 Good morning Thank you all so much for coming out bright and early on a Thursday morning My name is Janelle George. I'm senior policy advisor with the Learning Policy Institute and as many of you know LPI conducts independent high-quality research to improve education policy and practice and I want to thank you all so much for joining us for what will actually be the first in a series of events that will examine equity quality and access in public schools subsequent events will include examinations of choice and innovation choice and school integration or resegregation and choice and access and you will all receive information and updates about these subsequent events. So at this point, it's my pleasure first of all to announce that LPI is partnering with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund on these series of events and to welcome our colleague counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Nicole Dually. Good morning, and I'd like to add my thanks for joining us today for equity, quality and access How do we create schools we're choosing for all? My name is Nicole Dually and I'm policy counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund LTF was founded in 1940 under the leadership of the late Thurgood Marshall, Justice Thurgood Marshall We have enjoyed a close relationship with the Learning Policy Institute over the years. In fact, our president and director counsel, Sherilyn Eiffel, is on the board for LPI We are delighted to advance our mission of achieving racial justice, equality and an inclusive society by co-hosting today's event with LPI, which examines ways to promote access to quality educational opportunities for all students It is now my pleasure to introduce Dr. Linda Darling Hammond The president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute You can read her full bio in your materials But some highlights include that she is the Charles E. Duke common professor of education emeritus at Stanford University Where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy and Education She is the past president of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of its award for Distinguished contributions to research, life-to-machievement and research to policy She began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded both a preschool and a public high school Throughout her career. She has been a tireless champion for civil rights and equal educational opportunities for all students Please join me in welcoming Dr. Darling Hammond Wow, we have a full house. It is great to see you all here this morning Those of you who are here in Washington, DC Do not need me to tell you that choice has become a hot policy topic in this town and across the country it is the primary agenda for the current administration the current conversation about choices typically about Vouchers or charter schools But as we will hear this morning neither of those actually represents more than a tiny slice of School choice in the United States from the tradition of neighborhood public schools There has been considerable evolution over the years We have seen choice for integration through magnet schools in the 1960s We've also seen choice for segregation through white segregation academies Funded in a number of counties. We've seen choice for innovation Beginning in New York City as early as the early 1900s with the little red school house and over waves and waves of decades various schools of choice That in the 1970s and 80s warranted an entire alternative schools division Things like the international high schools Central Park East elementary and secondary school the work that Tony Alvarado did in district four and then district two And then ultimately the entire system of New York City in the 1990s and thereafter became a system of public school choice All one million students choosing elementary schools within community school districts and junior high and high schools across the entire five boroughs And those schools Many of them very innovative launched by Chancellor Joe Fernandez when he called for proposals from teachers and administrators and community groups in the late 80s and early 90s Have often spawned networks of schools that are now spreading across the whole country many of them Run by other districts as well more recently. We've had the introduction of public school charters which were initially launched in many places for the purpose of innovation and Launched many new models. In fact the first Charter School of Massachusetts was Ted Sizer's Parker School in Minnesota. There were a set of schools that were teacher run that were launched in the early 1990s Some schools that had been in private settings like Montessori schools began to come into the public school system Through charters, but now also exist as district-run schools So we see very distinctive educational philosophies like Montessori and Waldorf schools that exist as both District-run public schools and as charter schools as well as at private schools So we've got all kinds of choices that spread across a variety of sectors And in fact when one of our speakers Jonathan Raymond was superintendent in Sacramento He brought a number of those kinds of models into the public school system for some people Choice is about Operates is about innovation and opportunities for students to find the kind of distinctive Philosophy or type of school that they need And in California, for example, we have linked learning schools Which are career technical academies that are spreading across the state Within public school districts and people those students choose, you know a medical sciences academy or a construction trades Academy or whatever the Particular orientation might be for others choice is really a means for competition And some see charters in that way as a way to Cause other schools to feel more motivated to do what they have been holding back on doing And are stimulated by competition the laws and regulations governing all of these approaches vary from state to state and One of the report that we're going to talk about today really Talks about that. We did a previous report called high quality options a Guide for state policy makers and we've begun to really look at what are the ways in which choice is framed Managed regulated which has a great deal to do with what the outcomes of the choice plans are These laws and regulations vary from state to state from district to district and even within the same state or district over time and The outcomes can vary greatly So for example at one point Minnesota had an open transfer inner district law that allowed Students to go from district to district with a purpose of integration And it was in fact because of the rules integrator those rules were changed and Some of the choices then became more Segregated as a result of that change in New York City where I worked for many years with a variety of Spectacular educators who really designed new model schools throughout the district. How many folks here are here from New York City? All right, it's a hotbed of Innovative education There was a period of time where the rules governing the choice system Were very specific about being sure that choices as Families would choose a number of schools in a list that the choices that they were allocated enhanced racial diversity socioeconomic diversity and Diversity by tested achievement in different schools those rules were changed and now New York City still has a system of choice But it is much less focused on integrating students as its purposes We've seen how Charter laws in places like Ohio and Arizona Which according to studies by the credo Center at Stanford get very poor outcomes Have many authorizers and little accountability whereas the Charter law in Massachusetts Which has some of the strongest outcomes for its 81 charter schools? Require extensive accountability for curriculum for staff quality for the nature of the program and for access To the point where every school has to show how they recruit and retain English learners and special education Students and there are even mystery parent calls that the Department of Education makes To find out if I want to enroll my child in your school What will you be able to do for him who my child who has Down syndrome or my child who is autistic if the school says We really think you should choose another school that school will lose its Charter. So we're launching this series of Conversations and reports With the initial set of reports and you have on your flash drive The tapestry of American public education, which you will hear more about in just a moment In order to explore these questions about how can we in fact? Not have choice for its own sake but have choice Organized and managed in such a way that it offers high quality options for all students Including high quality neighborhood public schools, which is the major choice The parents want to make when they have that option of choice that offers access to all students and that supports and Enables a greater integration in our increasingly divided society. I Just want to make the point that Choice doesn't always mean choice. I did a study with colleagues at Stanford a few years ago in New Orleans which has become a system of in entirely now of charters It was mostly charters at that time And we interviewed a lot of kids and a lot of parents about their choices and we found Parents of special ed students One who had applied to 30 schools in the hope that her child would get accepted into one School the Southern Poverty Law Center had had to sue because most of the schools were not accepting special education Students took to another young man who said why didn't really have any choices the schools I wanted to go to were full They assigned me to the school. I asked about it and I said wasn't somebody shot there last week and the Person who was assigning me said yeah, that's your school not a choice lots of the Lowest income families families with kids with who are the most vulnerable Choice did not mean choice for them Some wonderful schools are created in that context, but some horrible circumstances for many Of the lowest income families long bus rides past other schools that they couldn't get into two hours away to get to the school that to which they were assigned and Lots of stories about kids getting pushed out of schools when they were not able to Perform so choice has to if we're going to engage with choice in American public education. It has to be an actual choice our A series on choice and how we can enable it to be a meaningful productive part of American Democratic public education will look at choice and innovation choice and integration choice and access and We'll continue to ask the question. Can we have choice? How can we have choice and high quality? Schools including neighborhood schools that meet students needs in all communities So with that I'm going to introduce my colleague our executive director and co-author of the report on the tapestry of American public education Patrick Shields Patrick has over 25 years of experience Managing large-scale social science research projects. He's co-authored a number of our publications He will provide an overview of the study and then we will get into a conversation about it Patrick Good morning. So First of all, I want to just Acknowledge that my co-authors Linda and Peter Cookson and Bob Rothman There were four of us as well as the broader LPI team that worked on this report So LPI, you know, is three years old now. We started in September of 2015 and we specifically Chose not to focus our research at the beginning of the organization on choice But two years ago 2016 obviously the debate over choice started to heat up here in Washington and back in California There was a debate going on in Los Angeles our largest district and the district in the country with the largest number of students in charters About increasing the number of charters about 29 30 percent of the schools in LA are charter schools And the question on the table is should we move from 30 percent to 50 percent? That was the question being debated at the school board meetings And so in that context we sort of asked the question how might LPI productively engaged in this debate over choice and As we talked to the people in LA the community groups the school board the business community that we were In the union that we were involved and we realized that we weren't asking the right question The question shouldn't be should it be 30 percent or 40 percent or 42 percent or 50 percent of the schools in the district should be choice But the question should be how can choice? Play a role in the creation of a system of schools not a set of independent schools, but a system of schools That would ensure that all schools were worth choosing and that all students were chosen by a High-quality school and so that was sort of the framing that we took into this whole thing And we started a series of research reports. We've been active in some policy debates and as Linda pointed out we now are teaming up with our partners To have a series of these forums on the on the issue So i'm going to sort of put some data behind some of the points that linda made And but don't worry about the numbers that i throw out here They're all in the paper which is on your flash drive and now available at this moment on the web as will these power points be in a minute okay so We came up with this term the rich tapestry of choices Thanks to charmaine mercer from the hula foundation who sort of was one of the Persons who sort of gave us this idea at the at the very beginning And one of our first finding of course is that choice is very widespread There's 18.7 million families in the us according to national center of education statistics That report that they have a choice in what public school their Children attend and there's about 6.5 million families who actually have exercised that choice Importantly Most of those choice schools are actually managed by The traditional school districts and our traditional public schools in one way or another So for example, there's as many magnets essentially 2.6. There's 2.6 million Students in magnet schools in in the country versus 2.7 million in charters So we talk a lot about charters But magnets are actually a very important part of the story as well And we'll be getting into this in a little bit more detail in it in a minute The other big finding here is that Most parents 77% Report that they're actually Satisfied with their current school that it is in fact their first choice And that includes over three quarters of the parents who are in their neighborhood school. That is The vast majority of parents Whose children are going to their neighborhood assigned school Consider that their first choice. So most parents are getting their first choice Okay After um, so given given what we know about The data we started to ask ourselves the question that well So if the question isn't should we have choice or not or what portion of school should be choice or not What is the question and so then the question that we came up with was, you know What under what conditions can choice play a productive role in systems of schools that provide for High quality schools more equitable access And for greater social racial and economic integration So these are the three themes that you're going to see Throughout the discussion and the report when you get a chance to to see it These are sort of the criteria that we're applying when we're looking at questions about choice again not good bad It's here. It's here to stay it's widespread The question is how can it play a role that's productive to getting us better schools Integrated and diverse schools and schools that are accessible for all families. Not just a subset of families Okay, so I'm going to talk about four or five different types of choice that are widespread and just give a little bit of data on them But again, you can find all of the data in your In your in your on your flash drive and on the web when you when you leave here. Don't look at it now Okay, so the the most popular and sort of the oldest form of choice is just sort of open enrollment There's two kinds of open enrollment in trud district within the district You're able to not just go to your neighborhood school But choose to go to other schools and there's 22 states would that allow for that um an inter district Choice in which you're able to actually leave your district and go to a neighboring district and there's 25 states Across the country So there's literally millions of kids who are involved in this this kind of choice. There's different examples. So I'm pressing the wrong thing here So an inner district choice Linda mentioned the long history of choice in in new york city the current small schools movement There's really great data on that Another example in massachusetts is is cambridge and cambridge provides an example of what we call controlled choice Which is not just anybody goes wherever they want But that the district ensures that People moving from school to school Results in greater integration instead of segregation. So right now in cambridge, for example 84 of the students are in what you'd call integrated schools. Okay Versus some other districts as you know where it's getting Then inner district transfer programs Linda mentioned the one in uh, minnesota, which is a great example Big program 38,000 students are involved in this and of course, it's highly centralized in minneapolis st paul area where students are able to from the suburban districts come into the City schools or from the city schools go out to the suburban districts and when the law was first put in place as linda mentioned there was A explicit policy that it couldn't lead to greater segregation And so it actually had an integrative effect. That is there was movement, but the movement Resulted in more diverse rather than the less diverse schools In 2000 there was a A ruling by the attorney general in minnesota that open enrollment schools could be Exempt from any policies associated with segregation and the result was a resegregation of the city schools So in 2000 right before this policy was reversed There were only 10 schools in minneapolis st Paul that were highly segregated highly segregated in minneapolis st Paul means more than 90 of the kids are african-american um A few years later that number was 83 So as soon as the segregation limitation was taken off There was a great deal of white flight out of the city to suburban schools which resulted in greater Greater segregation another Type of choice that linda mentioned are are magnet schools. So magnet schools have been with us for a long time And they are obviously These are themed schools. You follow the stem academy art academy the link learning are magnets of a of a sort that linda mentioned There's 3400 magnet schools nationwide in over 600 school districts, and I mentioned earlier 2.6 million Students and involved in them The data actually is pretty impressive. There are some series of national studies There are some highly controlled rcts on magnets There are some good local studies on magnets that consistently show positive effects on achievement attitudes teachers attitudes, etc Although when you get underneath it, there's a lot of unevenness in the data even that is even within some districts There's magnets that are very successful and other magnets that are less successful And we delve into that in some greater detail in the report and then the last Type of choice that I want to talk about Linda used the term model and it's a this is now here. It's a broad array This range is from you know success for all which i'm sure you've all heard of to to Other newer programs like new tech high and high tech high and some of these and these are sort of they're they're very important because they Not only are have have developed good schools Individual schools, but they have worked very hard on replicating and figuring out how to replicate them under different circumstances across the country So new tech high for example has you know 200 plus schools around the country And in fact, we've done a study on on these networks, which will be released in january And so the point here is that there's there's a wide variety of different kinds We go into detail in the report that you can see um, but it's sort of oh and then Almost forgot charters And the charters, you know what to say about charters, of course first of all, it's the fastest growing sector, right? I mean, it's you know a few years ago one percent of the kids in the country now It's five percent of the kids in the country on charters, etc As linda mentioned there is just really wide variation across states in how Charters are held accountable how they are authorized whether or not they are authorized through districts institutions of higher education Or you know in indianapolis the mayor authorizes schools, right? So it it's very different There's many Different management structures meaning about 60 of the schools about six out of every 10 charters is independently run But increasingly they're run through charter management organizations that you of course know about places like kip and vision schools um And and and that type of network that's about 29 of the charters in the country are run that way And then about 15 percent are actually run by for-profit management organizations So they vary in how they're held accountable How they're authorized how they're managed How they're even within states within districts how they're overseen? And the result of this as linda pointed out is the outcomes are highly highly variable So the big credo study that Linda mentioned credo has done and i think mackey raving is here today has done a series of studies around the country on On charters, but the big national study basically shows that oh something on the order of 25 percent of the charters do significantly better than their feeder schools the schools from which their kids come And about 29 percent do Significantly worse and the rest in the 50 percent range do just about the same So this variability that we've seen across Charters and other forms of choice Point out that there's other things that are important going on besides just whether or not you're a school of choice and so A basic conclusion that we made then is that choice is Not a end in itself. The goal is not to have choice Choice has to be a means to an end And as linda pointed out and i just noted in the minneapolis example Choice can lead to greater or less access. It can lead to greater or more segregation It can lead to better schools or worse schools. It depends on how it's managed Organized supported, etc. So choice is not a magic bullet Choice is just simply one means that we can utilize to get to the end and the end of course is better schools And what do those better schools look like? Well, they there's no surprise here when we look at successful Schools of choice. They look like successful traditional public schools. That is there is A a focus on personalized designs that is actually understanding where individual kids are and responding to their needs A high quality curriculum that is aligned with the standards and assessment in that particular jurisdiction And then a big focus on the recruitment Retainment and support of the educators in the building So i'm just going to go over sort of our four big takeaways from From the study The first one is that we as we think about building Systems of high quality schools that are accessible for all families The first thing one needs to do is to focus on the kids not the adults and how they govern one another Okay, and i'll give an example here of jonathan reyman who's going to be on one of our panels in When he first came to sacramento jonathan came to sacramento and you can tell me if i'm i'm wrong here and he didn't say we need a certain percentage Charter schools in the district or we need uh, we need two waldoff schools and one of these schools and one of those schools Rather what he did is he came in and he listened to the community He gathered data about what the um, what the community needed and they asked for for example a waldoff school and they asked for some other other things He um, then tried to build a system of schools that were in response to that need Which meant making decisions. It was a tough budgetary time about closing schools In ways that didn't leave any particular neighborhood without access to a high quality school And so at the end of the day he ended up with a system of schools That were focused on developing high quality learning environments Instead of a set of independent charters who just sort of like ran around and did whatever they wanted to do um The next issue is um, how does one ensure? equity and access for all kids and there's lots of Different ways to do it one that i mentioned in cambridge is to control choice to make sure that As you allow families to choose you ensure that that Leads to greater integration rather than segregation um A second way to do it is to standardize the enrollment process This is something like for example has been done in denver so that families don't have to find Five or six different schools and try to figure out what their application process is and what the dates are etc But rather they can go through one central portal to try to find out to understand what what schools They can apply to um another issue that um robin lake may talk about See brief done a lot of work in this area is that when schools lose students for whatever reasons They have to backfill with students from their waiting list or from new students who moved into the district So that schools don't become more and more specialized over time, which has happened Establish common disciplinary Systems here in dc when charters first got off the ground One of the findings was that students were being suspended at a much higher rate In charters than in the traditional public schools And so dc took some steps to address that and tried to develop a more common system and a more centralized system for disciplinary Procedures so that you don't get this different results in different places and student certain kind of students pushed out of Schools of choice and back into the traditional public schools um And then the issue of how to support and incentivize schools to serve the neediest students linda mentioned in new orleans New orleans with special ed students at the when charters first got going were um was a real issue Students couldn't get into charters charters were arguing that well They didn't really have to serve you know the support system to provide these kids and so the so the The school system there has recently made some efforts and robin Has written about this to incentivize schools and provide extra supports to them so that they can start to serve those kids And then a third issue is an issue of transparency Not all families have access to easy access to the social Networks that allow them to understand what the school system looks like so you have places like Denver and in massachusetts where they've stepped out Very aggressively with campaigns to get information into into families hands gathering common data so that You're able to you're able to look at Schools as apples to apples and you don't have to you know look at this report on that school and that report on that school And then ensuring financial transparency. This is a big issue in many districts Some schools of choice get a lot of resources from outside of the traditional district channels or from the state And making that clear to parents is an important doctor and then Making it clear how it is that students get assigned from school to school And then our final lesson is you know how to build a system of schools for all Leaving no school behind that is in some district What happens is there's a lot of effort to focus on sort of these new interesting innovative Schools of choice and the traditional public schools are if you will left behind and so what you find in good Systems of choice and Denver would be an example of this district four that window mentioned in in new york Are places where they have not just tried to have choice and innovation But they've supported all schools and there's different ways to do it One of them is to provide common professional development for teachers and Leaders in in the district whether or not they're in a school of choice or not Another one is to establish a common way of Providing qualitative as well as quantitative data on how well schools are doing that's again common across all All all schools whether or not there's schools of choice And then the other one is the whole issue of wraparound services and whether or and whether or not there shouldn't be a centralized way of Providing schools with the extra supports like nurses counselors, etc That meet the needs of those schools students regardless of if there is a school choice or not These are all ways of that we're thinking about how one can build again a system of schools in which all students Have access to high quality and all schools are of high quality And here's where we can reach the report. Thank you And so now linda is gonna right we are going to continue to just Plow on ahead Our first panel takes up the question of the possibilities and challenges of choice And I was reflecting on the fact that my own experiences with choice as a parent and an educator Really do hold up a lot of the possibilities and challenges of choice So we're going to hear from a number of folks about those but when my Children were very young. We lived in montgomery county, maryland. Who's here from montgomery county? I'm sure there's Montgomery county in the house And you may know that there are schools of choice in montgomery county's communications arts magnet and the math and science magnet and so we lived in to comel park And so we were actually in the neighborhood for the Tiny branch school and it's comel park elementary school where they had a math Magnet and I went into school with my first daughter Walked through the hallways and there were a set of classrooms that were almost all white And a set of classrooms that were mostly students of color because it was at that time a predominantly black area of the county and They had very different curricula So in one set of classrooms kids were just memorizing math texts to spit them back on a multiple choice test The other one they were doing a very thoughtful Math for understanding curriculum that I actually had seen before because a friend of mine developed it for kids in st luis And I went to the principal. I said well, I'd like my child in that classroom. She said oh Oh can't get into that classroom. That's for the highly gifted They had a gifted program which brought white students into this predominantly black school And a highly gifted program for the math which went all the way up to the math and science magnet at the junior high and the high school And so I said well this curriculum should be for all kids is you know, wasn't developed for the highly gifted Anyway, they finally let my daughter take the test because they could see a squeaky wheel He knew a squeaky wheel when they saw one She became the first black student in the magnet went all the way up through the junior high school and the High school by the time that got to the junior high school in the magnet of a hundred kids in the school of a thousand kids They had computers on every desk. This was many years ago They had a very highly qualified teachers some of them with phd's They were taking algebra in seventh and eighth grade in the entire rest of the school There was not a single credentialed math teacher Who could teach algebra in the junior high school? And that is still very much the same way that magnets operate in Montgomery county today So there you've got the possibility of integration and you've got the challenge of a very very highly defined tracking system that reinforces segregation When I went to new york city At teachers college I worked with a lot of educators who were creating all these new small schools And I saw these amazing possibilities for spectacular schools that were You know meeting the needs of a wide range of kids many of them well integrated and The the degree of innovation the degree of success with children That was happening as part of that Choice opportunity which the chancellor had brought in multiple chancellors maintained Was spectacular But there were many challenges and we're going to be joined on the next panel by claire sylvan who lived through some of those challenges With kind of fighting for all of the freedoms and autonomies that were necessary to maintain those schools So, you know challenges and possibilities When I came to california Palo Alto where stanford's located is right across the highway from east palo Alto East palo Alto was a hundred percent black district for many years. It's now predominantly latino some african-american and pacific islander Students palo Alto 80 percent of the people of college educated east palo alto eight percent of the people of college educated They have lost their high school in desegregation and the kids were all being bused out to surrounding districts two-thirds of them Were dropping out superintendent of the elementary district called up and said can you help us put a high school In our district in the community So kids are not bused out and enable them to be able to succeed That was started as a charter school because that was the only way that an elementary school district Could start a high school. So here you see the possibility of charters We did all kinds of work around both You know, I brought everything I had learned in new york Into that school and a lot of the people Came and helped us Ultimately we had a school with 90 percent graduation rate 90 percent of the kids going on to college doing project-based learning and exhibitions and social emotional supports and community school and so on But it was very hard to sustain that school and it really should have been a district school So we tried to get it back in the district The district didn't actually want that school because it served the highest need kids And it would have brought their average test scores down to have that in their accountability count So again, you see the possibilities and you see the challenges of choice And finally we did a study while I was at the scope Center at stanford of milwaukee schools, which was the first district of school choice Which had vouchers and charters and contract schools and district schools and all kinds of schools And lots of possibilities some great schools were created some innovations occurred But over two decades there was no improvement in student achievement in milwaukee And it finally took a superintendent who was working with us as part of a District leadership program Bill andricopolis who said i'm going to try to improve Achievement in this district and he tried to put in place some instructional supports Like those that tony alvarado had done in district two in new york All kinds of work around literacy around math and so on and he did finally move the needle on achievement But it was very difficult in a system of autonomous choice To get people together to do anything in common around instruction And after he left it kind of fell back to where it was so possibilities and challenges of all kinds of choice are things that Regardless of where you sort of started this conversation We have to contend with if we actually want good children education for kids So with that introduction, I want to introduce our spectacular panelists For this session you can read their bios in your packet But uh to my left and that might be a political statement. I don't know is the uh It's kind of hard to get to my left, but um The acting dean of the university of district columbia david a clark school of law john britain John has been litigating around these issues for a very long time. He joined the udc law faculty in 2009 He's a tenure professor of law there. He's been president of the national lawyers guild leadership roles at the nblacp the aclu and responsible for Really theorizing and activating litigation around inter district Choice for desegregation. Dr. Ashley griffin is down the row. I'm going alphabetically here Dr. Griffin is the director of p12 research at the education trust She conducts primary and secondary research to inform decision makers at the national state and local levels and really has worked on equity issues Uh in a variety of ways for a long time She served previously as the director of research and evaluation at the capstone institute at the great institution of howard university Professor louis squirt all right here in the middle is an associate professor of education and public policy at teachers college columbia university His work does examine policies around school choice reforms that advance both decentralized and market models of schooling and we'll hear from him on the Extensive research that he has done in that area professor. Julie mead right here in our matching outfits Is the associate dean for education and professor at the department of education leadership and policy analysis at the university wisconsin madison She does work about on topics related to education law And her recent scholarship has worked on how charter schools can promote an equal educational opportunity And then professor julian vasquez heilig Professor of educational leadership and policy studies director of the doctorate in educational leadership at cal state sacramento He's also the education chair for the california nwcp. He has perhaps I say this with a little trepidation But he is perhaps the most energetic of my former students And if you follow julian's blog and Many many activities you'll see that he is always devoted to issues of promoting access diversity and equity So with that start i want to start with john britain John you've participated in significant civil rights and education litigation throughout your career including before the u.s supreme court Some of that work has addressed inner district choice And i just wonder what your reflections are about how that Approach the inner district choice approach has been successful in furthering integration And in what ways have there been roadblocks to success? Thank you very much linda You've just been sailing along this morning so far so good And when linda darling him and calls me i come I Am here to testify That the right choice does promote educational equity particularly in promoting diversity And reducing racial isolation and segregation and leading to education I have been a School diversity school equity school desegregation Litigator for nearly 50 years And I have a mantra and you're only 39. I don't know how did that happen? I know when my Beagle educational expertise On equality ends And my ignorance on sound education policy begins As a result. I've always surrounded myself with educational experts like linda darling hamlin Like Amy stewart-well Like peter cookson and the rest And it's the type of knowledge and research that you have heard this morning That has formed my strategies And my efforts in the court When I was first invited to participate on this panel And the word choice came up I was puzzled And many of you may share that same view As the research has pointed out so far in the introduction of this session this morning and by the way I'm so delighted to see a room full of people packed at 9 a.m. In the morning sunny fall weather to talk about education and equity And choice and so I came in to mississippi back in the 1960s as So-called freedom of choice Was rolling out and you remember historically that freedom of choice was the first school assignment plan After the decision in brown versus board of education Which the segregated schools you they dropped the de jure policy Of assigning students to schools on the base of race and they created what was known as freedom of choice And under freedom of choice The students and their parents could choose whether to go to the quote black school or the quote white school And 98 of the white students stayed in the white school Maybe five or six or seven percent of the black students went to the white school And the schools remained segregated and it went all the way back up to the united state supreme court after brown versus board of education And they declared that that did not work and they must have a real remedy an effective remedy to dismantle the vestiges of school segregation my next involvement with choice as you've also heard is that choice was one of the standard remedies in school desegregation cases And it was a choice largely centered around the creation of magnet schools So historically magnet schools were created in order to promote diversity fast forward to the 1990s I was one of the lead lawyers in a major landmark school desegregation case in Connecticut called chef vs. O'Neill And chef was one of the first state cases based upon a state constitution in state court instead of in federal court that found that the deep act of segregation between largely the urban and surrounding suburban school districts violated the Connecticut Constitution and today All of this discussion about choice and choosing is a remedy and all of the pursuit for educational Equality today is about remedy It's not about any liability of whether in the school district did something to violate the law Because even if they did and even if they finding Then it's a second half kind of sports ball game in which the remedy is the key to success And so in the chef case It was one of the first cases that ever held that the boundary line between the segregated urban district and the more diverse Suburban districts was the cause of the unconstitutional segregation Inside urban district. It was a rejection of this so-called miliken versus bradley case around 1974 That said that there's no remedy for school segregation between urban districts and suburban districts and a case Wrought in federal court in which the remedy is to create these inner district plans and the miliken versus bradley case Only 20 years after the brown versus barter of education case held that the urban district cannot be involved in any remedy To promote diversity between the urban district and the suburban urban district in a region Unless the suburban districts were responsible for the segregation in the urban district which they mark And the kinetica case overcame that whole legacy and that old law And the remedy was an inter-district remedy the remedy also was a choice remedy of since 1965 and leading up to the decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1996 The greater Hartford area of kinetica maintained a program called project concern and this was a standard transfer Mainly of non-white children from the urban districts to a number of cooperating Suburban districts that created seats for them bob crane from teachers college came in Conducted a study and found the beneficial effects of this inter-district program when we won the case The state of kinetica automatically expanded that program and they called it choice it wasn't then known as the choice program for promoting integration And it also created a number of inter-district remedies Which was mandated by the decision in the court since the boundary line was the cause of the segregation And it's led today of one of about eight to ten very successful Inter-district programs in which a set of magna schools Surround the borderline and there are a number in Hartford too. And then finally I've been involved more recently in what you heard was control choice and the Godfather control choice is a longtime school desegregation planner named Michael Alves and Alves consultants and more recently Richard Calaver Who's here in the audience from the sentry foundation and I have joined with the Alves consultants and we have designed school diversity choice programs Based upon social and economic status. So from freedom of choice that were bad to choice inter-district programs To choice diversity programs under control choice These have been standard remedies to promote equity and diversity in k through 12 schools And there will be a test You've just had a semester's worth of amazing history. Thank you very much. I just want to ask do you have Uh Some thoughts about what has been most supportive of successes in this arena and where there have been Challenges to overcome, you know I think the success of control choice recognizes the reality that there are Fewer successful schools That attract a wide range socially economically of parents and a greater demand in excess of those successful schools from which parents may send their child So therefore you can't just create like Minnesota did in others a free choice That parents can choose Any school available for them? There must be some control So the key to The success until we reach this goal that you've heard of equity and access For all schools Performing at a high level for all parents You have to have some control and the control in short is based upon some algorithms based upon some criteria such as the Social and economic status of the parent the education ability of the child Built-in grandfather for any children existing in schools And you can go down this line that the school board sets and when they set this set of criteria The system goes to work in a computerized fashion and it gives parents three choices the first the second and the third You heard today that in most cases the actual assigned school and by the way this whole discussion About choice is the flip side of the coin in a standard educational administration of a school assignment plan and the conventional school assignment plan is the neighborhood schools And that is mandatory and the supreme court is virtually Appel the local Assignment to schools in neighborhoods Where the parents and the children live and that is also the problem So the problem is mandatory assignment to built-in housing segregated communities often Antiquity urban areas highly populated by a children eligible for free and reduced lunch and by schools under these State standards of so-called achievement are performing below the state system. So some are Trapped in those schools because there is no choice others find their way out, but there is no as The executive director pointed out near the end effort to build every school up To the standard of quality in the history. Well, that's a great segue to what I want to ask Dr. Griffin You have been really looking at these issues of school design. You have a background in educational psychology Um, what do you think are the particular elements of school design that public school options? Whether they're magnets or charters or open enrollment programs Need in order to promote quality and equity and to meet student needs and perhaps in particular the needs of african-american students But really all students needs. Um, that's a great question I actually think your report does a great job of highlighting a few that really stand out to me particularly in this space Do want to add one thing in that one of the challenges around these issues of school design It's really thinking about what choice means like to your point and how we define choice So often parents have a choice between what's poor and poorer versus really high quality schools period And so what we know to have high quality schools is that we need school discipline policies that that do not Disproportionately impact black students in particular Um, it's become really important in our charter school spaces that are overly Representing students of color And so we really want to think about how we think about restorative justice policies How we think about really promoting social-emotional academic development of students in those spaces We really want to think about the segregation within schools. And so your story Was so powerful because right like we see today in Montgomery County and so many other places really Um, awful situations where we have kids in the same schools where the numbers on the outside Where the district looks like the chartered network looks like it's totally diverse We've got a good system of diversity happening when we dive into those schools We actually see our barriers that are set up to limit black and brown and low-income students from accessing the right coursework And opportunities the right curriculums having access to diverse educators is something that we think is critical So so often we talk about Diversifying students and ensuring students are diversified. But what about our leaders? What about the teachers and buildings and that is so critical to how we think about You know, we talk about wraparound services and whole child development But these are spaces for both public and charter schools that are critical That we really need to think about and that we talk about a lot and and how we want to navigate our charter and public school Yeah, and you know your point about having in place Social-emotional and academic development supports restorative practices Gets us to the kind of training that educators have as well and whether they really know How to do that in a productive way. Absolutely that that consistent Had quality meaningful and I would even say targeted professional development Is what we need to happen in our school districts We really think about not just the just the pedagogy and the content but building the social emotional academic of adults Right adults need to learn how to interact with students They need to learn how to build their own social emotional and academic development as well So they can help students across the board We also know that when we think about how teachers give assignments Our our ed trust work and our practice team has really been thinking around curriculum and assignments That teachers don't always realize how they're assigning kids work And if that actually aligns the standards of high expectations or low expectations And so we know we need to provide development to really help teachers hone in And look at their assignments and think about am I inadvertently Maybe not on purpose sending the lever or the bar the notice that hey I'm giving you low expectations just because of the types of assignments I'm giving you we really need to think about that and how those can then engage motivation and engagement in students across the board Yeah So it's a really great set of points You know, we we think about in the context of choice the freedoms that schools want I'm always troubled by the notion that the freedom that some schools want is to hire teachers who have no training And then what about the rights of students to be taught by somebody who knows what the heck they're doing? So, you know, it's kind of Nothing else to say, but yep And so that that's really a part of it and I want to come to professor me because you do a lot of work around The access of students with disabilities to Uh, you know the the kinds of schools that they need of course that gets us directly to the issue of How educators can serve those needs and I wanted to ask you, you know under what conditions Choice policies can really provide the right kind of supports for that group of students Well, um for children with disabilities, of course, and and I'll give a much shorter, but I'm a little Hint of Because a lot of times when the issue of disability and choice comes up There's an assumption made that that issue did not come up until the advent of charters, but actually that's not true Right. Um, and we had a number of um, for example, ocir investigations and reports Coming out in the early 90s So we actually have that issue had been litigated in open enrollment programs both Intra and inter-district programs and in magnet schools before it happened in charter schools, right? And in all of those public spaces if you look at all of that as well as the um The way that the law was written in 1997 to readjust the the fact that the landscape of public choice was changing By making it explicit What has to happen when charter schools are involved? There are four kind of general Rules, if you will that apply in at least in those public forms of choice so set aside vouchers for a moment, but in those public forms of choice And that's that um, those choices must be accessible to children with disabilities So accessibility first second that parents cannot be required to waive services in order to get the choices that they want Third that FAPE or free appropriate public education must be available in all of those spaces and then Finally that the state and because federal law puts the onus on the state to ensure faith in all of its programming That the state has to decide Where the responsibility lies so in in terms of the individuals with disabilities education act We call that the lea or the local education agency So the state has to decide for example in an inter-district um choice program When the child transfers who's responsible for ensuring that that child gets what they need if the child has a disability or or disability manifests itself after after the move is it the resident district or is it the receiving district or the Chosen district if you will most have picked the latter as opposed to the former, but they have to decide Um, and the same is true in um, for example independent charters that don't have a connection To a school district who is the local education agent for that school? Because all of that creates accountability measures And so what all of that says together Is that you have to think about these these issues both with regard to children with disabilities But with regards to including all kinds of learners that has to be a design principle at the start So it must be a design principle when the state is creating a law that that allows these choices in the first place Or if the choices are created within a district the policies within those districts And even the charter school authorizer So even if you have a state that doesn't have many parameters around what a charter authorizer gets to do or must do The charter authorizer itself can set up a series of principles to ensure that and that holds folks Accountable whether whatever kind of system we're talking of choice We're talking about through the kind of the process and if you were talking about charter school specifically That means that you have to think about the entire charter school cycle if you will So you have to think about what do authorizers have to look at and what standard should they hold people to when they're reviewing a proposal What must be in a proposal If the proposals is selected then to have that school develop a contract What kinds of things must be in that charter itself or the charter concept? What kinds of things are non-negotiables In that those those spaces then we move across to to oversight and operation What kinds of data must be looked at by the authorizer as they're reviewing What's happening in the school to determine Whether or not a school is meeting it's the standards that we hold as a public policy for inclusivity And then in terms of of course the the big tools of Of revocation renewal and non-renewal decisions all of those have to pay attention to those things At the outset and and again remember that these are all policies constructed by people So that means we can construct them in ways that work And that all like all of these policy instruments They're only as good as the ways they are wielded And if you want to think of another way only as good as we have created safety measures to ensure that they're being wielded that way So and those go along with all of those Different kinds of controls that we have to think about as we're looking at how those systems you know In terms of charter school laws for example All of them have that that I all of them that I've looked at I should say a little qualifier there but Have non-discrimination language in there, but often it's just a statement of the schools will not discriminate And that is certainly a necessary element But I would argue that it's insufficient because it doesn't go far enough to think about that whole cycle And holding folks accountable And earlier I mentioned massachusetts, which has paid some attention Right to this issue in its cycle and in the way that it enforces the law and and so on Are there other places that you would point to as um, particularly thoughtful or Committed around this is so I would agree that that is Is the one that I would point to and and so it there is a little bit of irony here, right because Part of the the war interview world the argument for Charter schools was to create autonomy Without with a different kind of oversight so not autonomy without oversight But shifting if you will the general oversight Through state law and state regulation to the particular oversight through that charter school contract Well, you can see in that shift How good that accountability is is going to be highly dependent On what's in that charter contract that particular set of accountability measures And how well those are enforced by whoever is the authorizer on the other side And so the the irony of course is in the places where there seems to be the um Highest quality at least in my view are those places that are not as autonomous And the places that are more autonomous are the way places that I think that we're having Or maybe another way to think about is where do the autonomies, you know, which autonomies are most important And which are part of the accountability structure. Well, I'm going to go turn to julian boscos highlight who is as I mentioned the education chair for the california NAACP and Put that hat on for a moment. Okay Uh two years ago Or was it three the NAACP issued a much publicized moratorium on public charter schools that um Followed concerns about access as well as treatment of some students And then the organization then held hearings throughout the country to hear different points of view What did the NAACP learn in that process and what kind of recommendations came out of that? Excellent, excellent. First, I want to know are there any other californians here because I want to know if it's still 4 30 in the morning for us Just want to check that so i'm going to be speaking from uh, the high quality education task force report I'm going to try to use my notes here so that I can stay true to uh, what the report recommended So there was a few action items uh on charter schools in choice that came out of that 2016 moratorium Resolution which actually originated in california. As you know, the NAACP is a very democratic organization These resolutions come up from local units up to the state and then on to the national So the first uh is about creating an enforcing robust accountability measures specifically related to authorizers And I think dr. Mead has plowed this ground Really well, but one of the recommendations is and if you if you look back to shankers original vision Is that districts primarily serve as the authorizers now in california? So I have I have two children and when they want candy They first come to me and say dad can I have some candy? And I'll say no no candy and then they'll go to mom and they'll say Mom can I have some candy and mom will say no So then what my kids do is they go to the neighbor's house and ask if they can have candy Well, that's how the authorizing process works in california is that Charter schools can go authorize their shopping once if if the district Doesn't want to say yes to them then they can go to the county and then they can go to the state board And actually the state board of education has almost a 40% failure rate for the charter schools that they approve So that's the first thing and then second is a is a common And create a common accountability system one of the things that we're very fortunate to have in california Is we we have what I see as a secondary accountability system called the l-cap and the l-cap looks at a wide variety of It's a multiple measure way of thinking about the success of students who are from foster backgrounds from EL backgrounds from low sec backgrounds, but one of the challenges that we've had in california is getting Charter schools to make that information publicly available. So holding everybody To the same standard also requiring and Charter schools to admit and retain all students This is a challenge that was talked about in new orleans and the research That dr. Linda on him and done kevin weller does a really interesting piece in the teacher's college record talking about the dirty dozen 10 12 ways that charter schools are able to cream and crop their students We see this in the national data if you look at the numbers of low of special education students English learners across the nation They're they're they're less in in charter schools also Creating and monitoring a disciplinary guidelines if you the civil rights project wrote a report about this That charter schools are about 17 percent more likely to discipline their kids And one of the ways that dc sought to address this but was by creating a large school a large scale data system That looked monitored expulsion and disciplinary infractions One of the challenges with charter schools writ large Is that they take some of the problems that we already have in our traditional public schools and make them worse More segregated higher disciplinary rates if you look at the predominance of the research literature I think you would come away with that conclusion Also require charter schools to hire certified teachers in california and other places. There are loopholes that they can hire Teachers who are not fully certified. I have a podcast called truth for america I did an interview with a charter school teacher from los angeles And the charter schools really need special education teachers and I asked them well, what sort of training did you have? To teach special education in los angeles. He said I had about five hours of training Over the summer to do that Okay, and I asked well did the parents of your special ed students know that you basically know nothing about special education Had never written an iap. He said the parents absolutely did not know that and so that's a real Challenge we need to ensure that every school especially those schools and we and we know from linda's past research that Students of color and low sES students are more likely to be assigned teachers who are Uncertified require fiscal transparency And accountability and equity There was this story in in california just last week This charter school went out of business but before it went out of business It bought the charter school for three million dollars Then sold it to a leasing company and over time spent seven million dollars in leasing money when that school closed Those folks walked away with the four million dollar profit. And so we really need to be thinking about This fiscal transparency And accountability for all schools And then also eliminate for-profit charter schools. It's betsy-de-vose in the room You know as we know more than eight. I grew up in michigan lansing right here in the middle of my hand More than 80 percent of the schools Charter schools in michigan are for-profit the national authorizing association says they have the worst Transparency and accountability in that state the predominance of the research literature says that for-profit schools Underperform in fact included in that umbrella are the online charter schools Recognizing this the charter school association of california Turned themselves around on this particular topic three years ago They were okay with for-profit schools and jerry brown was saying that i'm not convinced that for-profit schools are problematic Well this last month jerry brown and charter schools association came together with both and for-profit schools were banned in california So that's a I think that's a positive step forward Well, that's a good segue to uh, professor huerta who's actually studied this question. So, um, let me ask you to Say a word about um, what you found in Multi years of studies about both for-profit schools and Something that goes off and with that as virtual for-profit schools Um, first good morning, and thank you linda and peter for inviting me to lpi as well. So i'm honored to be here um So thanks jerry. I was actually wondering how this was going to be integrated into this discussion because virtual schools A lot of the for-profit and the profiter that goes on in virtual schools Uh is a little bit of the the ugly underbelly that even charter advocates have for many years wanted to try to shake And it's sort of this wart that they've had to deal with And it's not until recently that they've actually Been quite vocal and explicit that um, they're okay with These schools going away So just a little bit of backdrop From where I come from this perspective. I actually stumbled upon the virtual school space In my first research project in graduate school started in 1996 when I was traveling up and down the state In my first empirical study as a graduate student looking at how Charters early charters 1996 four or five years into the movement how they were experimenting with whatever decentralized freedoms They interpreted were provided to them under the charter school laws Interestingly, one of the first charters we visited was a homeschool charter school in right in the middle of california This was a school that the district was a very very small district Had about uh 300 kids enrolled in about in a k8 school However, it had over a thousand kids enrolled in a homeschool Now this was publicly sanctioned homeschooling Which over time evolved into the virtual school space that we now talk about now in 1996 in california There were fewer than 100 schools charter schools operating there were about 70th egg But over half of the popular of the total population of charter school kids in california 1996 were actually in homeschool charter schools the state at that point With a very limited staff of the charter school office at the state level because I think the state Thought maybe in four years the charter school experiment was going to evaporate So they didn't really staff a charter school office at the state level But the state was not aware that over half the kids in charter schools at that point were operating in homeschool environments and the the roots of this to talk about is important because Those schools were operating with little to no accountability. In other words Traditional private homeschoolers were still allowed to operate as traditional private homeschoolers Whether that was prioritizing religious instruction or so forth, but this was all with taxpayer dollars Now the bigger issue was that the district that authorized this homeschool charter Was reaping the benefits of all the dollars the per people revenue that was coming into this district so Serving homeschool kids doesn't require brick and mortar doesn't require facilities transportation food services a nurse etc so The profit that these districts were able to make by sponsoring these schools and all of a sudden expanding their school population to Four times what it was previously Was an enormous windfall for these districts of the school windfall Fast forward a lot of these schools evolved into virtual schools and in the virtual school space today We see about about 300 full-time virtual schools nationwide The majority those are in the charter school space But more than 60 percent of kids in virtual schools today are in schools that are operated by four profits mostly k-12 ink Which is the large one. You probably see the commercials on tv. They even have a NASCAR racing team Purple yellow really ugly paint skin Funded by public tax film funded by public tax boy Connections academy is another it's another big one those two companies those two for-profit companies Dominate over 60 or they actually have 60 percent of the market share of students in this space k-12 ink for example has annual profits of about 30 million dollars with revenue flows of over 100 million dollars And connections is has a very similar sort of profit market Now as these schools have expanded one of the issues that from the from the issues from the governance and accountability perspective Is that states are really struggled with how to hold these schools accountable? And One of the things that I've studied in my own work is how is it that states are trying to limit some of the profiteering or if at all if they're trying to do that and address some of these accountability issues with regards to the amount of revenue that should be flowing to the schools for example If virtual schools are able to educate kids more efficiently For less money then the question becomes well then why should those schools be receiving the same level of per-people revenue as a brick and mortar That's right. So there's a there's a few states that have started sort of Attempted to limit funding to these schools and making more and provide a more appropriate level of revenue To these schools. However, there hasn't been a very concerted or Real effort in trying to limit this money. California has tried this Kansas has tried to do this a little bit But there's a lot of gray and most for the most part these schools are still receiving the same level of per-people revenue The other issue around governance is also How do you count virtual school kids? Daily enrollment is often through an algorithm where kids are you know, how many times they tap a keyboard And the software is able to account for you know, how whether a kid is actually on task And if they're able to show that they're on task by clicking the keyboard regardless of whatever it is they're doing That is sufficient to account for their daily attendance And that's then sufficient for that school to claim that that kid was enrolled for that day But one of the tricky issues with attendance on virtual schools is that the accountability of how we account For virtual school kids is virtual. It doesn't necessarily exist in most states And this is a this is a space that many start states have struggled with as well Because what we see is that It's very different to account for this enrollment and more importantly the profiteering Motives of a lot of the for-profit schools have really exploited The freedoms that are allowed under under this under this model Um What one of the things that we see that's very very common is enormous enrollment size in a lot of these schools We know that the for-profit virtual schools are usually about three or four times the size of the virtual schools that are operated by by local districts That are not in the charter school space And we see that um the churn rate or the dropout rate at a lot of these schools averages around 45 or 50 percent. I was just speaking with a reporter here in dc. There's a virtual school here in dc that has about 200 kids um, they report high levels of attendance And they actually pride themselves on their attendance But if you look at their numbers, they have an over 50 churn rate or every year they are turning 50 of their students So they may start with 200 kids in september 50 of them drop out during the year But then they finish the year with either the same amount or more because they're able to replenish those kids So there's an enormously high level high dropout level in these schools The tricky part is figuring out whether this school has claimed attendance for all the kids who have dropped out because many of these kids may be coming from other places And it is up to the home district from where these kids come to actually claim That johnny who was enrolled in this virtual school Actually dropped out in october, but yet the virtual school charged us all the way till may And this is something that's been happening in pennsylvania, Ohio, california and a lot of other places Because the onus for Proving enrollment is not on the school that enrolled the kid But on the district who sent the child who's sending the revenue to that to that school So the profiteering margins here are quite high With regards to issues of governance of teacher quality and instruction There's are there are a few states who have attempted to create statewide professional development and trying to bring teachers up to speed and how to Integrate technology into their classroom, but there is no state effort There is no state who has actually engaged a conservative effort in trying to create A model for what quality virtual school virtual instruction should look like Nor is there any state that has created a sort of certification process For what virtual quality virtual schooling should look like so there's a lot. There's there's this level of Of opaqueness here in how these schools operate Which is one of the reasons why it's also very difficult to hold them accountable Now in so far as moving forward recommendations on how we might improve this space the biggest issue is accountability There is virtually no accountability And legislators have to address the fiscal issue Or should these schools be receiving the same level revenues? They have to address how to how to govern attendance patterns and how to govern and define daily attendance They also have to address this issue of Size as well, you know again some of these schools on average are are Engaging over 2,000 kids with an extremely high Per teacher pupil ratio sometimes as high as a hundred to one or even higher 250 to 1 By the way, this the school that I told you about at the very beginning 1996 They had a ratio of nine. They had two teachers For 1800 kids. So they had a 901 teacher ratio And that was very common in California This of course is related to the fact that about 40 percent of the kids who attend these schools graduate Which is about half the graduation rate And that's the last piece. I'll tell you what and the the achievement and we're wrapping up in the achievement Evidence for these schools is is dismal and they are they are consistently on the bottom Squared of these schools. So so when we hear about claims of efficiency, we have to weigh that against Issues around what what their outcomes are not only just with regards to student achievement, but also what it is they're doing With the full amount of per people revenue that they're receiving Even though their costs are significantly different much lower than a brick-and-mortar kid So we've kind of gone through the whole panoply kind of possibilities and challenges here, but our next panel really is going to deal with the questions of How districts and states have developed strategies and solutions to provide high quality choice You know within all of these sectors In which choice is available So I want to transition us to that panel. I was going to Ask for time for audience questions, but we do we have time? Oh, okay. I thought you were giving me the I thought I was getting the hook I'm so glad that that's not the case because So I am going to ask for audience questions and I see one right over here, uh, and we've got a microphone coming to you Uh terrific Hi, thank you so much. Um, my name is Lindsay TPA work in senator Murray's office on the health committee And I guess the question hard to hear you so hold them. Sorry My question for you all is really focused on the issue that you're bringing up around Choice working with accountability guardrails And I think if you look at the parallels in the higher education sector We may see that we have a system of choice and it doesn't always work well and part of the issue is that Those guardrails aren't always working well and then you see That the current administration is really working to take away those guardrails And I would just like each of you, um in the areas that you're talking about to reflect on the fact of Is it worth setting up a system that isn't going to work at all as soon as you take away those guardrails Or should we have some other sort of system that isn't so I guess dependent on regulation or the kind of Assurance that people are going to continue to keep those guardrails in place. So our system without the regulations would be a system of prayer What might that be Does anybody want to take a stab at that? Well, I'll take a little stab and what what I would say is that Not to get too pendantic again But you know since if you were mad at me come take my school law class and what I would take you through Is all the litigation brown and other kinds of cases that we're really put guardrails on our public system because our traditional public schools lacked guardrails too And so we have we've learned over a long series of time that that When left to our own devices perhaps we don't pursue our better angels, right? We don't follow them and some of the things that exacerbate problems bubble up in that space we call school And so I think the the important thing to think about is At whatever level what how are we engineering these systems? To be as inclusive and as high quality as possible And I think from the federal government. How do you incentivize that kind of design? How do you think about that in ways that are going to reward the best? And discourage the work. Yeah Ashley I was going to go in a super slightly different direction Which is I think we need to understand better the why of like because of all the variability and how this is happening across the country It'd be really interesting to understand I am a researcher and understand the why like why are certain authorizers doing this better or In a different way that is impacting students in a different way impacting the system in a different way I think that there is a lot still to understand about why this report seems like a good Great step in that direction, but I do think I think you might have sent it linda around What is the why how do we understand? What's working is there is there a space where accountability Is a good thing and around what do we need to place that accountability to have the best impact? I think there's some work So that we done there before we just completely jump all the way in You know, one of the things that I noticed I've done some international studies the most recent book is called empowered educators Previous one was the flat world in education in other countries There are two things that get centralized if they're high achieving countries One is equitable financing of schools So all the schools are getting, you know, either the same amount of money or there's more going to schools that have Kids who are new immigrants or, you know Have greater needs And so that Centralized funding then gives people I mean part of the issue we're talking about here has to do with the way the funding operates The second thing they do is they train all educators Intensively extensively for free And and there's a base then Of competence across all types of schools and all kinds of Governance structures that you can rely on and if we had those two pieces working really well Then you would need less regulation Of our micro management of what people do inside those structures And I think we have to think about how equitable funding and Investments and competence Are part of the accountability that then enables more autonomy enables more diversity and innovation Louise I just wanted to And preach it to the choir here, but everybody remembers that equity is not a market value And I think that what's happened is Over time 25 years of choice mechanisms more than 25 years Is that the market perspective has really dominated this space And I gave you some examples of the virtual schools, but in charter schools We see a dominance of education management organizations for charter management organizations that that are that have the majority of kids They are competing with each other now market competition was in tandem together with local empowerment The two main objectives of choice as we as these as these policies evolved in the very early 90s But the idea of local empowerment has eroded. I want to believe That you know through decentralized Decentralizing public authority to local actors there still is the possibility to create schools that are unique to those neighborhoods however The ability to do that has been dominated by the very competitive market of management organizations for profits and nonprofits and we've lost sense of Trying to empower families and teachers at local levels to actually engage in whatever those unique forms of education are Um, but instead we're caught up in trying to Figure out how to manage The monster that has evolved with regards to the market approach to to uh public schools And I will say that if you look at the laws that differ across states that that market Orientation drives some states laws and regulations and Does less so in other states. So it's an interesting Um set of differences. Let me take another question if there is one you have right over here Hi, good morning. Um, my name is Jenna Thomas. I'm with the american youth policy forum and also the Co-founder of a new organization called learn together live together aimed at promoting school diversity and integration in the dc area and beyond and My question is about the role of private schools in this conversation and maybe to a lesser extent homeschooling because As we think about how the system of choice is set up in the district when we have Upwards of 60 of white and affluent families choosing Um choosing private schools, um, even in a even in an area where Unlike, uh, you know, john, thank you for bringing in chef to this conversation. But you know in an area where We have we have residential diversity. Um, but we're still not really able to achieve The sort of school diversity that we might want to see because we have You know folks exiting the public and charter school system So I just wanted to bring that into the conversation. I'm wondering what the panel has to say about about the role of Private schools as they are an option and a choice option for some some families. Thank you really good question let me just sort of frame the conversation about private school engagement in The same way we've framed everything else Which is highly variable across the country a nine percent of kids generally are in private schools Which is actually declining share But you have places like Washington DC, New York City is another one with very high private school enrollments Who wants to take that on julian? I wonder The reason why I didn't answer the last question is because I think my answer So would be might be too radical so tweet at me and I'll I'll respond So, uh, I on this one I think one of our biggest challenges with market-based approaches to education is that they're segregating our schools even more And the research is showing that, you know, african-american parents choose schools are even more segregated than the schools They're leaving same for white parents a little less so for for latino latinx parents Um, you know, I have a new study coming out that shows that if you look nationally You know comparing charters and traditional public schools If state local that that they're they're more segregated so, you know, I was I've been thinking about this and W. E. D. Du Bois who was one of the founding founders of the NAACP wrote a piece a long time ago That said do do negroes need separate schools Maybe 1930 or around there and myron orfield and some other folks at the university of minnesota convened a civil rights Symposium and they're going to do another one here in dc in january And these this was the these were the central topics of that conversation And so I think it's impossible for me to answer this just in a couple of minutes But I wrote a piece in the journal of law and inequality at the university of minnesota that asked do african-americans need separate schools Do they need separate charter schools and we we went through a lot of the recent cases how the spring court is thinking about this Parents parents involved etc etc. So I want to point you to that piece It's on academia.edu. I think this is one of the meta questions that we really need to ask This the same system that has segregated and stratified our society. That's the exact same system that we're using to In the market-based approach for schools. And I think we've got to really think about that And I think we have to say and after what's happened in the country over the last 24 to 48 hours That this issue of how we bring people together To have civil public discourse and to solve problems Has to be treated in every imaginable way and our willingness. I don't know if I would say willingness, but the fact that we have segregated re-segregated schools So thoroughly in the last 35 years You know is associated With the fact that we have this divisive Discourse that of the people who were Mailed pipe bombs over the last 48 hours half of them were african-american or more with attendant racial epithets and framings around the Discourse that accompanied the encouragement to do that So we have to really think about these issues not just as technical issues Of managing student assignments to schools, but also as fundamental issues for the nature of our democracy And on that now I am getting the hook So on that note, we are going to Reconvene our next panel, which I think has just gone out the door and is probably going to come back in the door So don't go away. Uh, we will be welcoming them in one moment. Thank you. Thank this wonderful group We're going to launch into our second panel, which is uh, where you're going to hear all the solutions to all the problems that we raised in the last panel I want to motivate you To be ready. I'm going to start by introducing peter kookson Junior who is our senior researcher and co-leader of our equitable resources and access team at learning policy institute He is a co-author of the report on the tapestry of american public education He's a sociology professor at georgetown university His research and scholarship for many years has addressed issues of education and inequality Social stratification school choice So please join me in welcoming peter to moderate our second panel Thank you And I just want to acknowledge that this whole idea got started by dr. Charmaine Mercer who is Second from the right as you look at her Who was a director of our dc office until the hulet foundation swooped her up? And uh, she really conceptualized this discussion that we're having today So we're delighted she came all the way back from the left ghost to join us Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you all for being here This is a tremendous opportunity to talk about these issues in a really thoughtful way We looked at the possibilities and challenges In this session, we're going to look at the sort of strategies and solutions for choice with quality and access That's how we're putting it. I just say one thing Years ago, I got involved and interested in school choice. This was back in the day And I got in my old car and I visited schools. They were they weren't really so systematic at that point in minnesota I went to cambridge and new york and other places and it was an idea that was being born Particularly in the case of charter schools and vouchers were in the air as well Since that time it has grown into a bigger political conversation a bigger educational movement And so the issues of design and the issues of system As as patrick mentioned in his overview and as linda mentioned really become increasingly critical Especially if you were looking at it from a point of view of equity in terms of all all students deserve the best schools that they can possibly get into So we have a wonderful panel here that are going to address some of these issues in different ways And I'm going to introduce them Then we're going to have a little conversation as we did in the previous panel I'm going to try to leave as much room as we possibly can So that we can have questions and we can discuss some of the ideas that come out on the panel So Welcome welcome to the panel. Welcome to you all Not I'm going to I haven't we're going to introduce. I'm just going to introduce you first and then we'll we'll get into the questions As linda said, we're very fortunate to have the actual adventure of the word tapestry among us Um, I don't know for historically, but at least in this context Uh, she's uh, charmaine mercer is a program officer in education at the william and for hula foundation Where she focuses on education policy practices the tools that advance deeper learning experience and outcomes Especially for those through this from opportunity. So the equity issue here is critical as linda said I won't go through that again. He worked for lpi and we miss her terribly Mohamed char dream is the chief innovation officer at the san antonio independent school district Where he develops and scales school design and turnaround initiatives Previously, he served as the interim chief and founding director of the office of transformation and innovation At the dallas independent school district He began his career in education as a middle school english and second language teacher and social studies teacher teacher in Central los angeles. So welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I only know you from all your work. So it's great to see you in person Next we have robin lake Probably many of you know robin in this audience and her work at the center for reinventing where she's director at the Center for reinventing public education non-partisan research and policy analysis organization based at the university of washington that develops transformative evidence-based solutions for k-12 public education Her research focuses on u.s. Public school system reform for this word system including Public school choice charter school innovation scale portfolio management and effective state and local public oversight practices So welcome robin We have claire silvin in the middle of our group here. We were so mixed that we don't have any political orders this way I can't use that line It's very good to see claire claire is the founder and senior strategic advisor of the international network for public schools And the co-founder and co-director of the deeper learning equity fellows And that I think we have so much We have a few in the audience. Look at that. Okay. Yeah, put up your hand. Okay. She's peppered the audience. All right, excellent Um, uh, nashley recognized. She's uh, claire is a nashley recognized expert Uh, and practitioner in school reform and the education of migrants which is an english learners And she's passionate about providing all students with personalized educational opportunities Previously claire worked in diverse roles spanning public secondary education teacher education and community workplace organized welcome claire And and and now we have it on the end of the line here jonathan rayman who is the uh, former president of the stewart foundation He brings insights very recently the former. I should say okay Uh, it brings insights from the many years of experience in education first is the chief academic Chief accountability officer at the charlotte mecklenburg school system in north carolina and then a superintendent of sacramental city unified school district from nine to two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen In his new book wildflowers a school superintendent's challenge to america. He shares his insights into what we need to do to transform america's public schools So we have a we have a fantastic panel So let's get right to the question so we can get going and I should also say that to some to the greed of the camp I'm going to i'll just put this here. I'll um I'll try to get you guys all to interact with each other. All right, so feel free if you have something you want to Say So charmaine I know she said I don't have that much to say but she has a lot to say Much of this form is the result of your thinking about what we call a tapestry of school choice Can you describe what you mean by that and why you think it's so important to examine this tapestry? And thinking of it as a framing for for our conversations about solutions and strategy In what ways does this framing of the issue of choice point us in the direction of solutions and strategy? Thank you, peter and thank you linda and lpi for having me um Well, we first set down to think about the various options of choice that were being thrown out kind of without regard for Quality without regard for how they were actually impacting students life The word tapestry just seemed to make sense because it came to me to think about it as Um or surface the need for a purposely interconnected system of school Thought that was really important a system of schools. That's also worth choosing when to signal that earlier They would be worth choosing because they would be equally resourced and equally supported based on or I should say equitably I don't think equal equitably resource and support it. I have this image of a quilt That one of my elders had made for me when I became a mom and it symbolizes Life periods in my life between middle school and motherhood There's all these individual pictures if you look at it, it's really intricate and it's beautiful Any individual piece tells you something unique about my life But if not until you look at the whole piece or step back and look at it as a whole that you really begin to appreciate And understand who I am in totality And I like to think about that when we think about all of the choices as opposed to thinking about charters and magnets Vouchers as this way of constructing public education step back and think about what do families and schools and communities actually mean How can we design schools to be reflective of what families and communities in school and Children actually need the design the structure thinking about it as a system and not as an individual collection of choices Not leaving choice as an individual's level because education or public education is still a public good So stepping out and connecting those pieces and starting to orchestrate and thinking of it as a system Which is why about a tapestry it just seems to make sense that we need to connect the pieces more purposefully And not allow it to be so random Well, that's a great introduction, but I want to ask you just a little follow-up Um, you mentioned the word public good Could could you elaborate a little bit on that because I think this is a key issue that we're really all grappling with What is the public good in this context? The public good is is our humans as our citizens it's investing in the people who we ultimately expect to help run the century We ultimately expect to help solve some of the challenges like climate change Cancer research so many of those things are what we look to ourselves to actually do But yet we don't invest in our people so investing in the people to ultimately do on behalf of the country What is needed or what is best? That's what I see That's a great great opening for us. I want to turn next to Muhammad Because I think there's a lot of resonance what we just talked about in your life and your work and your dedication And what you've done is San Antonio you've instituted a program to aid in increasing school integration Using the strategy of control choice, which Patrick touched on earlier in the meeting today Could you tell us a little bit about what school choice control choices? And why you took this approach in terms of achieving more social racial and economic integration? I have a follow-up question too, but just So where I would start is um The system was designed to do I often say the system's designed to do exactly what it San Antonio has 17 different school districts that make up the city One city right a mayor who can't talk about san antonio ISD, which is the urban core that we make up Um city council can vote straight about education. I was all purposefully designed This talk to richard rostin. He can tell you how the government sponsored all of that So with that I'm going to use big government to disrupt that and redesign it so we can fulfill the promise of integration Either we're going to be okay with this notion this neoplesian notion of separate can't be equal Or we believe in the promise of brown and we're going to continue to fight for it Now as a teacher as a student who grew up in high poverty schools They can succeed if they're damn hard to make work really well We're going to be committed to that but while we do that well, we're going to stop recreating it Especially when you're in urban cities surrounded by affluence right People often don't talk about attendant zones as choices. That's a market based decision That leaves out A good chunk of people in this country So let's talk about our attendant zones as well, but we don't want to do that We can point to charters. We can point to private schools But the tenant zones have been segregated since the dawn of time, right? That's I mean it fulfills our original sin of segregation So with all of that what I would say is what we've done Is we've decided that our family believe in best fit schools We believe a student should not be trapped in an attendant zone that people have not Taken the courage to redraw right because we have suburban districts surrounding us With all sorts of affluence and so with that we use our industry charter process to launch a control choice initiative And we're launching all sorts of school models for monosorry and advanced learning academies By the way, all of which are detrack Right. I always laugh what monosorry has become nationally, right? Maria monosora should be rolling in her grave And so with all of that We've launched our control choice initiative around building socioeconomically diverse and integrated schools and racially diverse schools And so the way we do that because people often get worried about race and such which by the way is still allowed Let's it's a myth that it's not We use something called socioeconomic blocks free and rigorous price lunch It's a flawed metric. We like it because we get federal funds But if you really want to look at need and you want to get to students Who really deserve a choice and you want to guarantee choice, right? You you've got to come up with a better measure of poverty That work was inspired actually by Richard Talenberg's work to help Integrate the magnets in Chicago And so basically what you do is you use census block data to find a way to measure socioeconomic capital Around a child as well as the kinds of communities they're growing up And so we looked at four factors from need and income to levels of education To home ownership and single parent households and now I've added in the English learner Data as well to English learners because we have to think about how those families navigate choice as well So with all of that We've created this block methodology and our families either live in block one communities and block four When you're more advantageous that kid is more likely to be around kids who are educated or have parents Or a friend who can call me and find me and try to get them off the wait list I say no to that often, right? That's not how that works And block four being your least advantageous less likely to own their home Less likely to know how to apply etc And so what we do with our control choice initiative is with these open enrollment campuses We take two approaches We do what I call a smarter and better attending zone Which is like this priority radius approach where say the school You want to have you want to give it was a former school that you reopened and you wanted a certain percentage to go to that neighborhood So I would draw a radius around it, but when I draw that radius I will capture a million dollar homes that I will also cut capture subsidized housing I'm not going to make it look like the red line that's attending zones that we have in Dallas and san Antonio And then when I go the rest of the district, I might do 50% eco days 50% non eco days And then I might do out of district I do out of district in san antonio because at the end of the day it is one city And and and we're surrounded by it and half of our employees are going to live out of district So that's one way and through that we'll get schools that are at least 50% economically disadvantaged And then not economically disadvantaged and we'll get students because I run something called an equity audit Which ensures that block 3 and block 4 students get it So if my recruitment strategy was engaging and powerful and it reached communities It was easy to apply Then I should have a quarter of the eco decide or economically dispending side come from block 3 and block 4 comes If they don't then I'll go to the wait list and I'll skip over and find the next block 3 and 4 kids and let them in So that's our equity audit another approach We take is the straight 50 50 approach 50% of the students are going to be eco days And 50% of the students are not and again we'll have two lotteries and then we'll do the equity audit piece So all of that does promote socioeconomic diversity Um, it does promote racial diversity Why because the blocks track with race because of this country's legacy of segregation Um, unfortunately it continually does The other piece I would share is the work doesn't stop as soon as you have all the colors And all the income comes into the school integration, right? You want to tap into pure effect? You better make sure your middle class families don't take over, right? So we do a lot of diversity and equity inclusion work as well in the campuses with our These schools have performance contracts that look at achieving gaps and everything so That's what we're doing in San Antonio. So I often say If a Muhammad in Texas can talk about integration I don't want to hear your excuse Well, I have to I have to say Oh, I'm sure I've got some questions at the q&a pier How is this working politically in San Antonio? I mean, it's a little off topic, but I'm just so curious because what you've done is so radically different than what was there before So you have to own it. You have to use the word integration and segregation right mayor de Blasio knows that really well so you We we Pedro and I well first one Pedro machine is hired me guys. He came from Chicago. I asked You bring me on we're gonna do the segregation Do you believe in it? Absolutely Does our board believe in it? Absolutely, but we've never known how to go about it, right? So first comes with just making the case for it But often people things like you have to come and undo attendance zones and deal with the pitchfork. You can start with one Right. Actually, that was the theme of an interview. I did with serpi. You can start with one Right and start with one and then scale right in Dallas when fully grown out the schools that we built It's gonna be 8,000 kids in there Right in San Antonio and these schools are fully grown out. They're gonna be about 6,000 kids When you start building on that concept, right then the political Tensions and such a result Because my middle-class families and their self-proclaimed progressive values they did begin to practice them They begin to have their play dates. They begin to have conversations about housing policy And hopefully the world becomes a better place and so um So you have to start with one and you keep going Um, and you have to stand up right you have to stand up to middle-class families when they Tell you well, why don't you just do this? Well, we want more seats and you have to be willing to do that um, I mean We're not afraid of white life I mean, that's what I'll say Okay, we'll come back to some of these issues. That was tremendous. Well, this this leads very much into my next question to robin Um, robin recently published a fascinating article for a public school choice focus on reality not rhetoric Uh, in which you wrote choice is not magic. It creates new possibilities and also new challenges This is a little echo of the previous panel, but nonetheless, we'll look at it from a strategy point of view What are the new possibilities and challenges that you see today? And I have a follow-up question for you as well Yeah, um, thank you Peter and thank you um to linda and lpi for having me Perfect that you all are working in this area the um, yeah, so peter the article that you refer to the brookings piece was um Built off of a series of studies. We did in 18 cities around the country. Um, they'd have we call kind of high choice So across the spectrum different kinds of choice and understanding from data and evidence What's going on on the ground and how can we focus on the facts not the not the rhetoric? And you know just to step back This is how we at syrupy have always tried to approach the choice problem I was recalling after the earlier conversation this morning An article that paul hill and I wrote many many years ago in 1990 or something Around choice shouldn't be about escape. It should be about reform. Um, and so that is where we've sort of Zeroed in on the possibility side of things. Um And for us we've always thought about the possibility In two ways first in terms of opportunities for Breakthrough teaching and learning Right and so what we know about effective schools is that schools have to be coherent. They have to Operate as a team. They have to have a clear mission and purpose. They need to be the locus of both Accountability and control in order to really deliver high quality results for all kids And then so we've always seen that as sort of the fundamental opportunity on the achievement side And um and looked across our 18 cities to look for evidence that that was actually occurring and there's some there's some positive things there You know much as the the new orleans case has its Problems and challenges if you look at the achievement results, it's sort of hard to hard to ignore So right starting with that premise achievement first and then second around new possibilities and hope for families that have been in a constrained choice environment before And by that I mean really what mohammad was just talking about the choice Is typically something that more advantaged families Can enjoy and as a parent of a child with special needs I've been in a desperate straight before so Understanding that a lot of folks are looking for something that is either a desperation move or is A look toward a quality of a school that they might not otherwise see In the public school the traditional district school offerings Whether that's Montessori or whatever so so those are you know, those are the The hopes and possibilities And our work has really been on the house. How do you Figure out what are the best ways to leverage? Leverage those opportunities On the challenges side, I mean, I think that The previous panel did a great job of kind of working through the The questions that we see in our data all the time that The less educated families Students with disabilities and their families have particular needs and challenges that one has to Find ways to address And so I won't dig into that now But I can happily talk about some of the other strategies that we haven't talked about so far about how cities are addressing those Then I'll just raise that the other challenge is on the political And financial front and the tensions that occur when you Like move outside of in district choice and outside and challenge the notion that the district is the only one who can provide the options And then finally just we'll just touch on The work at our center has been Something that we've we've relied on calling The portfolio strategy Although charmaine's tapestry is much more compelling We may be rebranding around We trademarked it already And then just just that this is you know, it's something that we've been thinking about from the start around How do you how do you create these reform strategies and The portfolio strategy is something that By whatever count you use 30 or so districts like san antonio Have been using to adopt a continuous improvement strategy and And think about ways to leverage the opportunities and minimize the risk to families You know, this is a great overview of your work And you said something also in this article I'd like to just touch on because it had it goes to do with Thinking about systems and thinking about this in the broader context. Sometimes we talk about schools I think our image is of the school somewhere school someplace But actually of course, there's a social context. There's an ecological context There's always a context and you wrote something very interesting I thought that you're willing especially if we're talking about solutions and A strategy you wrote in the same case Choice requires ongoing attention from both government oversight agencies and community education Advocates to ensure that all families can have access to high quality options When we think about choice and we think about people who talk about choice They don't often talk about government oversight Could you talk a little bit about that and what you meant by that because I think it adds a little To our conversations Yeah, I mean our view is that the role of government has to really stay focused on performance management And managing the equity questions and really ensuring like Massachusetts has done that That the most vulnerable kids are being well served in the system of choice And then there are all these other things right that have to happen and I would argue should be happening within the district traditional system as well around parent information Making sure that families understand Where they might find the best fit and how to enroll in schools effectively And that's what we've seen community organizations really step up and there's some really interesting things going around the country Ed navigators in new orleans Works with families and gives them a navigator an advocate really to help them Understand how to find the best fit. We'll even go to IEP meetings with the family and advocate on their behalf I certainly wish I had somebody like that when I was when I was fighting for my son um And then organizations like DCERN and DC are doing incredible work to educate families about How to look across the system of Of choices And try to make sense of a very confusing set of data around performance The approach to culture at the school whether that's compelling for them all the things that are really meaningful to families But you know the big data systems the researchers and the government agencies don't always get to those things And so that's where you know our view is that a true portfolio or tapestry Is pulling all of those avenues and And not just relying on government because as much as I'm a believer that government has an essential role in choice It's really dangerous. I think to constrain ourselves to the idea that a few people in a central office are going to have all the answers For families and that's the tension right And so the more we can engage the community and really advocating for what they need and sometimes it is Look the choices that you've put before us are high quality in terms of the data But aren't delivering on some of the other things that we're looking for All right, we'll come back to that because it's really a key topic thinking about systems and so forth But let's so let's move on to claro has a lot of experience in this. Um, here's my question to you The international network for public schools grew out of a collaborative effort Of the first school which was founded in 1985 and subsequently three international high schools Among the many district rung schools of choice in new york city It now has 28 network schools in five states and in washington dc You've been there almost for the beginning. I said she was from the beginning before she's correct me almost from the beginning Joining the first school community in 1991. Can you tell us about the international networks was launched? What it does and how the network has become such an important option for english learners All right, um, so Speaking about what student needs are um English language learners who I prefer to call actually and I wasn't going to do it, but I'm going to do it Multilingual learners because I'd rather talk about what their strengths are than what they need to learn So multilingual learners historically have not been Served well. They're one of those groups that are furthest from opportunity, which is a phrase. I love um and so those students in 1985 the first school was formed because um Actually a local community college realized that in queens, which was the epicenter of immigration Still is actually the most diverse county in the country um queens was um The the community college was realizing that its students that were they were getting very few immigrant students out And so it was started the first school of the collaboration between the city university of new york actually and the district um And the name was important The first faculty chose the name international because immigrant is a pejorative term in this country But international people get confused, you know, it's one of those private school Whatever we wanted our to confer prestige on our students And so that was the reason we chose the name international Um, and it was founded because there was a need for school that built on the assets of the Student and figured out and it took about six to eight years to figure it out. Um, how to do that? Well um by the time in 1993 One of the many waves of school reform and opening small schools and the schools of choice that were opening in new york That first school chose to piggyback on that And opened in 1993 and 1994 the second two schools as part of a variety I mean every imaginable source of funding from federal um title seven, which was the old title three I mean, it's what's now title three was title seven to The coalition of essential schools to annenberg everything thrown in a pot. Um And we chose after the second and third school form to create a partnership that it wasn't one school telling the others And we never we try not to talk and let me rephrase that depends on what the grant application has What we try not to talk about replicating our schools We prefer to talk about recreating them because each one is a creation In the context in which it's being opened Each community is different. Brooklyn is not queens is not Manhattan is not the bronx Definitely, and so we need you know, and i'm not a yankees fan. I was born in brooklyn The brooklyn dodgers. I just want to say their home was brooklyn So I know so right So the the schools We started a partnership and but at that point I was a teacher and I was a teacher until I left the schools in 2003 to create the network As a teacher we created a partnership where those schools began to collaborate Intervisitations projects across the schools and where I actually fought with the central board because we chose to put money That was coming into the first school into the other schools and they're like you can't do that I said, why not? Well, you can't get it back. I don't want it back. I want it there those schools need it We need to do this collaboration. So we we created that in 2004 As the small schools movement and gates was moving around that name international came in handy Because they were one of the things they began talking about was international education The asia society had international schools on name Interested them They really didn't understand the difference between what we were doing or what the asia society was doing In fact, they thought we were going to collaborate on everything because we were going to be their international initiative That was fine We figured we could open more schools for immigrants when we in In 1993 we had six applicants for every seat in our first school in new york city We still were getting way too many by the time we had four schools We had one in every borough except statten island still don't in statten island We still were getting multiple way too many applicants for every seat and so we didn't We are small schools So the solution was to create more schools created in different communities that met the needs of those communities And our strategy was to look at the data which we had a fight for To figure out where in eighth grade and ninth grade there were recently arrived immigrants Two criteria for admission to our school. We like to think of ourselves as highly selective You theoretically actually you don't really have to take the test but you have to take a test to get in The Issue is you have to fail it. You cannot be proficient in English and enter our school. It's an interesting We you can't come we want students that no one else in many cases want We want the students who are Recently arrived in the country generally less than four years at the time of admission and who don't speak So in 2004 as we began to We were approached to I was still a teacher to open the schools We actually wrote our first grant not knowing that we were in a non-profit because I didn't know what a non-profit was I was a teacher And I was running a project so we opened The first two schools in 2004 or five and became so 1985 to 93 we opened all of four schools those schools just helping each other 2003 to today we opened another 24 schools 16 in the city of new york at this point Slightly less than one in 10 more than one in 10. It's like 1.2 Kids who are recent immigrants in the high schools in new york go to one of our schools We have never wanted to be the only choice We support bilingual education schools. We support a variety of models because we think English language learners deserve as much Choice as anybody else But we also don't think that it just means putting them in the same room. That's what The school board argued in lau those who even know lau versus nickels. They had the same opportunities We're putting them in the same room. They got the same curriculum. Why? Why isn't this equal? that Hopefully stands The supreme court decided that and so we provide support For those students. So what the network does? That's different Is Schools can't do this by themselves. So one of the things that we do is we began to You know, if you go to our website, you'll see like all these core principles They were developed collaboratively by the leaders of the first six school They sat in a room it took them two years The network worked to pull that into six principles, but the question we asked is so what makes an international and international? And then we hammered that down into the network staff Five core principles. So the definition of who we are and what we do is decide defined by the practitioners who are working with kids The second thing so I guess the two big things we do is we open schools Overwhelmingly with districts While we are agnostic as an organization on charters districts or whatever I was asked by the leader of a union in one of the schools who said what do you want to do in our school? I said open a school for immigrants. He said is it going to be a charter? I said, I don't really care I'm happy to do a district school. You're going to help make that choice for me But we're going to open a school for immigrant kids So We open schools and we have a variety of things that we do to support them and we support schools and network them Somebody has to help Schools network. They're kind of inward focused if they don't have people and so we do that Those are the two big and we advocate. We're not shy about that I imagine not that would be great You know, any of you have ever had a chance in new york to go to one of the international high schools You really ought to do it because it's actually incredible All these youngsters from all these different places speaking all these languages and the Pedagogy that's been involved over time is so dynamic, but it's also so student-centered. It's quite an experience actually john Let me let me ask you a couple You've had a lot of experience at the managerial level. We are talking about systems, you know and how this works So let me just put this question out to you, but feel free to develop develop a little bit from your experience In your recent book wildflowers a school superintendent's challenge to america. You say it is time to quote Relinquish dogma and ideology and reframe the endless debate over education through the perspective that matters most That of our children How did you reframe the choice question? Sacramento so that the needs of children were better meant and if you could give some examples And one piece to touch on probably maybe is a transportation issue in terms of systems, but Take that question and go with it anywhere you want to the the wonderful part of our going last is either everything's been said You've either run out of time or you learned something and I've actually learned a lot this morning being here the first panel and then you know this panel now and By the way, I did bring a copy of my book for whoever answers or whoever asked the first question Other than you peter I will give a copy too. So happy to do that. Um, great book You know, I think this I love this idea of choices. Is it a destination? You know, is it an end or is it a means and I I learned a lot, you know when I was in charlotte mecklenburg, you know Charlotte had a lot of great schools a lot of magnet schools. You know, they really weren't in charter schools in in charlotte You know because they gave I think a voice right to every Every community and there's a lot of middle class and affluent families still in charlotte and You know, I think when when you you know when you don't listen Right, I think you ultimately end up it ends up kind of like a an end or a destination, right? And so we had a lot of those in in charlotte. Um, a lot of great schools. I mean doing everything Uh, except the big issue wasn't like nobody ever talked to with anybody There was no there was no sharing right the accountability model that we've talked about right and and I would say same in massachusetts today It doesn't incentivize Sharing and learning and cooperation and collaboration. I mean if it did in massachusetts You know that cap would have been voted You know to be expanded by the public if these schools are doing such wonderful things But the accountability model and same in charlotte, right? There was no There was no incentive and and how do I know I well? I was the first chief accountability officer Right and and when my oldest daughter who was in first grade was learning to read You know, she comes home one day and she she grabs my business card and she says, you know daddy You know, what does a chief accountability officer do right and and in this like grinch like moment You know when you know the grinch is stealing cindy, you know cindy lu who says You know, why are you stealing our christmas tree and he's like, uh, I said well, honey my job is to catch people doing good things Because I had heard from a principal that she said, you know what? There's these nuances that happen in our school right every day that nobody ever sees Nobody ever recognizes and most importantly nobody ever replicates right because they were destinations They were ends right and we had this wonderful researcher from Yale A woman named justine hastings and she did this incredible study in charlotte that it doesn't get any play today But it's she found that the cohort effect meaning if you mix kids, right? Is three times more powerful in terms of academic achievement and all these other things that we want of kids Then I then haven't a great teacher in in in front of that classroom So if you mix kids right, but I think most of the models today are all about kind of forced mixing right? We don't we don't provide I think really choice grounded in local community choice, right? Um, and so with all that background I'm sort of thinking and I thought about a lot of this just this morning when I came to sacramento Right. I mean we had so many kids right furthest from opportunity. I mean we had We didn't have a tapestry, but there were a lot of quilt patches like you know spread out all over the place With like long waiting lists, right some of the best schools that happened to pop up a lot of them stimulated by The remaining middle class that was in sacramento They had established these these little islands right huge waiting lists Or the charter community was like, you know angry and vicious and Right, nobody ever spoke to them and they were just they were out there They were doing their thing, right? They had a voice because no one else was listening So, you know for me you're coming to california in 2009, which by the way a good friend of mine said like Nobody's going to be a superintendent in california at this time. It's like it's like any grad me He said it's like hitting the beaches of normandy wearing an orange suit But I was like look man, I know that but You know, there are kids showing up the school on on monday And so if if not now when and if not me and so I came with a different set of eyes and I came to really listen And if we listen if we really listen Right, the answers are in the community, right? So, you know as we started to take what I say is a You know think systemically, right? But design locally Right, so when we looked around we were bleeding kids, right? We had families and children furthest from opportunity. We had these little pockets And yet we were bleeding, you know kids out to elk grove out to out out to natomas I mean they were just going but we had families coming into sacramental every day, right? Coming in to work at the capital and then and then they were leaving and we had neighborhoods that were just you know filled with you know Multi-generational Chinese families and yet we didn't have one Chinese language immersion school in our district, right? San Francisco had three or four right same kind of a community And so those families were going elsewhere leaving our schools kind of like icily And so it didn't take long to start to think of well We could replicate the schools that have these large waiting lists, right? We could move them to campuses that had been closed to enable them to you know to expand Those were so that that was that that was the low-hanging fruit, right? But then as we thought about even further right this idea of Of designing right locally. I mean when you ask Families and neighborhoods and communities and by the way students right when you ask them like what do you want in school? Like what kind of school and and then you use design principles, right? So we we helped communities that had been again so far, right? I mean so far they were on the bottom lists of you know the bottom five percent list in california We gave them an opportunity To redesign themselves to reimagine what learning could be like I mean schools and students and parents and family members were Were involved in the in this design process, right? So they they got the chance to use these really cool tools But but to create really responsive schools that that met their needs, right? So so choice right enabled them to then start to you know to create the kind of Of schools that they were interested in in in sending their kids to and you know, I mean look, uh, you know Poor families don't like leave their best kids at home, right? I mean they they all want their kids to have a great education And they want what's best for their children. They know and and and all families know What a great school is or the good schools, right? But often they just never have access to those kinds of schools and in certainly in in california at that time You know, I mean these things like these like yellow like school bus things like we don't have them in california I mean so, you know people have to walk and we have to think about that And so the the whole closing school conversation that patrick, you know referenced was it was real You know if we closed the school in a neighborhood it became a you know a dark spot, right? Or could we think about moving a school or could we think about rights on the way and you know We also could start by learning with our charter providers, right? Who by the way my first meeting with the charter Providers had to be facilitated by somebody from the california charter school association because relationships were that bad We had facility use agreements that were just months behind reimbursement rates. I mean it was it was that bad And fast forward, you know, we eventually we took advantage of you know, one of those compact opportunities that the gates foundation did Probably one of the best things, you know gates is done by the way, but you know, I can I can say that being a former you know foundation person, but It enabled us to work together with our charter providers for nine months. We developed it and we started sharing Professional development opportunities. We started doing school visits with each other We we made leadership opportunities available for teachers interested in becoming principals, you know 20 slots for district teachers 20 slots for charter teachers and at the end of those trainings We had comments like wow, we never knew the district had teachers that cared about kids, you know, so You know choice choices also about relationships, right? To the way it's framed today It's an either or to get back to your your question about dogma and and ideology. It's an either or right my way my model My reform, you know versus versus yours or not and really to me choices are both and right And when it's used as a As a way and as a means right and when you start to design a system around it, right a system of supports When you create accountability models that give incentives to learn and share, you know, you you get to charmey's tapestry Good. That was an excellent conclusion for this panel Um Questions from the audience I didn't want to rush you but I'd not make sure we leave some time so I I guess we just That's true I brought a couple Good morning. I'm kelly taylor. I'm a k5 engineering teacher from Idaho And I really love the positivity of the discussions and hearing the wonderful things I guess my question comes in is how do we define high quality schools? And we've heard just such diverse ways of making things work And it doesn't seem like there's one solution. So how do we incorporate that into a system? And then how do we hold schools accountable? If we know that high stakes testing Panelizes schools that take some of the neediest students Anybody want to tackle that we've got Well, I can say one quick thing it is um, what we're seeing in cities that are really pursuing portfolio Really trying to get kind of a common performance framework across all of their charter and district schools Is one this is really a hard question, right? There's no easy answer to it and um, most of the folks That we work with are really, you know being very very thoughtful in How do you balance clarity of information to parents and clarity of expectations to schools With the complexity that we know schools hold and that parents are looking for in schools It's it's just really hard. And so, you know, our advice is always this has to be to some degree A community-based decision And that's where the the good work comes in is when cities Or communities are sitting down with their families and saying what information Do you want to see in a clear quality measure? And then what are all the other things that you want to just know about to help inform your choices? I think most people understand that, you know, one test score is not Not enough, but ultimately government has to decide how how good is good enough? How bad is bad enough to make some of the hard decisions? Yeah So texas just shifted through to an a through f system um I think one of the things that we've been fortunate enough is we have a progressive commissioner who understood um That you know high poverty schools whose baselines start here Versus affluent school districts who just get them already here And then they have kids who come in lower, but they get masked in this proficiency game We created a nuance system that did prioritize growth And so texas has these three domains around where you can take the best of proficiency or the Or the growth domain and then it has this other domain called closing the gap Which has pissed off a lot of suburban districts because all of a sudden they're a c or a b and because you know It's got to help the other kids too And so I've appreciated that Do I believe the f label is problematic? Yes Do I think we could come up with other names? Sure But at the end of the day, we do need to know who our bottom 5 percent of schools are and we need to act with urgency Sometimes that may be closure or sometimes that might be great turnaround work, right? Which is damn hard as I've said, but it can be done. We pursued any Dallas Um, that's why I respect charter operators who do take the arms from around. Um, there's only a few nationally that do Um, we of texas also created a law that allows you to take that concept and develop a local accountability system Um, and as long as the state piece is at least 50 percent of your piece and so we're we're running with that to create this whole child school performance framework Um, the core districts in california have done some great work around that Um, you know, what gets measured gets treasured now. The question is do you start? Uh, having consequences if your kids are not growing socially emotional Like when do you start that consequence? Or is it just you report it? And just by reporting it you get people to behave differently So we're having that conversation intention at the end of the day We need a decision-making framework that looks at a child holistically to be able to act and improve schools So Very briefly what I wanted to also it is so One of the reasons a lot of schools do not wish to serve the population We serve is because They'll lower their, you know Results on the various accountability And that's one of the reasons I think a network has been really critical Our stance has been with every school was ever opened and in conversations with the district has been Our job is to we're we're on the high school level our job measures by how many kids graduate Measure us by how successful they are and go on to college We're not we told in the california districts We're gonna bomb on your 10th grade accountability measures because you give them in 10th grade Our kids are not going to be able to do much in english. I don't care Come back to us when they have to graduate. That's what i'm interested in The second thing is You can take on issues like when an unaccompanied minors arrive and they're over age And to say they're under credit is an understatement Um And they're not going to graduate maybe ever because they're coming in at 20 and have You know a year and a half So our stance has been schools serve kids the network advocates for the changes that need to be made And so we've bifurcated that purposefully and we provide the supports to the school and we deal with You know state education and so forth on what the Accountabilities measures need to be to ensure that every school is willing and we don't all you know Disincentivize schools to serve english language and then this performance assessment. I'm not going to talk about it Just really really quick. You know that's I love the question and and I don't fully believe in quantitative You know measuring systems. I don't care what state right? I mean the bottom 5% listing in california I think he's just it misses so much and so Um, I really believe in qualitative models, you know school quality reviews You know a lot of places they don't use them because they're hard. They're expensive. They take time But if we're really committed to this thing called continuous improvement, right? Which where I think we look at it too much as a a technical science versus the human relationship component when you've got You know principles working together, you know reviewing each other's schools when you've got teams of educators and parents doing You know assessments to really assess and to to self assess where they are You know that's when you really start to kind of drive improvement and you know one piece and we did in Sacramento We had community reviews, right? So we train parents and community members to look at just two things, you know Is the climate and culture welcoming? Right and you know, is it a place where I'd want my child, you know And again, right parents and communities They know and you need that pressure if you really want to have improvement if we really want to see great schools We've got to get that community that community ownership and they're they won't own it if they're not invited into the school And can I just add to that? I think it's it's more than just information is truly engagement A lot of these issues get addressed if we're continuously engaging families and including them in the decision making process About what teaching and learning looks like when we have to create schools when we have to close down schools We have to ask for bonds for air conditioning. That's when we choose to go to community But if you found the fundamentally different way of engaging students and families and community members in the entirety of the decision making process A lot of these things that began to survive All right, how are we done? We're done. All right. Well, thank you very much for our panel. I want to say thank you Patrick is gonna do a little wrap up for us. So I think we want to go back to our seats. That'd be that'd be great. Thanks great So thank you, um, everyone for coming. That was a great panel You know, we heard a lot at the beginning and in the first panel about the, you know The opportunities and the challenges and I think this panel really sort of underscored people taking the opportunity to Take on some of those challenges, you know, I just uh Highly at a couple themes, you know, both Jonathan the internationals and behind in san Antonio, you know focused about um Really involving the community and building on the needs of kids first And issues around the organization and choice and all of that follow the needs the expressed needs of the community and the identified Needs of the kids. I think that's a really a good point So with that, I just want to remind everybody that uh report is available online as will the power point be soon And that this is part of a series of events and there'll be additional for at least two more Coming in the winter and spring. So stay tuned. We're going to have a blog series on this topic And so that'll be coming out. So there'll be a lot more information And in the report are a set of over a hundred Citation so you can get to all of the data Underneath if you have a particular interest in el's or in in magnets or in special education or something like that There's resources there that you'll be able to get to and then finally, you know I'd like to thank uh peter and jenelle for organizing this and getting it together and Shawnee and crystal and the whole lpi team back there who did all the work to actually make it happen The comms team up here who organized stuff. Thank you very much and again. Thank you all for coming