# WonkyFolk: Year in Review - How Many Mulligans Does a Country Get?

How many mulligans does a country get before there are real consequences? In this year-end conversation, Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham confront 2025's uncomfortable truths: neither party heard the message voters sent, ed reformers have gone soft on accountability, and we're spending another year arguing while kids fall further behind. They explore Virginia's accountability experiment, the problem with universal school choice that doesn't prioritize low-income students, and what made Rod Paige different—a leader with a "core of steel" anchored by clear beliefs. Plus: why Brandon Brown and Howard Fuller are calling for more courage in the charter movement, and whether public education can offer anything to compete with disruption.

**Episode Highlights:**

• Why 2025 was another year of missed opportunities

• The retreat from meaningful accountability—and why reformers are complicit

• Virginia's test: Will Spanberger build on Youngkin's reforms or tear them down?

• Universal school choice without income targeting: A problem?

• Revealed preferences: Leaders who oppose accountability but ensure their own kids get it

• Remembering Rod Paige and the power of vision and beliefs

• The courage question: Brandon Brown, Howard Fuller, and finding your moxie

**Show Notes:**

• CharterFolk Brandon Brown interview
• Hess and Rotherham on cell phones and student engagement
• Andy on cell phone bans as surrender
• Andy on what's next for education in Virginia
• Tennessee religious charter schools case

Hey, Andy.

Hey, Jed. How are you?

Good. It's been a little while.

It's, and I thought we were doing Christmas and holiday and the season and all of that today.

It's, I got at least got an elf on a shelf, or I got a Charterfolk on a shelf back here, you know, and I got my, I mean, you know, a charter. Yeah. My, my sweater was so ugly last year, you know, that, remember that neon green thing I had? Well, you were the only one,

I guess, how can you tell a charter school elf from a regular elf?

Good question.

I think it's like vegans and libertarians. They'll tell you.

I think it's just, I think it's an accountable elf. It's an innovative elf.

I dunno. Okay. It's good to see you. We got a lot to cover. We should do like a little bit year in review year look forward and some stuff to talk about. There's been a lot going on since we last saw each. Yeah. Yeah.

I like tough to talk about stuff, but I am curious just what you're thinking about. Does 25 up be for you? And as you're maybe that you thinking about, for 26

Man, 25 you know, you wonder how many mulligans does a country get? Right? And like we've got like big problems and some opportunities to maybe try to reset them and yet we seem to blow every one, right? Like the country sent a clear message in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty when they elected Trump. And like neither party seems to have actually heard what that message was. Here again. Here we are. And I'm struck by like, you know, like let's talk about the Department of Education government. We do need some restructuring, right? There's parts of government that have not been modernized for a while. There's compelling arguments we've talked about on this podcast to maybe move some of the higher ed and post-secondary programs over the Department of Labor, move things around a little bit. But instead we get this sort of, you know, these delegation agreements, which rather than like lessening the amount of red tape, they actually increase the amount of, yeah, red tape. And and it's like that sort of across the board with a set of issues. So I just view 25 as another year of sort of missed opportunity. And we still have, you know, we've made some progress on chronic absenteeism, but it's still a real issue. Learning loss remains a pretty substantial, issue for a lot of kids. We're not doing as well by a lot of kids as we ought to be by any sort of reasonable measure. And yet we've sort of spent another year arguing about what? So, I guess, missed opportunities. And I just wonder how many of those, how many of those do you get before the starts to be real consequences from it?

Yeah, I just look at twenty twenty-five as an inability for us to even talk intelligently about what we actually face. And it just seems to me as though, and I look, I don't wanna make any broad, statements, you know, about politics outside the education lane and all that stuff. The demographics, we know that one of the United States' strengths is we're younger than other societies and we've been able to draw people who wanna come here. We have been a magnet for the most amazing minds in the world. We are making decisions that are exactly opposite of those strategic advantages that we've had. And, and they also really, affect education because if the country were to take advantage of its unique spot and say, we are gonna continue to have young people coming into this country, then it makes clear what the challenge is for education in front of us. Let's make sure that every one of these newcomers end up really well educated so they can take advantage, and instead it's like we we're just not even confronting that reality.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm a, as you know, like I think you can either, you can either invest in talent, you can do immigration, or you can do option C, which is my favorite. All of the above that you have a good immigration policy and you, that attracts talent and you do a good job with your homegrown talent. But like right now we're sort of choosing neither, and that is just completely untenable in this world. And, and I'm not quite sure what exactly resets that.

And if there's anything emblematic of the fact that, this has just been one whiff at the plate, but another whiff well, or at least another moment at the plate is coming, look at the Supreme Court case, around charter schools and religion. We had that whole drama play out. I think what that did is it really laid there what the level of stakes are for the charter movement, where in a different direction. And now it looks like there are several cases that are coming up the, and we're probably gonna have in 26 another court case. Maybe it'll be, and end up being delayed into 27. But it's just a matter of one year or so. Like being stuck in some groundhog effect. Be talking about the exact same thing. What progress is there in that?

Well, we talked about on the podcast, just we talked about that this was probably a non-decision more than it was a decision because the way it came down, four to four, and yeah, if you can get a case where Justice Barrett doesn't have to accuse herself, then it's potentially gonna look very different. There's a couple in this Tennessee case looks like one to bear, the Bear's watching. We can put some stuff about that in the show notes. What are you most thankful for? Outside of obviously family, I know how blessed you're there, but like, just in a more general, professional and work. Whatcha like most thankful for this year?

I have been struck by. The courage that some people have been showing right now. I, you know, and look, I broken record on this, Brandon's story in Indianapolis is just absolutely

Brandon. Brandon runs The Mind Trust,

Brandon Brown. The Charterfolk chat I did with him, and how honestly he spoke about his experience. And then to follow that up with a conversation with Howard Fuller and, Howard. He's just a blessing for a movement in so many different ways, and there's just nobody like him, but also, he wanted to talk about something and that that's how the chat got going. And that's where we started. And then I brought up the Brandon thing and he had watched it. And you know about at the 30 minute period, the second half of the discussion with Howard. I mean, that case always just viscerally raw and honest and what, but it got so,. The example that he has shown, I think has just been an amazing one. And now it's interesting. There are people across the country that are asking, Hey, would Howard be willing. To have a Zoom conversation with some Charterfolk, you know, about the need for courage in our different context. So, my sense is that it's not just Howard, and it's not just Brandon, but there are many people now. I actually feel a sense of greater moxie emerging amongst charter school operators, too willing to take on some of the growth and controversy that's happening. So I'm definitely, I'm definitely thankful for that. That's a good

One. That's a good one. I'm thankful, and I'm not just saying this 'cause we forgot to even tell people that you're listening to a podcast. It's called WonkyFolk with Jed Wallace, of Charterfolk. And I'm Andy Rotherham with Bellwether. Hopefully you've listened before and if you haven't, we hope you will and you'll sign up and become a subscriber and all of those things. And I'm not just saying what I'm about to say because we forgot to say that, but I'm actually really thankful the feedback we've gotten on the podcast this year. Great people enjoy it. They seem to listen to it in the car or while they're going for walks or jogging. And we get really interesting feedback, which I appreciate, a great deal. And I'm, I'm really, grateful for that. It makes it better. We've gotten some feedback that's been like super useful. And also it's just, it's just a great way. It's, it's a blessing is also just you hear so much stuff you may not otherwise hear because people tell they wanna reach out, they wanna tell you things, they wanna tell your reactions to things that they heard or things that have provoked or made them think about. And like, having that kind of incoming just makes you so much better at your job. And so I'm like, I'm just, I'm super, I'm super thankful for that. I hope we continue to get that, in 20.

Yeah. Here, here. I I definitely have appreciated the comments while people are talking. It was great talking with Mac and Macie, putting things in context and just, speaking in appreciative terms about what we're doing. So all that,

Yeah, we got

Some good

Guests this year. I mean, you're, this wasn't, wonky focus. Your thing with Brandon was great. I really enjoyed. Yeah, we've had some great guests. We've got some more coming next year that I think are gonna be, a lot of fun and that's been fortunate. We're actually fortunate we have more than we can accommodate, and that's a nice, that's a, that's a nice problem. Have.

And I think there are a lot of places that are fascinating to learn from. Right now, li likely gonna have a focus in Denver and Colorado and Parker has agreed to join us. And, you know,

Parker Baxter, he'll be on next year talk. Denver's like such a seminal place in ed reform and Parker's done a couple of evaluations and he is, with the University of Colorado based outta Denver. And he's gonna join us.

We've got, I'm eager to dive into Arizona there, all sorts of places, so it's gonna, it's gonna be great. Lemme lemme ask you though, I mean I've had several people, well first of all, I wrote something about Excel and Ed, I dunno if you read that one or not anywhere. I was basically talking about Excel and Ed went to New Orleans and then they talked about everything except for charter schools. I, you know, I griped a little bit about that and then I got some feedback from folks not say a negative word about, and I really wasn't trying to say something negative about that. I was just trying to really underscore that the New Orleans story is a fascinating thing right now. But also there's a contrast between the feel at the gatherings at Xcel and Ed and like the as price. I mean, people were, they went to the AS price. They're like, this feels like charter like 25 years ago. The optimism, the buzz. I mean, where are you picking up senses of optimism? Mixed, you know, momentum, energy, is it in that place only or other places as well?

Well, I enjoy, I was only able to be there for a day. I always enjoy that conference just because you generally get, it's one of the conferences where you get lots of different kinds of people. It's, they're sort all of a type and you know, and this year was the first post COVID year, the energy really like it was. And so that,. You know where I get, I feel like it's, there's, I mean, look, I'm not telling, giving away any state secrets. It's not a, it's not a great time. In a lot of ways reform is kind on the ropes and under pressure in different ways from the left and the right. It seems to, that's like one of the few things that they all seem, be able agree on.. But, some of the signs, there's, there's like small subsets of people meeting. There's sort of small policy subsets of things started to happen, small initiatives out around the country. And in my experience, I am sort of a believer in that idea. There's a, couple political scientists there wrote a book about, so they called a punctuated equilibrium that like you sort of, things change. It doesn't seem like much is changing until it changes. It seems like was there all along, and I feel like we're, we're not there yet. But we're starting, you're starting to see some of the groundwork get laid for what will turn into change down the road. And I think that's great. You've got some, there's enough people who at least privately, if they won't say it publicly. This is not tenable and there's a lot of bullshit and like you build from that. And that's kind of what happened. I mean, look, the late nineties, that's what was happening. People realizing federal policy, something wasn't working, needed to change and started. Odd fellow coalitions start to come together. And, and, that's also, obviously, that's what, like charter schools kind of the original energy behind them. So these things, so I'm, I guess I'm always like optimistic, long term, but I feel like we're starting to see, like, we're starting to see the metaphors, the embers and you know, at some point they'll blow into something. They'll blow into something bigger.

Well, I'm glad for your optimism. Most of the things. I don't know. I just feel like there's,

I didn't give you a fixed timeline that wasn't a twenty twenty-six predict. Yeah. Yeah. Twenty twenty-six is gonna be about a different set of issues, affordability, all that. I think like twenty twenty-eight is when we start to have a national conversation. You got a couple of people in that sort national kind of mentioning presidential conversation who have interesting things to say about education. Emanuel been obviously very like out there on it, but you've got some others who are sort of talking about in different ways. So I think like we'll start this conversational sort of pick up again. And it's not that it's all about presidential politics are all about federal, but that is the way the country tends to have these conversations. And so it'll be, it'll be a window opportunity for that.

Yeah, I just feel like. Well, in terms of optimism, you know, I love people's optimism that science of reading is our, the solution to our problems. And, and V Ed, you know, is the solution to our problems and getting rid of phones is the solution to our problems. I, and, you know, people like go all in on these things. They just, and they're so full of zeal and it's like, it's like they actually world gonna change on these things. And to me they just feel like flavor of the month just coming back around. And yet. We, because the education reform world doesn't have anything profound or real to like, you know, to center on. We end up like focused on these.

Can you buy into the idea that those might be, I mean, don't think any of those are like total solutions, but they might collectively, those might be pieces of a solution that collect, you know, essentially get the hundred percent. Yeah. Get in different ways. And so some ofthose things are like 10 to 15% kind of solutionsthat need get cobbled onto other stuff because like I'm not against, I'm not against any of those things. I have concern about CT and tracking and making sure that it's actually implemented, the pathways are implemented in a way that takes into account the past. I. You know, cell phone bands, they're like, they're better than the alternative. Even if you don't think they're great. So like, I can like, but I don't think any of those things are like completely game changers, but they're all like pieces, right?

Yeah. But like the phone stuff. I mean, broadly societally, you know, our access to technology, can, have all sorts of effects on people. But I mean, like, you see, I'm in Australia, they're basically saying that 16 year olds can't access YouTube. I mean, that's crazy. That's absolutely crazy. My He didn't basketball access. Khan Academy. I mean, come on. This is

Crazy. I, it's actually, I'm, they're doing, it's to how that, I mean, you know,. Trying to like ban that and people, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I do think we need some experiments. I am very leery to ban modalities of communication, especially right now. I've written about this, Rick and I had a thing about it. We'll put in the show notes, but like I'm also. Social media is a, it's not good for kids. It's not good for any of us, but it's particularly not good. It's particularly not good for kids. We have to think about things. So I guess I'm more, if the Aussies wanna experiment with this, let's see what we can learn from it.

I guess these broad stroke, eliminations of technology or options. I remember listening to a. Podcast with Tyler Cowen, and I think it's the CEO of Anthropic. And, and Cowen Aston, who was the most disadvantaged age group le leading into the AI revolution. And the CE said, it's actually the young people, whose experience in school is gonna be so divorced from what the experience is like in real life. They're cognitive distance. That's gonna be very difficult to maintain. And it seems like what we're really trying to do right now is make schools even more different from the rest of the world that they're about ready to jump into. I just, I think it's crazy. I mean, yes, these technologies. You know, world, these other online experiences, the same result happen.

I have two thoughts. I guess. One is, I can't remember a time where tech CEOs haven't said that about school. Like they always say that,. It doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, but they always say, and I and I think learning it's it like we need to make sure that it's relevant and that it's timely, but also like there's certain aspects of learning that are just like slow and difficult and. Sexy. And I think there's always a tendency to try to wish that away. The other piece of that though, I do agree with very much, and this is what Rick and I kind of talked about and I wrote about, in that edge piece that sort of prompted a lot of that is simply. You know, we do have to figure out, like if you don't want kids to be obsessed with like AI companions and this kind stuff, we gotta figure out what do we have on tap that's, compelling? Is that, you know, what are we doing in terms of youth activities, programming, sports, all of it that is like more interesting than your AI companion. And that seems like a pretty substantial. And also, I mean, school, I just said, I'll argue against my own book a little bit. I said like, school, there's aspects of it that are always gonna be a little tedious. That's part of it. And learning is not always easy. And, you know, there's a lot of concern about productive struggle and all that, but we also, it doesn't all need to suck as much as it sometimes does. And so there's, I think there's a balance to be struck. And we shouldn't, we can't just be like, well, learning's hard. And so that's why the kids are all. We gotta make sure School saying, wanna check into as well. Well, can't,

I'll a prediction I would is that my modality, is more prevalent. We'll start to it, which is one. Keep them in books, you know, and handwriting and what, just so we can get an assessment about whether kids minds are actually independently developing the capacities that they need use.

I think it's gonna be some of both. I'm, I'm excited actually about, like, I'll talk about an aspect of AI in a second, but I think excites me. I do think you're have to come up with some authentic ways to assess kids. You talk to like English teachers and they're like the writing, you've gotta figure out a way to get a baseline on your kids. That's so you hear a lot, college professors are talking about that as well, and I appreciate that from teaching college. You've gotta, you gotta figure out where people are early, so. Surprising to me that some tech coming back, you know, something I, a meeting recently, like a day going on, you. I've been very skeptical of project-based learning and that kind of assessment for a long time. Not because in theory it makes great sense, but like so many things like we just talked about a second ago with cte, so many things that are great in theory, this field is excellent at making sure they don't work in practice by sort of diluting them, taking the rigor out, the things that made them, you know, we see this like, again, like portrait of graduates a great idea, but it's turned into a way to sort of evade accountability. Yeah. I. You've, we've all seen this done badly, so I think we've probably all been to these things where like community members come in and they evaluate the kids, and I've been meaning to write about this Evan, at time. Just like share it here. Like you get these community members that come in and you have to be a real sociopath, let's be honest, to come in a bunch of kids you haven't met, spend any time with, you know, you have no. You, you have no relationship with them other than your some mucky muck in the community. And you're gonna come in and tell some kid their work's not good. Of course not. And so you see this like, oh, that's really good and interesting. And that's kind like what we do in our field. Even. Everyone's like, oh my God, this is not good work. And AI is not burdened by that. Right. And AI may be a way to start to actually have metrics that actually mean something real direct. Feedback. And there's some evidence that people like getting feedback from ai, particularly when they know it's anonymized and so forth. It's early, but there's some, there's some promising stuff there. And that could be a place where we could then start to assess things differently, allow kids to do some really different kind of things, which would be great. And so it was a place where I was like, okay, I, you know, it could help us solve a problem. And I was more encouraged in that way. On, on PBL. I've been, you could potentially start to do it at some kind of scale and have it actually be meaningful.

Yeah. One of the challenges at at High, high was just making sure that project based rigorous, and that's one of the great, one of the great, credits that Larry. Teachers crosswalk project the standards. Sometimes there just resistance. Didn't wanna do it, but another people. Another possible.

Yeah,

For AI next year.

Larry's a great example though because that's in a way, is part of the problem in the sense that people would go there, they'd see what he was doing and they'd be like, oh, we can do this. And then they would do a weak soup version of it because they're not Larry Rosenstock and they didn't like have all of that background, that intentionality. And that's why I just find like so many ideas. They're actually, in many ways, really good ideas, just get implemented poorly. You know, everything works somewhere in this sector. They, they don't travel well, they don't get implemented well. And they, and they, and they end up either getting discredited or there, things like that is gonna be hard to scale. That's like very person dependent. So that of course is an argument for school choice and charter schools is allow people like Larry to have those sandboxes where they can do cool stuff for kids and where parents can opt into that kind of thing. And, you know. 26. People still don't want that.

Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about how you think rolling out to see basically all conversations about accountability. Essentially water things down or. Move away from objective criteria, things in the end. Is Virginia actually an example of something better?

It could be. It's too soon to tell. So's the couple of pieces. It's, it's a classic as in six months. There's a couple of pieces. One. You know, youngin pushed the ball as far as he could, but it's not all the way there in the sense the accountability system that he put in place is really, is strong. There's more transparency. He's raising the cut scores. The tests are actually gonna be more meaningful than they, so there's a, there's like, he's put in place what he called an honesty gap agenda. And interestingly, that's the same thing Arne Duncan called it. This was this quiet sort of, yeah. The aisle bipartisan people are like, this is a problem we need to solve. But he didn't have time to put in place, a really solid school improvement system yet there's a lot of work still to be done there. And so that's the first dimension. Is there still just work to be done? And when people would ask me about like, what's the next governor gonna do, I would say that's an important question, but important question is also what does the governor after that do? Because like Virginia. Lag little while now reform and you don't fix that overnight. That probably takes a couple of, yeah, it took us a few cycle to get into this hole takes a fews to them and so, there's still work to be done. That's the first variable. The second is it's a partisan time and. There's just a lot of strong feelings. And will people be able to separate, I mean, if you ask me like, two of the things I think that young did that are important and I hope are built on, one, is the education pieces. He opened, you know, these lab schools across the state, the accountability stuff we just talked about and the other on mental health. Both for young people and more generally, had a, he had a really good mental health initiative and you don't wanna see that stuff. You know, there's plenty of room to do politics and all that. You don't wanna see stuff like that fall prey to just partisan back and forth. But will it, you know, you get, when you add up the people who don't like accountability because the adult constituent groups don't like accountability. And you know, like everywhere else, we have a lot of people who, even if they don't realize, they are acting to make sure the schools operate for the benefit of the adults more than the kids. So you've got, you've got all that going on. Got people ideologically genuinely just don't like this stuff. That's, and then you got all the partisan people who are like, well, I don't care if I like it or not. The other guy did it. I gotta like undo that. That's a lot. You add that up. That's an awful lot of people. So, we'll see, I think, the interesting thing is for Abigail Spanberger is who's the incoming governor? Always Bern. You know, she. She's under lot of pressure in the state on a whole bunch of issues. And she'll have to figure out where does she pick her spots? And there's gonna be a lot, you know, she's, she's right to work. She's got like a bunch of positions. And so will she be able to take a stand on education or not Remains to be seen. But interestingly, her, she has national ambitions, which everyone does. Every, you know, I mean, you know, this. And president, so she, has. And being good on ed reform actually line up pretty well. She doesn't wanna, it'll be hard in twenty twenty-eight given like what it's shaping up. Like if you were the person who lowered standards, you reversed efforts to like raise the rigor of the test. You closed public schools of choice. That's not a good look. And so she'll have to figure that out. But her national ambitions. Like she doesn't do those things and she sort of builds on it. I mean, that's essentially, that's what George Bush did a lot of the education stuff. I don't take anything away from Bush. He was a very good education governor. But a lot of that stuff was in place when he got there. Right. And he was able to sort of ride that. She has a, she has a similar opportunity. We'll see if she, we'll see if she can, take it. But it's extremely teed up for her.. Yeah. Well, tell me what else, like, you're, like, I'm close to, I hear lots of stuff like, whatcha hearing, like, you know, as you travel around whatcha hearing, and obviously Virginia continues to be a laggard state on charters.

Yeah, no, I hear just generally, Virginia being sort of counterfactual. Okay. Something new on accountability was accomplished. I saw a, an article that came out. I think that there was a new report on how schools were doing under the first un under it for the first time. I just, and I think the way that you diagnose the problem with okay, the, and the adult interests and all that stuff really affecting, and those are ideological. Then there's the partisanship. All that I agree with, but I also feel like they're the ed reformers ourselves. We're just co-opted, we're just bought in. We're like, okay, tests are dead. And let's start pretending that this other garley gook is actually valuable way to measure. And I'm just very skeptical and I think what happens again and again, we could have had this going back. 90 or so, we could have individual test results down to the student, to students so we can have growth and we could see whether or not schools are improving the rate at which kids achieve basic literacy and basic numeracy. This is very simple. It's very simple. And also it's not very time consuming. Time consuming. I mean, these n stuff, I mean, we know kids. Basic reading and basic, math abilities in, I mean, in the lower grades, 25 minutes, 30 minutes by middle school and high school. Okay, maybe it's 45 or minutes, but it's nothing in terms of a time commitment. And because we won't stay focused on that. Basic literacy, basic numeracy, you know, a progress. We're now just talking about distracting things, and I don't see how our world is really helping right now. We're just be, we're just going along.

Well, I think like there's that old, you know, quote, argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they'll be yours. Like, I think the ed reform community spends too much time arguing for its own limitations. Like we could, like we should be saying tests need to be a lot. They can be a lot better than they are. There's a bunch of people who run around, have these ideas on tests are just technically not feasible with any kind of large scale assessment. But there's like, there's serious people. People like my colleague. Croft at Bellwether who, you know, they're serious. They appreciate the technical feasibility, but also like the potential, you know, she's a psychometrician, as I said, by training. But instead we argue like, let's, is it no tests or we can't, we allow the debate. We, we have the limits of the debate to be set by others. And I just think that's, you know, that's a place this movement should like, stake out its own. It get back to staking out its own sort of north stars and sailing towards them rather than tests. No tests. Like why allow the debate to be defined that way? Define it as here's what we can actually do. Here's what kids deserve, here's what parents should expect. I feel like you can play that out across just a range of things, but like we end up, we end up setting a lot of our own, limitations based on what people think is feasible or popular or whatever else.

Yeah, and I just think we're going in exactly the opposite direction of, having access to basic literacy and basic numeracy. And I think what we're gonna have to do is just let several more years of this incoherence, just be there until people see it's a fricking problem, and then they're gonna turn around and finally do it. But in terms of comparison against what the Chinese are doing, we'll have lost a decade. And in this world where things are changing this rapidly, a lost decade to China, I don't, I don't think that's country.

It's just missed opportunities and yeah, I mean, the Chinese are very serious on the competitive. They're approaching it differently, than we do. And there's, there's, there's some dimen different dimensions there, but yeah, they obviously, they mean they mean business. And yeah, you talk to some people and they will tell you they're less worried about the military side of this and more that they feel like the Chinese are very patient. They're gonna try to just to apply pressure you economically, you know, and education a piece of that. People were more concerned about what could it mean in terms of, in terms of, you know, use of force and some kind of conflict between our countries. Who knows? But yeah. So I mean, I think part of the problem though, saying, I know you wanted to talk about, which is the dissonance between sort of what people say privately and what they say publicly seems like a real

Problem. Yeah. Lemme ask you, what makes you most uncomfortable to, that you're writing about,. I mean, we all know things that we're bumping up against. I was sharing about Excel and Ed. I mean, when I push on private school choice, and not keeping our thumb on the scale for low income students, universal, everybody gets the same amount of money you can screen out kids by elective admissions. I mean, I know it pisses off, you know, our private school friends. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying we should throw ourselves on the tracks and all that kind of stuff, but I definitely feel it as I'm writing it. I definitely feel it as I'm saying it as well. I have some other ones that could certainly, you know, cop to myself, but where, what makes you squirm? What makes you squirm when you're writing about some of these? That's such a good question. I wanna hear about

This from you because I, it's the things that make me qui two different. One is not having the time. So I have like a ton of things that I've sort of gathered a whole bunch of string on. They're half written or I have like detailed notes and so forth. But I have it because I'm like, I don't have the time to get my own thinking where I want it to be on that. And then the other one is like accuracy, which is tied to the first one. Like I have a low error rate. That's something I like. And so I like, that's why I don't like to sling takes around. It's like all the time.. It takes time. And, and so those are more my, those are the things that I sweat. More. It's, it's those things. I don't mind taking on controversial topics. In fact, I think we don't talk about them enough. And I'm willing to sort of, you know, you get pushback, but you have to be, first of all being like, you get something wrong, you have a take that's wrong. It's not the end of the world. You know, you're gonna, you're gonna be wrong a bunch of the time. When I say accuracy, it's like I wanna make sure I have like basic facts, right? So forth. You know, the contours of something correct.. To be confident that you're, you're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be right more than you're wrong, or things are gonna move the direction you think they're gonna move in. And, and I don't mind like, so like an obvious one would be, the last few years it's been like really toxic on all these issues affecting transgender kids. And I sort of staked out a position that sort of no one. Treat, you know, obviously non-discrimination and people need to stop being assholes to these kids. But like sports that didn't, that was a problem. And, and it needed to be addressed. And like I watched the other day, you know, the, litigator from the A CLU Chase Strange, they're a, I think I'm pronouncing the last name right. They're a,. They've litigated a bunch of these cases and so forth. You know, the head person at the ACLU doing this, and they were on Ross Douthat, I think I'm saying his name right, Doha, his podcast, at the Times, and they were saying, oh yeah, the sports thing, we probably do need some restrictions. And this is the person a couple years ago calling everybody a trans who wasn't for hundred percent. People could play in any sport however they identified and like, I just feel like you have to, like, and I mean I can like save all little nasty and I made sure I made a note. All the people said crazy shit about that. But like, you just have have the confidence that, okay, this, you know. Thing does seem like something's there. And, and so that didn't trouble me as like a controversial issue. It was more the stress point was I wanna make sure I was writing with care and was getting it right because you're talking about people's lives. That was much more of the stress point for me than like, that it's controversial was like, I wanna make sure I'm like doing the best I can on a complicated question.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I, and I think that's one of the things that people count on coming from Andy Rotherham, right? That's, you, I

Dunno what, dunno what they count on.

Well, I mean, whatever. I mean, what I speak about you in all sorts of different places. I know you're great. You're the one that's why the podcast. But I just feel like there are all sorts of things now that, they just. They don't make any sense. They just don't make any sense. And this crap about, we're not gonna understand what's going on with basic literacy and basic numeracy. Right. You know, it's just nuts and, you know, to not be able to like, speak forcefully on that, the stuff around like limiting what teachers can teach in history and so all this kind of just try. Of course some woke stuff went too far. And, and the left has their ideology they're trying to impose on, you know, all these schools, well, the rights, doing it, you know, with even greater vigor right now. And virtually no one says anything about it. No one, you know? And, and I think

It's, I, no one says, I just feel like it's. Opposite, like so like this gender stuff that's now happening in some of the colleges in Texas. It's the inverse of the stuff that was happening a few years ago where people were losing their jobs. The people on the left were freaking out. Now people on the right are freaking out and people are losing their jobs over that. And like it's, I don't think it's that no one is saying anything, only each time, only half the people say something. Like it, like it's either a problem or it's not. And if you think it's not a problem, then you shouldn't think it's a problem when either it's happening on either side. If you think it's a problem, I happen to think it's a problem, which won't surprise you, then you should be like, it's not good when people are losing their jobs for stupid reasons in twenty twenty and twenty twenty-one. It's not good when they're losing their jobs in Texas in twenty twenty-five. We should like be better. Yeah. It's like it's, we're living these like parallel worlds, you know?

Yeah. And it's whenever we see some regulation that we don't agree with, we go after it and we say, we don't like it because of whatever the policy matter is. And we'll say, and by the way, our schools are so overregulated that the last thing we need is over additional. And then. The other side of the political spectrum will do the exact opposite, you know, in terms of whatever the social issue is. But, but they'll also make the argument that our schools are too overed. It's just, and no one can sit there and say, stop regulating our damn schools. You're killing them. You're killing them. Right. And, and I just, and I also, I feel like. I mean, I've been doing some stuff with like some charter s part part of stuff around about Brandon or whatever, charter school people. You know, we get timid when things get controversial, right? It's Oh, oh, shy away. Don't say that thing. Don't say that. Don't make that criticism of the school district. And you know, when I say that everybody, having been through it many times at CCSA is if you wanna do something bold, don't try and get, do something bold in the middle of controversy. You're dead. If you've waited until that moment, have a discussion at some moment proactively, what are our values? What are we trying to get done, and what are we in the abstract willing to deal with, you know, from a controversy standpoint, you know, make the decision there and then ride it out when you've made your choice through the actual controversy. Right? But because we're not proactively articulating these things, Andy, we just get battered around in the wind.

Yeah, I agree with that. I, what do you think causes like. You know, there's this one dimension and like people write about, you know, luxury beliefs, which is, you know, sort of another word for like virtue signaling or whatever. But the other problem is like revealed preferences. These people who they say one thing and then they do another. So you've got all these people who are like not wanting to be serious about reading, but they're making sure their own kids. These are generally people who are in positions of power. They're making sure their own kids can read. What we're talking about is making sure that poor kids can read so they have a shot. At the American Dream too. But these people who are like, oh, we should deemphasize these things, they're not deemphasizing them for their own kids, right? And you see this, whether it's like, you know, like the teacher's union leader in Chicago who turned out like her kids were in private schools after she was like rallying against that and all this stuff. Like she was making sure her own kids were getting what they needed. You see it on school choice people who are like, you know, oh, I'm, you know, I'm against school choice. I'm against privatization. But they made sure they're either. Public, private, they afford, they can afford a place to gets them zoned into just the right schools or they go private. Yeah. Like it's this, I think it's like this revealed preference. I I think one of the things we don't talk about is enough of that because it's part and parcel of just running schools that basically exists for the convenience of the adults and, you know, to work for adult interests. And we should be, maybe that's a place we should be having more hard. Is, you know, if you wanna talk about structural inequality, it's things like, you know, property tax based schools and essentially ally based school choice.

Well, I think it's a function of the fact that we suffer from having no visions and no beliefs and, you know, page passed. I had a chance to get to know Don McAdams pretty well and did an interview with him. It was so interesting. The morsels just Rod page is a fascinating figure. He's a fascinating figure. Right. But the thing that MCs always goes back to is, you know, rod started on the board of the school district. Right, right. And then one of the tasks, one of the first tasks that he had. A task that would come up with a declaration of visions and beliefs and what they wrote blew a lot of people away, especially by a nineteen ninety construct, you knows, was like people just don't understand how that document was his anchor for the, basically the rest of his professional life. He did it, he wrote it. You know, and I just feel like we all, I mean, we can talk about Rod page. I'd love to, you know, see what your theories are or what your reactions are to his passing away and what people have been saying about him, generally. But in terms of a shining example of a person that had that anchor, the language that McAdams used was Rod page is a Nerf ball with a core of steel. Flexible on all of the surface issues, could take a punch, you know, that kept spiraling toward, you know, his goal. But then when you gotta a core of things. A core of things. And he always talked about the core of things were his, was his vision and his beliefs. I'm sorry, I just, most of the people that are out there throwing out their ideas right now, I don't think they've got a vision and beliefs. Go and write your damn declaration statement, come back and share it with us, and then let's start having the next conversations.

Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll say it shortly. I mean, rod was, I didn't know him super well, but I'm close to a lot of people who did know him very well. I was always impressed his life story, incredibly impressive, and so forth. And as a result of that, I think what was impressive about him professionally is he was kiss first. He, he did not suffer from the client confusion of. Who is it? The adult interests or people talking themselves into like doing the bidding of the adult interests while, like rationalizing in some way he labored under none of that he was kids first, that the schools exist to serve the kids even when that's inconvenient or difficult or whatever else. And, and because of that, he took a chance on some stuff, including, you know, two young educators in Houston became ki. Yeah. You know, Mike Feinberg and Doug Levin and like, I dunno, but some, you know, that's impressive and that's a legacy right there. I think that's like, so that's the thing that stood out about him the most. And when you saw sort of the private reactions, you know, people talking and emails going around, it was, that was the thing, like it was his character, the kind of person he was what people were talking about much more than any like, roles he held or any of the rest of it.

Well, I think a lot of his personal reputation gets intertwined with nclb and what's the latest thing that we think about NB and whatever I've, who can't, who can't identify things that were a problem in NCLB, but. So attach that to Rod Paige's identity, like that's the deepest way to understand this guy. I think that's a great disturb disservice.

I agree. And I think one of the things that gets lost is that like the convenient like thing you hear is people, I go, Texas, Houston, it was all cheating and there was some cheating that went on. Cheating goes on in lots of places. Lot achievement gains and so confirmed by independent Yeah. Going cheating on the right in some other states. And people were like, oh, you know, we're through that same thing, which is, Mississippi people are like, oh, it can't possibly be real. And again, like you're looking at the results in the, you're like, something's happening here. Yeah. This is not just like tests. And what is fascinating to me has been fascinating for a long time is like the number of people who, when something works, are like ready to rush out and debunk it and make sure it can't possibly work. And Rod, Paige just had high expectations for kids. He believed kids could do more than what we expect. We shoulda higher expectations for everybody. And so forth. And he, so he was never like, as soon as something was working, like gearing around the corner because it couldn't possibly be real or Right. And we need more of that. We need people, we don't need, we don't need credulous people, but we need, people are fundamentally sort of optimistic and believers. And like the Mississippi reaction again, it's like, it's at one level it's sort of comical and watching sort of journalists bat around. Report to be education researchers is not like a great look for the sector. Dunno, Piper, like fighting all comers and it's like you, I don't take away from her. She's a great reporter, but she's a journalist. She's not know, she's not an per se. It's not a great look for the field. But like the people are just like rushing out because they wanna like de it can't, it threatens if it's possibly real. So maybe that's a wish for 20 in addition to like more hard conversations, just more empiricism. Like you're gonna, we're always gonna be surprised. That's what kind of makes it interesting. And there's just like a lack of willingness just to learn about this stuff, you know, and see what works, what doesn't, because I've always admired about you is like, you're willing to like, you know, you'll look at the evidence and so forth and try to figure out, and not, you don't necessarily like sugarcoat it.

Well, I have a theory. I have a theory. And also like, you know, people on bellwether can say, yeah, Jed's, pilled, charter,

Charter pill.

But, but look, I got a theory and people know what I think and I keep, I can keep testing it. And, I think that we have... Public education has been sadly un-public, and what we want is greatly more public education. And I can talk about, you know, what that is and I can talk about what the charter school role is toward that. And and I think we have to have the courage to say it over and over and over and over again. And I don't think we, but we're getting there. But really Andy, I dunno that many other people in the landscape where I would say. I'm not trying to cast like, you know, praise on me, but it's like, but like, who has it, who has a theory about how this is supposed to get better? And, and like, as we have these breakthroughs, I mean, I wanna say to our private school, you know, friends, okay. As this thing goes universal, you know, and as everybody's got eight thousand bucks a kid, you know what, tell me how it plays out. Tell me how it plays out. I don't think any of them have it, even if they're wrong in describing it, because of course you're gonna be wrong. You're never gonna be like the future, but at least you have to have a theory. And I dunno what anybody's theory is in public education these days.

I'll steal man, their theory, which I think is we need something new. It's gonna be messy to get there, but we need to create disruption to create that new thing. I think the folks who are not like it's driven around this stuff, I think that is I can man their argument. That is, I think what they say. I think they would agree. They would say, I don't think we know exactly what's gonna happen. We can't all that, but like, this is a necessary predicate to getting there and what's not, what's happening now doesn't work. So I think that I see. I could see what they're driving at. Is it like, I think it's, I think the, you know, jury is very much out and all of that, but I can at least steel man their argument. I think the bigger question is like the public education folks. They have, they have nothing on offer. Right. And they, and you in politics, you can't beat something with nothing. And they're trying to do that. And it's, this is starting to show up in this conversation of will the Democrats ever get their act together on education? like what is the counter, what's the strong pro public ed reform kind of agenda? Because the status quo, I mean, the bottom's not gonna like fall out tomorrow, but you can see the attrition. All the trends are bad. And public education has to like, engage with that. And I, you know, there's, there's, to my way of thinking, there's insufficient energy, around that. And the irony of course is a lot of reformers are very pro-public ed. So when they're starting to meet, trying to figure out what's going on, they're actually trying to solve that problem all the while getting attacked by the establishment, you know, being. And everything else, and they're at least trying to get closer to like, what's some kind of a vision for a, that includes a robust public sector.

But it's all just built on pretense. Just like CPS Chicago public, well, you could choose it, you could choose whatever major city you wanna right now. I mean, the, I mean the amazing thing is that Ct U is is now basically taking the entire city of Chicago. I dunno if you saw the Washington Post editorial today about, you know, Brandon Johnson, what's going on there? I mean, really if you believe in the science of reading, or if you believe in whatever other reform do you really think. Its current state, you know, with its current economics, with its current governance, with its current toxic culture and other problems under enrollment and like sending money to schools that parents don't wanna send their kids to. I mean. You really think science of reading is gonna like solve that problem. That is not it. And I, but it's a pre,

But it's a predicate. I mean, look, if the Chicago public schools could get serious about teaching reading, that would be a game changer for a lot of kids. I think one of the things we don't talk honestly about, it's just how abysmal the achievement is in a lot of these places. I mean, we talked about Virginia earlier. We just came through this debate about what you know. What's going on are, most of the schools are actually great, whatever. Like you look at our NA data, disaggregated by race and income. It's absolutely appalling. And, and like we don't talk about that. And Chicago, I mean like this data is it is stunning and I think one of the things people shy away from is honest conversations about like. What that, and what does that actually mean for individuals in terms of what kind of opportunities they're gonna be able to access and like how much choice and agency they're gonna have in their own lives. And so that's a place like also, we ought to just have some real conversations around. And I think what you do when you do that is you flush out people on the right and the left to, for different reasons. Don't believe you're gonna get very good results. And I think we should flush that into the open, have that conversation. Much. Let's have that conversation.

Trend over our however many years of doing this, three, four years, that you've now become more optimistic than me?

Well, you have to be, I mean, look, I'm short term, short term, pessimistic, long-term, optimistic, right? Like you have, and if I wasn't gonna do something else like you, and I just, I do think like, this stuff ebbs and flows in terms of the public. Politic. Can't get too wrapped up with that. It's gonna come and go. And I mean, you look at the progress we've seen, we've talked about it like, you know, it's, this is a, you know, this isn't a great time, but, we've seen a lot of progress over the years. One of the most spearing to me about sort the ethos that broke out post twenty-twenty is how hard it was for people to even talk about progress. And you can argue we have real problems and we do, but also we've seen progress to get people bought into that and became quickly framed if you were talking about progress at all. Make sure somehow to the problems, which just a terrible way to do politics. And it's also just, again, empirically wrong.

Well, I love hard times together, you know, and learn from you each time. We, we talk and look forward to twenty twenty-six. I think

We're gonna have a big thing planned for twenty twenty-six. We won't spoil it here, we'll roll it out to listeners, later in twenty twenty-six. But it happens, but it's gonna be great. Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. And again, we're super grateful to everybody who listens. You can, you know, get this picture signed up for Jed's newsletter, make sure you're signed up, you're reading Ed, and you can subscribe to the, podcast of various ways. And, you know, those are all good ways to find out about it.

Yeah. People are telling me that the likes. Great deal. So if people just click on that dumb thumb sign, I guess it actually helps with the algorithms a lot, so,

Yeah. Yeah, I'm terrible about doing all that. Apparently. Apparently it does matter and we're appreciative. So this was sort of a holiday,. Mulligan. We'll

That sounds great. Well listen and, you again, thank you again for look to

You as well. Well,

Okay.