Transcripts
Starlie Coleman, welcome to Charterfolk Chat. Delighted to have you here.
Starlee Coleman:Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Jed Wallace:Well, you know, you tell me all the time, you know, I. I want to get into the policy. I don't want to get into my background and all that kind of stuff. I hear you. I hear you.
But also, people remain interested in who you are, how you're doing. You know, you're in your first year. This first year is one where it feels like two decades of stuff have happened.
You knew what you were getting yourself into. No one in their right mind would have known what they've gotten themselves into. Can you give us the status check here? How are you doing?
How's the first year going? What surprised you most? What do you love the most? What bugs you the most? People just are interested in that side of it as well.
Starlee Coleman:Yeah. Yeah. I was joking with someone internally the other day.
I knew I would be dealing with problems, but I didn't think I would be dealing with these problems. So. So that's. I guess that's kind of always the way that it goes. Listen, I've. So I've been on a job for nine months now, and I love it.
I'm having a great time. And I know it's chaotic and. And it feels wild on a daily basis, but I like that. I like.I like the chaos, and I like, you know, I like solving puzzles. And this feels like a really big puzzle right now. To solve all kinds of things feel like a big puzzle. So what has surprised me? I guess. I guess the.
The problems that I am dealing with or the challenges that I am dealing with surprised me. You know, I.
I confessed, maybe irresponsibly, that coming from Texas, the Supreme Court case was, like, not on my radar, really in the way should have been. I mean, I was like, whatever, we'll figure that out later. And here we are about to have to figure that out.
And that, you know, obviously has taken a lot of time over the last few months and will take an extraordinary amount of time over the coming months. Yeah, of course, depending on what the court decides. But. So that. That. That has been. That has been a surprise. And. And then one of my.
Well, I mean, I talked. I'm. What I'm loving and what I'm not loving. You know, there I was listening this morning. There was a hearing this morning. So we're. It's.
It's Wednesday. Is today is Wednesday, right?
Jed Wallace:It is Wednesday, right.
Starlee Coleman:May 14th. And I was. There was a hearing morning, a congressional hearing. And now I am so tired of like, the anti charter tropes and talking points.
I guess the good thing is they're not that creative. Like, the anti charter people are not that creative. They have been saying the same stuff for 20 something years.
So that's helpful, I guess, that they're just not that creative. And they're not particularly smart either. But. But, you know, that's annoying.
It's annoying to have to deal with like this situation where, where you watch a congressional hearing and you're like, okay, so all day long we're gonna have to like, answer media questions about, like, factually inaccurate information being shared from the dais by a lawmaker who should know better. And that is so annoying.
Jed Wallace:Yeah, for sure, for sure. But it's also the kind of thing that reminds us every once in a while what, you know, what color cowboy hat we're wearing to the rodeo here.
So you take some leverage on yourself from that. Okay, now I know why I'm blowing through. And I just see so many charter folk that encounter that stuff. The first reaction is being dispiritedness.
They get a step away from it and they realize that's what's getting between me and my community. My kids doing even better. Okay, let's go. Let's go.
And what I feel good about right now, and I'd love to just, you know, double check with you, and I've asked other people, you know, asked Kevin Hall a month ago. I asked Marlon the month before that. You know, I just have this sense of the charter school movement just generally doing pretty well.
And, you know, it's. There's a lot of reasons for it. I'd love to see just whether you agree with it or not.
But one of the things I just love the most is what started Charterfolk was a period of what I thought was ambivalence, traveling the country, seeing 40 different states, and a loss of confidence that we're even on the right side of history. Right. And George Floyd and the racial reckoning moment and all of this reconsideration and all that was super important.
All it was really important to do. But I don't sense the same ambivalence. I'm not sure if I sense really any ambivalence. It's, yes, we want to do more.
How do we do it, how fast do we do it?
And yes, the conditions may be varying in a lot of different parts of the country right now, but a lot of places we can actually make progress, pressure test those things. You picking up the same thing or what? Nuance?
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, yeah, completely. So, yes, things are going really well for charters right across the country. In red states, in blue states, in purple states.
We are growing, Our schools are improving. The policy climate is getting stronger. Even in blue states, we are winning. Like, not.
Not just like winning on defense, which we're doing, but, like, putting points on the board, winning, like, moving things forward, more autonomy, more funding, more growth. I mean, we. Substance, of course, are outliers, but the overwhelming. The overwhelming factual evidence is that we are continuing to. To. We are on.
We are ascending still, right? Still after all this time and all of these other competing, bright, shiny objects, right? Like ESAs and whatever.
We are continuing to be the school choice strategy nationally and the school choice for families looking for options. Like, we're. That's. That's us, right? That's us. And this. And this, like, feeling. I totally hear you on the feeling of ambivalence.
And also was talking to one of my friends who works in our, you know, in our.
In our funny little world in Minneapolis, and we were talking about how, like, we are so quick in the charter community to buy our own bad press, right? We are so quick to do that. And when you dig in, it's not true, right?
I had this crazy conversation the other day with a reporter from the Washington Post. Talk about. Talk about, like, bubbly, bubbly people, right?
So weird, like, weird, weird situations, right, where people are, like, so in a bubble that they, like, they cannot even see that they're in the bubble, right? And so I'm having this conversation with a Washington Post reporter, and she's like, we're going to write a story about the Supreme Court case.
And she says, I'm going to write this story. She sounds so sweet. Like, this is her intro to our discussion.
I'm going to write this story about the Supreme Court case against the backdrop of overwhelming decline for support for charter school. And I'm like, what. Talk about, like, what's your. And I said, like, what is your evidence of that?
Like, more families are choosing charter schools than have ever chosen charter schools before. We are passing more pro charter policies in every state than ever before. Yeah, we are like, what are you talking about, lady? And she goes, well.
She goes, well. She goes, well, you know, the Biden administration, y. That completely true, but okay, what. So anyway, whatever. I like that. That is so true.
There is, like, this weird. They're in certain pockets, right? And I like, you are in California and I am in Texas.
And, like, there is a difference between what is happening in those two states, that is true. But the idea that, like, overall over just like, generally speaking in the country that things are not going well is, like, not true.
And I, that, that is one of the things that I would want for, for charter folk out there, right, to just feel, like, buoyed in their, like, spirit and like, dedication the work. Because, like, are. Are there moments of, of conflict that are. That are difficult to get through and, and, and complicated. Right?
Like, I mean, I'm sure many people have, like, complicated feelings about the gains we're seeing from the Trump administration on charter policy and then also the challenges that we are being presented from the Trump administration, like those. That is a real tension, right, that we are all working through. But, but generally speaking, I want people to feel like we are.
We are not on the defense. We shouldn't feel like we are on the defense. We are winning all over the place in all kinds of ways.
And, and we should show up like winners because we are.
Jed Wallace:Absolutely. I love that the Minnesota Tribune stories have driven me totally crazy. Look at Charterfolk. Two things. It's. This is just my side gig.
It's my little service project to the movement. I only have so much time, right?
And the other thing is, so I don't have enough time to change other people's writing or, hey, you get to write what you want, right? I don't step. And the other part too is this is not about me agreeing with stuff. Hey, get it out there.
And there's gonna be some ideas that we like that I like and don't like. But somebody wanted to write something. It was. It was a, you know, positive piece of a story about how great things are going in their state.
But it was linked to the Minnesota Tribune's story about how things are terrible in Minnesota and look in these other states, how it's so much better. And then Minnesota Tribune, they won't even look at. At St.
Paul being one of the 10 states in the cities in the PPI study that's grown to have 30% of kids and where all boats have risen and gaps are closing and they'll never write a darn thing about it.
And then you go talk to people about Minnesota and they're down in the mouth about the movement overall because of that patently irresponsible journalism.
Starlee Coleman:Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. This is like one of the things that is so.
That is really one of the reasons why it is very important, I think, and why we took this really seriously in Texas, understanding our own data, like in a really deep and nuanced way so that number one, we can tell our own story. Because the media, like by and large the sort of legacy media is not going to tell our story for us. Right. For whatever reason.
I don't know why, but I, it seems, seems like journalism is one of those places, like one of those industries where lots and lots of like people with like deeply held progressive values go into that profession, right? And they see their job as a certain thing in a certain way. And that is often not to weirdly. Right.
Like they're happy to push back on, I think, broken institutions in government in many aspects. And for whatever reason public education is like off limit. Right. And I don't know why that is. Right. I don't know why.
Maybe it's because they all went to public school and so they feel like this like irrational attachment that I have talked to many people about, like why are we irrationally attached in this country to the way that things have always been or the way they used to be or whatever? Like, like I, that, that I don't have that. And so it is like I, I am like a curious observer when I see it all over the place.
Like, why are we so attached to this old idea that is like so incredibly old fashioned and we are like very unattached to the way things used to be in so many other places of our life. Like what? It's so weird to me and I don't know if it's like everybody likes their teachers or like their mom was a teacher.
Like, you know, I don't know, people just like, it's like you can't have a, you can't have a discussion about the fact that like the public education, the district public education system is like on the whole not working. Right.
Millions and millions of children without somehow like deeply wounding or offending people because like their aunt was a teacher and like I said, their aunt is not the one responsible for the broken governance structure. Right? So it's like, it's not personal, but people have a hard time separating that out.
Anyway, whatever, I'm on a tangent, but, but we have to understand our own data in a way that I don't think that we, that we fully do. Right. I inherited this situation in Texas, right.
I came in to, to the state association in Texas seven years ago and one of our charter school leaders, you know, I was sitting with them early in my tenure and we were talking about things and about what I wanted to accomplish at the Capitol and all of this Stuff. And he said he's great schools, great schools in Houston. And he said, if only the charter sector was like a little better in Texas.
And I was like, okay, I think we're pretty good, right? So then we start looking and looking and looking like the charter schools in Texas are excellent. They're excellent.
Not, not a little bit better than the district schools. They are unbelievably better for the kids that they serve than the district schools. And like, pretty much across the board, right.
Like, we have some outliers that probably need to be closed.
Jed Wallace:Right.
Starlee Coleman:But generally speaking, on the whole, the charter community in Texas is unreal. Right. And. And I. And like all of this stuff that we believe, like, oh, well, you know, like you, you. They kick everybody out. So we looked not true.
Like, she's like, objectively not true, right.
Like, if you look at demographic breakdowns of like, who gets suspended and expelled in Texas public schools, like at charters versus district schools, like, you are 12 times more likely as a black child to be suspended at a district school than a charter school.
Jed Wallace:Right?
Starlee Coleman:Right. Facts, right?
Jed Wallace:Absolutely.
Starlee Coleman:This was like a thing, right, that we, we had to deal with, right. In the legislature and everywhere, we just had to say like, that not true. Not true. Right? Not true. That's not true.
And when we understand our data, when we can tell our story, not only can we tell our story in the public sphere better, like just push back on bad narratives, we can make sure that lawmakers, like, we can dislodge some of these like stubborn myths. Right. With that, that, that we have to combat all over the place. The anti charter stuff is the same in every single state.
The stuff they say is the same. Right? Right. It's the same. So figuring out who we are, how we're doing using data is really, really important.
And I think it just like when we know who we are, we can feel proud of the results that we are delivering and how we are deliver. Excuse me. Delivering those results. Because it's really great.
Jed Wallace:Yeah.
Starlee Coleman:Really?
Jed Wallace:Yeah. Well, I agree with you. And unlike nearly every conversation I got to.
Well, I knew you even when you were back at the national alliance on your first go around. I didn't know you very well.
I didn't know you very well, but whatever, I remember you well and we met each other but then got to know you in the Texas context.
And like every conversation, almost every conversation we've had since then, you want to take me in a bunch of different directions that I'm like super interested in. And I've also got These questions, I want to cover bases.
So let me put a pin in this because this, this really bugs me that I don't think we have a policy agenda that allows us to drive the narrative that is within our potential to do now that we're in a 35th year of our movement, as opposed to our 35th day or 35th week. So let's, let's set that aside just to go a little bit further on, on state conditions, you've been really pretty emphatic.
Hey, wherever school choice flourishes, even if it's private school choice, ESA vouchers, charter schools do really well in those environments. And I just want to check in with you on, on that. I've heard you talk about it repeatedly.
Just want to see what your conviction level is, you know, as we're getting further into this stuff. And now Texas has this, you know, very big new program that's been approved there.
And the second, then on the blue side, the thing on the blue state side, the thing that like, gives reason for optimism for charter schools in those contexts is often some kind of dispiriting because it's like things are so broken within the traditional public school system in those places. And it's kind of like we have to, like our success is going to grow out of that really sad circumstance.
And it just feels like a complicated one for us to insert ourselves into and keep our bearing. So I could be wrong. Maybe you see things in blue, blue context a little bit differently than that.
But let me just throw out, just across that red, blue spectrum, what are your, what are your thoughts now?
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, yeah, good question. So let me, let me, let me talk about the private school choice thing first. So it's not, it's not just my conviction, it's the data. Right?
Data shows us that when private school choice programs pass and, or when private school choice programs go through, like a big expansion in who is eligible to, to apply charter enrollment grows up, goes up. This is continuing to happen in places even where there's, you know, very robust programs like Arizona and Florida. Right.
Those are two states where we continue to see incredibly strong demand for charter schools. I can't explain that. Right. I don't know why.
All that I can say is maybe it's just because, like, there's more parents in the marketplace shopping around for a school and they think they want to go to, you know, whatever, the XYZ Catholic school, because they have a, you know, whatever values, alignment plus, you know, a good classical curriculum, and then they find great hearts in the Process. Right. And Great hearts is freak. I don't know. Right. I don't know what drives that.
I don't know what drives that, but it is like, factually bearing out in. In the data. And so I, I am. I remain.
I remain optimistic that there will continue to be a lane for charters regardless of what other programs and what other changes are made in education policy. Whether that's eliminating school district boundaries, which I support. Right.
That would be a very interesting catalytic policy change for parents shopping for options if they are free to look around wherever they want. I think if charters get tight again, like I said, feel like we have had to be at moments about who we are. Right. And who, what we.
What the value proposition is for a family, we will be fine. We will be fine. And I believe that because I, I believe that what charters offer is special, and I believe that there is.
There is something unique about the combination of what we offer to families. We offer the sort of best features of public men. Right. Coupled with very intense accountability to families and to taxpayers. That's what that is.
We're. We're the only ones, right. That, like, put, Put the two things together, you know, and package that up for families in the way that we do.
And I, I think, you know, no. No parent says, even me, who's like, I'm like the biggest test score nerd ever, Right? Well, maybe not ever, but I'm up there.
And even me, like, when I, When I say, what is the. What do I want for my own little girl? Right. Why am I picking a school for her?
Academic rigor is in my top three, but in some cases it may not be my, My number one. Right. Right. So. So the point is there is. There is such a unique thing about who we are and what we offer that I just, I don't.
I am not worried in the long term. Like, could we lose our footing for a minute and are things get. Could things get a little whackadoo and, like, might we have to figure things out?
Sure. And, like, come back to our principles? Yes. All. All of those things could happen. But. But we.
We can do that and we can work through moments of uncertainty and come out the other end in a way that I think will make us as strong as we ever have been. And so I, I remain unworried about that aspect in the blue state context. You know, politics in blue states are. Are difficult.
I totally acknowledge that. I am. I would never pretend like the, like the, you know, the ease with.
With which school choice bills pass in Red states is similar to the kinds of debates and dynamics that my blue state colleagues, you know, face. I wouldn't, I would never, I would never say that. And we are seeing charter schools, charter organizations thrive in blue state environments.
It can be done, right? It can be done if, if, if the, if the advocacy infrastructure is strong.
Jed Wallace:Yep.
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, we can win.
Jed Wallace:Like that. Like that.
Starlee Coleman:And we are seeing that around the country. And so like, if there is a missing ingredient in a place.
Jed Wallace:Love that. Okay, that's another pin. Because we're gonna get to that later in the, in the conversation as well.
Let me go to the one area that I think I'm most irked about in terms of Charterland, which is not having made enough growth or not having achieved growth consistent with what I think our potential is.
Starlee Coleman:Enrollment growth or academic growth.
Jed Wallace:Enrollment growth. I feel like I'm all about enrollment right now. I feel like. And part of this, I think is function of ambivalence. And hey, part of this is Covid era.
And part of this is, hey, a new level of blowback where we become the number one priority for, for, you know, the charter school or for the status quo interest to, to. To. To defend against all those things have made it understandable.
I still think that we could be achieving more and it's important that we be in achieving more. And I just wanted to see just generally how. I mean, these changes potentially to the CSP program could be phenomenal.
You know, other changes, you know, coming out of Washington could help us. Part of this, I really think comes down to policy matters. And hey, facilities are a big problem that stands in the way.
But the other part of it too is just charterfolk ourselves recognizing what our potential is. The mission driven sense. You know, I'm just getting off the phone. I had a long call with Sue Shalby yesterday just talking about Don's background.
And we're talking about. We're doing projects together. We were talking about that early, early period.
Just so many mission driven organizations just really centered on growth.
I know some of that stuff is antiquated and doesn't really apply, but still, that moxie around growth, I feel like we could, you know, we could be accentuating that right now. Any, Any thoughts here?
Starlee Coleman:I think it is very expensive, right? Like our. To. To grow, to build a new building. It is really, really, really expensive right now. And I don't think our.
I don't think philanthropy, certainly not public support for school buildings, for charters.
Like, I don't, I don't think they've kept up and and the, you know, some of the regulatory and, you know, policy things that need to happen in order to make it easier for charters to actually get a building permit and that sort of stuff. Like we, you know, we, we have work to do in the policy climate or in the policy sort of ecosystem about some of those things.
But honestly, I, I think the biggest barriers to our growth right now are like, it is just freaking expensive, expensive to build a building and find land and you know, like, they're charter school leaders. I know I keep talking about Texas, I'll talk about other states chart. Let me do Idaho.
Charter school leaders in Idaho have like an enormous amount of moxie right now around, right?
Jed Wallace:Sure.
Starlee Coleman:And buying, affording land and affording the cost of building a building is really hard. And there's a very generous philanthropic community in Idaho that is helping support all of this.
They are racking up wins on the policy climate to support, you know, public funding and financing for, for buildings too. And still it's hard. It's expensive, it's hard.
Jed Wallace:Yeah.
Starlee Coleman:So I think that's number one.
And then the second thing is like, no matter what we do on funding, on, you know, for like building the building, regardless of how good we get on the policy side on that stuff, we cannot manufacture bodies who can be teachers. It is hard. Like when you, I think when you ask school leaders what is outside of funding. Right.
What is your number one barrier to growth and what is your number one barrier to like, academic growth? Also they would say teachers. Right?
Yeah, well, like, it is not, it is not a made up problem that we are having a real problem finding really strong people who want to be in front of a classroom and stay there. Right. That is, that is hard.
And you, you know, we could build a whole bunch of new buildings, but if we don't have teachers to teach in them and you know, and effective teachers to teach in them, like, what is the point, Right. Of building the buildings? And so, you know, those are two just like real issues.
I, I, I, I, you know, let me even go with like Eva Moskowitz in New York. She'd keep growing if she could.
Jed Wallace:Yeah. Yeah.
Starlee Coleman:So it's not, it's, it's, it's not a, it's not a lack of will or desire.
It's just like there are, there are, I don't know if I want to say structural, but there are like operational issues right now that are real for school theaters.
And, and you have to have a, I think you have to see a path to how am I going to pay for this building and how am I going to fill it with effective teachers before you, I mean, a smart one anyway, right, Is going to do that before you sign a new note.
Jed Wallace:Yeah, I'm with you. And I still think there's a discussion within our world. I feel like. I feel like our North Star has shifted over 35 years.
In the beginning, it was really about bastions of innovation and however many kids we can serve, and there aren't good options and, hey, let's get these things going. And now we're in this era where I think what our systemic impact is going to be, you know, wait a second, what is all headed toward?
And because I don't think that's really crisply in front of us, people start to say, wait, how does my growth fit into that? Wait, how does this all work together?
Not that it can be like, so, like puppeteered or anything like that, but just that idea when you come back to, you know, racing red lines, the financial practices that are in our school, is it just the, the historical unfairness that is there, that when it gets surfaced, people are, oh, that's why I'm growing.
Starlee Coleman:Right?
Jed Wallace:Why, Right.
And I just feel as though sometimes we get distracted by so many other things going on in the world and goodness knows there are enough things to be distracted about.
But if we can get our eyes properly focused on our own world and if we can see the lack of fairness that is here and our design, hey, we got some schools that need to be closed and we're not perfect and all that stuff, but by design, we don't have those same things in us and we can push the overall system to get to now. People say, interesting.
And I just feel as though that next chapter of discussion in charter world is, you know, waiting for future, you know, focus and, you know, probably the very thing that Starlie Coleman is going to be leading us to, like talking about.
Starlee Coleman:I. Okay, so I will. I will give you this. On, on this point. I will. I will give you that. I also see a, A different level of hungriness. Hungriness. Hunger.
Hunger.
Speaking of hunger, among charter leaders who are leading the school they founded and charter leaders who have come in to an already established school, there is a different vibe, right, about, like, what the job is in those. In those, I think, for those leaders. And, and that, and that is true.
And I think as we see more and more of the OGs, right, who started charters, like, leave because it's time or what, or they're exhausted and they're gonna go do something else for a while or whatever that I, I hear you on. Like how, how do we make sure that we don't lose the edge? Right?
The edge of like just like a fundamental recognition of like, yeah, we, we are in a political fight because opening a charter school is an act of political war.
Jed Wallace:Right, Totally.
Starlee Coleman:Like, so we fired a shot and by opening the building and like that, like, are we gonna fight for that and, or, or right, like that. I, I, I see that. I see that too.
And so how do we, how do we, you know, cultivate that same level of fire for people who didn't have to come in and have the fight? Right?
They, they, you know, they come into an established school and enrollment is fine or good or great or there's a long wait list, whatever it is, and academics are good and you know, whatever. That's, that's, that's a different job for, for a chartered leader. So I hear you, I hear you on that.
I think the Supreme Court case will light the fire.
Jed Wallace:I like that. I want to get to that. I like and also, I mean, let's not overstate charter folks influence here.
But it's that, that intuition that any nudging in a correct direction, you know, people want to identify themselves as part of the charter school movement. They see it as a noble thing. They know that growth and pushing the overall system is what we're designed to do.
And yet it's going to mean that we have to push through ridiculousness that shouldn't be there, but it's just a part of the world we, we find ourselves in talking about like federal. So I want to get to scotus. Everybody's wanting to hear your thoughts about that.
But before, can we just talk about other non SCOTUS Washington things?
I know we've got Kevin Kiley, you know, from my neck of the woods, you know, leading the committee hearing today, you know, super cool, proposing new legislation and we got an administration that's proposing different things on csp, increase in funding to csp.
At the same time, there are other decisions that come out of the administration that I think are of concern almost everybody, certainly to many charter folk and how we all fit together on this. What's your latest thinking about the wisest way for us to orientation orient ourselves to the cacophony coming out of Washington right now.
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, this is, this is hard. And like, you know, you were, you were in a session I was in a few weeks ago in Nashville. And so you know that this is the most difficult Thing to.
To discuss in a way that does not make people very frustrated. Things are going to change, period. I do not know what the full array of change will be. I don't know. Things will change.
Does that mean programs get moved to other places? Maybe. Does that mean block grants happen? Maybe. I don't know. Right.
Jed Wallace:Yep.
Starlee Coleman:Things will change. And it is unproductive for us to say no change. That is not realistic and it is not helpful, and it is unproductive. Things are going to change.
And so the way that we should be showing up and positioning ourselves in those conversations, if we want to have any influence at all in how the change rolls out so that it affects kids and families in the least disruptive way as possible, we need to show up with ideas and we need to show up with solutions. And we need to show up and say, I see that you want to do this. Have you thought about doing it this way?
Jed Wallace:Yeah. What about this?
Starlee Coleman:How about this? That thing over there. Here's something for you to think about. Here's a concern I have, but not know. Right.
Jed Wallace:That is.
Starlee Coleman:That is. That is like an unproductive. I mean, just from like human psychology, who wants to talk to people like that? Nobody.
You know your uncle that you have Thanksgiving dinner with, and he's like the guy who was like, you know, the. Just a curmudgeon about everything. Like, do you enjoy talking to him? No. No, you do not. Right.
And politics is about relationships and whether or not people who are making the decisions agree with you all the time. You know that's not going to happen. Right. We're not going to always be perfectly aligned with the people who are in charge.
But it is our job to make progress for children, regardless of who is in charge.
And if we are in a period of change and disruption and what we want on the other end of this period of change and disruption is for children to not bear the brunt of changes in policy, then we, the grownups, need to show up and say, I hear you on that.
Jed Wallace:Right.
Starlee Coleman:Let me give you an idea of how that could actually really be helpful to schools. You want to block money? Cool. Let's talk about.
Let's talk about how we make sure it actually shows up at every school campus or every district instead of getting bottled up in a place where they're going to be unhelpful in sending it directly to charter schools because of political opposition or whatever. Right. Like, let's. Let's be realistic and adult about the fact that elections have consequences. I understand.
Jed Wallace:Yep.
Starlee Coleman:Maybe. Maybe charter Folk didn't vote for the people in charge today. Okay. Like, I could accept that potential reality.
I don't think we're a monolith like people want to believe, but.
Jed Wallace:Right, right.
Starlee Coleman:We have an obligation to say what we do want, not don't do anything, because that isn't the choice. The choice is not do nothing, leave everything the way that it is, or do all these things without ever talking to anybody. In our.
In our world, those are not the choices.
Jed Wallace:Right, right.
Starlee Coleman:So, like, we. We need to be realistic and adult about our job. And our job in this moment is to show up for families, and that is not that.
And showing up for families is not saying no to everything. It's showing a way to be productive.
Jed Wallace:Right, right, right. I asked this question to.
To Marlon Marshall from Citi Fund two months ago, and, you know, he repeated it over and over again, so much so that I basically made it the title for the entire article, which is Opportunity Amid the Chaos. And we can make so much progress right now. The question is our own creativity, our own unity within the chaos, those kinds of things.
And it certainly seems like in Washington right now, there are a lot of places to make significant progress. Is there any place that, like, you think is maybe a little underappreciated or, you know, something that you're particularly focused on right now?
Starlee Coleman:Well, we are focused on charter school policy at the National Alliance. Like, that's what we. Right.
Jed Wallace:Yeah, that's what we're talking about. What, you know, what possibilities for advancing charter school stuff. And. Yeah.
Starlee Coleman:Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Like, we. We are. And this is what is hard right in this moment. And I recognize. I recognize the tension that we have to live through.
We are in a moment right now where we could make the greatest gains for charter school policy than we have been able to make in 20 years.
Jed Wallace:Yep. Yep.
Starlee Coleman:And I'm gonna take it. Okay. Whatever else, we're coming out the other end with big stuff done for charters.
Jed Wallace:Yep. I love it. Okay, we're going to go to scotus. Let me. Let me just say this one thing. This is no criticism of you, of the national alliance, not of Nina.
I love her, too. This is a criticism of me. Of me, because I lived through Trump one, you know, in California, blue state stuff.
And what I discovered, you know, in that moment, because all these things that were proposed out of Washington that people presented as not being consistent with our values, I actually think a lot of them weren't consistent with a lot of, you know, our values. But What I critiqued myself for was not having proactively been stressing how so much of what we're doing on offense is consistent with our values.
So the thing that just, like, irks me, I mean, and look, I mean, Ricardo Soto at ccsa, I mean, he was the head of the Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education. I love Ricardo Soto. I'll do anything for that guy.
And at the same time, there are a lot of people worried that the Office of Civil Rights is going to get sunsetted, haircutted, whatever it is, you know, within the department.
But it's been sitting on top of a public education system that, in my opinion, is one massive violation of civil rights the way we allocate educational opportunity. And so for me, I'm like, you want us to talk about fairness in the society?
Go after those damn red lines, Go after the financial practices we know are unfair and all sorts of other things.
And the more that we, I think, get anchored on that publicly and have narrative going along those lines, the better, I think, will be postured to deal with a moment like this when people see some of these other things that maybe they are very legitimate things to worry about. But comparison to where we could make progress, you know, I think it helps provide a sense of context and confidence that we just.
We didn't have it in California to the extent that we should have. And I chalked that up to one of my errors as a leader during that period.
Starlee Coleman:Well, that's very reflective of you. I will. I agree with you. And it's the. And it's the point. You. I mean, you said it more succinctly than I. Than I. My rambling previous answer. But the.
But yet it. It isn't true that everything, keeping everything the way that it is is a good idea. That's not true. Like, that isn't true. We. We are.
We are a whole community of people built around the idea that a whole bunch of stuff needs to change. So, like, why would we be in this moment and not say, you want to. You want to break a bunch of stuff? Cool.
Let me give you the list of things that need to be broken right? And. And redone. Why wouldn't we be those people? Why. Why would we be. I mean, to pull out, like, a completely antithetical situation.
But, like, why would we be right. The William F. Buckley astride the. What is his famous quote? Like, conservatives are the people sitting astride history yelling, stop.
Are we those people now? Plague.
Jed Wallace:Right. Right.
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, I don't think so. Right. Yeah, I don't think that that's who we are. And, like, why are we showing up that way right now? Show up and say you want to break stuff.
Here's the list of things that are not working for kids and haven't worked for kids in a long time. And here's some ways you could fix it.
Jed Wallace:Yep.
Starlee Coleman:Instead of letting them do whatever they want and then us just standing astronide history yelling, stop. Like, yeah, it's. We're. We're not in the head space. We need to be.
Jed Wallace:All right, this is. Get. This is coming back to this last pin. You know, I'm going to go back to. Because it fits in all that stuff. But let's go to SCOTUS here.
I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. And at Charterfolk, I will say it's one of.
uctive about this starting in:What exactly was going to be. I didn't know, but I didn't say that.
Hey, just because there's writing on the Supreme Court wall means that charter schools are going to end up roadkill.
The language I've been using, you know, more frequently is, hey, I don't want to be Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, but I also don't want to be plain chicken. There are things here that we should be sober about and, and, yeah, genuinely worried about. It's trying to strike that balance.
I see you doing things like that, but. But also, you just have your own flavor on it. What, what are. What is your thinking now as.
As we stand, you know, a couple weeks after the arguments before the Supreme Court?
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, I, I like your. I like your framing on that. If the Supreme Court says that religious charter schools must be allowed, things will change. Right.
Things will change in every single state. It will. We will have to change every single charter law and federal law related to charters. That's, you know, 50 laws. Right.
That all the states, plus DC plus Puerto Rico and Guam, and then the federal. Federal CSP statutes. And that is tied to definitions written into federal law About. About charters.
We are not going to be in a position if, if that's the decision that the Supreme Court has, I. We could win. The question will get settled one way or another.
If this case ends up in a tie, a 4.4tie, and nothing happens there's other cases waiting in the wings to come. It. This question will get settled. If it's not this year, maybe it's in a couple years, and that's okay. Then. Then that'll be time, you know, whatever.
More time for us to plan and more time for us to think about what do we want, right? What do we want our charter law to really look like now in this new, you know, this new time that we are in? We. It is time to plan for what is next.
And, you know, I also, you know, I don't want people to panic, right? This is not something to panic about. We will get through whatever, whatever the decision is, right? We will. We will adjust. We will.
Charters will survive. We will come out the other end of this. Things will look different in some places. They could look very different, right? I can.
I can see a scenario where in some states there are public charter schools and there are private religious charter schools.
I could see a scenario where that happens in some states, and I can see a scenario where in some states, lawmakers say we're not going to do that, so we're going to change our state law to make charters have more features of publicness. The question is, you know, how, how. How organized, how proactive, how unified can we be as a community in our response to these things?
So that, so that lawmakers, you know, Covid is a great example of this. When lawmakers make policy out of panic, bad things happen, right?
And so, like, we need to make sure that when this decision comes down that we are calm and we are unified as a community, and the response will look different in every state about what we want so that lawmakers do not feel pressure to legislate out of panic. That will not be good for us.
And so we are doing a lot of work right now on the sort of proactive planning side of all of this, working very closely with state associations.
And I would just encourage anyone in charterfolk land that if you are wondering how to plug in and you are concerned and you want to talk about what the plan is going to be in your state, call your state association and talk to them about it.
Most state associations around the country at this point are having coalition meetings where they are working through thorny questions about things like what happens, right? When. When a religious charter school tries to open in our state, like, what's. What things will that kick off? What. What responses will that kick off?
And how do we be. How do we get ready for that? And what is the answer to that? And what do we want the answer to be. So anyway, there's a lot of planning going on.
There's a lot of work. I think this is actually a moment right now for us. It is a. It's a gift because this is a moment for us to.
To increase our advocacy capacity significantly in a hurry. It's an opportunity for us to increase our ability to be in coalition with each other in a hurry.
We cannot be in a situation where, you know, four or five different groups or. Or factions. Right. Of the charter community are showing up in a state capitol, all asking for something different.
When this decision comes down, that's the per. Opportunity for lawmakers to either do nothing or to do what they want instead of what. What the charter community wants. So we can't have that. Right.
And so this is a. This is a good opportunity for us to say, okay, we're going to reset how we work together.
We're going to reset how we handle big legislative problems. So it's daunting.
Jed Wallace:Sure.
Starlee Coleman:There's a lot of work ahead, but we're going to come out of this on the other end in a couple of years. Like, it's gonna be. We're gonna be in, like, a little murky middle for a while. Like, that's true.
But we're gonna come out of this, I think, with strong. Much stronger advocacy capacity. We're gonna come out of this with better charter laws.
This is an opportunity to fix things that have needed to be fixed for a long time in state laws. Like, we're. We're gonna. We're gonna get some wins out of this. Like, will things look different? Yep.
Will some states emerge with private religious charter schools as part of their policy landscape? Yep.
Jed Wallace:Could very well be. Could very well be. All right, I want to get to that advocacy stuff. You know, it's my obsession, but I can't help but just ask this question.
So can you give the backstage pass? I mean, what's it like to be in the United States Supreme Court chamber when something like this happens and just being feet away from it? I.
I've heard people talk about different gasps across the room, and it's so quiet, any one person makes any sound, you know, it's just a hallowed ground. You know, what was it like to be there?
Is there anything you can share that you might not have shared, you know, on, you know, on TV interviews or whatever, that would help charter folk understand what that experience was like to have our. Our movement in front of that bench, you know, in that way?
Starlee Coleman:Yeah, it was wild. It was Wild. It is a very small room, and it is hot in there. They need to work on the ac. It was very. It was. It was. It felt significance.
Of course, it was crowded. There was not a lot of. There were not a lot of empty seats in the room.
And I think that was really interesting because I think that tells you about that, just like the level of significance that this case has. One of the things that was really interesting. So there's.
There's a bar, a literal bar that separates where attorneys who are part of the Supreme Court bar can sit and which is right in front of the. The dais where the justices are. And then there's the sort of public seating.
One of the things I thought was interesting, and I asked somebody about this later, every seat for attorneys was taken. Every seat. And that is not normally the case in Supreme Court arguments. Yeah, every seat was taken. So I thought that was really interesting.
There were a number of former U.S. supreme Court clerks that we had worked with in various contexts on our amicus brief strategy for the charter sector who all flew in.
And it was really interesting to see, like, all of them going in together because they're allowed to go in the room first. Right? Because they had worked there before, right?
And that was really interesting to see all of these Supreme Court clerks who had worked on amicus briefs on this case on both sides, like, in the room together. That was really interesting. It was.
This is like a very random thing, but I was sitting, like, I had a direct line of sight into, like, to two, like, John Roberts, right, who sits right in the middle, and the attorneys who arguing stand at a podium, like, right in front. And you can. So you're looking at the back of them, right? And they fidget like crazy. And can you. I mean, and, like, not that I can blame them.
I would be, like, out of my mind, nervous. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you. Because. Because that's really intense thing, right? Like, they don't, you know, they talk, right?
They come up there and they, like, say their piece for a few minutes. A justice can interrupt them at any point.
There's like, no, you know, there's a rule that they have to be allowed to get through their whole, like, opening statement, right? That's. They don't have to do that. They can just, like, start firing questions at you. Can you imagine doing that for the first time?
Like, can you imagine your first time doing that? You must be, like, merely peeing your pants. I mean, it would be so stressful anyway, so there.
So anyway, that was Kind of like a fun little interesting thing about, about being there. But it, look, it was, you know, it was, it was quiet, it was crowded. And I think one of the things, like, I've been thinking about this a lot.
Like, why were, you know, when I, I went back in, I read the transcript, of course, and reading the transcript felt, it felt like it was a more balanced conversation when I read the transcript than it felt in the room. And I don't know if that's just because I, it felt, you know, I felt nervous, right, Being in there. Like, why, why are we even here?
But, but, you know, they have, they had three attorneys on their side, right, that got to talk separately.
And I think just for being in the room and like the weight of the conversation, being on their side, right, of like three very, very talented, smart, articulate attorneys, you know, making a case and being asked questions and volleying back and forth with these, these members for a long time.
I mean, I, you know, I don't know if I was tracking the clock completely accurately, but it felt like their side, right, the sort of pro religious charter school side ultimately was like about an hour and 20 minutes. That's a long time to be in the room and like, listening to, like, the other side making their case, making their case, making their case.
And our side was, you know, I don't know, 40 minutes.
And so I wonder if, like, part of the, the feeling of coming out of the room of like, oh, gosh, that didn't, that, you know, it seemed like, you know, that they were very, you know, I think people came out of that room feeling like, oh, gosh, that didn't go, that didn't go as well as we had wanted. And, and then in truth, looking back, I just wonder if it was because it was. So the time was right.
Jed Wallace:Right, right.
Starlee Coleman:Because. Because really, Greg Garr did a good job. I mean, he made all the points, strong arguments, answered questions effectively.
And I wonder if it was just that fe. Feeling of like, you know, twice as long or whatever, right? I don't know.
Jed Wallace:Yeah, well, it's just some of the charter people have said that I assumed I'm a lawyer and I just tell them I just Play 1 on TV. But I have come into contact with a lot of our legal minds, you know, across the 25 years here, and some of them in California being among the first.
I think there was an understanding and this is a part of why you guys made your legal advocacy network across the country, too. These were some of the smartest legal minds in the country.
And they also, they knew that they were doing brain surgery on the Constitution of the United States and of their states. Hey, we don't fit really well into the old boxes. And, and, and yet we know. And this was Ted Coldery's moment of genius.
You know, we needed some hybrid thing that would be able to get done, something that our existing structures had not been able to do. And they just focused there and they focus there and they focus there.
And so I think in the end, whatever comes out of the discussion, the judges are going to make the decision at least very deeply aware that a heck of a lot of great legal jurisprudence has gone into the creation of this very unique thing, the charter school movement. And they've got to make a decision, respect, respectful of that.
So, and your guys defense, your guys whole strategy has, has put that in front of the bench. So I say, hey, we've rolled the dice, we've done as best we could.
We'll see what comes on the other side and appreciate you giving the backstage pass here. Okay, we're getting close to like running out of time here. I've got two more things.
The first one is, is around this advocacy, you know, structure and how are we doing?
I mean, when they hired me at ccsa, I mean the, the, the amount of support that we had in the legislature was so paltry and basically the, the thing was, as fast as you possibly can build enough support such that if we ever have a terrible governor, the charter school movement will be okay. We almost made it. You know, we almost made it, but I just had this manic feeling every day. It's not strong enough. We gotta get there.
f CCSA, travel the country in:The state associations are our unique opportunity for doing that. I can remember being out in the wilderness and people saying to me, jed, that's never going to happen. That's never going to happen. Just whatever.
And we go to this gathering. You were there and I texted you afterwards, right? I'd had conversation after conversation, said, hey, state associations are still not strong enough.
They're not getting fast enough. They're not getting better fast enough.
But if we were to look at where they are right now versus where they were three years ago, I mean, would you agree? The state associations are getting a heck of a lot stronger right now. And without exception.
And I mean like I was feeding them the answer or whatever they were just absolute agreement. Absolutely. There's something that's happening here. It happens to happen. No disparaging comment about.
About Nina or anybody before, but it's also happening when you're coming into the role you bring, the example that you bring.
Starlee Coleman:Are.
Jed Wallace:Are we figuring this thing now or what.
Starlee Coleman:What.
Jed Wallace:What's happening? What's. What's your set?
Starlee Coleman:Love it. I do. I think I. So I think a couple of things are happening. One, funders and school leaders who are important.
School leaders obviously, like the most important constituent for a charter school association. But school leaders and funders are probably more aligned than they have ever been around.
The idea that there must be a strong, effective voice for the charter community focused only on advocacy and focused on the state capitol. I don't think that we all. I don't. I don't think that we had that agreement generally right across the land, but, you know, until pretty recently.
And there are pockets, of course, still where that. Where we don't have an argument about that, but it's coming that that is an essential.
An essential principle that has to be like, where there has to be agreement and alignment around. Around the need for that, and that creates the conditions then for people who.
Who want to win for charters to come and take these jobs at state associations. And. And it all fits together. But. But yeah, I. I agree with you completely. I mean, we are.
We are seeing, like, what Noah in Missouri was able to pull up is he was willing to use the political power that the charter community has to push the district to give them money or he fronted their bonds. Like, are you kidding? That's freaking awesome. Like, we have to be way more willing. We have. We have more political power than we act like we do.
And so we need to figure that out. Right? We have to agree that we have it, we have to harness it, and then we have to be willing to use it.
And sometimes that comes in ways that is, like, a little uncomfortable, right, For. For people leading schools. And a lot of them are like, I just. I want to get along with people, and I love kids.
And I'm, like, not doing this to, you know, be in politics. I'm doing this to be, you know, to. To show up for. For kids and families. Yeah, we're political. So.
So, like, get comfortable with it because, like, we're, you know, the bad elections have, like, really serious consequences for the charter community in a way that they do not have consequences for the district school community.
So, like, we just have to be real about that and comfortable, like stepping into the power that we have and, and also very strategic about building it and using it.
And I think, you know, I feel like I'm seeing this all over the country now, like people, people coming into these jobs and state associations who are like, let's go. Right, and like, ready to fight and, and ready to win and do what it takes to win. And that is really exciting. Yeah.
And Jed, part of that is because you have been beating this drum. I mean, you're. You are a dog with a bone in all of the right and good way to probable insufferable.
Jed Wallace:Yes, I'm.
Starlee Coleman:But you have, you have pushed us, right.
You have pushed us as a community to think about how important it is that we are strong on the advocacy front and that the state associations are the right place for that strength to lie. So you have been helpful.
Jed Wallace:I appreciate that. Thank you. Starla. Well, but it's just a new generation of leaders that have come in that, you know, have proved catalytic as well.
But I do think that, you know, the thing about the associations is we have the representativeness, we're squirrely. It's hard to build all the governance. Oh, my gosh.
These people want to go in all sorts of different directions, but we make our shared decisions, you know, and it makes them more authentic. It makes them, you know, more. Have greater credibility. And that's part of us going forward. All right, last question. Here is what I wanted to get to.
Because, I mean, if I was going to talk about the other one right now, hey, you talked to Noah, you know, Brandon and Noah, you know, I think. Were they in the same way? Did they go to. Did they go to college together? Did they do Teach for America together? I don't.
But Brandon Brown, each other, they've got like pictures themselves teaching together and stuff. But Brandon, you know, in.
Starlee Coleman:In bananas, right?
Jed Wallace:He writes at Charterfolk, he says, hey, we don't have to be chauvinists here. But there's no problem in the char. A charter advocate's got to say there's something noble and right about charter ness.
And people should want all of our public schools to become more like charters. And the key thing that charter school leaders have to do is drive agendas that reflect that. So I put this, like, it's structure and it's North Star.
The structure. I say like, the structure is like, can we build muscle cars? Can we build muscle cars? C3, C4, focused on the, you know, advocacy, all that stuff.
But then do we have a place to drive them? And I feel like Brandon's piece was really about helping us get crisper on. You're right. We have to say, you know, what that North Star is.
And yes, we have to be absolutely unapologetic about the fact that there are aspects of the charter school design that we should want manifest across more of public education. And I'm just. You and I talked about this.
You and I talked about red lines and this kind of stuff, but I also feel like our policy agendas are not that imaginative. I've been in the Tennessee legislature and people have said to me, give me the next generation of stuff. The Utah legislature, same thing.
Give it to me. I'll give you whatever you want, whatever is going to help accelerate growth. And I feel like, I mean, I have my own idea, but.
But I'm not sure we collectively do. And it doesn't matter what my ideas are, right? It's all filtered through the state associations.
And what we collectively want are our policy agendas as an. As imaginative and. And as bold and unapologetic as we need them to be right now.
Starlee Coleman:No, but I think one of the things that has to be true also for the charter community is that we, you know, it's mathless hierarchy here, right? We have to make sure that we are also taking care of the basics for schools, right? They need, you know, we.
We need to take care of the stuff that makes it hard for them to run their schools with autonomy and fidelity to their mission. And I think, I believe that when we get to a place where.
Where charter leaders are able to think sort of step back from like the red tape nightmare that they are living in and think for a minute about what is next or how could we do whatever, right? That. That we are not going to have a shortage of ideas about. About how to make things better for kids all over this country. We're not, we're not.
We don't have idea bankruptcy, right? Like, that is not what is. That is not what. That is not the problem. I think that we have right now.
Like, what we have right now is get these people off my freaking back so that I can be creative so that I can be innovative. And that, you know, feels like we, we. We. We have, we have. We have to cover them better so that they can be creative.
And these, you know, on the regulatory structure have just like, gotten completely, completely out of hand. Like completely and totally out of control in all states, red states, blue states, whatever.
Like, it's just like this, this is not the bargain that we are supposed to be operating under. And so we, you Know, we just, we need to get, we need to get back.
I think ESAs are a really good opportunity for us to say to lawmakers, hey, you know, you just gave $10,000 per kid to that school over there that has absolutely no rules done. Can we talk about our institute? This is an opportunity, right? And like we should, we should, we should take it.
So anyway, we should, we should take that.
But I will say, you know, I, I see interesting things happening still all over the place, even in the face of, you know, bureaucratic burden that is, that was never supposed to be, and including really interesting things like, you know, something that is happening here in Texas. Choose to Succeed.
San Antonio based organization is partnering with the Texas association to identify some charter leaders who had some innovative ideas about how they could be service providers in the new ESA program. And they're, you know, doing a pilot project to, to, to help charters stand up.
These like, individual, like, I think they chose five schools with like five totally different kinds of ideas about how they could be a participant, right?
And you know, take the new structure that has been created and say, okay, how do I create a little space for myself here and for our school and our network with, for innovation with this new structure? So you know, I'm, I'm encouraged by that. And, and, and, and they picked, they picked five schools, but they have a 20 schools. Send ideas to them.
Here's what we would do, right? I mean this is, we can't get there. We can get there, but we, you know, back, we can get back to the big idea place related to the policy agenda.
But we, you know, things, things have gotten weird, right, for schools on the compliance side.
Jed Wallace:All right, well this is great. I mean, I think I hear you. We don't have idea bankruptcy by any means. By any means.
One of the things I think is, I've been really excited about of late is some advocacy organizations that are really taking a longer term view, at least a decade longer into the future. And then if they look a decade into the future, they have to look a decade or more into the past.
And when you look at the chart, you cannot understand the progress of the charter school world unless you take the decade long view. And when people say, oh my goodness, in 10 years we could have that much effect. Oh, all right, sign me up.
I think you'd say that the national alliance, our national advocacy, you could break it down into decade long increments. Our first decade. Oh, we don't need any advocacy at the state, at the national level anyway.
You know, Nelson comes along and stitches something together that that works. You know, hey, Nina comes along and really made it something focused on advocacy and just built it.
And now you're taking it now into our fourth decade here, having the experience of Texas. It was essentially a nation scope that you were working on.
Starlee Coleman:But, I mean, this is everything.
Jed Wallace:Every conversation I come out of, you know, I feel like we're in good hands, darling. We're in good hands.
Starlee Coleman:Thank you.
Jed Wallace:Thank you for what you're doing. Beat on me mercilessly if you think there's something more that we can do.
But just super appreciative and thankful for the efforts that you're making.
Starlee Coleman:Thank you. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. It was good to see you. And hopefully next time in person. All right.
Jed Wallace:I love it. See you. Starlink.
