Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Eliza Shapiro, education reporter for The
Speaker 1: New York Times, also born and raised in New York City.
Speaker 1: Off the record, what damper are you in? OH? I
Speaker 1: don't mind saying. I live in Brooklyn Heights. I grew
Speaker 1: up in A hundred six between West Denni Riverside. Why
Speaker 1: my first department I see him with my uncle Charles's
Speaker 1: apartment of three Riverside Drive a hundred and my ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend lives in that apartment. Don't let the charm fool you.
Speaker 1: In this year's one hundred Most Powerful People in Education,
Speaker 1: Shapiro ranks up with senators and ceo s, and her
Speaker 1: listing there reads no one on the education beat is
Speaker 1: a sharper or more effective thorn in the side of
Speaker 1: city officials. Plenty of us take our school systems for granted,
Speaker 1: but we owe it to ourselves to know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Like many New Yorkers, I get overwhelmed trying to understand
Speaker 1: the network of exams, state and local laws, charter schools,
Speaker 1: racial politics, and labor issues that make up the New
Speaker 1: York City school system. A conversation with Eliza Shapiro is
Speaker 1: a great way to start untangling it all. Under Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of change what had he wrought.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg completely transformed the education system in New York and
Speaker 1: many people feel for the better. Yes, so much change
Speaker 1: happened that the record is mixed, but there were some
Speaker 1: really controversial changes that were met with a lot of
Speaker 1: resistance that research has borne out were quite successful, even
Speaker 1: if quite painful. So, for example, no one likes to
Speaker 1: have their neighborhood school closed for low performance. It's incredibly
Speaker 1: emotionally painful for people who have memories of the school. However,
Speaker 1: one of the only ways that research has borne out
Speaker 1: to improve schools that have resisted improvement and changed for decades.
Speaker 1: Sometimes closure really is the difference maker, and Bloomberg cast
Speaker 1: away the politics of it, which are really nasty and
Speaker 1: not easy and said, tough nuggies, we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: And in some not all cases, but in some cases,
Speaker 1: it really helps schools get better in places where kids
Speaker 1: have not had a good option for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you get to the point where it's that bad
Speaker 1: that you're actually going to close a school, you disseminate
Speaker 1: them among adjacent school districts. I'm assuming or you entirely
Speaker 1: recreate that school. It's maybe it's in the same building,
Speaker 1: but there's a new principle, there's a new theme, there's
Speaker 1: new teachers and new everything closesn't mean you shut of
Speaker 1: the building clothes, means everybody gets fired and you start
Speaker 1: over again, potentially pretty much. To me, that's one thing
Speaker 1: I'm always I mean, I'm very pro union. I'm in
Speaker 1: a union, but the the proprietary nat ture of the
Speaker 1: teacher's union, it reminds me of the police where they
Speaker 1: kind of build a moat around their fiefdom here and
Speaker 1: they want to be completely self regulating, which is ridiculous
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, you are an employee of the
Speaker 1: City of New York. You work for the taxpayers. Yes,
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest changes between the Bloomberg approach
Speaker 1: to education and to Blasi's approach to education is to
Speaker 1: Blasio has a very very accommodating relationship to the teacher's union,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly politically powerful here. Every year more and
Speaker 1: more so, even I would say, I would say the
Speaker 1: election of Donald Trump has created a much more passionate membership,
Speaker 1: and many teachers feel that public education is under attack.
Speaker 1: Teachers all over the country feel that way, and that's
Speaker 1: why they gone on strike. If you're a teacher in
Speaker 1: New York, you happen to be a part of one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful unions in the country, and so
Speaker 1: you have a lot of leverage and power. What it
Speaker 1: hasn't meant on the ground is that, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to close the school. It's a lot harder
Speaker 1: to come up with education policy that could be disruptive
Speaker 1: without the union signing off. And Bloomberg just at a
Speaker 1: certain point, for better or worse, gave up on that.
Speaker 1: And that's not part of the de Blasio calculus. Blasio
Speaker 1: began to dismantle much of what Bloomberg had done. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? Yes, I don't think you could find two
Speaker 1: people who disagree more on foundational aspects of what public
Speaker 1: education should be. I mean, de Blasio said, we're not
Speaker 1: going to close schools anymore. We're not gonna embrace charter schools.
Speaker 1: We're not going to be as focused on tests or
Speaker 1: on sort of what data tells us about how schools
Speaker 1: are doing. We're not going to create smaller schools from large,
Speaker 1: underperforming high schools. But the problem is, over the course
Speaker 1: of the de Blasia administration, more and more research has
Speaker 1: come out that backs up some of the controversial, really
Speaker 1: really hard fought Bloomberg policies. We know that some of
Speaker 1: that stuff was working. What's one that de Blasio has
Speaker 1: tripped away that people have said was a mistake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think there's one really important example. So, you know,
Speaker 1: there is nothing harder in public education than figuring out
Speaker 1: how to take a catastrophically under performing school and somehow
Speaker 1: make it okay for kids to go to. There's no
Speaker 1: silver bullet. This is the hardest work in public education. Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: you know, broke up schools, made them into smaller schools,
Speaker 1: close them, tried to get teachers out, tried to get
Speaker 1: principles out. But this made people in the communities really angry.
Speaker 1: And to Blasio came in and said, don't worry, guys,
Speaker 1: We're not going to do all that stuff that made
Speaker 1: you upset. We're not them. We're not going to do
Speaker 1: all that stuff that made you upset anymore. We're going
Speaker 1: to take an entirely non controversial approach to school improvement.
Speaker 1: It's a program called Renewal and ended up costing the
Speaker 1: city almost eight hundred million dollars and it just uh
Speaker 1: largely did not work. So do Blasio said, We're going
Speaker 1: to flood under performing schools with resources and money and
Speaker 1: coaches and after school and that's all great, there's nothing
Speaker 1: to say that more money. In most it did not.
Speaker 1: And at a certain point you have to say, we're
Speaker 1: spending eight hundred million dollars and we're sending thousands of
Speaker 1: vulnerable kids into schools after year that the city knew
Speaker 1: vulnerable and described vulnerable so low income kids, homeless kids,
Speaker 1: black and Hispanic kids, kids who in other words, deserve
Speaker 1: a lot better from their government. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was clear, i would say, from the first year of
Speaker 1: this Renewal program in that it just wasn't coming together.
Speaker 1: Principles were confused at what to do. A lot of
Speaker 1: schools were not improving. Some did, some that were on
Speaker 1: the bubble of actually being functional did, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them didn't. And that meant that, you know, you
Speaker 1: could have gone your whole way through high school in
Speaker 1: an underperforming school that the city knew wasn't actually going
Speaker 1: to be acceptable, and that has been a big black
Speaker 1: mark on this administration's education policy, and it's really reverberated
Speaker 1: across the country. People are saying breaking up schools is tough,
Speaker 1: but a renewal like model that could even work. Um
Speaker 1: does the New York City school system spend the same
Speaker 1: amount of money per student system wide, so there is
Speaker 1: a baseline per pupil. New York City spends a fair
Speaker 1: amount of money on on a paltry amount of money. No,
Speaker 1: it's not the problem. That's not the problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everyone who works in the school would say
Speaker 1: we need more. And there's every year in Albany, enduring
Speaker 1: sort of the state legislative session, there are advocacy to
Speaker 1: say we need more, we need more. Governor Cuomo has
Speaker 1: added more money. I think what's really hard is that
Speaker 1: in New York City we have a massive bureaucracy that
Speaker 1: oversees by far, the largest school system in the country.
Speaker 1: It's one point one million kids, and the bureaucracy has
Speaker 1: basically never really functioned properly like ever in the last century.
Speaker 1: And every few years there's a massive reorganization and we
Speaker 1: think we're going to streamline it and get it right
Speaker 1: this time. But it's really hard to build a system
Speaker 1: around the huge variety of types of schools, types of kids,
Speaker 1: vast needs in the system, and it's sort of this
Speaker 1: constant bureaucratic project. And you know, Bloomberg recognized that, I
Speaker 1: think pretty early, and he got rid of this system
Speaker 1: where there were thirty two separate districts within the school
Speaker 1: district that we're all making their own decisions. He standardized. Again,
Speaker 1: that was like a very hard fought win. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like six to one, half a dozen the other
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost impossible for this bureaucracy to effectively
Speaker 1: run a system of schools. On the other hand, when
Speaker 1: there were thirty two elected school boards, there was all
Speaker 1: this corruption and patronage because know, you sort of do
Speaker 1: neighborhood by neighborhood politics in New York and that gets messy.
Speaker 1: So your cousin becomes the accountant for the local school board.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all vastly exactly, and that's New York
Speaker 1: and that's bureaucracy. But you know, I think there's no
Speaker 1: denying that more money would be helpful, But in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases it's leadership, teacher quality, organization, figuring out
Speaker 1: also how the money is spent right for renewal. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe school A needs a new guidance counselor,
Speaker 1: but School B just needs like a math coach because
Speaker 1: this math teacher is not getting it. And sometimes more
Speaker 1: money can lead to sort of a one size fits all,
Speaker 1: So there needs to be more money with better planning,
Speaker 1: and those two can be really tough to get together.
Speaker 1: My dad was not in the teachers in my town.
Speaker 1: In fact, when he crossed the picket line, some of
Speaker 1: his own friends and colleague through things at him, and
Speaker 1: they threw objects that you like, batteries you put into
Speaker 1: a toy. And I don't mean to sound too libertarian here,
Speaker 1: but it's like, why doesn't the union want there to
Speaker 1: be some oversight by the taxpayers, by their duly elected
Speaker 1: officials of their rank and file. Why, I mean, do
Speaker 1: they have a point that there's some politicized filter that's
Speaker 1: in place when when teachers and people are not promoted
Speaker 1: or they're fired or whatever. Has that been proven? It's
Speaker 1: a great question. I think, as with all things in
Speaker 1: this system, there are two genuine sides to the issue.
Speaker 1: So I think it is true that in the past
Speaker 1: and I'm sure today there have been documented incidents where
Speaker 1: principle throughout a teacher because they didn't like them. Has
Speaker 1: my reporting shown that that is like a rampant crisis. No,
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, the New York City
Speaker 1: Teachers Union. Only in the last decade or fifteen years
Speaker 1: have groups really gun to question their power and say,
Speaker 1: why is it that we have this group that you know,
Speaker 1: city Hall has to do a handshake with them on
Speaker 1: every education policy. Uh. You know, the teachers union has
Speaker 1: a job which is to protect the teachers. The people
Speaker 1: who lead the teachers union genuinely care about children and
Speaker 1: want the school system to get better. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any question about that. But there are different priorities
Speaker 1: when you run a school system as a chancellor, as
Speaker 1: a mayor, and when you run a teacher's union. There
Speaker 1: are some very valid questions that have been raised about
Speaker 1: can we get rid of a teacher who's really demonstrated
Speaker 1: themselves to be not qualified sooner. That's different from a
Speaker 1: teacher who you know, maybe had a tough first year teaching.
Speaker 1: This job is enormously difficult and really wants to get
Speaker 1: better and need some coaching from a teacher who you
Speaker 1: know has it, just doesn't have it, can't control classroom
Speaker 1: or or or isn't showing up every day. You know,
Speaker 1: these are these are different types of cases. It's like
Speaker 1: the police would you would you would have No one
Speaker 1: would want to get rid of bad cops more than
Speaker 1: the good coups. Totally. But I would just say in
Speaker 1: an ironic way, the teachers unions got a boost even
Speaker 1: though Trump and the Admistration have gone after them. There
Speaker 1: is this profound sense of unity, rallying cry, which is
Speaker 1: what a union needs to be powerful and strong. That
Speaker 1: Trump has helped in gender and politically, it's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good moment for the teachers. Who wants to be
Speaker 1: a teacher today, I would imagine somebody who is a
Speaker 1: glad for punishment. I mean, listen, this job is so
Speaker 1: so hard. I spent a lot of time in classrooms
Speaker 1: and probably in a school one full day a week,
Speaker 1: and I mean just the behavioral stuff, just like getting
Speaker 1: used to learning how to control a classroom. You can't
Speaker 1: just like sort of be a badass and walk in
Speaker 1: and you do it in a chair any chance, certainly not. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's a lot of new younger
Speaker 1: teachers I'm meeting who really have like a like a
Speaker 1: social justice point of view, who want to teach in
Speaker 1: underperforming schools or schools a lot of homeless kids and
Speaker 1: really feel like this is the best way, which I
Speaker 1: certainly don't disagree with. This is a really good way
Speaker 1: to make a difference in your community if you're concerned
Speaker 1: about the state of the world. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of young teachers who say, like, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: it my all in this school in Brownsville where thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the kids are homeless. Um, there's a new
Speaker 1: trend of having more cultural responsive education in school. So
Speaker 1: that's you know, more books by authors of color, or
Speaker 1: when we learn math, can we look at how you know,
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians approached it. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are coming out of school who
Speaker 1: have learned this and it's not mumbo jumbo. I mean
Speaker 1: it's real. Who want to bring it into schools and
Speaker 1: modernize the schools because you know, if you walk into
Speaker 1: like sort of a typical New York school, it's still
Speaker 1: like a relatively can feel like, um, it can feel
Speaker 1: a little bit trapped in time. What change would you
Speaker 1: like to see. I mean, my pet obsession right now
Speaker 1: is homelessness, and I sort of don't understand why the
Speaker 1: d o E continues to plot along sort of having
Speaker 1: a broad, unofficial office that looks at student homelessness. How
Speaker 1: can it possibly be that there's a hundred four thousand
Speaker 1: homeless kids and it's not really clear who's responsible for
Speaker 1: them at the central office level. If there's going to
Speaker 1: be a central bureaucracy, how can it be that one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful offices in that bureaucracy is not
Speaker 1: the one that deals with the single most vulnerable population
Speaker 1: in the city. So, you know, I and I talked
Speaker 1: to officials about this, and I just say, like, how
Speaker 1: have you guys not gotten it together organizationally on this.
Speaker 1: You have a large bureaucracy with a lot of money.
Speaker 1: What else can you do? Um? But I mean to
Speaker 1: your point about schools and poverty, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: in the sort of charter school movement and education reform
Speaker 1: movement of the last two decades, there has been this
Speaker 1: hope and somewhat call it a fantasy, that schools can
Speaker 1: trump poverty, and it's just not really true. Schools are
Speaker 1: being asked to perform tasks that are impossible. What I
Speaker 1: find very often when I go into high poverty schools
Speaker 1: or school a lot of schools with lots of homeless students,
Speaker 1: or schools with a lot of kids who are just
Speaker 1: struggling academically, is that the principles are highly organized. Actually,
Speaker 1: some of these principles were appointed under Bloomberg's reign because
Speaker 1: he was very very focused on high quality principles, which
Speaker 1: I think has worn out successfully. Who runs a school
Speaker 1: really really matters. But you go into these schools and
Speaker 1: you spend hour in the principal's office and you just
Speaker 1: watch a highly affected person who's spending every forty seconds
Speaker 1: putting out a different fire. And then people ask, well, like,
Speaker 1: why aren't the test scores of this school higher? But
Speaker 1: if you have a parent coming and saying I just
Speaker 1: lost my housing, or we still haven't gotten a shelter
Speaker 1: placement or um, you know, we don't have enough food,
Speaker 1: it's really hard for these schools then to both essentially
Speaker 1: act as social workers and case managers and you know,
Speaker 1: be instructional leaders. We're asking a lot of educators in
Speaker 1: schools that are segregated by race, poverty, housing status, and
Speaker 1: the best principle in New York City can't do all
Speaker 1: of it. New York Times Education reporter Eliza Shapiro. One
Speaker 1: of my other favorite conversations with a journalist on Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing was with the New York Times Stephen Lee Myers.
Speaker 1: He wrote the excellent English language biography of Vladimir putin
Speaker 1: the News are and is now the Times Beijing bureau chief.
Speaker 1: There's no question that the biggest challenge to the United
Speaker 1: States now is China. It's the economic challenge, it's the
Speaker 1: military challenge, it's the trade challenge. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: the issues that you're seeing this administration deal with, and
Speaker 1: and Obama administration was dealing with it as well, and
Speaker 1: whoever comes next going to be dealing with because China
Speaker 1: is a country that really firmly believes in its destiny
Speaker 1: and um and it's a system that is even more
Speaker 1: authoritarian than Russia is, and more efficiently authoritarian than Russia is,
Speaker 1: and that makes them more powerful. To hear my interview
Speaker 1: with Stephen Lee Meyer's text Myers, that's m Y E. R. S.
Speaker 1: Two seven zero one zero one. I'm Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the thing the Eliza Shapiro told
Speaker 1: me that one of the most controversial proposals floated under
Speaker 1: the Deblasio administration is the outright elimination of gift didn't
Speaker 1: talented programs in the New York City public schools. So Blasio,
Speaker 1: facing pressure, as he so often does from his left
Speaker 1: flank on social issues, He's been facing all this pressure
Speaker 1: from advocacy, you have to do more to integrate the system.
Speaker 1: So kind of as a way to get people off
Speaker 1: his back, he said, Okay, I'm gonna you know, classic government.
Speaker 1: I'm going to create a task force. They're going to
Speaker 1: study integration, will get back to you in three years.
Speaker 1: So the task force gets back to us and says,
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of almost all gift and talented
Speaker 1: PROGRESSI City. They said, because this Gift and Talented test,
Speaker 1: which is given to kids when they're four, they don't
Speaker 1: believe that that's a fair measure of gifts and talents,
Speaker 1: And because they believe that putting kids who are academically
Speaker 1: accelerated in different classrooms is inherently exclusionary and leads to segregation.
Speaker 1: So they went. In fact, this group went much farther
Speaker 1: than the mayor and immediately the mayor, even though he
Speaker 1: commissioned and appointed this task force, said oh my god,
Speaker 1: I barely know them. I'll get back to in a year.
Speaker 1: I mean, I genuinely do not believe that to Blasio
Speaker 1: believes that the city should get rid of gift and talented.
Speaker 1: But there is a new coalition of advocates experts, I mean,
Speaker 1: people who studied the issue, who say the idea of
Speaker 1: gift and talented is inherently exclusionary, and we can have
Speaker 1: more magnet schools, we can have more enrichment for all kids.
Speaker 1: But this is this is the third rail of education
Speaker 1: politics in New York City, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: far they're going to get. Where have you seen? I know,
Speaker 1: I was we we in our research. We so that
Speaker 1: you mentioned Lawrence, Massachusetts and Campden, New Jersey's places where
Speaker 1: there was some real progress. Describe that for me. Well, So,
Speaker 1: Campton is a fascinating example because it is um one
Speaker 1: of the absolute poorest, most desperate, most dangerous cities in
Speaker 1: this country. It's sort of infamously a really really really
Speaker 1: tough place to live, violent, violent, and just incredibly poor
Speaker 1: and sort of sequestered and isolated, and kids have you know,
Speaker 1: I have to deal with gun violence. You know, it
Speaker 1: can be really dangerous to walk to school. The schools
Speaker 1: have long been under performing. The school board there has
Speaker 1: long been played by corruption. So you know, I spent
Speaker 1: some time there recently to sort of say, like, how
Speaker 1: can the schools get better here? It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of like, if you can do it here, you can
Speaker 1: probably at least apply a lot of this stuff to
Speaker 1: other places, because Camden is really one of the roughest
Speaker 1: places in this country. And what I learned when I
Speaker 1: spent some time there is that and this is sort
Speaker 1: of my answer to this question. I get of like, well,
Speaker 1: what works, right? So what I found there is what
Speaker 1: works is when you have people who run a school
Speaker 1: system who are not ideological, who say like, okay, so
Speaker 1: we have all these different reforms in different ways of
Speaker 1: improving public education. But the unions believe A and B,
Speaker 1: and the charter people believe X and Y and never
Speaker 1: like to shall meet. Right. So actually there's good ideas
Speaker 1: on all sides of this issue, even though education policies
Speaker 1: and is so contentious. So let me give you an
Speaker 1: example in Camden Um there are some really high performing
Speaker 1: charter schools but they operate differently than almost any charter
Speaker 1: in the country. That is because they are zoned charter schools.
Speaker 1: So UM typically a charter schools what is ourship to
Speaker 1: get an expert's opinion, what is a charter school? So
Speaker 1: a charter school is a is a public school that
Speaker 1: is privately managed and typically they are you get in
Speaker 1: through a lottery system that's open to um anybody in
Speaker 1: the city. So there's a lot of charter schools, for
Speaker 1: example in Harlem, but technically anybody can apply and if
Speaker 1: you are lucky enough you know, to essentially win a
Speaker 1: golden ticket and get into a good charter school in Harlem,
Speaker 1: you can go and who runs them? Who runs them?
Speaker 1: So sometimes it's sort of what we call like mom
Speaker 1: and pop charters. Like one founder decided I want to
Speaker 1: start a charter for example, that helps kids with autism,
Speaker 1: which is a charter here. Yes, I mean they basically
Speaker 1: go through a process to get a charter and then
Speaker 1: they get typically they get public space in New York City,
Speaker 1: although some are in private space that they pay for.
Speaker 1: Typically there they have this lottery system. So what it
Speaker 1: sometimes means is that parents who know about the lottery
Speaker 1: will sign up for the lottery, but many parents don't
Speaker 1: know or there's vulnerability where like you might not be
Speaker 1: able to just get it together to fill out the
Speaker 1: application and understand how it works, and sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to line up. I mean, there's all these sort of
Speaker 1: different ways that have benefited lots of poor kids, but
Speaker 1: sometimes not the absolute needius kids. So, for example, in Camden,
Speaker 1: instead of having a lottery system, you'll have a charter
Speaker 1: that is open to kids um own in a neighborhood,
Speaker 1: so it sort of operates like a typical zone public school,
Speaker 1: yet it's a charter. And so what that means is
Speaker 1: that kids with severe special needs, kids who live in
Speaker 1: incredibly tough homes, kids who are homeless, go into the
Speaker 1: high performing, excellent, well organized charter and they can't sort
Speaker 1: of be counseled out or kicked out or told maybe
Speaker 1: this charter isn't for you, go to the public school,
Speaker 1: because the charter actually serves that purpose. So it's incredibly
Speaker 1: interesting hybrid model between a traditional public school and sort
Speaker 1: of a newer, innovative charter. And that's helped a lot
Speaker 1: of kids in Camden, and it could probably help a
Speaker 1: lot of kids in New York city. But you don't
Speaker 1: see that happening here. No, And that's because it's the
Speaker 1: union situation. What's the strength of the union situation across
Speaker 1: the river. It's not that far away. It's it's just
Speaker 1: just not as strong of a union. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the only reason that they got it
Speaker 1: together in Camden. But the politics of education in New
Speaker 1: York are so profoundly entrenched, and it's hard for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think there are two really
Speaker 1: powerful sides in New York. This is not the case
Speaker 1: in every city, but in New York, you have a
Speaker 1: really powerful union. You actually have a very strong mayor.
Speaker 1: We have mayoral control and he runs this system. And
Speaker 1: there's no school board, there's no powerful school board. You
Speaker 1: have a very powerful charter school sector that has a
Speaker 1: significant lobbying arm. And sort of these three big groups
Speaker 1: are constantly fighting, and it has just become difficult, because
Speaker 1: of the complex, crazy politics of our city for these
Speaker 1: sort of three groups to meet and say, um, well,
Speaker 1: you have a really good idea about this, and I
Speaker 1: have a really good idea about this, and we can
Speaker 1: combine A and B to make a smart policy. See.
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't really happen. I mean, New York
Speaker 1: politics are really wild, and it's a hard place to
Speaker 1: make hybrid policy work. And I found that sometimes in
Speaker 1: smaller cities, with um less powerful unions or less powerful
Speaker 1: lobbying groups, or less powerful charter groups and just a
Speaker 1: smaller centralized government, it's just easier to get stuff done.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, that's what we've been talking about. It's
Speaker 1: just really hard with the system of one point one
Speaker 1: million kids to make good policy for everybody. What about Lawrence, Massachusetts?
Speaker 1: What did you observe there? What they did was said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have this chronically underperforming district. Enough is enough. What
Speaker 1: we're gonna do is have somebody come and essentially take
Speaker 1: over this district, someone who's a really, really experienced educator,
Speaker 1: who has experienced in school improvement. We're going to take
Speaker 1: over this district. And here's kind of we're going to
Speaker 1: lay down the law. We're gonna say that we are
Speaker 1: transforming the expectations for this district. We're bringing data to bear. Uh,
Speaker 1: we are adding community supports where they're needed, but not
Speaker 1: as in delas renewal, sort of a one size fits all.
Speaker 1: We're saying this school could use this, but that school
Speaker 1: could use that. And you know, just incredibly effective government
Speaker 1: and bureaucracy to say there's one person who's responsible for this,
Speaker 1: all of the work's going to come out of his office.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes I just feel with school improvement it
Speaker 1: has to be small scale. To start with the renewal program,
Speaker 1: Delasi said we're going to turn around a hundred schools
Speaker 1: in three years. It's just not how this works. I
Speaker 1: think one of the biggest mistakes was not figuring out
Speaker 1: what worked well in ten to fifteen schools and then
Speaker 1: applying it to two hundred schools. But again, what you
Speaker 1: have in Lawrence and in Camden is this non ideological approach.
Speaker 1: You say, yes, we're gonna have community services, which some
Speaker 1: education reform people scoff at and say it's all about
Speaker 1: the tests or it's all about high expectations. And we're
Speaker 1: going to approach education reform in a non ideological way
Speaker 1: and say we support charters and we support data, and
Speaker 1: you just have both because both sides have good ideas.
Speaker 1: It's also reflective of I'm not going to name them,
Speaker 1: but there were two public schools, one in my current
Speaker 1: neighborhood and one on the Upper West Side where I
Speaker 1: used to live. That the parents have formed some parent
Speaker 1: organization and they've taken over the public school and they've
Speaker 1: really fluffed it up to a fairy well where the
Speaker 1: parents they want their kids to have new microscopes and
Speaker 1: some of the moms and dads are gonna front the
Speaker 1: money boom. They're ready to check. And their whole mentality
Speaker 1: was we got the dough and they didn't want their
Speaker 1: kids necessarily to go to private school. So they have
Speaker 1: kind of taken over these public schools and made them
Speaker 1: like really pretty sweet. Have you observed that? Yes? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean this is like it's like, why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: I mean, private school in New York City is really
Speaker 1: really expensive. So if you have a high quality yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a high quality public school with a
Speaker 1: strong parent teacher association and a super powerful, active, you know,
Speaker 1: group of parents who can raise you know, literally as
Speaker 1: much as one million dollars annually at fancy auctions, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you save yourselves? I mean, but this is like
Speaker 1: where we get to the haves and have nots of
Speaker 1: this system. I mean, we talk a lot about resources
Speaker 1: and money, and that's a huge part of it, and
Speaker 1: PTA fundraising is a huge part of it. But we're
Speaker 1: really also talking about is power. Which parents have power, time, connections,
Speaker 1: organizational prowess to pick up the phone and call your
Speaker 1: city council member, call your state senator and say, you know,
Speaker 1: our roof at ps whatever is leaking, or we really
Speaker 1: need some new laptops for these kids, and we're going
Speaker 1: to make a stink until we get them right. That is,
Speaker 1: that is a parent who inherently has a little bit
Speaker 1: more time, money, privilege, etcetera. There are parents with power
Speaker 1: in the city and their parents without power. You remind
Speaker 1: me of when my daughter, my older daughter, Ireland, went
Speaker 1: to private school and we get there and we said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm so sorry. I know we're coming
Speaker 1: to you to come in mid year. We're coming for
Speaker 1: the spring semester, and uh, I'd be so grateful. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm really late. I'm not pretty thick. And then one said, well,
Speaker 1: we do keep a couple of admisitions mid year in
Speaker 1: our pocket distint case you never know. I mean, we
Speaker 1: do have people who that this does happen. You mean
Speaker 1: you're not the first person. And I said, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: There anything we can do, and the woman looks at
Speaker 1: me and there's a breath and she goes, we could
Speaker 1: use a new faculty parking lot. Oh my god. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm sorry, and she said yes, she
Speaker 1: said the parking lot and she points out the window
Speaker 1: of her office. She was we would really like to
Speaker 1: get that paved. And I was like, done, Oh my god. Done.
Speaker 1: I mean, wrap it up. I'm done. I'll do that
Speaker 1: for you. I'd love to do that for you. And
Speaker 1: I paved the parking lot of the private school. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't have children. I don't. If you had children,
Speaker 1: where would just send him to school? Yeah? It's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I went to public and private schools in
Speaker 1: New York. So what I have thought about if and
Speaker 1: when I have my own kids is the culture of
Speaker 1: New York City p of its schools is a bubble.
Speaker 1: And one thing I found with the kids who had
Speaker 1: gone to Sands the whole way through in Brooklyn is
Speaker 1: that a lot of them had absolutely no sense of
Speaker 1: the wider world. We didn't talk about you know, we're
Speaker 1: in this borough where there's like massive poverty. We just said, like,
Speaker 1: things are good for us. And I think you were like,
Speaker 1: are you going to deer Valley this year. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would also say that in some public schools that are
Speaker 1: sort of almost like referred to as some my private schools,
Speaker 1: there is probably a lack of understanding of the broader
Speaker 1: system in which your school sits. So whatever I would
Speaker 1: want for my kids would be like, Hey, you're part
Speaker 1: of a system and part of a city. And that's
Speaker 1: what I see when I I would, I would, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I mean, I mean, they I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how like I mean, that's how I just feel, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you do on Saturday when you wake up?
Speaker 1: You just stay home all day? I literally don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I try to leave New York all the time, and
Speaker 1: then I do, and then I think it's awful. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would, I would like to raise kids
Speaker 1: in the city. But but what I really feel is that,
Speaker 1: you know, this is like a broader theme of my
Speaker 1: work and my coverage is you know, when I cover
Speaker 1: tough fights about reasonings or integration or you know, admissions changes,
Speaker 1: there's a huge variety and how parents and families see
Speaker 1: themselves as part of a city. Are you just about
Speaker 1: your school on your neighborhood and making sure your p
Speaker 1: t a is well funded, making sure everything's hunky dory there,
Speaker 1: or are you part of this massive system where if
Speaker 1: there are terrible schools or underperforming schools or cash strap
Speaker 1: schools on the other side of your district, how much
Speaker 1: do you care about them versus the school on your
Speaker 1: corner where everything seems to be fine. Um, what's the
Speaker 1: best way of measuring student outcomes? Yeah, it's tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: test scores are a really blunt measure. There's been a
Speaker 1: huge political backlash to using test scores to make almost
Speaker 1: any decision. Part of Deblasio is pitch as a mayoral
Speaker 1: candidate in there was a lot of frustration with how
Speaker 1: much Bloomberg had prize tests, and de Blasio said, Okay, like,
Speaker 1: not to worry, folks, I'm no longer going to make
Speaker 1: decisions in terms of promoting a student, in terms of
Speaker 1: assessing a school, in terms of assessing a principle primarily
Speaker 1: or mostly according to tests. So the stakes of tests
Speaker 1: were significantly lowered, but it is the single best diagnostic
Speaker 1: tool we continue to have. I mean, graduation rates to
Speaker 1: tell us something, but of course they're only for high schools.
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem with the backlash against
Speaker 1: test scores is that if you don't use test scores,
Speaker 1: things get a little fuzzy. So you'll have people saying, well,
Speaker 1: what is the trust level at this school? That stuff
Speaker 1: is important, but it's very very hard to measure, and
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of time and in sort of
Speaker 1: deep connections within one school to figure out what that means.
Speaker 1: How much do the teachers trust the principle, how much
Speaker 1: do the teachers do the kids trust? Of fiction between
Speaker 1: that between principles and teachers some I mean, they're all
Speaker 1: these kind of things that are really hard to measure
Speaker 1: from the outside. Like you walk into a building and
Speaker 1: you can tell it's functional by how the principle is
Speaker 1: interacting with the math teacher. Or you walk the hallways
Speaker 1: and you see is the writing and art on the
Speaker 1: hallways being updated frequently or is this from last spring?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's sort of all these soft, soft measures.
Speaker 1: I mean, I learned to tour schools from the former chancellor,
Speaker 1: Carmen Fremia, who was spent fifty years in the classroom
Speaker 1: and had all these really amazing tips and tricks you
Speaker 1: would never think of. But it is incredibly hard to
Speaker 1: go into one school and spend a day and assess it,
Speaker 1: because schools are these crazy ecosystems where everything is always
Speaker 1: changing and a kid could be disruptive on Monday and
Speaker 1: by Tuesday he's the smartest kid in the one person
Speaker 1: when he walks in the door at the beginning of
Speaker 1: that year, and another person when he walks out of it.
Speaker 1: You talked about very young people exactly, and it's constantly changing.
Speaker 1: It's really really hard to assess. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you'd like to spend eight hours a day in
Speaker 1: schools for a year. Test scores do tell us something
Speaker 1: and test scores and evaluating teachers. So this is a
Speaker 1: part of the backlash to test scores is that teacher
Speaker 1: evaluations have been caught up in that fight. So the
Speaker 1: backlash to testing sort of advocates against testing and said, well,
Speaker 1: you can't possibly use the students test score to evaluate
Speaker 1: how other teacher is teaching them. And I think there's
Speaker 1: probably an argument that if you're a gym teacher and
Speaker 1: you're student is not doing well in math, and maybe
Speaker 1: you're not a bad gym teacher, but if you're a
Speaker 1: math teacher and your kids are of them or more
Speaker 1: are not able to pass the third grade state math test.
Speaker 1: What's going on on in that classroom? And you know,
Speaker 1: we've had this saga in New York over the last
Speaker 1: ten years, how should we evaluate teachers. We've gone, we've
Speaker 1: flipped the pendulum every which way you can imagine, and
Speaker 1: we don't really have a clear system today. I mean
Speaker 1: it's constantly being negotiated behind closed doors in Albany of
Speaker 1: what our evaluation system should be. So we don't have
Speaker 1: a coherent teacher evaluation system. But there's a strong argument
Speaker 1: to be made that strong evaluation systems that are not
Speaker 1: you can have a strong evaluation that's not a punitive evaluation, right,
Speaker 1: but saying how are your kids doing on tests? How
Speaker 1: are they doing on internal quizzes, how are they you know,
Speaker 1: what's their portfolio of work look like? To take evaluation
Speaker 1: seriously and not say you lose your job if you
Speaker 1: don't have the rating we want in this semester. But
Speaker 1: to have a strong, comprehensive evaluation system, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's important. Well, one more quick question. Richard Carrnza, the
Speaker 1: head of the New York City School System. I always
Speaker 1: feel like, and I mean always feel like that you're
Speaker 1: the person that's drafted to play quarterback, the most porous
Speaker 1: offensive line in the NFL, no matter how talented they are.
Speaker 1: That the number one pick, they won the Heisman Trophy,
Speaker 1: and they've got the shittiest offensive line in the world.
Speaker 1: It's just you're just going to get the crap beat
Speaker 1: out of this and be a political punching bag. Is
Speaker 1: that true? Yes, yes, you will be. It is really
Speaker 1: hard not to be. Background. He is a New New Yorker,
Speaker 1: brand New Yorker. He'd barely been here before it took
Speaker 1: over the school system last year. He had been a
Speaker 1: superintendent in Houston and in San Francisco, and he had
Speaker 1: been administrator in Tucson, Arizona, and done well and done
Speaker 1: reasonably well, although I would say he didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: sort of really clear, huge signature winds in those places.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think he did interesting work. But this
Speaker 1: is his biggest arena. It is the biggest arena. And
Speaker 1: we're almost two years into Kranza's tenure, with only two
Speaker 1: years to go because de Blasi will be treum limited
Speaker 1: out and he does not have a signature initiative yet.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think is really challenging is that
Speaker 1: Karansa believes more in the power of disruptive structural change
Speaker 1: probably than to Blasio does. But de Blasio runs the
Speaker 1: school system. Kranza doesn't. And so I actually think there's
Speaker 1: a lot that these two guys don't agree on, and
Speaker 1: so not a lot is happening. He's been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of ducking. He's been doing a lot of ducking.
Speaker 1: He's been doing a lot of talking. So he came in,
Speaker 1: guns blazing, saying, folks, I'm an outsider and I'm here
Speaker 1: to tell you your school system is segregated, which is correct,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot here that I'm gonna take some
Speaker 1: big swings at and we're just going to have to
Speaker 1: deal with it. And a lot of people said, all right,
Speaker 1: like show us what you've got, But we don't really
Speaker 1: know what that is yet. That's the thing, I mean.
Speaker 1: To Blasi's biggest education initiative, pre K for All, all
Speaker 1: mostly tied up in a bow before Kranza came to town.
Speaker 1: Renewal was created and failed essentially before Kranza got here. Um,
Speaker 1: and now we're sort of in this moment where you know,
Speaker 1: de Blasia ran for president, he came back home, we
Speaker 1: don't really know what his next big education thing is,
Speaker 1: and I think he has a limited amount of time
Speaker 1: again because implementing change is so i'm consuming and glacial.
Speaker 1: So if you've got two years left to say you're
Speaker 1: going to take big steps to desegregate, the clock is
Speaker 1: really ticking. Yeah. And the and the last thing I
Speaker 1: want to say is that, to me, this is the
Speaker 1: problem is that in addition to STEM, in addition to
Speaker 1: you learning all the things we want you to learn
Speaker 1: and all the things you want to learn in school,
Speaker 1: I want you to learn how to think critically. And
Speaker 1: what we have now is a critical mass of people
Speaker 1: who don't know how to think critically. And they're the
Speaker 1: ones that got this guy elected president of the United States. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I think is really challenging and explosive
Speaker 1: about this moment in New York politics is that we
Speaker 1: are a liberal city and we are reckoning with oh
Speaker 1: my god, Donald Trump as president and all of these
Speaker 1: people the day after the election got involved in their
Speaker 1: p t a is in their school boards and their
Speaker 1: parent education councils. And three years later, what we see
Speaker 1: is some change, but a lot of conflict. And you know,
Speaker 1: people really wanted to get involved and make a difference
Speaker 1: in their schools. And I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been frustrated and felt stymied and felt disappointed. And
Speaker 1: what I really feel I'm covering right now is like
Speaker 1: a is like a liberal city sort of at war
Speaker 1: with itself over at schools. And it is really just
Speaker 1: this singular, intense moment for the school system. And I
Speaker 1: think it's largely because of the broader political climate. Eliza
Speaker 1: Shapiro of The New York Times on the strange confluence
Speaker 1: of national and local politics and the kids caught in
Speaker 1: the middle. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing for Fort