The founder of Netflix says school is about to be unrecognizable. A former mayor is talking about reading scores. A teachers' union president is boycotting Target.

Reed Hastings, Rahm Emanuel, and Randi Weingarten — Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham take the three in turn.

Reed Hastings makes the technologist's case, and Andy, who moderated his conversation with Mike Goldstein, isn't buying the analogy that carries it: personalized learning is not personalized medicine. Jed has a study out of China where homework quality soared and measured learning fell behind classrooms using no AI at all.

Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, is speaking common sense about schools at a moment when common sense sounds radical — and Andy thinks that lane is worth more than the endorsement everyone else is chasing.

And Randi Weingarten is boycotting Target, which Andy suspects has almost nothing to do with Target, while Jed thinks it will cost the sector something real.

In this episode:

• Andy on Reed Hastings the technologist — "for a lot of people in Silicon Valley, technology, it is a faith"
• Why Hastings' analogy to personalized cancer drugs struck Andy as "almost like a category error"
• The Economist's write-up of a Chinese dataset: homework quality up, measured learning down against classrooms without AI
• Jed's daughter's clinical psychology program, where a bot now stands in for a first practicum client
• Why Andy thinks the biggest gains may be teacher-facing — training, screening, and remediation rather than student tutoring
• Cognitive offloading, and why "a crappy lesson off of ChatGPT or Claude isn't any better than getting one off of Pinterest"
• Jed on AI as a force magnifier arriving exactly when adult ambivalence is at its worst
• The techlash, and Andy's insistence that the first response to a sweeping declaration should be more questions
• Liz Cohen's "Dry January for tech," and cell phone bans as "a white flag that we don't know what to do"
• Virginia: Nina's CharterFolk piece, a state with roughly seven charter schools, and a law that lets only localities authorize
• Youngkin's twenty lab schools — shipbuilding, aerospace on the Eastern Shore — and the politics threatening them
• Jed's California strategy: put a charter in all fifty-six counties and force the record
• Whether the 2020 presidential primary locked in the Democratic Party's posture toward charters — and what a 2028 field might do
• Rahm Emanuel "staking out the common sense lane," and why education reads to voters as a proxy for seriousness
• Enrollment decline, the end of COVID funding, and Jed's 2021 thought exercise about Sacramento Unified
• Randi Weingarten's boycott of Target, Andy's late-night Walmart story, and a corporate sector that had already decided education was a no-win proposition

Show Notes & Resources:

• The conversation behind this episode: Reed Hastings and Mike Goldstein, moderated by Andy Rotherham (Bellwether)
• Reed Hastings on the impact of AI on schools (The 74)
• Reed Hastings on what it will take for AI to be different from other ed tech (The 74)
• The Economist study on AI's impact on learning
• Sal Khan re-evaluates the impact of AI in schools — Chalkbeat
• Bellwether on artificial intelligence
• "Screen Bans Can Be Education's Dry January — Time for a Much-Needed Reset" — Liz Cohen, The 74
• Cell phone bans — Andy Rotherham, Eduwonk
• "The Best Answer To Many Education Questions? Another Question" — Andy Rotherham, Eduwonk
• The future of charter schools in an evolving school-choice landscape — AEI survey (AZ, FL, UT)
• Musical chairs — Andy Rotherham, Eduwonk
• The AFT, Target, and teachers' retirement funds — Wall Street Journal opinion
• The PBA's letter to the teachers union — New York Post (2014)
• Learn about and support Andy's work for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Eduwonk
• CharterFolk

Hosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)

Sponsor WonkyFolk: Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Sponsorship packages are available, including live WonkyFolk events. Reach out to Jed Wallace at [email protected] for more information.

Watch the full video on YouTube.

WonkyFolk is produced by CharterFolk.

Jed Wallace 0:01

Hey Andy, I'm doing well.

Andy Rotherham 0:02

Hey Jed, how are you?

Jed Wallace 0:04

It's been way too long.

Andy Rotherham 0:06

It has been— it's been a great summer though for both of us, so that's why I had a good summer.

Jed Wallace 0:09

Yeah, well, you've been like— where all you been? I've been having a hard time keeping up with you. You were, were you in Iceland or something like this?

Andy Rotherham 0:17

We went to Iceland for the eclipse. I actually got to with my kids. We've been there before, we love it, and we were just like, let's go see some friends in Iceland and hang out. And if we get the eclipse, that'll be great. And if we miss it, we still get to do a bunch of great hiking in Iceland. And with, you know, the age my kids are at, you don't get so much time with them. So that was awesome. And then Julie and I spent a bunch of time in France, cycling. We needed to train for a ride we did this summer for the Pan-Mass Challenge that I do every year for Dana-Farber. And I was like, you can train here in the places we always train, or we can go to Normandy. And so we got a little place in Normandy and just rode around. So we had a great summer, a little time at the beach, a little time in the mountains.

Jed Wallace 0:54

Was it a special anniversary this year for you guys?

Andy Rotherham 0:57

It was twenty-five. We wanted to go on the trip with you. I was sorry that didn't work out. Julie's dream has been to celebrate our twenty-fifth with you, and so, yeah, no, so you had this great trip that I was sorry I couldn't be on.

Jed Wallace 1:05

Hey, that's a sign of questionable judgment there, but it was terrific.

Andy Rotherham 1:18

You went up into the Bob.

Jed Wallace 1:21

It was cool. And I really, you know, I grew up in Colorado, spent a lot of time in the mountains, did a lot of backpacking, but I don't remember seeing as few humans for an entire week. So it was cool. And we didn't see a ton of wildlife, but the wildlife that we saw was extremely cool. We saw a lynx, you know, and we got back and our guide was like, wait, you saw the lynx? I showed him the picture. He's like, look, you have to understand, this is a reportable event. This happens so infrequently that researchers want to know whenever we see a lynx. I said, okay, well, whatever. So, just one example, really cool stuff. There's some great fishing there, Andy. I think maybe I can talk you into a return trip for us to go get some bull trout and go get some cutthroat.

Andy Rotherham 2:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Now that I know that you're a mandatory reporter too, I'll feel like safe going with you.

Jed Wallace 2:04

So it'll be a good thing. And you got— well, you have Edgy Fish coming on in another month or so, right?

Andy Rotherham 2:09

Yeah, we got a good group.

Jed Wallace 2:13

Or a few weeks.

Andy Rotherham 2:14

We're going to spend some time. Every year we get like either a real high-profile Dem or high-profile R for the alternate for an off-the-record conversation. So it's good. It's going to be a great event. We've been able to expand it a little bit. You know, we're in a pretty rural mountain town, so we can only accommodate so many people. But so there's a waitlist. And so I apologize to everybody who's on it. But it's good, yes, I'm looking forward to that. It's a good crew and a good time. We got some great sponsors this year, so it's gonna be a nice event.

Jed Wallace 2:44

That's cool. Well, it's been a— sounds great, sounds cool.

Andy Rotherham 2:46

Yeah, if that's something that sounds like you'd be interested in, a real outdoors-oriented gathering of education professionals, you hit me up. I think a lot of people listening know where to find me. If you don't, [email protected].

Jed Wallace 2:59

Well, we get together frequently enough, I get to know what your ideas are or thoughts are about a lot of things. And now it's been whatever it's been, three months, I think, since Pat, I think. So there have been many times where I've been thinking, I wonder what Andy's making of this. So I got my list.

Andy Rotherham 3:15

You want— is Andy a Lake Ontario or a Lake America guy? Is that the kind of thing you wonder about?

Jed Wallace 3:21

Yeah, yeah. I was more thinking about, I want to dive into your recording with Reed Hastings. And great, awesome job.

Andy Rotherham 3:29

Yeah, we should talk about it. Before we do that, we should tell people what they're listening to. This is the WonkyFolk podcast with Jed Wallace of CharterFolk. And I'm Andy Rotherham with Bellwether. Our long-suffering producer asks that you please like and subscribe. It helps with the algorithms. And honestly, if you don't want to do it for Jed or I, if you're one of the people who listens because we annoy you and so you sort of hate listen, that's fine. Do it for our producer who really is like— you can only imagine what that poor guy puts up with. So don't do it for us, do it for him if that makes it easier. But we would appreciate if you not only download, but actually subscribe at the various places you get your podcasts and like it and so forth. And you can learn more about both of our work at CharterFolk and at Bellwether, just Google and you can find us.

Jed Wallace 4:18

That's maybe the best one we've had yet, Andy. We're gonna like, we're gonna delegate this responsibility to you for every podcast.

Andy Rotherham 4:25

Sad thing is that's the best one out of like forty. That's what it's taken.

Jed Wallace 4:30

Our best one is, please take pity on us, even if we suck, or because we suck, you know, like us, or do so for our long-suffering editor here. So that was clever. I like that. But look, come on, I'm dying to get into this conversation you had with Reed Hastings. I thought it was terrific. And, you know, I've also just— you really had to play straight man, and both of them, Mike and Reed Hastings, were just riffing off cool stuff, I'll just stay out of the way and let these people say their stuff. You shared a few little comments here and there, but I could also see that your own processing was happening. Share what your reflections are on the conversation and anything that's followed up since it, because I bet you've gotten a lot of feedback from it since recording it.

Andy Rotherham 5:17

Yeah, well, first of all, just kudos to Reed Hastings and Mike Goldstein. I find in this sector we got lots of people who have like lots of takes, but then they don't want to be on panels or discuss them and be challenged, you know. And you look at somebody like Reed Hastings and what he's accomplished, you know, in business and so forth, like he doesn't have to do any of this if he doesn't want to. And so it's a real credit that I read these— it was with him, it was a podcast he'd done that then The 74 ran a transcript of that I read. Mike wrote an article with a colleague of his for The Atlantic. And I was like, these are two really interesting takes on this that diverge. These are two smart people who I've known in this work for a long time and respect. So I just sent them a note, was like, hey, would you guys want to do this? And they were both like, yeah, sure. And I was like, I don't want to have a debate. This isn't theater, but let's like actually just talk about this because it seems interesting. And so I was really— a credit to both of them for that. The thing that struck me, I just found it like it was a classic Reed Hastings, a technologist. He has a deep faith in technology. For a lot of people in Silicon Valley, like, you know, technology, it is a faith. They have a faith in what will happen. I think he's right about sort of the pace that AI is improving at. And so we should be humble about what it will and will not be able to do, you know, five, ten years from now.

Jed Wallace 6:32

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Rotherham 6:33

You know, and I wouldn't bet against it. That bet on technology has proven to be a very good bet. That, you know, really, I mean, not just the Silicon Valley, but throughout human history.

Jed Wallace 6:40

Yep.

Andy Rotherham 6:40

Jed Wallace 7:38

Right.

Andy Rotherham 7:39

At the end, Reed had this interesting observation that hit home with me. I was talking about if we're going to personalize education, if you look at what we've done over the last twenty years with personalizing news, I'm hard-pressed to find a case that that's really been good for us. Algorithmic delivery of news seems like it's one of the things that's sort of polarizing as it creates, like, centrifuges on the right and the left. And so I asked him about that, and I was like, so we're going to personalize education. Is that risk just extending this problem? And his answer was interesting. He's like, look at cancer drugs. Look how personalized they are, which I get. As I said, I ride my bike across Massachusetts every summer to raise money for Dana-Farber to support that kind of work because it's so important. But to me, that was almost like a category error. Like personalized cancer drugs are amazing and what they can do with gene therapies now.

Jed Wallace 8:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Rotherham 8:29

And what's going to happen there is going to transform cancer treatment. And that's exciting and that's going to be great. It doesn't follow from that, though, that everything should be personalized in education. It's just different. But Reed Hastings comes at it with that technology sort of framework and belief. Okay, personalization, it's going to be good. I thought that was kind of revealing about like one theory of the world, and then Mike is then bringing his different one.

Jed Wallace 8:53

Yeah, I loved Mike's comment about, well, you know, there's some things that are just not that fun to learn, but there's something about being in a class together and going through it almost as a rite of passage, and they're all rolling their eyes about it.

Andy Rotherham 8:57

What do you think?

Jed Wallace 9:11

But they actually learn it in the context of, you know, that unfunness. And how do you replicate that with all this individualized learning and all this stuff? So I thought Mike was full of interesting comments. I just thought it was a terrific conversation and was just very happy that you did it. I thought that it was interesting. The Economist came out with a pretty, you know, a big article. They referred to a dataset coming out of China, which is really big. I think it's the biggest one that's been done yet, which was evidence all the way through courses that the quality of homework that these students were doing was at a whole other level, no doubt about it. But when they tested at the end, the learning that had occurred was way lower than classrooms without AI.

Sorry.

I think that what Sal Khan's been saying is similar. A tempered reaction to how this stuff is going to actually help students learn. I think Reed Hastings comes back to, well, if it's about engagement, if it's about motivating kids to learn, technology can be optimized around that and we'll figure it out over time. And I think that's— we will see. We'll see. I love his optimism. But I'm not sure we have any early indicators that technology or AI is even close in that category.

No, there's a lot of work. I think like it's, but like that question, his point about how fast it is improving is compelling.

Yeah.

He looks at what some of the curriculum companies are doing. Like I'm skeptical. You saw me— he had, there was some bets flying back and forth and I took the under on some of them. But like, so I'm somewhat skeptical on some of this, but I do think the pace of change, people, some of these companies, and now you have, I mean, there's education companies that are doing curriculum and the AI is actually revising the curriculum on an ongoing basis. And so the product cycles have just collapsed in terms of timelines and so forth. And so I don't know, I think it may not be as transformative as some of the biggest boosters argue. And there's also this whole custodial function of education that we talked about some, but I think the people who think it's going to have no impact and it's just going to bounce off are wrong. One of the things, and honestly, for me, I'm most excited about the stuff that's actually teacher-facing and administrative-facing, the performance tools and so forth. That's where I think we actually may see some of the biggest bangs for this. And there's real potential there to really change the job of teachers and address some of the things that teachers have to do that are routinized and could be done by AI and free them up. And so we talked in that conversation about some of the downsides. If teachers aren't teaching content, it makes the job less attractive because, you know, particularly at the high school level, they're getting into it because they want to do that. But there's also a bunch of things that could make the job more attractive, particularly like special education is an obvious use case, but there's some other.

Yeah, yeah, well, I'm recording from my daughter's new apartment. She's moving, she's starting a clinical psychology doctoral program. And it was interesting, we were here for her first day after class to debrief it with her. She shared with us that for their first practicum, it's really hard to get that first practicum and get enough time with humans and, you know, all of the supervision that's needed. They have designed now a bot for the psychologist, you get your client and this bot now can really test these students early in their careers about what their reactions are. I thought it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect, right? It's the example like, hey, whether or not what the student's experience of AI is going to be as he's learning or she's learning to read is one thing. But wait a sec, as a practitioner, we can now really model all sorts of challenges that kids have that we can present now to teachers and refine their practice much more quickly than we would otherwise. So, when you're talking about the professional— yeah.

And targeted training for teachers. If you're struggling with something, we can give you a bunch of at-bats around it. I think it could be transformative on labor because right now, essentially, to remove a low-performing teacher, you have to let them demonstrate for a very long time that they're a low-performing teacher. And this could present, I think, a lot of sort of VR. There's like some companies that have sort of noodled around with it, but I think like AI is going to take it to a whole nother level, like the ability to change how we train, screen, remediate teachers. And so you don't necessarily have to do all those things on live kids all the time, which would be great.

Yeah, yeah. I guess I would say in terms of just pulling back and the macro, the thing I'm concerned about, right, it seems to me as though AI is just this force magnifier in all sorts of different directions. What's good can become great. What's bad can become god-awful.

Right.

And, you know, if we give AI to students and they basically use it as a crutch, it could make things much, much worse. So what it seems to me is though we need a moment in education where the adults are not ambivalent. Where we are very clear about why we're doing this thing. What are the skills we think our kids need to learn? And I think if we were crisper and if we were more adamant, if we could get over our damn ambivalence now, or malaise, or however we want to describe it, I think it would be critically important, you know, as we go into this AI era. I'm— but the thing is, when the malaise has been the very worst, when our ambivalence has been the very worst, is right now. When this technology happens. And that gives me pause as much as anything else I know of as it relates to AI anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's right. And we also just need to be clear-eyed about the people who just want to ban it. I mean, you can do that in the early grades, and there's probably some real case on banning when you're talking about agentic AI and you're talking about young kids, but you're not going to be able to ban this at the high school level. We're not going to ban it at a societal level, obviously. And so there needs to be some realism that we do need to learn to adapt to this and so forth. And so I think the real detractors and the real boosters are sort of missing where the action is. And a big piece of it for me is how do you train and support teachers? I mean, you talked about the recent study that The Economist wrote up coming out of China. You talk to teachers, they're seeing that kids hitting it out of the park on out-of-school assignments. They struggle with anything in class that's not technology-aided. That's a problem. That means like, you know, the word is cognitive offloading. Basically, it's not doing the work. They're having the AI do the work. Like helping teachers learn how to use these tools to design things, teach in that way is hugely important. So you talk, you know, like it does just reveal stuff that's bad. It makes it worse. So if you don't like teachers getting— this example I use a lot— you don't like teachers getting lessons off of Pinterest at, you know, eleven o'clock at night on Sunday night.

Right.

Like, having them get it out of ChatGPT isn't any better. Now, if there's good tools that actually help them build those lessons and so forth in really good ways, well, that can then be an enhancer.

Yeah.

But just getting a crappy lesson off of ChatGPT or Claude isn't any better than getting one off of Pinterest. All we've made it is a little bit more efficient and frictionless, but we haven't actually improved anything there. And so I think that human dimension around training, supporting teachers and so forth is going to be huge. And no one is doing a good job on that. You talk to teachers, even like the most well-resourced places with big AI initiatives, and they're frustrated. And most places are not either well-resourced on this or doing big kind of, you know, change initiatives.

So how do you put this conversation in context with the broader techlash happening? And look, I mean, I think Haidt's research on phones and social media and the like button in 2013 and all— now we're seeing the banning of phones, we're seeing the banning of screens. These— I mean, I'll start out. I just don't think these policies are designed to long endure. I think they're a political reaction. There's people just irked. There's— people are worried about their kids, and look, I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about here, but these blanket bans that we seem to see across entire school districts like LA Unified, or essentially across entire states, as they're mandating a restriction of use of technology in the classroom. Do you think this stuff is gonna long endure, or is it like, oh, a couple years and then we're gonna be on to the next thing?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, so first of all, I think that you gotta— and we can put in the show notes, I wrote a piece a while ago. I was like, on any of this stuff, not just edtech, just anything in education, when anyone has like one of these declarations about things, your first sort of response should probably be more questions. Because like the techlash, like what are we talking about? We're talking about social media and stuff kids are doing out of school. Are we talking about edtech? Are we talking about AI? Because those are distinct. They're getting mashed up. The anxiety about AI is sort of showing up at schools at the same time you've got this concern about screens. And then like, what are they being used for, right? So everybody's like, let's get tech out of school. And then they discover actually we've just made this huge pivot to online assessment, which is what everybody said they wanted, right? So you can't like— it's all mashed up.

Right, exactly.

So your first question should be more questions like, what age group are we talking about for what purpose? So that's the first thing. But I do think if the tech industry doesn't get its act together to start talking about quality rather than just quantity, they will lose because these bans are all like a hundred eighty minutes, a hundred fifty minutes, a hundred twenty minutes, whatever it is, rather than like, are these tools any good? Are there signals of quality? And are we providing people with evidence on that? Because if the tool is not good, then it should be zero minutes. And if it's good, we probably want to have a conversation about where do you build in discretion on how that tool should be used. That's my first reaction. Liz Cohen, we can put this in the show notes, had an interesting piece where she was like, we don't need maybe long-term bans, but maybe some of these bans are a little like Dry January for tech. Like maybe we just need a little pause. And Dry January doesn't mean you never have a cocktail again, but it means you take a little break and reflect on what your situation is there. And that goes to your point, like people can't be ambivalent. Maybe we need something like that. Like Dry January makes people not ambivalent. They're making a conscious, deliberate choice. By the way, I have to just, as someone who's part owner of a cocktail bar in Boston, Dry January is a terrible idea and I don't recommend it. But if you do, you're not being ambivalent. You're making a conscious choice there about what you're doing, right? And so she's saying something like that, which is sort of intermediary, that maybe we just kind of catch our breath, think about what's going on. And I think there may be something to that. But yeah, you can't ban your way out of this. I'm fine with the cell phone bans, but we should acknowledge what they are and are not. They're not like really a reform. They're basically a white flag that we don't know what to do, so we surrender. And maybe, who knows, we just had these huge settlements with the tech companies that are now settling, is going to be a bunch of money. And so maybe some of that money can be used to actually help think about this stuff more, do more support and training. We can have— rather than running headlong into this, we can have a more thoughtful conversation.

Yeah, it's complicated.

Yeah, I always hope for that. I'm always disappointed, but I always hope.

I think that education is this canvas that the politicians want to paint their pictures on, and when the constituents want them to do something, what do they do? Well, they do it within the schools, but— yep.

Yeah, right, because they control it. That's all they control. They don't control the out-of-school time. And like, if you're watching like Australia, they're really struggling. They had this ban, everybody's like, oh, this is great, like this is the Jonathan Haidt stuff. And like, it's not working well. They've got problems. You can't really control what kids do except in school. You get some degree of control. So I think that's also part of the issue here, Jed. Like, I think we can all agree on the harms on a lot of this stuff. The remedies are more complicated, right?

Yeah, right.

So like two really good examples of that, like sports betting is a mess right now, but the actual remedies are more complicated because like if you just ban it, it'll go offshore and there's argument you'll even have less leverage and so forth. Pornography, probably not good for kids. I think we can all kind of agree there's a real harm there, but in a liberal society with a robust First Amendment, like, how do you actually treat adults in that context? Should they have to register with something that's going to create a record, or should they be able to access material that they want to access, you know, in a consensual way on their own? That's complicated. A lot of these questions, people have like these easy answers, but they actually bump up against really difficult things. We're at a point where we've identified the problems. A lot of the solutions are trickier.

Yeah, and I think we're at this moment when technology is moving so rapidly that we need a lot of different innovation. We need people going in a lot of different directions, figuring things out, reporting back. And yet we have perhaps as one-size-fits-all or blanket policies happening in this space as we've ever had. And I don't know how we ever get to the point where we can realize that that kind of blanket approach is almost always, even from the policy itself, wrong. But the other thing that's just completely not taken into account is the taking of agency from educators, you know, in school after school after school. And when you reduce agency and ownership, the cultural costs are very, very high, and we just don't respect our educators enough to make good decisions with these kinds of issues. And I'd like for us, especially in an era when we know that the future is going to be changing at a pace we've never, you know, seen before, be a little bit more modest in our policymaking in the education world, especially also when we know that education's the most overregulated industry we probably have in modern life.

Well, underregulated and overregulated in different ways, right? Like, I would argue more we just don't get the balance of that right at all. There's examples of both.

Well, overregulated in terms of just, you know, a ton of statute and regulation on everybody. Underregulated in that, you know, crappy schools get to keep operating forever. And you know, we should, if that's what you mean. Is that what you mean, or just think something different?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

We do a poor job. Like, there's too many people who are working in schools who shouldn't be in proximity to kids. Like, we ought to be regulating that, yet meanwhile we're micro-regulating a bunch of other stuff that you're like, is this better? To your point, better to handle with some degree of discretion and freedom.

Yeah, well, let me ask you about Virginia. I've had it come up several times, had some conversations with Nina on a variety of different topics that I said, hey, you want to write something for CharterFolk? And she said, yeah, I do. Well, what would you be most excited to write about? Jed, I really want to write about Virginia. I was like, that's a great idea. Please do that. And so I thought she wrote a really interesting piece. I've had regular contact with Katie as she's trying to make an association there. You and I have been, you know, talking about it.

This is Katie. This is Katie who's launching a charter school association here in Virginia.

Yes, exactly. And so she's going to be writing for us here. I mean, Katie and I have had an interesting conversation. I think, are there seven charter schools in Virginia? But the data coming out of them, there's like one school that's like a specialty school serving a very alternative population. There's one school that is very, very low-income kids, far exceeding prediction. And then the other five, not serving a representative population, but just nailing it on your guys' new accountability system there. So it's a very compelling case. We don't have that many charter schools in Virginia, but the ones that we have are great. Why the heck aren't we growing these things? But, I mean it.

Well, yeah, we did grow. So Nina's piece was great. It was funny when I got back, I had an email bump from her and then I had the one she wrote. She writes fast. She reached out to be like, hey, would you want to talk about this? But I was in Iceland and not on email. And then she banged it out. It's a great piece. Look, I mean, so first of all, a little context. Yes, we have these charter schools and they sort of come and go. The numbers always hovered in that ballpark. You know, the trading range has been low. And the reason for that is because under our charter law, only localities can authorize them. So the local school district has to sign off on the charter school, which— and we point this out a lot because it is absurd. It is literally like saying McDonald's has to sign off if a Five Guys can open.

Yeah.

You know, that sounds absurd because of course it is. And so there's both the education culture, people don't like choice, and then statutorily and constitutionally, we're a very strong local control state that goes back, you know, to massive resistance and a bunch of other stuff. So the state can do a little more. And Glenn Youngkin, when he was governor, he opened twenty of these lab schools, but they had to be funded by the state. But they were in partnership with colleges and universities. There was a big fight about whether or not they should be able to be private colleges too. Some of our great HBCUs are private, like Hampton. And so if you didn't allow privates, you exclude schools like that. But some people didn't like that. Some people, a lot of people didn't like choice. People want to be able to control the choice. And so there's a whole bunch of stuff, but a bunch of them opened. They're interesting. There's a couple focused on shipbuilding, which is obviously in our, you know, it's a national priority and issue. But we have Norfolk here. And, you know, so there's obviously a lot of shipbuilding.

Right, right.

We got one on the Eastern Shore focused on aerospace, which is cool. And like, people don't realize how much spaceflight is going to be happening out of Wallops Island rather than Florida, particularly because of climate change, NASA's going to be having to move its operations. It's going to get harder and harder to get launch windows with weather in Florida.

Yeah.

And so like having an aerospace charter school, particularly in a relatively underserved area of the state, it's exciting. Healthcare, tech, obviously. So a variety of tech applications. They're cool. But they're super controversial. Whether or not they're going to survive is, you know, politically an open question, which is infuriating because like this is exactly what we ought to be— if you care about public education, you ought to be providing these kinds of options. But that's the reason I tell you all that, that story, is that is super controversial. I suspect in most places people like lab partnership schools between colleges, universities, school districts to offer these things. That's controversial. That sounds crazy. And it is crazy in any kind of national concept. But you can imagine if that's a flashpoint, you can imagine where charter schools go. And so Nina's like, yeah, nothing ever came before the board. And honestly, the board for a long time was completely unfriendly to charters. And so it was endogenous. People didn't bring stuff because they knew you were going to get a no. So why bother?

Right, right.

There's no point. There's no remedy. It's not like California where if you get turned down, you can then go someplace else. It's not like Tennessee where you have this incentive. If you keep turning them down, you're going to lose your ability to do this. You keep saying no to schools that end up opening and being good, you lose your ability to do it. We have nothing like that. And so nobody came because it was just like a performative dog and pony show. What was the point? So I don't know. I mean, I think Spanberger's three big things, she needs to get school improvement, that, you know, Youngkin put in place the accountability system, which is really important. And we're finally— but there's a whole school improvement piece that needs to happen. She needs to fix the finance system, because our school finance system is dreadfully inefficient and out of date. And she needs to modernize assessments. Those are three big lifts that need to happen. There's not a lot of room for choice there. It's not popular. It's coalition splitting. And so I hope she can see her way to keeping the lab schools because kids are taking advantage of these. They're good for public education. I mean, again, there's all this ideological bullshit, but they're good for public education because they give people options and make them happy to be in public schools, which we're in a declining enrollment situation. That seems important. But I don't think there's going to be room for like super robust stuff on choice in the near term. And ultimately, it really is a constitutional question and it takes a lot to get a constitutional— as people saw with this redistricting thing that got overturned, it's like the process to actually get a constitutional referendum on the ballot in Virginia is very laborious and complicated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you said that people aren't bringing charters to local areas because it's just a performative exercise, but that's essentially what Nina's suggestion was, hey, let's get some new charters going at local levels and let's put some pressure on.

Or, I'm sorry, to the state board. They're not bringing them up to the state because like they can't do anything. So, and if the board's not charter-friendly, you're going to get turned down. And there was a window where the board became charter-friendly, but it won't be for long.

And when the schools are good, you have a compelling case for not a hundred more, but hey, let's have a half dozen more.

Totally.

Do you think that's viable? I mean, if we put together some— right.

Well, there's superintendents who are doing it. We had a superintendent named Pam Moran, Albemarle County, who opened some. There's a guy there, assistant superintendent Chad Ratliff, who still runs one. It's very innovation focused. So there's people are into this. Loudoun County opened some. Fairfax was not interested. That was an ideological decision. They were against this, which is crazy because you've got low-cost privates coming in this area. We're going to have an Alpha School. BASIS is open. Like, there is going to be competition. And so they should be thinking about how they want to adapt. But Loudoun County was like, yeah, let's— and so they opened a couple of these with George Mason, which is great. And so, you know, but it was all just so political and there was pressure being put on higher ed institutions not to participate. It's just like industrial grade stupid and waste of energy for things that are good for kids and families. We should be offering— if you don't wanna have more choice in the private system, you gotta offer it through the public system. People are not gonna put up with not having options indefinitely. And the lack of vision on sort of getting in front of that and addressing it is really striking.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you talk about California's authorizing structure being one where you can appeal and you got a chance at the end. Well, essentially in 2019, they wiped out the state board as the third step. And we have a lot of schools now that are in precarious political situations. I wrote about this recently. Upwards of, I think it was nine hundred, more than nine hundred of the thirteen hundred schools in California are in this middle band where basically the school district can like choose whether to renew the school or not. And Oakland Unified decided to close down an Aspire school, and Aspire appealed to the county. The county's essentially very aligned with the union and with the school district, so it's not really a viable appeal body. And then we go up to the state level, and the state board says, well, because of this confusing new law, we don't even know if we can do anything, we're going to take no action. So it's, you know, it's complicated in California. But the thing that, you know, I think is really interesting to look at is California has continued to grow. I left in 2019. There are eighty thousand more kids in charter schools today than there were then.

Is that related?

And a lot— well, I mean, when I started, we had two hundred seventy.

Is that correlation or causation?

When we left, we had six hundred. Six seventy. So, I mean, there was growth while I was there, and there's been growth since.

You did more than your bit, man. I'm just giving you a hard time.

But the really hard thing to face is there are parts of the state that lean red. And you go and get a charter, you approve an appeal for a charter, or apply for a charter in like Merced or the Central Valley or in Orange County or in the Inland Empire, you're going to get charters approved. And people are going there. But then in these other parts of the state, there is declining enrollment. There's some variations here. People wouldn't necessarily apply for a charter everywhere, but there are many places outside those redder areas of California where we would grow if we could. But people by and large don't even apply now because they don't think they can get it. And so now we have legislators in the California, you know, capital saying, oh, but there was no big setback for charters and no one's applying anyway. Well, you know, so, I mean, you saw Caprice when she was at Navigator.

Right, we have that same argument. It's endogenous. People were like, no, no one wants them. And it's like, no, no one's wasting their time.

It was awesome, you know, when she had tried there in Salinas Valley to get new charters going and how great Navigator is. Academically. Who wouldn't want more Navigator schools? And yet the vote wasn't really very close. But I keep saying to our people in California, I think we need to send a signal. We got fifty-six counties in California. Let's make sure we got one or two charters in all fifty-six of these counties, and let's force people to vote these things down. And let's create the record, the track record, that the policy in California now is not consistent with what parents and communities want. I think that's basically what Nina believes is the case in Virginia as well. Let's get some new charters going. Hopefully a few of them are approved. Let's be smart. Let's go where we can get charters going. But if they don't get approved, well, the signal it sends to policymakers that change is needed is just a much more compelling one.

Yeah, so stay tuned. I mean, I think it's going to be a while in Virginia, but you know, at some point we'll get there. At some point— I mean, charter schools are such a fact of life and such a big part of the D.C. system, it's sort of embarrassing. And at some point that will have an effect, but we're a little ways from that right now. And as I said, the governor, she has like a couple of big priorities she needs to address to keep education improvement moving forward here. And so she's gonna have her hands full anyway.

And is Virginia just going to stay totally out of the new federal, you know, whatever the right language for this is, right?

I don't know what we're going to do. The EFTC, the federal tax credit, I don't know what we're going to do.

Tax incentive.

So Governor Youngkin opted us in on the way out the door. You know, states could opt in early. The regulations are still not out, which is— I mean, I'm old enough to remember when the regulations were coming in the spring. So everyone's kind of like these states. I think people need to wait to see the regulations before you make a final decision. But we're actually in right now. So she would have to opt us out, which is politically a little bit more awkward. And I think if you look at the demographics, both the eligibility levels for people to be able to participate in it and the number of people in Virginia who would hit the donor thresholds and could donate, I think it'll be a problem politically because you'll be able to show all this money, particularly from the wealthier parts of the state, that's going out of state to other places. So I think she's in a little bit of a pickle, but in a weird way, maybe Youngkin did her a favor because if she does nothing, we're in it. She doesn't actually have to do anything because we're already in it. So, and then if she wants to get out of it, if there's some big high-profile problem or something. So in a way, he kind of gave her a little bit of a pass. She can sort of say, look, my hands were tied, we're already in. But, you know, like a lot of governors and, you know, the new head of the NEA is from Virginia.

Yeah.

She's under a lot of pressure. You know, there's a lot of pressure for Democrats to fall in line on this. You know, Hochul's been saying she's probably in, which makes— if you understand anything about the structure of school finance and private schools and how that works in New York, like it makes perfect sense for her to do that. Polis has been saying all along he's going to be in in Colorado. That'll be another one. So will the next governor decide though to reverse that? I don't know. I think it's going to be very difficult for blue states. And there's a lot of public school activity spinning up around this. I think there's huge opportunities. I don't know. It seems like there's opportunities. You want to find ways to pay teachers more over the summer to have them doing interesting work. There's all kinds of ways to support various kinds of enrichment activities for kids. I don't know. It seems like there's a lot of promise here if you actually get in front of it. There's plenty of risk. There's plenty of stuff to be concerned about around sort of quality, around— there's questions around, you know, civil rights and public dollars, all of that. But there's also, I think, big opportunities for people who want to do interesting stuff to have a new revenue stream to do that.

Do you have any new read on how that tax credit is rolling out nationally? It's, I mean, it's not specific to the tax credit, but we saw the survey information coming out of CERN and AEI around ESA growth in Arizona and Utah and new alarm that maybe charter schools aren't going to grow as fast as they have in the past. We've talked about this subject, you know, several times, how big, how small. I don't really have anything

Yeah, yeah, I am still worried about charters just in general. I mean, I think the ESA stuff— there's going to be some bad headlines, like people are going to start taking a close look at some of these states where they've expanded. You know, and the interesting paradox on choice, like the early voucher programs had pretty compelling results in the sense they're obviously doing no harm. There was, you know, some benefits. As these programs universalize and expand, like those effects go away, for pretty obvious reasons. And so like the political momentum has grown even as the research becomes less compelling. So there's going to be some attention on all that. I think the question must be like, is it enough that you get some re-regulation? Some of these places, there are states that do test kids who are in these programs. And like you talk to some people like, oh, that would never work. And it's like, well, like that works. That's Indiana. Texas is going to be doing that. That's like Tuesday in Indiana. It's not— you know, so I don't know, we will see. I do think the federal one will end up being big. I think it may sputter a little bit at first, but once people figure out how to get donors, how to reach them, particularly some of the subtle stuff in the regulations in terms of what they allow, I think it will actually grow fairly robustly. Now what that looks like— it may grow a lot on the public school side, which will make some of its boosters very disappointed. But I think there'll end up being a lot of participation because there's no such thing as free money, obviously, but it's as close as you're going to get to free money in public finance.

Okay, well, so I think you and I are kind of on the same trajectory on that topic, but you throw a zinger in there, you're more— yeah.

I still think the musical chairs— we could throw the musical chairs thing in there— we'll see. It's gonna be interesting to watch. And again, we got to see the regulations. These things take time. Like, spring was probably a little overambitious, but I am surprised that it's August and they are still not out. Like, at some point this becomes a problem if you're trying to like stand up an SGO and you want to know what you need to do and what's not. And so that will start to have some consequence on uptake the first year, which will then have some political consequence coming to a presidential election.

So you throw in your zinger there about worried about charters. I mean, I'm definitely worried. I want— what's new? Is that— I've got a couple new things or whatever.

You should always be worried about charters, Jed. If you're not worried about charters, how— you can't raise money.

Well, come on, what are your new data points here about why you're so bitter on charters?

Our role should be reversed. You should be like in full panic mode. And I just think the choice market's going to get more and more crowded, and the political market is difficult for charters. That seems like a bad combination. You know, you have the centrists like charters, but you have people on the right who either don't like them, you have rural superintendents and so forth. The choice thing complicates their life. And then you have all the folks who want ESAs and private school choice. That's where all the energy is on that side. And then on the left, the centrists like charters, but no one on the left— like, you know, the DSA is not a charter-loving organization. And so you'll see people leave some of this stuff alone because they don't disrupt families and all. But you're not seeing a big appetite to protect or grow it. So I think there's some real challenges.

I think, because I just, in the immediate term, I mean, we've talked about this before, and we're adding about a hundred thousand kids a year in charter school enrollment nationally, and I think that's pretty good. I think it should be faster, and I think we could be moving with greater urgency, and I think anything in this landscape that has a sense of momentum would gather a lot more attention, and, you know, I don't think it would be that hard to drive a big momentum story in charters these days. In comparison to everything else. But, you know, two things that are definitely sobering. One is the return to SCOTUS, and I don't have an answer for that. And if it happens, I just— that is a way that, like, you know, generations of effort could be, you know, sidelined or erased, or I don't know what the right word is.

Yeah, well, you can't make this stuff up. They needed to find a school that Barrett wouldn't have to recuse herself on, so they found a Jewish day school. Like, you can't make this stuff up.

So it's so crazy. But also, I think we have, like, at this point, we have more than thirty new private school programs in states across the country. If you want to fund a religious school, you've got the mechanisms to do it now.

Yeah, no, that's why it's counterproductive.

There's no need to just drop a bomb in the middle of something that's serving four million kids like this. The second piece, I will concede, these are storm clouds on the horizon, which is what happens, you know, in the next primary, the presidential primary. And we didn't really have one in 2024 on the Dem side. So basically, I think the national narrative for charter schools in terms of where we stand in the Democratic Party, it was locked in in the 2020 presidential primary where the NEA paraded everybody out in front of them and all of them just beat charters in the face, beat us up, beat us up.

And that turned out great. Yep, totally.

And I just feel like our world is not working aggressively enough to have a different, more complicated conversation. Maybe Rahm Emanuel can stand up and say a few things that are nice about us. But what I see is a field emerging where, you know, in order to get the NEA endorsement, they're going to be falling over themselves to be bashing us as much as they did, you know, six years ago.

Well, we'll see. I mean, one other storm cloud we should note on all this stuff is like we hit peak kid a couple of years ago. Enrollment decline— they're going to put a pressure on everyone and we can talk about that. So that's like one of the big storm clouds kind of hidden in plain sight and people are not talking about, and then the public schools are sort of accelerating that by making themselves, in some cases, repellent to people, private school enrollment's going up.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like a bad— there's a whole set of things there. In terms of the presidential politics, like one optimistic scenario would be that a lot of people are going to be realistic enough to know they're not going to get the NEA endorsement. And so then it's like, I can run around and say all this stuff that repels voters for no good reason, or I can actually just speak some common sense, and Rahm seems to be staking out the common sense lane. That's just what he's talking about, stuff like, hey, you want your kids to learn to read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You care more about that than you care about all these social culture war fights. You want a good school. You want to know that your kid's going to programs and stuff that are going to help them get a good job afterwards. And so there may be some other people who just decide, you know what, I probably should just be speaking some common sense

Yeah.

rather than the stuff that really is sort of toxic to parents. Like, education people love it. But in this country, if you're not for sort of choice and options, like, people kind of— they're kind of, what's wrong with you? And if you're not for accountability, quality reading, they wonder the same thing, you know? And I think there's a very sort of crude calculus that voters don't vote education per se at the presidential level, fewer than ten percent. But they do make sort of a framing calculus about candidates. I think part of that is like, if you're not serious on education, why would I trust you to be serious on everything else? If you're not going to just take a firm stand on sort of quality in public schools and all that, why would I trust you to like keep my family safe from Vladimir Putin? Like it is that sort of like lizard level calculus. And I think smart Democrats get around that by showing they are tough on this. They care about quality. You're already seeing like— you're seeing people like, even like Pete Buttigieg is trying to apologize for 2020 and get in front of school closures. Like, I think good politicians are realizing where that's going and Rahm Emanuel is getting there early and staking out that ground that, like, just common sense on schools. He's not saying anything that's like revelatory or wild. He's just speaking common sense about what we should do. And, you know, it's a little like that old Truman thing. Truman's like, you know, I just told 'em the truth. They thought it was hell. Rahm's just saying common sense and people think it's like, you know, incredible. That shows how far off the rails we are. And good on him for seeing that political opportunity and jumping in there. And he's also, by the way, doing that on some other— you're seeing that on some other issues. He's talking about the economy in ways that I think would be surprising if people actually listened to him. He talks about the economy's rigged and we need to unrig it. He's saying stuff about the Middle East, a pox on everyone's house.

Right.

And so like, I don't know, you know, so it's so hard. There's so many things, but I think that might have a salutary effect on maybe getting some other people to say some sensible stuff if they get in and not just have a race chasing for an endorsement that, by the way, like if that endorsement was as powerful as people think, we wouldn't be living through this, you know, nightmare we're living through with Donald Trump. And, you know, things would look different. Barack Obama wouldn't have become president. Like, it's, you know, there are other paths to the White House for people bold enough to take them.

Well, I think we're switching our roles here. I think usually I'm the irrationally exuberant and you're the, you know, the measured one. I think you're a little bit more optimistic here than I am, having been through these things before. And I just don't see dynamics that are different. Yes, I can see people pivoting toward the center once they've gotten through the nomination. But I think the NEA thinks that they have an approach now for the presidential election that's going to lock people in to be supporting their agenda generally. And I think it's incumbent upon us, reformers, charter world, to work harder to scramble dynamics such that it's harder for that to happen. I'm not sure I would give us a great grade on that. But let me ask you, I mean— yeah.

Well, we're not good at doing politics. That's the question. Like, who's actually going to be out there doing politics, right? I mean, it's a little like the fact that everybody is not out there— like, Rahm Emanuel is the first presidential-level candidate in a long time to be talking about this stuff, and the fact that everyone's not like clamoring about that is like telling.

Yeah, yeah.

They should be. It's like someone's actually talking about our issue and pushing. And there's not the sort of broad political activity that you would want to see on a national level. And people who have tried to raise money for that have come up short. And that's, you know, that's a challenge.

Well, you know, I'll share my reason for optimism, which is actually a revealing of greater pessimism. And I'd love to have your— you know, I just— I'm pessimistic about what's happening in urban education and what's happening with enrollment decline. You've talked about all this. And I just feel as though we're going to go through a period of the punchbowl being pulled back from COVID funding. We have the declining enrollment. We have these teacher unions and other unions in these districts that have forced their districts to sign on to unsustainable contracts. And just the trauma and the ordeal that's going to play out over and over again for the next few years is just going to be more in the, you know, in the discussion. And so charters are going to be something, you know, that contrasts with that. But, you know, whenever these things come up, oh, some city with a heck of a lot of charters, you know, their school district is like going through some self-inflicted, you know, trauma. Generally, everybody's like, shut up about it. Don't say anything. Just don't say anything. Let that thing happen. We stay focused on our own stuff. But my own intuition is that that's not right, that I think people are— I think they're confused. What the heck is going on? And they need to turn to some place to have something shared with them that like is a story that hangs together. And I feel like we should have that, but I don't think we do. But you're smarter than me on this, Andy, you know.

I thought you were going to say— I thought you were bringing us in for a landing. I thought you were saying that place is WonkyFolk. So please like and subscribe.

Well, that goes without saying, but like, I mean, what— yeah.

No, I think you're right. I think you're right though, Jed. I would just say like, I think our politics, we are stuck in a red-blue framework and that's how we think about this. But if you look at so many of the issues right now, they're intramural within the parties or they're cross-partisan. So data centers is like obviously a big one, but so many people in both parties are running against Congress, not in the abstract, they're running against stock trading and things like that. A whole bunch of the AI questions are much more intramural than they are necessarily straight red-blue, not just the data centers. Just across the board, I think like all this, the populism— I mean, you got a lot of voters who are trying to figure out do they want left-wing Bernie-style populism, do they want right-wing MAGA-style populism. There's just a lot of issues. And so I think the axes are more inside-out, up-down, establishment versus insurgent, populist versus establishment, which is another way of saying inside-out, than they are just traditionally red-blue. And so I do think people are looking for that. And I think the politicians who actually recognize that and get in front of it and break out are going to do extremely well. I think the voters— we're stuck in the two-party kind of dynamic right now because that's what we have, but it is not serving anyone, which is why in a relatively short period of time we toggle from, you know, Barack Obama to Donald Trump. People are frustrated, they're looking for things. And so I think politicians that sort of recognize that and get in front of it will do well.

Yeah, well, I just think this is a conundrum for us, and hey, yeah, I mean, when you just— my hometown Sacramento, it's just so sad to see.

Well, we can be a part of that though. Charters are a great way to stand aside from that. Like, it's a great issue.

And I wrote a thought exercise back in 2021, which was Sacramento Unified is so broken that we should try to make sure that that school district serves no kids. Grow charters. And every family that we can possibly get to all the suburban school districts around Sacramento, that's what we should be trying to do. Well, it's obviously tongue-in-cheek. I'm trying to like make a point here, but it's playing out, Andy. I mean, Elk Grove right next to Sacramento Unified, it's building like crazy. Part of it is that they've got new housing there, but a lot of it is parents are desperately leaving Sacramento Unified. Folsom, you know, another one directly toward the Sierras.

But this is bad.

It's growing too.

But this is bad overall. I mean, you can't have a good city if you don't have a thriving middle class that wants to be there and raise a family. And we learned that you can't just have— in a bunch of cities. And so this is something that we should have more focus from state and local leaders on addressing, because it's just not a good trend. And you see it in lots of places.

And I think it's a place where we are and where I do think we have something to contribute to the discussion. And I think we're also starting to see that we're seeing Sacramento City Council members starting to write op-eds and request the school board to come and talk to the City Council. Wait, what's going on with the school district? The implosion of school districts harming the entire city. So I believe that that is just a dynamic that's going to be playing out across the entire country. It's probably going to be playing out fast enough that it could be a part of the presidential primary discussion in 2028. And that's where I would suggest we try to get our ducks in a row.

Well, yeah, I think cities in general could end up being a focus of that because I think the next few years are going to be not great. And so I think there will be— we will be having a set of conversations around things like that, and hopefully charters will have their place in them.

Hey, Andy, one last question I had for you before we go. I was just intrigued to see Randi Weingarten starting this boycott of Target. And I mean, I got all sorts of thoughts about it, but this is what I wanted to ask you about. And, you know, you've been following Randi as long as any of us have been. Get us started on what you think of that. That choice.

All right, I mean, I don't even know what to say. So I'll tell a story that I think will illustrate what I think about the effectiveness. I remember back in the height of the school choice stuff and the healthcare stuff when the NEA was going to boycott, and then the SEIU over healthcare stuff, Walmart. And this was pretty high profile and everything. I remember I went to— I lived out in rural Virginia at that time. I was curious. My wife and I had been out to dinner. It was kind of late, so we're coming home around midnight. I was like, let's go by Walmart and see what's happening. This thing's going on. It was like a random, like Thursday night or something. And parking lot was packed. The Walmart was packed. And I suspect I live, you know, where I am, where we're recording right now, about, you know, three or four miles from a Target. I bet if I went over there to, and this is a pretty high information area politically, I bet two things would happen. I'd have to stand out front for a while before I got somebody who actually knew there was a boycott. And second, I suspect the commerce at that Target, you know, the other day there was certainly no room at the charging stations for electric cars, I think is relatively unaffected. So that's the first. So I think these things are sort of, with all of these things you always want, and this is true whether it's like school choice people talking about, you know, elements of the tax credit, like are they really talking to the public or are they trying to send a message to the Treasury Department? Like audience always matters.

Yeah, yeah.

And in this case, like who is Randi's audience? And I don't think it's actually Target shoppers because nobody cares. I think it's— she's signaling to Target she's open for business. And so I'm sure there'll be some kind of negotiations. There's always negotiations. I know that sounds cynical, but that is kind of how things go. And she's sending a signal to the media and so forth. I think this will have almost no impact on sort of what, you know, attention Target shoppers, you know, at all.

Yeah, I just— we have only made six trips to Target in the last two days to get new hangers for the pictures here.

What's your— are you refusing to shop at Target now? You're helping your daughter? Are you making her like go someplace else to furnish her apartment?

Look, I just think it is symptomatic of what is going on more broadly. I mean, their reasons for targeting Target have nothing to do with education, nothing to do with education. And when you have people that are responsible for the dialogue around education in our country saying nothing about it, it only serves to like drop education further off the radar screen.

That's fair.

And I just think it's ridiculous. And I think it's really a cynical ploy to just make sure that for the far left, they're just sending their signals. Be with us. Be with us. If you support teachers unions, you know, these other issues are ones that we take as well. And, you know, while it's going to have— Well, I mean, I totally agree with you.

Well, Randi's been smart on that. Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

I don't think it's going to have any effect on Target whatsoever, but it's going to, like, signal. Signal to their base, you know, and that's all that's really important to them. And again, it's just another cynical gesture. Not only is it cynical, it's nothing to do with education, but, you know, it's just so nakedly a political purpose that I just find it sad.

Well, look, I mean, Randi's been smart about this. Credit where it's due. She realized, I mean, it was a while ago. I'll try to dig it out if we can find it for the show notes. A letter surfaced from the police union in New York to the teachers union there, which was basically like, if you expect us— the teachers union had taken some positions on policing to try to appeal to the left, the left part of the Democratic base. And the letter was basically like, look, if you want us to continue to defend your efforts to protect crummy teachers, you can't do this. It was very sort of naked and political. And of course, it leaked and the New York Post got a hold of it, which was probably the point all along. But like, Randi's not a fool. She knows they're not going to win on the merits on a lot of these education questions, like bottling up charter schools, defending teachers who shouldn't be teaching, all this stuff. So they make themselves sort of invaluable in the coalition by taking on all this other stuff. And they're sort of a big coalition partner. And then the education stuff sort of falls off, which is why you talk to people a lot and they're like, ah, yeah, we don't agree with them on this, but like, we need the money because like, we're doing these other issues and this other, and sometimes it's important stuff. It's hunger and things like that. This is not always like trivial stuff. And so she's been very good at sort of spreading that around and building a coalition there that means they don't have to win or lose on the merits of their education fights because the fights are turning on sort of some other dimensions. And that's to your point, like, that's the cynicism and a piece of what they are, what they're doing here.

Last thought on it, just it's— and this might be too optimistic a scenario, but I think there are a lot of corporate interests across the country that see their local schools are terrible, and they used to play more of a role in trying to help things get better. And then they've seen it as like a no-win proposition and they're kind of like out altogether. And I just feel— and they're like, hey, if we stay out, we're not gonna get targeted by these people.

Right.

Now they kind of realize, wait a second, whether we stay out of education issues or not, we may or may not get targeted. And look how ridiculous these things are. So I mean, there is a price to pay for Weingarten doing this. She could very well, you know, send to corporate America the signal that it doesn't matter what you do, we may go after you for whatever political reason may be convenient in the moment. And that can allow corporate interests to say, think about the schools in your city. Think about the schools in your area and what, you know, can you really do? Because there may be no way to keep yourself off the teacher union radar screen, and maybe you should just stay focused on what you know is good for schools in your local community.

Hopefully, although that can get you in trouble. Remember, GE was like supporting some work on Common Core, and some standards were pretty innocuous stuff, but they ended up with protesters at all their shareholder meetings, and Randi was in the middle of that. And like, I think they're all— if you're a CEO, you're like, wait, what? What? Like, I'm trying to give this money for schools and now I got like people disrupting my shareholder meeting? The hell with that. And so that, you know, that's another dynamic here. Like, just the sort of like the adult tantrum does have an effect, and it forces people to be like, I don't want to deal with this. I can, you know, we'll do other stuff. And given that companies are thinking on relatively short-term time horizons around earnings and stuff, when you tell them like we need to get serious about STEM education because of a twenty-year trajectory, they're like, twenty years? You know, they can't even think in those terms.

Well, this is why I've been wanting to talk to you here for the last few weeks, and glad that we found a little bit of time. I'm also excited.

Because you wanted me to give you permission to shop at Target and not feel bad about it. You've been feeling guilty.

I just wanted to be able to run these things by you, see what your thoughts are. I'm kind of excited. We've had some people reach out to us who want to be guests on WonkyFolk. We've had some people reaching out maybe about sponsoring, you know, some of our WonkyFolk podcasts, which we'd love to see happen. So I think we had a little pause here, but now we're going to like pick up again. And I think it's going to be a great fall season.

Yes, definitely. So like us and, you know, do the various things that help the algorithm when you're downloading this, wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe. If you are interested in sponsoring, be sure to let us know. We do have sponsorship packages available. There's kind of different kinds of things we can do up to and including live events. Jed and I have done a few live WonkyFolk, which are often really fun. At least we think they're fun. The audience is usually drinking, so it's unclear if like they're actually fun or it's just everybody's got a few drinks in them. But we can do some stuff like that too. So let us know and thanks so much for listening. Great to see you, Jed.

Yeah, see you soon, Andy. Take care.