Andy and Jed discuss what the theme music for their podcast should be before shifting to their voting experiences and frustrations with the current political landscape. The conversation delves into polarizing views on education, highlighting voter behavior differences, the impact of California politics, and significant historical events influencing perceptions. The nuances of charter school regulation, accountability, and data-driven decision-making are explored, emphasizing the difficulties of balancing regulation with performance metrics. The importance of evidence-based advocacy, critiques of past and current administrations, and the need for a balanced approach to promoting a healthy educational environment are underscored. Finally, the discussion addresses systemic issues in education, the challenge of intergenerational advocacy, and the impact of political climates on education reforms.

Show Notes:

PPI report 

https://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/PPI_Searching-for-the-Tipping-Point-paper.pdf

Parker Baxter Denver study 

https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider36/default-document-library/denver_systemwide_and_intervention-effects-technical-report-september-2024.pdf?sfvrsn=f4236bb4_1

Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg on Denver 

https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider36/default-document-library/leading-for-equity-and-student-growth-lessons-transformation-the-denver-public-schools-sept-2024.pdf?sfvrsn=237174b4_1

Eduwonk on election

https://eduwonk.substack.com/p/come-talk-ed-politics-plus-heres

Chalkbeat on CO consolidation 

https://www.chalkbeat.org/colorado/2024/10/16/denver-families-for-public-schools-move-past-education-reform/

74 on school choice referendum 

https://www.the74million.org/article/school-choice-questions-dominate-november-ballot-propositions/

Hey Andy, how's it going?

I'm good, how are you?

I'm doing pretty good, doing pretty good.

I mean, whatever, we're chuckling even as we get on this thing.

But, I mean, I got the, I got the input from Dale Chu.

He's like, dude, I actually kind of like you and Andy,

but you need some theme music.

What's going on?

So,

, you

got to see him this week.

What did dale recommend?

What was his suggestion for us?

All he said was just , you guys are pretty good But like, , it's pretty jarring to

start from nothing and it just doesn't bespeak, seriousness So so i've been

starting to think about Getting AI, to like mash together, incompatible,

music ask it for the combination of Rage Against the Machine and, , Brahms

Second Concerto or something like that.

You could represent the Brahms, , I could represent, , the Rage Against the Machine.

But I don't know, maybe you got other ideas.

Or like Moon Age Daydream or Voodoo Child, something like that would be fantastic.

I think that would fit us a little bit better.

As long as it was played in a Muzak version, , or something like, like

something you'd hear on an elevator.

I guess I, I mean, if I would actually be okay with it, we just got some really

cheesy porno jazz, that would be at

least, but if I, if we could somehow get Hendricks, that would be amazing.

All right.

Can you work on the rights to that?

Maybe bellwether can swing that for us.

All the big money.

This podcast is thrown off for us.

Yeah.

, we're getting lots of feedback.

I've heard also, I heard somebody say the other day, how strong your mic

sounds now, the audio is better, which made me immediately, unfortunately,

think of Trump in Pennsylvania.

And then one day I'm going to be like telling people.

All the other podcasters said, Jed Wallace's, Mike, you should have

heard you, you should have heard it.

It was so strong the way he, sorry.

My almost slap seems like a poor Bobby Kennedy.

I don't dunno why my, that's not how Trump talks, but I certainly don't have

a Trump, I don't have a Trump impression.

Did

is that, is that talk what, what the podcasters are

talking about in the shower?

Exactly.

They're talking about, they're talking about your, that your mic

has gotten really strong and our, our, our sound quality is better.

So it makes sense that we would then segue in into having some actual intro music.

I like it.

I like it.

All right.

Well, I know you got other stuff going on this week around elections and whatever.

It doesn't seem like we can get started without at least getting

starting there and whatever.

You're going to be sharing other stuff.

I don't know if you got so much content.

You can, , keep it fresh across several podcasts here.

But what are you thinking here?

I don't know.

Look, whenever we talk about, I always want to be transparent.

And I used to say, like, who I would vote.

I've actually already voted.

And I wish there was like, After you vote, there was some list you could get onto.

So you would stop getting the texts and pleas for money and everything else.

So you could be like, I popped out, like it's, for me, it's, it's game over.

So I voted for Harris obviously.

But I feel like it's important to say we're not just like out

here, like,know, , somehow like independently handicapping this, but

look, everyone wants to say the race.

I don't think anyone, , I wrote the other day on Edgewonk, like.

Everybody making predictions.

I'm pretty sure figures they've got a 50 percent chance of being right

because it's a two person race, and they've got like a 75 percent chance.

Everybody will forget their prediction in the first place.

And so that It seems very, very tight.

And, , I talked to different people and political people in Pennsylvania,

you get different takes on, on, on what they think's going to happen.

I think if you, if you, if you're a Democrat and you want

something to worry about, you should worry that she's not ahead.

Like not substantially, it's a pretty divided country, but that she should be

given the context of everything, , both favorable sort of tailwinds for her and

what you would think would be pretty substantial headwinds for her opponent.

Like she ought to be.

In a more comfortable place.

And so that's that's reason of concern.

And then I guess for the republicans, if you want to, if they're republican,

you want to worry, she's she still has time to close the deal.

She clearly has not yet.

But sometimes these elections shift hard and the conventional wisdom

just doesn't apply in this case.

Because like, , it always shifts against the incumbent party.

Well, in this situation, who really is the incumbent party?

And so there's Like, I think if she could, land some sort of clear, convincing

messages about what she's going to do.

I mean, I think she could still seal the deal.

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to vote for Harris as well.

And, I mean, I, I'm not a happy Harris voter and, it's just, there's some

things I kind of feel are disqualifying and I just feel like January 6th is

just, is fundamentally disqualifying.

We can talk about other things that are disqualifying as well.

But, I mean, I actually think the worst public policy decision of my,

of my lifetime is, is the Iraq war.

And I swore that I would never vote for somebody who voted for

the resolution and I never did.

And I actually think that the Iraq war is what just, fractured the

Republican party and has ultimately led to us having, having Trump.

But, I don't like it.

I just feel like I'm not happy with, certainly not happy with the education

policies, , of, of, of Biden and, and, Harris and whatever it voting

within the democratic blob within the state of California is just.

So distasteful.

So I'll try to find as many ways as I can within on my California ballot to like

signal, Hey, I want something different than, Democratic Party, basically mono

control of the entire state here, as I think the Dems are really driving,

the state into a state of dysfunction.

Yeah, it's weird.

You said a couple of interesting things there.

One is look.

I mean, I, I agree with you January to me, to me, the pre January 6th conversation

about Trump, the post January 6th, and he did plenty of things, , I didn't

vote for him in 2020 or 2016, either.

He did plenty of things I found offensive, but that like, was a different level.

And so I feel like we have to have that conversation.

With that in mind, that, that, , people talk about choices people made

after 2016, people who decided to go into the administration or did this

or that it was January 2017 was a different time than post January 2021.

I think that's a nice gets, gets lost.

The other thing he said, look, I will say one of the nice things, , it was something

that you correct to Trump's credit.

He didn't, he said he wasn't going to get us any wars and he didn't.

And some of that stuff, a leader can't control, obviously.

Things happen on your watch that you, that you can't control.

But, per the post, your post Iraq comment, it's one of the

interesting factors about the realignment of, of the parties.

Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of an interesting thing.

And then the other thing you said, the blob, like, I just think this is one

of these hidden in plain sight things.

And two in a couple of ways.

One, it's such a weird thing right now, how we talk about politics.

Like I voted for Harris and walls despite my concerns about some of their

positions, particularly on education.

But everybody assumes that everybody else votes for a candidate based

on, like the worst thing about them.

And I think it's created just an incredibly toxic discourse in the

education sector because it's all these things that, like, Everybody

recognizes like their own bias and doesn't realize that everybody

else probably has a similar one.

Some of the people who are voting for Trump are certainly not

voting for him because of the most like revolting things about him.

And I think it's a problem we've come into in this sector.

If you're like, I run constantly into these people.

I can't imagine anyone voting for Trump.

I can imagine that.

That's not that to me, that's not even a very hard thought exercise.

I handicapped the issues and his positions and things he has said

and done and so forth differently.

But like this idea that it's like unimaginable, like, no, it's, it, and

I think that if there's a problem with the democratic message, it may be that

it may be that it's oriented towards, it's unimaginable to vote for this

person rather than it's imaginable.

And we need to persuade you, in a, in a different way

that may be alienating people.

And then the last thing, look, the blob man, like she's a creature

of California democratic politics.

This is really her first time out harvesting national votes like this.

And if you sort of.

I didn't want to get some clues into how she operates and so forth.

It's, it's look at politicians who have come up in that democratic machine.

And it's like, I think that that's actually will reveal quite a bit about

sort of how to think about, , what to expect and so forth and what

we should expect on education.

Yeah, it's interesting to see Gavin just having basically lock, stock and barrel

in the early years of his administration, going far, far left, trying to keep

the teachers unions, the other public employee unions, the other far, , left

aspects of the of the coalition together.

And then, , he's in his last 2 years.

He doesn't need anybody anymore.

And it just feels like it just feels like he's repositioning himself to try and be.

So whatever he does in the future, at least I'll have something else to refer

to other than, , what he did in these first four to six years as being governor.

Yeah.

And look, Trump has broken the rules of politics.

Right.

It, I mean, there is, so there's no, there's no Tim Russert anymore.

And so I think you realize politicians are sort of behaving a little more

like, , like, like, I mean, politicians, politics is always sort of situational

opportunistic, all of that, but it's happening at a different level.

I think it's because people realize there's so much noise in

the issue environment and so much chaos that like, you can sort of.

You can do that.

And Gavin may very well be able to get away with that.

Yeah, we'll see.

We had a Charterfolk board meeting on Friday.

Really interesting conversation.

J.

Arnis Wright from the Freedom Coalition was on.

And, one of her comments during the board meeting was, We just have to have

people talk about education a little bit.

And, I thought it was an interesting, I mean, whatever we, you and I talked

about it before, just how mostly education is off the radar screen altogether.

But Jay really brought it home and she's going to write something at charter

folk, in this week as well on this topic.

But, , if it, there's very little about education at the top, if

anything, at the top of the ticket.

There's some interesting state, ballot initiatives in Kentucky, , in

Colorado, couple other places around school choice in these things.

, there's elections that are happening in Chicago, with the

dysfunction with Brandon Johnson with the new school board there.

So there are certainly some, some elections that are gonna have

big bearing on education issues.

Anything that you're tracking above others as it relates to education?

Yeah, that's interesting question, Jed.

One thing that I am, with education, that I am thinking about is like,

you're right, it's not an issue, but it really is a factor in the election.

It's really fascinating in these closing days.

That, , Harris is trying to run up her margins with white

college educated voters, because that could be a differentiator.

And Trump's trying to run up his margin with non white voters.

And education level is turning out to be highly predictive

of, of, of voting behavior.

It has been the last few cycles, geography and education have taken on

a greater role, but even it seems even more so with, with the sort of these

shifting coalitions within the parties.

So there's that.

I'm also watching this school choice.

Ballot referend , like you all in California, I live in Virginia.

Our ballots like pretty simple like this year.

We have like a US Senate race, your house race in the presidential.

And there's one ballot issue that was pretty straightforward.

We don't get a ton.

It's hard to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Colorado is like you all were like voters get this, like phone book to go through.

And and one of them is this sort of innocuous sounding

create a right to school choice.

I think Kentucky has one of these as well.

And the way it's worded, it seems extremely innocuous.

So if you're like wading through all of these things you have to think about

as a voter there, It could be very easy just to be like, Oh, what is this?

It sounds Like parents have a right to direct.

It sounds like it's basically codifying the Pierce decision of, , almost a

hundred years ago at the Supreme Court.

It doesn't sound like it's particularly revolutionary.

And so I'm watching that one.

I mean, obviously look at the passes.

It will immediately be challenged.

These things always end up.

Wending their way through the courts.

But, that one seems that one seems really interesting.

Just in terms of is there a new sort of softer strategy that we

might see around these things?

It can't be by accident that that sort of similar approach

on multiple state ballots.

Yeah, colorado is interesting in that we're really testing some school

choice stuff in a purple, but mostly blue context has shifted enough now.

And so it's interesting to see the dynamics there because that was

really driven by the voucher and E.

S.

A.

People.

And they kind of threw a bone into the charter school people saying,

Hey, you'll benefit from this too.

But the charter school people are like, what are we really

going to get out of this?

Not very much.

And, and so I don't think the charter school world has gone all

in as maybe the ESA and voucher people would have expected.

I have what I think longer term is, Hey, if you're in red context and you're gonna

do something different, I don't know.

But outside of those contexts, If the E.

S.

A.

And voucher people are going to come and expect charters to be a part

of the coalition, there's got to be something tangible that's going to make

things, , better for charter people.

And in Colorado, there are all sorts of things that they could have done.

One of the things I think is, and Starley has been out of the gate

strong on this in her early months at the National Alliance, the partly the

new head of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.

Yeah, she, she's really talking about the problems with flexibility,

autonomy, freedom, and I'm starting to become of the opinion that we need

much stronger, structural barriers to re regulation in charter land, such

that you need it in your constitution.

Hey, if you want to re regulate charter schools, you need to have two thirds of

the, of the, legislature vote for it, or there needs to be a two part process,

or you need to vote it, vote on it, . Two years in a row or something that's just

a higher bar so that we don't see charter schools run the same trajectory that all

the rest of public education is run, which is toward being just overly high bound.

Yeah, it's a weird thing though, right?

Like, I agree with your and obviously what's going to happen and this

will be saying to be vigilant about with the Harris administration

is there'll be a pandemic.

They'll be pressure on to, , under the guise of regulate sensible

regulations for charter schools.

It'll be a bunch of stuff that that is designed to, , cause problems,

hamstring growth and all the rest.

And it'll be well, how can you be against the stuff and all that?

We've seen that debate and playbook before.

It's, it's, it's both tired and effective.

But what's, interesting is that's all happening.

This, this, this push, you're right for all this regulation at the same

time that on some of the core stuff, like measurement accountability.

communicating clearly with parents about performance.

That's all going out the window, right?

And so, like, you got these two sort of very disjointed, pressures happening,

like, basically at the same time.

And the ed reform movement, best I can tell, they've sort of fallen

under the sway of this idea that, like, test scores are pretty useless,

accountability is, , yesterday's news, you don't need this stuff.

And okay, maybe, but the problem is there's no, there's, there's certainly

no alternative vision to replace it.

There's no positive looking, right.

Okay.

We're not going to do that.

We're going to do this.

We're going to do, , some other mechanism and historically testing,

, really smart testing critics.

I would like to say like Ted size would be a good example of that, , just,

, credibly wise and thoughtful about it.

He was like, Oh yeah, that's why you have to let parents choose.

You can't, you're not gonna have tests, but then you gotta let parents

like have, have just a lot of choice.

They can express.

their preferences that way.

Like he was very thoughtful and had a vision that was intellectually

consistent, focused on equity, all the things you would want.

And we don't have that now.

We just have none of these measures matter.

And so it's just going to further this sort of vacuum we're in.

And it's again, it's just interesting relative to this on these other things.

We've got this push to like, reregulate as fast as we possibly can.

Yeah, I think that we in Charterland have been too associated with

the sunset the test crowd.

With the kind of the naive belief that if we get rid of this, testing,

we're going to get rid of some unfair decision making being made against us,

but

I think it's actually the exact opposite of that when there is

no objective data whatsoever.

It basically makes every renewal decision a subjective one, a political one,

and, and when people are motivated to, to turn us, turn us down or to

deny us to have no objective data in the landscape to build our, our

argument around is gonna be terrible.

And the other thing, too, is that, like, look at look at Credo's report here.

Just, , a couple of years ago.

I mean, that is one of the most important stories for charter schools ever.

And this this this PPI study that shows that charter schools, , where

we have cities where 33 percent or more of the students are served

by charter schools, all 10 of them gaps decreasing and boats rising.

This is based on data.

If we don't have that data, how the heck do we start telling

these incredible stories?

Right.

Well, also, and Parker Baxter's new study in Denver as well, which

is very, , student level data.

The PPI study, I thought was great.

I should, like, as a disclosure, I'm a senior fellow there.

I used to work there full time, the, um.

The president of PPI, Will Marshall, he's like the lead guitarist in my wife's band.

So there is, there is like a lot of, there's a lot of conflicts.

Hey,

theme

music.

Ask him for the PPI though.

There we go, though.

He's like, honestly, I'm scared to ask.

He's really into Steely Dan.

And I don't know if I could have, team music for our podcast.

But we'll see.

Anyway, it's a great study.

I mean, there is a basic correlation causation thing with

it that they can't control for.

But I do think what it clearly shows, and it hasn't gotten enough attention

is the argument was, if you had lots of public school choice and charters,

it was gonna be bad for everybody.

And I think you can clearly like, All the districts that, that, Will

and Tressa looked at that study.

They are like all have substantial, market share of, of charters

and bad things haven't happened.

Good things have happened.

So you certainly even accounting for the correlation causation,

why did the good things happen?

You can't argue that like having a bunch of charter schools means

like a bunch of bad things.

And then Parker's study, we can even talk about the substance.

The effect sizes are actually unusual for our sector.

There's some fast, but it's all, we'll put all this stuff in the show notes.

Or we can talk about the politics of it, because what is fascinating to me,

I mean, the findings are compelling.

Parker did a study a few years ago that you couldn't control for certain things.

The school district fought with him about getting student level data.

He was finally able to get it.

If I, I think I had this right on a, like just a one vote, majority on the

board, like they had to fight for it.

It's just crazy to get data, to get information.

And this isn't like about students, this is anonymized, just data, just

information that a researcher could use.

I think probably cause they knew what it was going to show.

And it shows that like the reforms that.

I've been in place for a while.

So, , Michael Bennett, Tom Bozberg, Susanna Cordova, like all like

fantastic school leaders, that those reforms had a big impact, on student

achievement, a big positive impact.

And that's after all the blood that was spilled in Colorado

around politics for this.

And people almost like now kind of throwing in the towel, it's, which

is like another one of these cases where we don't wait until we get

the results and people give up.

But here's the thing with Parker study.

Like, that's really substantial information about one particular place,

and yet it's gotten almost no attention in the media outside of Colorado,

relatively little there, and it certainly hasn't, like, at an elite level in

the sector, and you would think, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I would

think if, like, let's say, like, in L.

A.

or Sacramento, where you are, like, a study came out that there was some

intervention, and suddenly, like, Cancer rates, , like, , incidents of

breast cancer, incidents of asthma or diabetes had just like gone off a cliff,

suddenly just declined precipitously because of some intervention.

That the local government had decided to do their people would be like, get

out there, figure out what's going on.

How do we like, , there'd be there, there'd be a rush to like, figure it out.

And there's just so little interest.

It's really,

it's really remarkable.

I wonder if PPI is going to go back and try to make their own control group.

Maybe that's something they could do.

It's just you can't the correlation causation stuff, whatever.

You're never going to get to it at the level that we would want.

But.

Where is the other side saying, Hey, just leaving the status quo intact

over the last 15 or 20 years, we've seen the same results in those 10

cities that these other 10 cities that have seen big charter school growth.

I'm not aware of Omaha nailing it.

, I'm not.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, right.

I was agreeing with you.

I mean, I just whatever.

I don't tell me what the great story is within a traditional approach to things.

And I don't think there is one anywhere.

But the thing that

I will jump in here that I do think is also just a preponderance

of the evidence kind of question.

Like, you've got all the credo stuff, like you mentioned, which, which points

in one direction And has changed.

People still talk about Credo, like the early findings.

They don't talk about the continuation, the updated, they, they go from

the original credo findings.

And what Credo has shown is just a, a steady increase in

quality, a whole bunch of stuff.

We'll put those in the show notes too.

I mean, this is, that's kind of old news, but apparently.

Penetrated.

Then you've got all these various studies that come out in different ways.

, the PPI study showing, , at least for certain, you can say there's

not like huge harm being done.

The study on, Denver, you've got like, you look at New Orleans where, , So

they're doing substantially better than they were before the storm to the point

where people are sort of losing that in a relatively high level of improvement

because the sort of differences year to year and improvement events have slowed

down because they've made progress.

And all these places, are they like, , outstanding?

Of course not.

But they've made like real progress from, , improving

their, , their overall performance.

And so you can make, make a preponderance of the evidence case

that like, okay, if I have, if I'm a policymaker, I have to make a decision.

Am I gonna do this or not?

Yeah.

There's a lot of evidence I should probably do this.

And so I don't know that we have, , you can't, if you always wait for the RCT,

you can't, like, it limits the range of things you're gonna be able to do.

Policy making's about making decisions.

By definition, basically on imperfect, incomplete information.

It's not social science.

It's it's policymaking.

And I just think the evidence here, is strong and, , it's frustrating that more

people aren't challenged with the face of this plus what you just described, like

against this backdrop and context, why aren't we, what are we talking about here?

But I don't even think we ourselves talk about it in the right way.

I put most of the blame on us.

Yes, of course, , the world is distracted.

And yes, our adversaries are going to try and, , play whataboutism or whatever.

We won't even tell the story ourselves.

Did you see in Denver, that Denver families, And rutted, two organizations.

I respect a great deal, by the way, and, , boards I agree with and all, all

that, but they decide to merge in the LA in the last week and then they announce

what their agenda is for the future.

And it has no reference whatsoever to the great progress that's been made

over the last 15 years, and it has no commitment to, let's do even more.

It's, they're pivoting to, let's focus on health and safety and academics,

and I'm just like, if there's any place that should just unabashedly be

like, we have made incredible progress.

And our task now is to build on that.

Keep going.

No apologies.

But that's not what we do.

And when our own advocacy organizations won't say the thing, how can we get mad

at other people for not saying the thing?

I think that's fair.

I mean, we talked about some of those.

I think there's some interesting stuff there.

I have a couple of thoughts.

But I do think we've done a bad job and I and, telling the

story and I think advocacy, look, philanthropic dollars for drying up.

So you're going to see, I think you're gonna see a lot more of these

sort of consolidations and mergers and acquisitions and so forth.

And not just on advocacy, but in general, but particularly

there, the dollars are drying up.

People haven't learned the lessons and it is again, it's a little embarrassing

to say we're not going to focus on.

Academics and improvement right in parallel with the study coming out.

The, by the way, Boasberg and, and Michael better, he's a us Senator now, wrote a

company paper for it, like saying, , so it's also put in the show notes and , that

in the face of all that to say, we're not going to do this is certainly a little

embarrassing, but one thing they said that I thought was interesting is that

we're not going to be just something to the effect, I'm, I'm paraphrasing the

quote, we're not going to be disruptive, we're not going to be showing up at

school board meetings and so forth.

And I feel like, okay, you and I have talked on this podcast about there.

We, we, I think we have like two problems.

You and I have talked about the people who, they just seem to want disruption

for disruption sake, they want to, they don't, they don't want that.

They don't really care as much about better public schools as they do is

like sticking it to the teachers unions.

Right.

Like, so any disruption or acrimony is sort of an end in itself.

Not necessarily a means to an end in terms of education improvement.

And I don't even mean like they think like we have to, like the teachers unions

are in the way of education improvement.

That's something I would agree with on a lot of counts.

I just think they just don't like the teachers unions and they want

them gone and sort of irrespective of whatever that means for schools.

So we've talked about those people, the theater, that maybe we

should call them the theater kids.

And, and then you've also got this other side now, which wants like no acrimony.

Okay.

No disruption has sort of internalized this idea that any acrimony

disruption must be like our fault, rather than sometimes in politics.

That's just like, that's how you get things done.

That's what happens.

And, how to use it constructively and so forth.

And so they're sort of saying out of the gate, we're just not,

at least as the quotes that I saw, there may be more to it.

But what I saw that I was like, well, that's, it's, it's, it's hard to do

advocacy if you sort of acquiesce on some of the core tools of advocacy, like

right from the jump, that's a problem.

And, and by the way, the teachers unions don't do that.

They never unilaterally disarm on the contrary.

Everything is a constant.

debate, battle, negotiation.

They never stop and that's why they're good at what they do.

Yeah.

I think there's a lot of nuance to parse out here.

Cause I, I think that, you're right.

Just cheap attacks for the sake of attacks.

Make the other side look like crap for this, for that, for it's for that sake.

Is just, without integrity, without vision.

And in the long term, I think ultimately counterproductive.

The question, but on the other hand, you'll have people that will

say, Hey, can we just, like, do the Rodney King thing and just

all get along a little bit better?

And hey, can we just agree that we don't care about governance model?

All we want are great schools.

Well, as soon as you start saying that, though, then the

entire critique falls apart.

And, , this is where I think we have to get precise and I do

think I don't think I'm some kind of genius or anything like that.

I think sitting in that seat at CCSA for 10 years and realizing the things

that I could say that I could only keep saying until Tuesday versus the

next month versus the next year versus the things that I could actually keep

saying for my entire duration of time, the things that I could keep saying

Those are the places where we should stay anchored to and, and they are ones

where you say, look, yes, parents don't care about governance model for sure.

For sure.

But there's something about the design of the charter school world.

That allows educators to be more successful and for the for a lot

of the unfairness is that we find in education to be addressed.

And all we want is for a landscape such that all educators

operate within that landscape.

And it's not and as soon as you say, oh, we just love all, , schools,

whether they're bad or good.

Then when you see these problems in Chicago.

Then you see these problems, , in Denver.

Then you see these problems in St.

Louis, in Milwaukee, all these different places.

If you don't think that there's something wrong with the system,

what must your criticism be?

There must be something wrong with the people, with the people.

And I just totally disagree with that.

It's just that we're no better as people than they care

about kids as much as we do.

It's that they, we are operating within a healthier environment and

we should want that environment for all educators and for all kids.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And you said an interesting thing.

I just want to double back on.

You mentioned Rodney King and this is a little bit of an aside, but I think

it goes to this idea like some of this is just generational people like the

advocacy fights of the 90s and the 2000s, like the current generation and not

necessarily even like burst in those.

They weren't And so we have to relearn some of these lessons.

And the reason that it made me think of that is, yeah.

I remember in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, you

heard people saying nothing like this has ever happened before.

This is going to change everything.

And like, I was like, if you're of a certain age, you remember the Rodney

King episode was, I think, very salient for a lot of people really at that

time, young people who now sadly were older people, , in terms of like, just

the, the, the issues around policing, the issues around racism in society.

And it's very formative.

And likewise, it's roughly the same time.

The O.

J.

verdict, which again, shined a lot of light on on to these very different

perceptions of the justice system that exists across racial lines.

And those were very formative experiences for a lot of people.

But when this happened more recently, it was it was as if those things for

a new generation hadn't happened, which, by the way, is not their fault.

That's obviously like every new generation, right?

Has that, , but it's just interesting.

I think we're seeing something of the same thing here where the newer generation

of leaders and because there's been lots of intergenerational friction and

whatever else, and it hasn't necessarily internalized kind of what worked, what

didn't work, the lessons there hasn't been sort of a good job of sort of transferring

that knowledge and information.

And that's a miss.

Because you want to essentially, I try to, when I mentor young leaders,

I try, I'm like your, your, your role is to go out and make new mistakes,

not, not replicate what we made.

Right.

Learn from ours.

Don't make those again, go make new ones.

That's what progress, that's what progress is messy.

That's what it looks like.

And, I think we've done it.

We've done a, we've done a poor job of that, which something we've

talked about in the past on this podcast that even shows up in like,

CMO leadership transitions, which have often been pretty, pretty rough.

We've just done, it's just been, there's just been a poor job of that overall.

Yes.

And let me just stay in the advocacy world, just because that's where

I feel like my data is freshest and my understanding is deepest.

It's one thing to say, Hey, we want a baton pass.

We actually had some things figured out and we've modeled and we've given

you some ideas and just take them.

Oh, wait a second.

You don't understand what the whole educate charter school thing is all about.

Isn't that a shame?

That's one scenario.

The other scenario is we who went first.

didn't get it right.

We weren't crisp.

We, we were not courageous enough.

That's what I really do think.

Like Brandon, Brandon Brown's piece, that he wrote about Indianapolis.

And then I followed up on that.

And I know that that post was just insufferably long, but

Brandon and I talked about that.

And it was just like, look, we want something in the landscape

that tells the whole story.

From, , 1995 until 2024.

And it'll stay fresh for the next three years.

We don't have one just write it yet.

Okay.

In there, Brandon was talking about in 2011 when the mind trust first came

out with his ideas for Indianapolis and how the entire system was going

to evolve and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, it made things worse for two years.

It was just really shrill.

But then over time, when people saw the common sense of what they were proposing.

It just come.

And of course, there's ebbs and flows.

It gets more controversial, less controversial, but I think a lot of

our advocates are intuition is if we say anything that's controversial,

the right thing to say in Denver right now is, well, we care about health.

We care about safety and we care about academics.

Oh, yeah.

And everybody like congratulates you.

And that's so great.

There's nothing that's there that's built to last right?

If you have a critique, , so you're, you're, you're

rewarded for saying that thing.

And then the value of anticipates over time.

I feel like those of us that have done this before, , we need to acknowledge

we did it wrong and we're handing things over to people and we're saying, oh, it's

intuitive what they're supposed to do.

And we didn't do it ourselves.

But what, however it is, we get this theory articulated

for the way going forward.

Sure.

There's nothing that's more important for us right

now.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's a, that's a really smart point.

We should come back to it.

I think it's also hard.

We can come back to another podcast.

Look, everyone's just scared right now.

And that's part of the problem.

And it's making everybody timid and, , there's lots of

different reasons for that.

But everyone's, everyone's scared and nervous and that's a hard, you

can't lead, you can't leave like that.

And you can't have, you can't have impact like that.

But I think when you get data like this from PPI saying that we're

10 for 10, I think we should have a greater sense of confidence.

Yes.

If we say the thing right now.

It's going to result in blowback.

But when we generate results like this over the long term,

it's going to get better.

But we, we have to be able to surface, , what our theory of action really is.

Yeah.

No, I, I, I, I agree.

And, and, and certainly you can say the stuff that everybody

says it's going to get worse.

That's been, again, that's been disproven, which look, politicians

are naturally risk averse, right?

And so starting with, okay, it's not going to get worse.

That's actually not a bad place.

Cause they don't want that to happen.

On their watch.

Yeah,

that place to start and then be like, and here's this other evidence.

Yeah.

And, , as it relates to this, this election right now, I wanted,

I wanted to make this point during our election discussion,

but I think it fits right here.

See what your thoughts are.

There's a part of me that just wishes there was no election happening

whatsoever, not that I can be happy with the Biden status quo, not that I

could be okay with the status quo in California or a lot of other places.

But I just feel like right now, at least in charter land, We figured out

how to keep making decent progress.

And in fact, I would say we're seeing some acceleration right now.

And if conditions could just stay this way for another five years or for

another 10 years, I think we would see a resumption of momentum in Charterland.

But what I worry about is an election that just shakes the can again,

such that we're all, , reconsidering whether or not we're on the right side

of history or whether we should be.

In some way doubting our partners and those kinds of things.

Do you have any feelings along these lines or might just,

no, it's a great question.

And I think one of the, another one of the weird things hidden in

plain sight, I think there's this again, people, there's sort of these

casual narratives that take off.

There's this assumption that, Oh, Trump's a Republican.

He's probably for choice.

He's been, , in the past he's talked about choice, like, so he'll probably be

good for charters and Harris will be bad.

And in fact, like the evidence, if you take a look, we have something

coming out on this from Bella shortly.

Like if you take a look like they've both been pretty bad on it just in different

ways I mean don't forget trump proposed to block grant the charter program to

states Do you understand anything about how this stuff works and at the state

level and all that like that was a dreadful idea he didn't actually do much.

He talked he certainly he certainly talked about choice Like if you want,

like if you're going to measure by rhetoric, he certainly talked about

choice more than any president prior, but he did less on it substantively

than Clinton, Bush, Obama, certainly.

And, , it's kind of a wash, frankly, with, with, with Biden.

He didn't do anything.

Yeah.

To, to, to really push it.

Because, I mean, We don't need to, , get into the litany of reasons why in terms

of focus and, and, , everything else, but like he did for whatever reason, he didn't

do anything on choice, consequential.

And, so it's like, it's out there in plain sight, like, like neither

of these outcomes are actually good.

For choice and charters, , particularly for charters, which is why I think

lots of people, Yeah, I think there's probably relatively few national

single issue charter voters, right?

Like, , i'm a pretty big supporter of charter schools as , but

like I was factoring to my vote.

So I think that's another one of these things and it means like how do

you reset that because like And and people are looking at this as well.

One's better than the other It's actually they're both equally bad.

And so if you're an advocate you care about charters You got to figure out

How do you navigate in that environment, no matter what happens, here, here,

coming up in November and then second.

How do we like set the table differently, right?

Like it's a little bit like it.

I used this analogy recently at a meeting.

I'm not sure how well it worked, but it's, it's like a restaurant, right?

We're arguing over what should maybe be on the menu and like, should it

be like, , fixed price or whatever.

We need to be eating in a different restaurant, right?

Like all together.

Like where did this, where the, the ground we're playing on,

we're playing on the ground, the charter opponents want us to be on.

And that has, that has to change.

I almost want to end it right there.

I all I want to do is say, amen.

I feel like on the other side of the election, what matters

more than anything else.

Do we just keep going and are we going to just stay, take, take pot shots at each

other now, or are we going to crisper about what we're doing and more convicted

within the realm that we actually have influence over in these other realms.

And people are going to have to come to the table.

Let's end it.

I mean, we can end it there and we can come back after we have some, yeah,

we'll come back in March when we have some idea of who the president is.

We, , look, we can, everybody's going to have to get out of their fields.

If Trump wins.

like center left left performers.

You have to say we cannot just have another four years of

nothing happening for kids.

We've got to figure out how to move the ball forward.

I can't hide behind this excuse that it's so the only thing that's good

for kids is saving our democracy.

That's a slogan.

We got to like, actually, like, how do you get school improvement?

And if Harris wins, like these folks on the right, you're gonna have to get out

of their fields that Oh, my God, socialism is coming to America or whatever.

And, like, figure out, like, How do we push a agenda that is, is good

for kids and so far as, as expanding opportunities for families and so

forth is concerned in this, in this context, and so everybody's gonna have

to like, we can't keep just hopping from election to the next, making up excuses

for why we're not getting anything

done.

So I'll end it with a challenge to you, Andy.

I am going to find theme music tackier than you will.

I believe, I believe you are.

I believe you're up to that.

All right.

I

like it.

Great talking to you.

I look forward to talking to you next month.

Yeah.