now, I think something like that, like you hear all

this noise and so forth, but like he's generally within the state reasonably

popular particularly in the context of a, of 2023 and closely divided politics.

And so I just, that, that looks to me to be a little bit of an

outlier case relative to how this stuff's going in most places.

You were telling me about the new content standards that were adopted in

Virginia and how it might relate to some of these red/blue wars, culture wars.

Educate me a little bit here.

You want my PTSD, I should probably be talking to your

wife about this on the couch.

It was, it was quite an experience.

This is my second go around with standard setting in Virginia

and it has changed a lot.

It was highly political actually.

What we were talking about, you would talk to some people and you'd be like, "what

you're saying isn't true" and they would say, "yeah we gotta engage the members."

And it became just very red on blue and just stop yanking.

And there were some mistakes.

The administration there, there was clear the, the first set of standards

that were put forward, the board rejected them eight to nothing.

So it's not like there weren't mistakes.

But this final set of standards we passed is actually pretty good.

It's actually got some California stuff in it, as a matter of fact.

But the rhetoric around it is just deranged.

It's starting to slow down as people, some people are actually reading at the

Washington Post and editorial where they allowed that a lot of the criticisms

being leveled against them were just in factually inaccurate and so forth.

But it was illustrative to me, Jed, just the time we're living in.

It's hard to have nice things, right?

Like the end of the day the product we ended up with was pretty good.

The board adopted the standards themselves unanimously.

Including Anne Holton who's, you're not a Virginian, but her family's history here

in Virginia around issues of integration and issues of addressing historical

discrimination, racism in our state.

She's on the board and was like, these are standards are, they're

pretty good on how we teach about that, and they're a real step forward.

So it was like a good moment and the board worked hard collaboratively to

get there, and yet the atmospherics were just terrible and the sort

of just the conflict narrative and the conflict entrepreneurism.

And it was just for me, just illustrative of like why we, why it's hard to get

anything done right now in this climate.

And so to your earlier question, to move things forward in some of these

places, we need people to come together.

And that's just not happening.

It's all about a conflict narrative and stirring up differences rather than

figure out how to bring people together.

I think there are so many different kinds of content,

standards and content standards to be thinking about, that it might be

worth a conversation at some point.

I just think it's fascinating how much difficulty we're having adopting

these things and we tend to argue about what is the single point

of view we want to get to on this issue or that issue, or this issue.

And yet what we know we want students to learn is how to grapple

with multiple points of view.

And it doesn't make, I just don't understand why the standards

that we attempt to adopt are arguing about a spectrum of ideas.

I think there's some ideas that can be Just beyond the pale, don't

include them, they are just extreme.

But we want to like share a range of opinions on these kinds of things and

come forward with tools for kids to figure out how to grapple with that range.

And there's just, we don't model that for kids at all.

No.

And both sides have things that they dearly held things that they

think are just matters that are not open to varying points of view.

But among all the normies, like the other 80% of people are like, yeah, those are

open to, those are open to contention.

And so it's not it's not about whether or not you should teach about reparations.

It's whether should you only teach about them one way or should you

teach the case for and against.

And should you teach that in a really nuanced way because

among African Americans, there's differing views on that, right?

It is not should not....

So you don't teach in some sort of reductionist way, teach it with all

the nuance and complexity there.

One of the things I'm very pleased about the Virginia standards is Zor

Neal Hurston is in there, who to me, is like representative of somebody

who was not easy to pigeonhole clearly thought for herself, was

actually censored during her lifetime.

And so like, complicated people like that I think help with what you're getting at.

But the other big issue is simply do we even teach content or do you just

teach inquiry and skills or very little content and mostly inquiry and skills.

And that's an interesting dynamic for the charter sector I think,

because my personal view is I like a more content rich education.

And I think there's a lot of evidence that shows that know a knowledge

rich education, you get better outcomes, better literacy, all of it.

That knowledge is essential.

And then once you have thing that, that knowledge, then you teach

people to think critically in the things we were talking about.

But it's not a sort of both.

It's a, you need content and then you learn to think about it.

But within the charter school context, obviously there's schools that are all

over the place from core knowledge charter schools that are very content focused to

very progressive, purely inquiry based schools that are very light on, you

know, on an emphasis on content, very project based, all of that, and they can

all live kind of in the charter world.

And I do think you can't, you just, you said it earlier, you, there's

stuff that's gotta be off the table.

You can't just be like anything's good.

Societies have to make choices and you can't dodges.

And I think people in the choice community, you think choice will solve

that are, I think that's wrong, but you can have more sort of, if you

have a more choice driven system, you can have more on these sort of

emphasis on pedagogy and themes.

And it does create more space for that.

Yeah I'd love to come back to this topic of how to teach across a broader

content and a range of perspectives.

I would say that some of my favorite moments in teaching were those when I

actually think I did it pretty well.

There were times I did it wrong again and again and again.

But by my seventh year, I was better at it than I was in my first year.

And I was also, just starting to learn how to balance.

If I never shared what my perspective, my personal perspective

was with my kids, they got bored.

And they were genuinely very curious and they felt like they were being messed

with, if they never knew what their teacher actually thought about an issue.

On the other hand, if it was the teacher's opinion all the time,

so I tended to give it like once every 20 days, once every 20 issues.

But every once in a while I was going to give it, and they were,

it would help them stay with the lesson all the way to the very end.

But I just think these ideas about how we teach a range of perspectives and

how we also try to get kids to move away from extremes to being able to see

on both sides of issues, is something that we should really get better at, but

we never, at least from my perspective as it relates to content standard

adoptions, find that to be a priority.

Yeah, and we're actually talking in Virginia about how do we, what kind

of tools and training do you provide to teachers to help them teach these things?

There's a couple of problems.

One, a lot of teach teaching programs and teachers on education, they

don't get the content on this.

And part of some of the craziness in the last few years when you scratch meet

the surface, it's not, curriculum coming out of sort of state governments or even

school districts as teachers freelancing.

They're just finding stuff on Google or Pinterest or whatever it is.

And so you have to provide good materials and all that.

And then you have to provide training becuse you don't just wake up in

the morning knowing how to do this and sensitive stuff can come up.

I used to do a lesson where I would take kids to to the Superior Court to see, and

you could usually count on there'd be drug cases and those are the public defenders,

generally fourth Amendment defenses.

So it was how I taught the Fourth Amendment.

And but that would also like you go to court on any given day, you're gonna

see stuff that's gonna raise a whole bunch of questions about society for

kids and different questions about different things, including obviously,

power, race, things like that.

And so like you, you don't just wake up knowing how to do that.

You've got to, you need training and so forth.

How to navigate those conversations in ways that people hear feel heard,

regardless of different points of view on, on what are often contested questions.

Yeah.

You brought up to me this week the core knowledge study, we'll wrap on this issue.

But leave on a good note.

I think it's, it's fascinating, first of all, to see some kind

of research that would suggest that core knowledge is generating

such positive results with kids.

The thing that's hard for me to separate there is that all of the research

was in Denver charter schools, and you know, already I'm a fan of Denver

Charter schools and I just know that a lot of the successes that we find

within charter schools are so context specific, are so organizational specific.

It's very difficult to extrapolate out.

And I wonder whether or not this same set of organizations, should

they have chosen something different than a core knowledge approach,

probably would've been successful with that other approach as well.

But there's clearly something within this that we should dive into further,

which is what are the real value adds coming from the core knowledge approach.

Yeah.

Just one thing you raised there that I found interesting about this study is I

do think we haven't done enough to think about sort of what are the compounding.

I was always like the Teach for America studies would keep coming out, but I

was always particularly interested.

How do Teacher for America teachers perform in really high performing schools?

Do we see a different effect and a more powerful effect there you saw with

America teachers, you see a sort of, not insignificant, a modest effect that on

average they're better than peer teachers?

But it's not a huge effect.

But you're like, that's across all schools.

What happens if you put them in a really high, do you get

a compounding effect there?

This study, I was interested, so what happens if you take and you put in

good high functioning schools, a really strong knowledge rich curriculum, and

as it turns out you, you see a fairly substantial effect, the size of which

we don't usually see with interventions.

It's very significant.

The study we should back up, I don't know, are we doing show notes yet?

That's only our third show, the study is by a number of people, including

a couple University of Virginia professors Dan Wellingham, David Grismer

and so I would urge people, it's on my blog https://www.eduwonk.com/.

You can find it.

We'll get it referenced in the show in the show notes.

Perfect.

Anyway, so the study, it shows pretty significant effects.

And it was a lottery study, which I like.

It's basically a natural experiment that not, over-enrolled schools

create, which over-enrolled schools is not an ideal circumstance, but it

does create good opportunities to do studies and I think it's significant

for the reasons we talked about.

And just, again, it shows a knowledge rich curriculum.

And this was always Don Hirsch's thing.

It shows how crazy education politics are.

He's always been considered a conservative, and in part cause

maybe because the timing when his book came out the same time as

Alan Bloom's book and so forth.

But Don is anything but a conservative.

He's extremely progressive in his politics and he believes one of the most sort of

egalitarian things you can do is give everybody equal access to knowledge,

and we don't do that, that's why his curriculum is structured the way it is.

And to see results like this, I think it's significant and it's the kind

of thing that if we had a healthier politics, I think we'd talk about more.

I was trying to figure out what would be the analogy of a medical

study with these kinds of results.

But it is significant and you would think we would be talking

about it like substantially more than the attention it's gotten.

I speak about charter schools can sometimes warp these results cuz you

don't know if it's unique to the context and whether it can be extrapolated out.

But another thing I think is valuable from the charter school world just generally

is we have organizations where studies like this can occur and and they can

really start to inform conversations.

So on this as well as on a number of other issues, I think the

existence of the charter school space there is doing what we want

it to do from a societal standpoint.

But hey, great to check in as always.

Good to see you.

We'll get on to, we'll get fully onto baseball season now for the next one,

but great to see you and fun to catch up.

All right, you take care.

Until next time.

See you, Jed.